Bidstack Group (LON: BIDS) detailed plans for its next phase of growth on Thursday, as it recruited yet more high-profile talent to its board at a time of great momentum.
Bidstack is an in-game advertising platform. It lets real-world brands place their advertising in areas that feel natural to a given video game. For example, on the pitchside LED boards in a football game or on cityscape billboards.
The tech player has been adding more and more titles to its portfolio. It has added an impressive 14 since the end of December. Meanwhile, looking forward, it has a “robust” pipeline of more AAA and high-fidelity titles as game developers look to adopt its offer of quality brand campaigns and further monetisation.
Bidstack is also forming powerful partnerships. Indeed, the firm added Verizon Media to its Approved Partner Network for the Nordics and the Netherlands in March, building its experience and understanding of this “vibrant and established” esports and gaming market.
On top of this, it also announced in April that it has integrated with a “leading” demand-side platform (DSP). A DSP is a type of software that advertisers use to buy advertising from a marketplace.
This came as the company continued work with DSPs, advertisers, and industry bodies to define an open-exchange method for trading in-game advertising.
Elsewhere, results in February from Bidstack’s work with Moat by Oracle demonstrated the strong performance of its PC inventory, which is running at three-and-a-half times the industry average. The campaign ran on Football Manager 2021. In total, 99% of observed impressions were free of general invalid traffic, such as traffic from simple bots.
Adding e-sports experience
At the same time, Bidstack is adding two members to its board, including Glen Calvert of esports performance brand Fnatic. Fnatic is the most successful esports brand of the last ten years, with over 200 championships across 30 different games.
Calvert has been chief operating officer at Fnatic, which has a global audience of 55 million and has won $15 million in prize money, since January 2019.
Later this year, Calvert will go on to launch AI start-up Kaizan.ai, which “augments the intelligence of teams”. His other experience includes being the founder and chief executive of Affectv, a programmatic marketing company. Before that, he was part of the founding team for advertising personalisation platform Struq—which Quantcast acquired by in 2014.
Before becoming a director, Calvert was a member of Bidstack’s advisory board, joining back in August 2020. He now joins the company as a non-executive director.
Bidstack noted the “considerable experience” Calvert brings with him to the firm, as well as his “strong relationships across the sector and among the investor community”.
Impressive executive directors
The other new director at Bidstack is Lisa Hau, who is currently the company’s chief operating officer. She joins the board now as an executive director.
Before she joined Bidstack in May 2020, Hau led investor relations at WPP. Before that, she spent five years as an equity research analyst with multinational investment bank Jefferies. There, she headed up coverage for the European media and internet sector.
James Draper, founder and chief executive of Bidstack, said:
“Lisa is already well entrenched in the Bidstack business as COO and has impressed many of us in successfully driving forward a number of aspects of our business. Her background and previous experience at WPP has been instrumental on many occasions since she joined the team.”
Meanwhile, after the Bidstack annual general meeting, Mike Hayes will move from the board of directors to the firm’s advisory board. The business is still seeking an additional independent non-executive director.
All of this positive change signifies a company now in its next phase of growth and gearing up for great things.
Looking ahead to 2021, Bidstack is forecasting material revenue growth, significantly weighted towards the second half.