Company: Drawbridge, Inc., San Mateo, CA
Company Description: Drawbridge, known for pioneering cross-device ad targeting solutions, uses a statistical triangulation technique to estimate a match between a desktop or mobile browser cookie and a mobile device. Using this technology, the company has paired users to over one billion devices to date, and the number is rapidly growing.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year - Up to 100 Employees

Nomination Title: Drawbridge, Inc.

1. Tell the story about what this nominated organization achieved since January 1 2013 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Drawbridge was founded with the goal of revolutionizing mobile advertising. The Drawbridge team has developed the first machine learning ad technology that leverages insights from device IDs to enable advertisers and marketers to reach targeted audiences across screens. The company does this with a unique approach built on a statistical algorithm that matches a desktop cookie to a mobile device, creating a pairing.

Due to the limitations of cookies on mobile devices, Drawbridge offers a probabilistic solution that relies on a combination of device attributes and other data to make a prediction that a set of devices belongs to a single user. Through Drawbridge technology, users receive relevant ads without having any privacy concerns, while advertisers and brands can increase their audience reach across devices through stronger and more accurate targeting.

In 2013, Drawbridge paired its one-billionth device globally using this technology. Drawbridge also raised the bar for probabilistic precision pairing to 85% accuracy, versus the industry standard 50-60%. 2013 was a pivotal year for Drawbridge in many respects, as the company grew its business, team, partnerships, visibility and addressable market. The company built upon its established technology to refine the cross-device platform to facilitate an open and transparent buying relationship between advertisers, agency, and direct publishers. This is a first-of-its-kind in terms of being a real-time and reserve marketplace with cross-device data. Publishers can sell inventory, and agencies and advertisers can buy through the fully transparent self-service platform.

Drawbridge partnered and integrated with all major mediation and real-time buying sources, including Bizo, BlueKai, Lotame, eXelate, AdMob, MoPub and Mobclix, while expanding beyond static banners into interstitials, rich media and video formats. Throughout 2013, Drawbridge served over 400 campaigns across the globe, expanding into Europe, China and Australia. Top demand verticals included Travel, Retail, Finance, eCommerce, and Online Services.

The company’s reporting structure was enhanced in 2013 to help advertisers understand return on ad spend (ROAS), cross-device attribution, cross-device audience behavior, and other major key advertising measures in an intuitive self-service dashboard. Internally, the Drawbridge team grew from 27 to 48 employees, including five new executives in Sales, Marketing, Strategic Partnerships and Product Development with the company opening offices in New York, London and Chicago. Drawbridge also closed a $14M series B funding round, bringing total funding to date to $20.5M.

As a result of these incredible feats and innovative technology, Drawbridge was featured in the New York Times, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AdExchanger, and Advertising Age, and was named one of the “15 Hottest Ad Tech Start-Ups” by Business Insider in 2013.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader of this nominated organization:

Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan is the founder and CEO of Drawbridge, the industry-leading programmatic cross-device advertising platform. Since its inception in 2010, Drawbridge has quickly grown to be the first and foremost solution for cutting edge cross-screen advertising strategies for Fortune 500 brands. Named one of Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising” two years in a row, as well as one of Ad Age’s “40 Under 40” in 2014, she is an expert on advertiser-buyer connections in today’s mobile environment. Always an innovator, Kamakshi left her role as Lead Scientist at AdMob (acquired by Google in 2009), to solve a digital advertising problem before it was a buzzword: cross-device. Kamakshi received her Ph.D. in Information Theory and Algorithms from Stanford University.