The People 
Behind Smartly.io

Smartly.io Is Founded. In 2013, Kristo Ovaska and Tuomo Riekki founded Smartly.io and created the product's first prototype. The company started with a handful of pilot customers and became a Facebook Marketing Partner soon after its founding.

Smartly.io expands to multiple markets and employs over ten people with the help of seed investments. At the end of the year, more than $1M ad spend flows through the platform and operations are ongoing in ten countries.

With more than 60 employees and offices in San Francisco, Berlin and Singapore, Smartly.io has multiplied its customer count to 500 companies and become a leading Facebook Marketing Partner.

Expansion to multiple social media platforms begins with the launch of Pinterest ad management and optimization features. With over 300 employees and offices in 16 locations, Smartly.io helps some of the world's largest advertisers to create, manage, and optimize their social advertising.

After introducing a new majority shareholder, Providence Equity, at the end of 2019, Smartly.io is well on its way to becoming the number one digital advertising platform for modern marketers. Expansion to Snapchat and investment into expanding its creative capabilities have made Smartly.io the leading social advertising software for both ad buying and creative teams. Smartly.io hosts SofaSummit, the world’s largest virtual ad tech summit, for the first time.

The team doubles in size to 600 Smartlies globally. Smartly.io acquires Silicon Valley based ad tech startup Viralspace.ai to provide an unmatched level of custom creative insights. After more than a year of working remotely due to the pandemic, Smartlies delight in the new, highly flexible hybrid work model that allows them to combine the benefits of working from home and at the office. Smartly.io commits to becoming a carbon neutral company — measuring and compensating its annual carbon footprint.

The year kicks off with Smartly.io’s acquisition of UK-based creative optimization platform Ad-Lib.io, which marks a pivotal step in expanding into the entire Google ecosystem, with the goal to provide one tool that can be used to create content for all advertising channels.