Calcus helps SMEs scratch their growing itch for native advertising
Finnish growth company Calcus.com brings native advertising to SMEs. The next steps on Calcus’s growth path include an equity offering, acquisitions, and an IPO.
“Marketers need to make a shift from ‘telling and selling’ to ‘native sharing’,” says Ville Maila, member of the board of native advertising company Calcus.com. Native advertising means publishing content, whether textual or video, within the media so that it blends into the editorial content of the media without being distracting. This new form of marketing is now increasingly starting to be used by small and medium sized enterprises.
“Over the recent years, more and more of the bulk of the SME iceberg has started to take its steps into the world of digital marketing with services such as Google’s Adwords. In a very short time, SMEs have become more open to these kinds of marketing investments,” Maila underlines the market potential.
Calcus’s edge over its competitors lies in its ability to serve small and medium-sized enterprises operating in business-to-business markets. “Big marketing agencies target big advertisers, they don’t care about SMEs. We have tailored our offering specifically to SMEs,” Maila says. “With this strategy, we have become the leader in native advertising in Finland.”
In Finland alone, Calcus reached a €3 million turnover and 17% EBITDA in 2016. The company seeks to boost growth with mergers and acquisitions, for which it is currently raising a €2 million funding on Invesdor.com. Afterwards Calcus will be exploring opportunities for an IPO.
”The estimated B2B SME market in Finland is around €80 million, so for an agile venture like Calcus we see a lot of growth in our IPO roadmap with two-digit gross margins. Old methods are not working. For example, the biggest B2B SME service provider in the field has €28 million in revenue and making a loss of €3M,” says Ville Maila. “Every company has a life cycle and in Calcus we are now seeing the moment of exponential growth.”
“Calcus.com is rapidly pushing native advertising to new segments and reaping the benefits,” says Mikko Savolainen, communications manager at Invesdor. “After the company’s pivot to native advertising in 2014, its growth looks promising and I think investors will find worth a good look.”
More about Calcus equity offering at Invesdor.com
Contact:
Ville Maila, member of the board, Calcus.com Ltd.
ville.maila@calcus.com
Mikko Savolainen, communications manager, Invesdor Ltd.
mikko.savolainen@invesdor.com, +358 40 747 5205
Calcus.com in brief:
Calcus.com is the leader in Native Advertising in Finland. Our mission is simple: reinventing the content marketing by software. As such, we’ve built the most effective Native Advertising Campaigns for marketers to master the art and science of content marketing. We have the software that helps marketers to understand its target audience, choose the correct media channels, optimise content dynamically and measure the impact of their marketing efforts. We are the only company delivering content marketing innovation at the rapid speed needed to face the demands of an ever-changing digital world. More information at Calcus.com.
Invesdor in brief:
Invesdor is the Nordic market leader in equity crowdfunding platforms measured in invested capital and revenue in 2015. A financial technology (fintech) company founded in Finland in 2012, Invesdor operates an online investment platform that connects ambitious European growth companies with investors worldwide. So far Invesdor has helped raise more than 26 million euros and hosted 73 successful equity crowdfunding campaigns.
Invesdor's clients include private and publicly traded companies from Finland, the UK, Norway and Denmark as well as investors from more than 50 countries. Invesdor has offices in London and Helsinki.