• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 9, 2024

Opera Ads has been focusing on filtering out fraud, as well as understanding ways to support ad targeting without third-party cookies within and outside of its owned-and-operated platforms.

"We can’t take the media risk when we go out and acquire inventory in partner apps,” said Per Wetterdal, vice president at Opera Ads.

Invalid traffic tools (IVT) have been a focus. The company has invested a lot in IVT tools. It has been building out an ad stack that uses tools like tag certifications.

“I feel the entire industry has become better with IVT,” he said, pointing to companies like Human and Pixalate as masters in the space.  “When we started with ads, we had our own inventory and it was easier.”

Opera, based on Oslo, Norway, reported in October that revenue rose 20% to $123.3 million, with advertising rising to $76.8 million. The company also raised its full-year outlook again.

“The main driver is from search traffic to engines and partners,” he said. “We share revenue with them for the search traffic.”

When Opera’s ad business started to scale, offering audience extensions and placement on other properties, everything changed. It was a learning curve, he said. 

Similar to other Chromium-based browsers, Opera doesn’t block third-party cookies by default. Users must to block or allow cookies using options in settings, but last week the company announced it had been granted TAG Platinum status achieved by The Trustworthy Accountability Group, which combats criminal activity and fosters trust.

Opera is one of only 34 organizations worldwide that has achieved this status.

The company has received a boost from mobile-first ecommerce, retailers and travel.

It began in Asia, followed by the U.S. and Europe. Many of the clients are global. Wetterdal pointed to competitors when asked to cite one of the most challenging parts of scaling its ad business.

“We have a cost focus on infrastructure,” he said. “Companies that don’t have that either outsource too much or rely too much on the cloud.

They struggle with the cost of scale, especially as they move globally.”

Wetterdal acknowledged Opera Ads is a challenger in the space, a much smaller company and brand compared with established platforms. It sometimes takes time to earn trust and attention. Most of the clients come to Opera because they want to look at other platforms, he said. They are looking for a unique proposition with a smaller size company.

Opera Ads, introduced in 2019, eventually expanded from the browser into connected television and other trends—all globally—without using third-party cookies for targeting. Instead, the company relies on machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and signals like search intent and content. Pricing models range from CPMs and CPC to CPAs.

The company’s performance driven strategy, contextual and intent-based targeting, built during the past five years supports its supply side platform (SSP) that offers a marketplace for mobile, web, CTV and audio. It also provides a self-service platform that has become available for buying inventory on Opera News.

AI also is a main source of technology that powers the experience. It’s embedded in the browser. Users can power the AI at any time—voice, text and images. On the backend it recommends content. AI also is used to optimize creatives. A super hub was created in Iceland to support its own CPUs used for model training. For the bigger models, the company has partnerships with OpenAI and Google.

“Without machine learning and AI, we would not be able to do what we do today,” he said, when asked about optimizing and targeting ads, and that the investment will only increase. “It cannot be managed by manual configurations.”