In February 1999, ad pepper saw the light of day in the online marketing world in Nuremberg. Founded as a classic start-up, the Pepper family initially consisted of a group of career changers, as there were no job descriptions for the online industry at the time. Over the years, they passionately developed a successful performance marketing company specializing in lead generation and target group targeting.
Time flies when you’re having fun
In 2003 I – Susanne Pilz – got to know and love the Peppers as a working student. And as it happens, when you feel comfortable with each other and experience numerous exciting adventures together, it never gets boring and you stay true to each other. That’s why I’ve been with the company ever since and today, 15 years later, I’m Managing Director DACH at ad pepper media Germany.
True to the motto “time flies when you’re having fun”, I would like to take the time to look back on behalf of ad pepper at the last 20 years of our innovative, fast-moving and multifaceted industry, as well as at ad pepper’s milestones on the way from start-up to an experienced company in the German online marketing industry.
From pioneer to trendsetter
One year after its foundation, ad pepper went public in 2000 in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In the same year, the Internet industry was hit by the bursting of the dotcom bubble, which ad pepper successfully survived. Even the financial crisis in 2008 did not affect the then 9-year-old company.
In 2002, ad pepper acquired shares in Falk eSolutions AG, a global provider of software solutions for ad serving and e-mail marketing. The Danish online marketing company Globase ApS, the Scandinavian ad serving provider Emediate ApS and other companies also joined the company. Not all of them stayed – some were sold on at a profit.But the affiliate marketing platform Webgains Ltd. and ad agents are still part of the ad pepper family today.
ad pepper media is part of the International N.V. group of companies, which operates with 250 employees in seven worldwide locations with various specializations in the field of performance advertising. With the performance business, we have found our common thread for success.
The success story was crowned with dynamic growth of 30 percent in 2017. In addition, shortly before ad pepper’s 20th birthday in 2018, we recorded the best financial year since our founding.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Secret recipe for a long life
Typical characteristics of the online marketing industry are constantly new trends as well as an enormous speed of development. This is what makes the market so dynamic, which makes it so attractive for us. Every day, ad pepper faces new challenges and develops innovative ideas to move forward and grow – because it’s in your twenties that life really starts to be fun! ?
ad pepper recognized early on that online marketing always offers new opportunities in terms of measurability of success and interaction with the target group. That’s why we combine our creative, technical and analytical competences to be able to act holistically with relevant methods. The transition from environment-centric advertising to user-centric advertising was a new approach that has turned the industry on its head in recent years. Thus, ad pepper started its first steps in real-time advertising and with an in-house demand side platform (Adexplorer).
In the meantime, ad pepper offers all modern campaign management options: Thanks to iSense, iLead and performance display advertising, we are picking up speed in all relevant areas – in content targeting, lead generation and benefit-based advertising.
Another important experience we have gained over the past 20 years is: reacting early to trends and market changes. A current topic is data protection, which gained attention not least with the DSGVO and will become even more relevant for companies in the coming years with the ePrivacy regulation. When it comes to these topics, we can present secure solutions to our customers and business partners.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
The best is yet to come
At ad pepper, we’d love to be able to look into a crystal ball sometimes and see what’s in store for the rest of our professional lives. But since this is impossible and would perhaps take away the excitement, we prefer to rely on our experience, our skills and our feel for the industry. We always serve new online marketing trends such as video, social and data advertising against the backdrop of our recipe for success, performance. That is our DNA.
With this in mind, we raise our glasses and say, “Happy Birthday ad pepper – to you!” ❤
Susanne Pilz slipped into the online industry 15 years ago as a working student and is now Managing Director of ad pepper media DACH business and thus responsible for the record year 2018. In addition, Susanne Pilz is a lecturer for online marketing at GAW (Grundig Academy) in Nuremberg and a member of the advisory board of Marketing Club Nürnberg e.V. for social marketing.