• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 10 hours ago

One LoopMe patent analyzes how thousands of algorithms compete with one another. As many as 2,400 algorithms evaluate the same data and compete to influence the outcome of an advertising campaign.

“As one algorithm becomes more powerful during the course of a campaign, it ultimately takes over,” said Stephen Upstone, CEO and founder at LoopMe. “It's almost like you’re running a race and the one that gets the most affective takes over.”

In an average campaign the company might have about 10 different algorithms that make an impact. Clients can see the outcomes in the dashboard of LoopMe’s platform.

The technology is attracting top talent like Edward Peterson. With more than 25 years of technology experience at Microsoft, Xandr, and AppNexus, he joined LoopMe as senior vice president of global engineering from Microsoft. Peterson was part of its AI team that rolled out Copilot globally.

Peterson becomes part of the senior management team, overseeing LoopMe’s software development hubs in the U.S., Poland and Ukraine.

LoopMe’s revenue growth of 50% year over year (YoY) in the first half of 2025 puts the company on track to invest more in talent and acquisitions for future growth.

The mobile video ad platform is on track to generate about $400 million in revenue from advertising, growing 40% each year for the past seven years, but Upstone believes the company will far exceed that growth in 2025.

The company reached net zero&rdquo for hosting costs, and sees about 400 billion daily ad requests, and only passes 2% to the ecosystem, making processing more efficient, he said.

Upstone wants to bring more performance and demand into the company’s strategy to support advertisers through acquisitions.

“We’re looking at about 150 companies per year,” Upstone said, when asked if he has plans to make acquisitions to fill gaps. “Probably more next year than this year.”

LoopMe made its first acquisition, Chartboost, from Zynga, a Sequoia Capital-backed company, at the end of 2024. At the time, Zynga had about 30,000 SDKs, giving LoopMe pieces of code that let it integrate directly into apps.

“Many advertisers demand you have the ability to go direct to publishers,” Upstone said.

LoopMe got its start working with many of the large holding companies like Publicis and Omnicom, and then began working with independent agencies, followed by platforms like Google and others.

The company's strategy pulls upper-funnel approaches like reach and frequency -- as well as brand safety and viewability -- into the mid-funnel to test advertising exposures in real time to optimize everything supported by AI.

Upstone has worked with AI and machine learning for about 22 years. He got his start collaborating with some of the professors of founding AI members from DeepMind. LoopMe has since brought in generative AI to expand the ability to code software faster.

LoopMe eased into performance brand advertising, taking a computational AI-driven approach to measure the media in real=time, helping advertisers to build an emotional connection with customers.