Keeping kids safe online has become a priority in the information age and is particularly key when everyone is spending more time on the internet due to homeschooling and home working by parents.
Kidoz Inc. (CVE:KIDZ) is a mobile advertising technology company and owner of the KIDOZ Safe Ad Network - www.kidoz.net - and the Kidoz Publisher SDK. The company’s commitment to children's privacy and safety has created one of the fastest-growing mobile networks in the world, currently reaching over 300 million kids per month across its KidTech AdTech network.
Kidoz provides an essential suite of services that unites kids’ brands, content publishers and families. Trusted by Disney, Hasbro, Lego and more, the KIDOZ Safe Ad Network helps the world’s largest brands to safely reach and engage kids across thousands of mobile apps and sites.
Proactive recently sat down with Kidoz co-CEOs Eldad Ben Tora and Jason Williams to learn more about the business.
So, what led to the setting up of the KIDOZ Safe Ad Network?
Eldad: KIDOZ actually started as a safe environment for kids on mobile 10 years ago, but about 5 years ago we realized that the biggest opportunity in the market is safe advertising for kids. We saw that kids were flocking to mobile, which was viewed as the number one screen preferred by them, and so we started working with the players in the market.
We started working with publishers who developed apps for kids and while they were enjoying the number of kids watching and playing with their apps, we saw they had difficulty to monetize them in a safe way. On the other hand, we saw that advertisers who used to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying commercials on TV were looking for new avenues to reach kids with their products and services, because kids were not watching TV anymore.
So we did one plus one and said, okay, the kids are on mobile and the app publishers are lacking monetization segment positions, while advertisers are looking to enter mobile and need a safe and trusted platform for that. And that’s why we created the KIDOZ Safe Ad network and we became the number one provider of kid safe brands.
The KIDOZ Safe Ad Network is trusted by the likes of children’s icons such as Disney, Hasbro, Lego, how important is that to the company?
Eldad: Obviously, the brands you have mentioned are probably the toughest clients you could think of. It takes them years to trust in you and your partners and we had months of due diligence before they spent their first dollar with us. But once they did, because they only trust a very limited circle of partners, this was crucial for both of us.
It's actually important for both of us - they are important for us, and we are important to them because we give them a safe avenue to reach kids. So I think it's a good match.
What does the KIDOZ Rooplay interactive learning experience generate for the company, and will it be expanded?
Jason: So the Rooplay system along with the KIDOZ OS are two software products that are built and owned and operated by Kidoz. They are more in the content and e-learning space and are on millions of tablets globally, with the KIDOZ OS the leading provider of two OEMs of that solution.
And while they're not our primary focus for the company, because we're seeing much higher growth with the advertising network, they bring in nice revenues, they build a lot of business development opportunities with some leading groups globally and it is an interesting space for us. So we continue to maintain them, we continue to consider what features would put good growth onto them, but our primary focus, is the Safe Ad network.
So how did you come to be headquartered on the idyllic Caribbean island of Anguilla?
Jason: Good question. Well, besides the fact that Anguilla has the world's most beautiful beaches, it is also a British Independent Territory which follows British law and corporate law and so it's a great place for a corporation with valuable IP such as Kidoz. Our IP is owned there and that simplifies our tax planning for an eventual purchase of Kidoz, should that come, because an acquirer would then be able to buy our IP and technology in a more simplified tax-efficient way. We are a foreign-listed entity on the Toronto exchange, and we have Canadian roots and also Israeli roots, but the company is resident on the island of Anguilla.
What do you both bring to the company as co-CEOs?
Eldad: Well, although we are similar in our backgrounds, each one of us brings a different flavor in a sense to the company. I'm bringing my experience from previous companies, where I have scaled them from a few people to dozens of people within a few years. And I have been working closely with the technology companies in Israel, which is an amazing hub for ad tech companies and start-ups. So we can enjoy a lot of the resources and have a lot of talent here in Israel when it comes to the technology and ad tech and this is something that we're bringing in from the Israeli side.
Jason: Well, I've worked in technology my whole career on the business side, so I have lots of skills and resources on business development and leading companies more in mobile gaming and user acquisition areas, with a lot of marketing. While my experience is more originating from North America, and the companies I have worked for have been there, using my network of different skills and talent in North America combined with Eldad’s in Israel has really helped to bring the best of both worlds together for a global organization such as Kidoz.
We’re a 24 hour network that has engineers pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week, given the way that things fall, and having that type of support, that type of development for a software company like ours is critical. So having co-CEOs allows us to handle twice the opportunities that come our way. And really we're developing at such a rapid speed we could have a third!
One of my favorite quotes actually is from Elon Musk talking about his long workdays and noting that after one year of working 16 hours a day, you're going to accomplish twice as much as your nearest competitor who's only working eight hours a day.
So now that we've got two CEOs, working very, very hard, we are accomplishing a lot and bringing a lot of deals to the table and that's definitely contributing to Kidoz’s success.
What should investors expect from Kidoz for the rest of 2021 and beyond?
Jason: Well, to start, Kidoz is on an excellent run. We've been growing really fast for several years in a row now, at more than 50% year-over-year, and that growth is accelerating, with a return to profitability in 2020 with revenues over US$7.1 million. In 2021 we’re tracking to increase our growth as Q2 2021 has been fantastic and we're excited to get that closed and then prepare for a busy H2.
It's just been one success after the next and that's on the existing ad tech business, which is mostly a direct deal business where we're talking to all of our advertisers, bringing in their deals, launching them, and manually handling every single one.
But what we've been developing for some time now is a Kids Safe programmatic technology, which is going to open up on day one with about 5-times the opportunity that we're currently handling all through the technology that we're building. There will be no need for manual operations on each deal, we will be screening all of the deals that go live, which is part of the Kids Safe technology, but it will vastly increase our ability to grow and scale.
And this technology is literally coming out as we speak. We were entering some live tests with the team just yesterday and we're hoping Q3 2021 is going to see some new revenues coming from the system and by Q4 we expect to be at full speed.
Then we’re just hoping to continue this great growth that we've been on for the rest of 2021 and position ourselves for 2022 with more talent and more software coming out of the gates, which is really going to speed our growth.
Eldad: Just to emphasize what Jason said, I think that our current growth rate of 50% year-over-year is our support line and as we launch new services they are expected to expedite that growth way beyond that support line. So I think investors could expect higher growth in the next few years by the opening up of new markets, new services, new audiences, and new technology.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com