Overview
Smartly.io automates social media advertising for brands by handling media buying, creative production, and performance optimization across platforms such as Facebook and Instagram through a software-plus-services model. Its software automates campaign setup, optimization, and reporting, while a services team provides guidance to scale campaigns profitably, and a Creative Services group tests and refines creatives to boost results. It differentiates itself by combining automated workflows with data-driven creative testing within one solution and serving major brands like Uber, Fabletics, Ubisoft, Burger King, and eBay. Its goal is to help brands navigate evolving social media behavior and achieve scalable, profitable advertising across multiple platforms.
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About Smartly.io
Industries
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Acquired
Total Funding
$2.8M
Headquarters
Helsinki, Finland
Founded
2013
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What believers are saying
- November 2, 2026 Intelligence Pro adds planning, benchmarks, headroom, and incrementality signals.
- June 2026 Wpromote and Horizon deals prove agencies pay for measurable performance lift.
- Smartly's 2026 LinkedIn integration expands B2B video automation across a high-value channel.
What critics are saying
- Meta, Google, Reddit, and LinkedIn can commoditize Smartly's automation layer by 2027.
- Smartly's managed-services-heavy model faces margin pressure if clients shift to self-serve platform tools.
- A failed measurement promise would kill trust, shrinking enterprise renewals and agency adoption.
What makes Smartly.io unique
- Smartly unifies creative, media, and incrementality inside one 2026 AI workflow.
- June 2026 Horizon Media partnership activates Blu audiences directly inside Smartly workflows.
- October 2026 CTO Kelly Uphoff deepens Smartly's AI-native decisioning strategy.
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Funding
Total Funding
$2.8M
Below
Industry Average
Funded Over
3 Rounds
Benefits
- Unlimited Paid Time Off
- Paid Holidays
- Paid Sick Leave
- Health Insurance
- Mental Health Support
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- 401(k) Company Match
- Company Equity
- Life Insurance
- Disability Insurance
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
0%1 year growth
0%2 year growth
-2%Smartly launches Intelligence Pro to connect campaign planning, performance and incrementality. 2 mins read The new offering brings together planning, performance benchmarks, headroom analysis and incrementality signals to help marketers make more informed decisions across the campaign lifecycle NEW YORK-BUSINESS WIRE- Smartly, the AI-powered advertising technology company, today launched Intelligence Pro, a premium offering that brings together four capabilities to help marketers plan investment, understand true incrementality and determine where to spend their next dollar. Intelligence Pro connects causal inference models with planning tools to help marketers prove business impact and make faster decisions from increasingly complex data. "Marketing teams are inundated with data, but the challenge is identifying what signals are useful and turning them into a decision they can act on," said Maxwell Tang, Chief Product Officer at Smartly. "Intelligence Pro brings forecasting, market context and state-of-the-art incrementality signals together to help marketers assess where to invest and what their media is contributing. As AI accelerates campaign execution, the quality of each decision matters more." Intelligence Pro combines four capabilities within Smartly's platform: * Reach Planner helps teams compare media scenarios and forecast cross-channel reach and frequency before campaigns launch, supporting more informed planning. * Headroom Analysis helps marketers assess where additional investment may have room to drive growth and where returns may begin to diminish. * Benchmarks puts campaign performance in context across relevant industries, regions, platforms and objectives, using aggregated and anonymized data. * INCRMNTAL Connect adds an incrementality-based view of media contribution alongside platform-reported performance and can inform applicable Smartly workflows. "We used to spend a lot of time pulling data from different platforms and manually analyzing where to invest," shared Sierra Smith, Sr. Marketing Manager - Paid Social, Hearst Newspapers. "With Headroom, we can evaluate budget opportunities using historical performance and make more informed decisions without all the manual work. It's been a game changer for how we approach planning." Together, the capabilities help marketers connect planning and optimization signals in the workflows where campaign decisions are made. Intelligence Pro is part of Smartly's broader vision to bring creative, media and intelligence together, helping marketers move from insight to action across the campaign lifecycle. Intelligence Pro is available now to eligible Smartly customers. For more information, visit smartly.io/intelligence-suite. About Smartly Smartly is the AI-powered advertising technology company ranked as the leader in The Forrester Wave(TM): Creative Advertising Technologies. Its platform unifies creative and media to produce intelligent creative, dynamic, data-driven image and video assets optimized for seamless activation across channels. Brands manage, optimize, and scale high-performance campaigns in one place, achieving PwC-validated results, including a 5.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) and 42 minutes saved every hour. Medianet support 800+ brands and manage over $7 billion in ad spend globally. With strategic partnerships across major media platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, and TikTok, Medianet help Fortune 500 companies deliver relevant advertising at speed and scale. Backed by deep media expertise and best-in-class customer support, Medianet empower brands to maximize performance and drive real business outcomes. Visit Smartly.io to learn more. Contact details: Media Joseph J. Nuñez Senior Director, Global Communications [email protected] Media Outreach made fast, easy, simple. Feature your press release on Medianet's News Hub every time you distribute with Medianet. Pay per release or save with a subscription.
Meet its Members: Marc Holloway, smartly. Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Marc Holloway, Head of Customer Success, APAC and IAB SEA+India 2026 Industry Leadership Board Member. Smartly is an AI powered advertising technology company that transforms the advertising experience for brands and their consumers. The platform contains automated solutions for creative production, media buying, campaign optimisation, and intelligence across platforms, saving time and improving effectiveness. Backed by deep media expertise and best-in-class customer support, IAB SEA+India empower brands to maximise performance and drive real business outcomes. Smartly began in Helsinki 13 years ago as a Facebook Marketing Partner, and IAB SEA+India has since expanded strategic partnerships across major media platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, and TikTok. IAB SEA+India is also selected as OpenAI's first advertising technology partner as well as recently adding LinkedIn Advertising on its platform. Smartly has brought many groundbreaking innovations to the advertising industry over the years. An early example is Predictive Budget Allocation (PBA), a solution that allocates budgets across platforms, campaigns, ad sets and ads based on predicted performance. More recently, Smartly launched a suite of intelligence tools including Brand Pulse. Brand Pulse deduplicates the reach from platforms giving advertisers a real time view on where they are achieving the most efficient incremental reach and allows them to continuously optimise to maximise impact. What stands out is how Smartly solutions work together. Combining Brand Pulse with PBA creates a multiplier effect, helping advertisers drive even greater ROI. South East Asia & India is a thrilling place to work thanks to the diversity of thinking, cultures and ideas. There is a real passion to do more, do better and to win which I am constantly impressed by and draw a lot of energy from. Its advertisers in this region really push IAB SEA+India to keep developing its solutions and partner to maximise impact, making South East Asia and India crucial to the overall development of Smartly solutions I have no doubt that this region will continue to innovate and grow at a rapid rate, leading the industry globally into the future. what's your favourite thing about being part of the IAB SEA+India member network? Being part of the IAB SEA + India has been valuable both professionally and personally. Connecting with leaders across its industry as well as developing peer connections has given me a grounding anchor and sounding board at a time of significant flux in its industry. I have always found conversations with fellow members and opportunities to learn from different perspectives genuinely refreshing. And stepping up into an Industry Leadership Board role, Co-Leading the 2026 AI Council has been an incredibly fun experience! It's hard to choose one favourite as there is so much on offer. But one of my most memorable food experiences has been trying Assam Laksa for the first time. So delicious! meet its members Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Kishan Khatri, Principal Product Manager at The Trade Desk and IAB SEA+India 2026 Industry Leadership Board Member. tell IAB SEA+India about the trade desk, what is your mission? The Trade Desk is a 21/10/2026 meet its members Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Stuart McLennan, Senior Vice President, Strategic Markets at Rakuten Advertising and IAB SEA+India 2026 Strategic Advisory Board Member. tell IAB SEA+India about rakuten advertising, what is your mission? At Rakuten Advertising, IAB SEA+India turn 13/10/2026 meet its members Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Alisha Sharma, Sales Director at Kargo and IAB SEA+India 2026 Programmatic Council Member. tell IAB SEA+India about kargo, what is your mission? Kargo is a leading omnichannel ad-tech platform delivering innovative advertising solutions 08/10/2026 meet its members Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Siddharth Puri, CEO at Tyroo and IAB SEA+India 2026 Strategic Advisory Board Member. tell IAB SEA+India about tyroo, what is your mission? Tyroo exists to help businesses access and monetise growth opportunities across 29/09/2026 meet its members Its 'Meet our Members' series spotlights the diverse voices shaping digital marketing across the region. In this edition, IAB SEA+India feature Bertilla Teo, Chief Executive Officer, APAC at Smartly and IAB SEA+India 2026 Strategic Advisory Board Member. tell IAB SEA+India about smartly, what is your mission? Smartly is an end-to-end technology platform that brings 28/08/2026 Stay ahead in digital marketing - get the latest IAB SEA+India insights, updates and opportunities direct to your inbox.
Smartly names ex-Netflix executive Kelly Uphoff CTO. Thu, 8th Oct 2026 (Today) Smartly has appointed Kelly Uphoff as Chief Technology Officer, bringing in a former senior technology executive from Tala and Netflix. Uphoff will lead the company's global engineering organisation and oversee work on its AI-focused advertising platform. Her remit includes systems designed to learn from campaign signals across creative, media, measurement and optimisation. The appointment marks a senior leadership change at the advertising technology group as it puts greater emphasis on automated decision-making in marketing. The role will focus on developing technology that uses campaign data to inform subsequent creative and media choices. Uphoff joins from Tala, where she served as Chief Technology Officer and led technology for the financial platform. Before that, she spent a decade at Netflix, leading data science and engineering teams working across machine learning, predictive modelling and experimentation. Her background in personalisation and AI informed the hire as advertisers shift from using AI to generate assets to applying it across a broader set of campaign decisions, including how campaigns are created, activated, measured and adjusted. Leadership change Uphoff succeeds Lauri Tarkkala as Chief Technology Officer. During his tenure, Tarkkala oversaw a reworking of Smartly's technology foundation and the development of its unified platform. That period also included the integration of acquisitions such as Ad-Lib.io, Viralspace.ai and INCRMNTAL, which expanded the company's work in creative and campaign decisioning. Laura Desmond, Chief Executive Officer at Smartly, linked the appointment to wider changes in the development of advertising technology. "Advertising is entering a fundamentally new era, where AI and intelligent systems will reshape how brands understand and respond to consumers, make decisions and turn intelligence into action," said Laura Desmond, Chief Executive Officer at Smartly. Desmond also outlined the company's view of the role AI will play in its products and engineering priorities. "Kelly understands that in an AI-native system, every signal is an opportunity to learn and make the next decision better. She brings the technical depth, AI expertise and customer orientation to help us accelerate the continuous optimization loops across creative and media, where every action generates intelligence that improves what comes next. That is how we create better experiences for people and better outcomes for marketers," Desmond said. Smartly's latest executive hire comes as advertising groups across the sector try to apply AI to more than content production. Many are seeking tools that can combine data analysis, experimentation and automation to decide which audiences to target, which creative treatments to use and how budgets should shift during a campaign. In that context, technical leadership has become more central to product strategy. Companies in the adtech market are under pressure to show that AI can improve measurable campaign performance while fitting into the systems brands and agencies already use. For Smartly, that means continuing to build around a platform model that unifies campaign functions rather than treating media buying, creative development and measurement as separate tasks. Its engineering work is increasingly focused on continuous decision intelligence across the campaign lifecycle. Uphoff said that trend shaped her decision to join the business. "The next chapter of advertising will require technology that can continuously learn, make better decisions and translate intelligence into experiences that are genuinely relevant to each consumer," said Kelly Uphoff, incoming Chief Technology Officer at Smartly. She also pointed to Smartly's existing technical base and the scope for further development. "Smartly has built a strong technology foundation and has a compelling opportunity to bring AI, data and decision-making together in ways that create meaningful value for marketers. I'm excited to join the team and help build what comes next to move advertising forward," Uphoff said.
Horizon's bob Lord takes aim at holdcos' FTE pricing models: 'it's the old system' The executive expects brands will stop paying for agencies' traditional headcount-based models within the next five years. 4 hours ago ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ brings the people shaping advertising, commerce, and media together for four days of unscripted conversations and after-hours connections. Meet Meettool in Midtown, Oct. 5-8. Bob Lord, president of independent agency Horizon Media Holdings, is condemning some agencies' labor-based pricing models. "You have to create composable architectures" to drive clients' business growth, he said onstage at Smartly's Advance event in Lower Manhattan. "What's holding Meettool back? Inertia. "It's the old system: FTE [full-time equivalent]-based models, principal-based buying - how the holdcos make their money," he added. "You've made investments in technology over the last five years. You need to monetize that investment, and you're going to force it on your clients." He said he was "not picking on anyone," but simply highlighting "an economic equation." Later in the same panel discussion, he predicted that within five years, clients would stop paying for the FTE model. Kendra Barnett is Adweek's senior tech reporter. Recommended videos
Smartly partners with LinkedIn to scale creative and video for B2B. Search. LinkedIn's professional audience insights combined with Smartly's AI-powered creative and performance intelligence give marketers the speed and intelligence to deliver more relevant creative across every stage of the B2B buying journey. Smartly, the AI-powered advertising technology company transforming ad experiences for brands and their consumers, today announced a new integration bringing LinkedIn Ads into its unified advertising platform, expanding the channels marketers can manage with Smartly. The integration will help marketers personalize creative for professional audiences, accelerate video production and use audience and performance intelligence to continuously improve advertising outcomes. "Our collaboration with LinkedIn extends Smartly's creative and intelligence capabilities to one of the most important environments for B2B marketers," said Laura Desmond, CEO, Smartly. "When you're engaging a complex buying group, one message or one piece of creative isn't enough. Smartly makes it possible to turn audience intelligence into relevant creative at scale, learn from performance, and continuously make the next ad better. Smartly's integration with LinkedIn brings that advantage to B2B marketers." The integration brings Smartly's creative and performance capabilities to LinkedIn at a time when B2B marketers are navigating increasingly complex buying journeys. Purchase decisions often involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities, raising the need for creative that speaks to distinct audiences, buying stages and markets. By combining LinkedIn's professional audience with Smartly's creative automation and intelligence, marketers can turn a deeper understanding of who they are reaching into more relevant advertising and continuously improve what performs. For B2B marketers, this brings Smartly's AI-powered creative and campaign intelligence capabilities to LinkedIn, helping teams: * Make B2B creative more intelligent: Combine audience insights from LinkedIn's professional network with Smartly's creative intelligence to create and deliver more relevant creative across the buying journey. * Scale video for LinkedIn: Use AI-powered automation to produce, version and iterate video at scale, turning existing creative into more relevant video assets for LinkedIn faster. * Turn performance signals into action: Bring campaign and creative insights into a continuous intelligence loop that uses AI to surface what's working, identify opportunities to optimize and inform smarter creative and campaign decisions on LinkedIn.
Smartly.io is Hiring for 64 Jobs on Simplify!
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About Smartly.io
Industries
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Acquired
Total Funding
$2.8M
Headquarters
Helsinki, Finland
Founded
2013
Smartly.io is Hiring for 64 Jobs on Simplify!
Find jobs on Simplify and start your career today
Don't see your dream role? Check out thousands of other roles on Simplify.Browse all jobs