Opera Ads celebrates its 2nd anniversary with over 130% revenue growth since launch

By Per Wetterdal, EVP Commercial   

Since its launch in May, 2019, Opera Ads has become a force to be reckoned with –  it reaches and engages millions of Opera users worldwide with innovative, content-based Ad experiences from Opera’s global inventory, across its portfolio of products, and has become the third biggest ads platform in Africa, hot on the heels of Google and Facebook. 

These efforts have resulted in spectacular growth for Opera Ads: since 2019, revenue has jumped over 130%. The daily revenue run rate is up 50% year to date and is now exceeding $240,000 per day across our mobile products. It is tracking to over $80 million in revenue for 2021.

Over the last two years, the Opera team has maintained a commitment to improving the user experience by introducing innovative, feature-rich ad formats. As a result of our efforts, Opera Ads is the platform-of-choice for advertisers seeking to reach a scaled and engaged audience – in a highly transparent fashion – across the fastest-growing mobile digital markets.

Advertisers seek out Opera Ads because it offers them the most relevant features for successful campaigns, all designed to help advertisers increase engagement with their target audiences and maximize the performance of their online campaigns. Opera Ads is constantly innovating and introducing new capabilities to support our partners to drive engagement and performance for their brands and products. In addition to our native content formats we are also offering powerful call-to-action and conversational formats such as click to WhatsApp, Messenger, USSD and SMS to lower the friction for advertisers to connect with their target audiences. We have also introduced high impact formats such as Roadblock and Floating Button, offering 100% share-of-voice and giving brands the opportunity to reach the full scale of Opera during a day or a weekend. Last year we also introduced our Insight formats where advertisers can run polls or surveys based on easy to use templates giving them additional insight to what users think about their brand or offering.    

Beyond these features encouraging rich engagement and insight, Opera Ads Brand Safety tools, which include the most relevant fraud detection tools, ensure our partners’ safety and protection while providing campaigns with maximum quality delivery, brand safety and viewability. Recently, Opera has successfully completed its Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) certification for Opera Ads from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab. The certification confirms that Opera Ads adheres to full transparency, third-party viewability and verification of ad traffic. Setting Opera Ads up for accelerated growth we have recently launched our audience extension offering where we connect our demand to partner inventories in addition to our owned and operated inventory. This gives Opera Ads incremental reach and offers our advertising partners the ability to connect with a broader audience in a seamless and harmonised way.    

By introducing intelligent advertising that conveys the right message to the right audience, at the right time, in the most opportune place, Opera expects this growth to continue - worldwide. Additional upcoming features include:

• Opera Ad Manager, a self service tool that empowers advertisers to take full control of Ad campaigns – from planning to execution – within the Opera Self Service ecosystem.
• Premium Ad Solutions, offering advertisers a selection of premium inventories, AI driven targeting solutions, advanced data analytics, and guided support from our Ad experts.
• Further expansion of our DSP & Publisher Solutions, tailored for demand and supply side platforms that reach over 90% of internet users worldwide, helping enhance advertisers’ monetization strategy.

As we look to the future of advertising, we’re building a world in which both advertisers and consumers win. Opera is developing technologies that not only allow brands to connect with large, highly-engaged audiences, but to target those audiences with precision. For brands, this means every budgeted advertising dollar is more productive: brands benefit from visibility and insight, able to market their products and services effectively and efficiently. Consumers benefit from genuinely relevant ads based on their interest and context, while gaining access to free personalised content and all the compelling services the web offers. All with Opera, and its innovative features, at the core.

Stay tuned!