Head of the week: An admazing guy
As CEO of Admazing, Simon M. D. Morton wants to ensure that hardly anyone in the online advertising sector will be able to avoid his company in the future.
As CEO of Admazing, Simon M. D. Morton wants to ensure that hardly anyone in the online advertising sector will be able to avoid his company in the future.
Being an entrepreneur has always been one of Simon Morton's life goals. At the age of 15, he was already trading on the stock market with his pocket money "not much to the delight of his parents". As a teenager, he discovered the Internet as a second passion. His years of maturity at secondary school were synchronized with the development years of this new medium. Together with his classmate Philipp Hasenfratz, who turned out to be "a true genius" when it came to computer technology, Simon Morton dreamed of setting up an Internet shop. Their role model was the overnight stars, as they were making headlines in the international business news at the time with horrendous successes. However, the two young entrepreneurs had to wait until they were of legal age before their own start-up was legally recognized. When Admazing's first customer brought in a profit of 316 francs, there was a lavish party. But Simon Morton was already clear back then: "We have to prove ourselves again and again."
Admazing did not have a group behind it - and this fact still drives Morton and his team to provide services that are always "a little better than the competition". The online advertising broker feels obliged to provide such above-average service orientation and performance to its customers so that they always get the most for their advertising money. "This constant optimization is what sets us apart," Morton is convinced. He also wants to know each of his customers personally, even though Admazing now manages "several hundred campaigns a year".
In order to cope with this size, Morton relied on a good team early on. Within five years, Admazing has grown to 13 people and is now the number 3 in the industry. The young boss sees it as an important entrepreneurial talent to create a climate in which good people "can fully develop their skills". More than half of the employees are key account managers with planning skills. Morton himself is a business student - currently on a break - and joined Media as a career changer. "I had to teach myself the skills and bring the right professionals into the company." Morton also "professionalized" his Board of Directors very early on, for example with Thérèse Ruedin ex AY&R and now owner of the Ruedin Consulting advertising agency. He also made use of external consultants and worked with clients and agencies: What does the market want? What does the client want? What do the professionals say?
"We are so successful because we have constantly listened and implemented all these needs extremely flexibly," he believes. Morton sees this fast and direct strategy as a "major advantage of an SME".
Admazing entered the market in 2002 when it was in a downturn. Many customers were no longer interested in the Internet because more and more people were losing money on the stock market with Internet shares. "This bad reputation of the internet annoyed me and I wanted to prove it: The medium has it in it."
The WWWeb fascinated Morton right from the start because it has "revolutionized the economy and our entire lives" like almost nothing else in history. "That's where I want to be professionally and entrepreneurially."
The idea for Admazing dates back to the time of Yahoo and the first search engines. These sparked Morton's plan to program a platform on which advertising space could be searched for using a machine. Using the do-it-yourself principle, customers could then plan their own campaigns and place target groups precisely on the web. Admazing started with this approach. However, the two founders soon realized that their customers were not keen enough on self-made networks. The medium was not yet advanced enough for this automation idea. Most new customers on the web still needed advice and wanted "us to do the work for them".
So Admazing had to "reinvent itself" and has been constantly expanding its consulting services ever since. "In this business and medium, you have to continue to specialize a business model and refine the offering because there are new technologies, channels and opportunities every day."
However, the basic idea that advertisers can reach their target groups very precisely online has remained the same. Admazing wanted to prove this right from the start with monitoring that was as transparent as possible. To this end, the intermediary developed its own reporting tools. However, their market launch needed money. Admazing tapped various investors with a business plan. However, this was not easy in these times of an increasingly bursting Internet bubble. The Thurgau Cantonal Bank, on the other hand, was persuaded that not everything about the Internet was just false speculation.
The company, which is co-financed by the bank, is now known for its successful AdCockpit tool. Here, advertising customers have access to all their campaign data at any time, right down to the individual advertising media. "This also makes it easy to access all reports," explains Morton. His AdCockpit provides information on all placements and sub-placements - at a glance.
At Admazing, all renowned websites are brokered, but "deliberately not exclusively", as the agency clearly wants to position itself as an independent broker. The portfolio contains "a good mix" of roughly the same number of direct and agency clients. These include, for example, Hotelplan, Die Post, Teleclub, Fiat and Stimorol.
When asked why online advertising in Switzerland only accounts for 1.5 percent instead of around 10 percent compared to Germany, Morton puts forward the interesting theory that this "underdevelopment" is no longer so clear in Switzerland. "We already do a similar amount of online advertising in Switzerland. But there are no clean market figures because many players don't report their sales at all and not all disciplines are recorded."
When Simon Morton needs a break from the virtual realities of this economy, he finds his "second life" as an organizer of classical concerts. Because he has also caught the eye of his musical friends as a creative entrepreneur, some have asked him to manage their tours. In the meantime, this hobby has become "semi-professional". In 2004, Morton organized the first classical concert in Baghdad since the end of the war for the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg with the FDFA's Competence Centre for Cultural Foreign Policy. "We thought it would be a strong signal if a Swiss pianist was the first foreign soloist to perform Western music there again after 14 years of embargo."
His sporting hobby also has to do with freedom. Since secondary school, he has not only surfed the net, but also enjoys gliding through the air - close to nature with a paraglider.
Andreas Panzeri
Being an entrepreneur has always been one of Simon Morton's life goals. At the age of 15, he was already trading on the stock market with his pocket money "not much to the delight of his parents". As a teenager, he discovered the Internet as a second passion. His years of maturity at secondary school were synchronized with the development years of this new medium. Together with his classmate Philipp Hasenfratz, who turned out to be "a true genius" when it came to computer technology, Simon Morton dreamed of setting up an Internet shop. Their role model was the overnight stars, as they were making headlines in the international business news at the time with horrendous successes. However, the two young entrepreneurs had to wait until they were of legal age before their own start-up was legally recognized. When Admazing's first customer brought in a profit of 316 francs, there was a lavish party. But Simon Morton was already clear back then: "We have to prove ourselves again and again."
Admazing did not have a group behind it - and this fact still drives Morton and his team to provide services that are always "a little better than the competition". The online advertising broker feels obliged to provide such above-average service orientation and performance to its customers so that they always get the most for their advertising money. "This constant optimization is what sets us apart," Morton is convinced. He also wants to know each of his customers personally, even though Admazing now manages "several hundred campaigns a year".
In order to cope with this size, Morton relied on a good team early on. Within five years, Admazing has grown to 13 people and is now the number 3 in the industry. The young boss sees it as an important entrepreneurial talent to create a climate in which good people "can fully develop their skills". More than half of the employees are key account managers with planning skills. Morton himself is a business student - currently on a break - and joined Media as a career changer. "I had to teach myself the skills and bring the right professionals into the company." Morton also "professionalized" his Board of Directors very early on, for example with Thérèse Ruedin ex AY&R and now owner of the Ruedin Consulting advertising agency. He also made use of external consultants and worked with clients and agencies: What does the market want? What does the client want? What do the professionals say?
"We are so successful because we have constantly listened and implemented all these needs extremely flexibly," he believes. Morton sees this fast and direct strategy as a "major advantage of an SME".
Admazing entered the market in 2002 when it was in a downturn. Many customers were no longer interested in the Internet because more and more people were losing money on the stock market with Internet shares. "This bad reputation of the internet annoyed me and I wanted to prove it: The medium has it in it."
The WWWeb fascinated Morton right from the start because it has "revolutionized the economy and our entire lives" like almost nothing else in history. "That's where I want to be professionally and entrepreneurially."
The idea for Admazing dates back to the time of Yahoo and the first search engines. These sparked Morton's plan to program a platform on which advertising space could be searched for using a machine. Using the do-it-yourself principle, customers could then plan their own campaigns and place target groups precisely on the web. Admazing started with this approach. However, the two founders soon realized that their customers were not keen enough on self-made networks. The medium was not yet advanced enough for this automation idea. Most new customers on the web still needed advice and wanted "us to do the work for them".
So Admazing had to "reinvent itself" and has been constantly expanding its consulting services ever since. "In this business and medium, you have to continue to specialize a business model and refine the offering because there are new technologies, channels and opportunities every day."
However, the basic idea that advertisers can reach their target groups very precisely online has remained the same. Admazing wanted to prove this right from the start with monitoring that was as transparent as possible. To this end, the intermediary developed its own reporting tools. However, their market launch needed money. Admazing tapped various investors with a business plan. However, this was not easy in these times of an increasingly bursting Internet bubble. The Thurgau Cantonal Bank, on the other hand, was persuaded that not everything about the Internet was just false speculation.
The company, which is co-financed by the bank, is now known for its successful AdCockpit tool. Here, advertising customers have access to all their campaign data at any time, right down to the individual advertising media. "This also makes it easy to access all reports," explains Morton. His AdCockpit provides information on all placements and sub-placements - at a glance.
At Admazing, all renowned websites are brokered, but "deliberately not exclusively", as the agency clearly wants to position itself as an independent broker. The portfolio contains "a good mix" of roughly the same number of direct and agency clients. These include, for example, Hotelplan, Die Post, Teleclub, Fiat and Stimorol.
When asked why online advertising in Switzerland only accounts for 1.5 percent instead of around 10 percent compared to Germany, Morton puts forward the interesting theory that this "underdevelopment" is no longer so clear in Switzerland. "We already do a similar amount of online advertising in Switzerland. But there are no clean market figures because many players don't report their sales at all and not all disciplines are recorded."
When Simon Morton needs a break from the virtual realities of this economy, he finds his "second life" as an organizer of classical concerts. Because he has also caught the eye of his musical friends as a creative entrepreneur, some have asked him to manage their tours. In the meantime, this hobby has become "semi-professional". In 2004, Morton organized the first classical concert in Baghdad since the end of the war for the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg with the FDFA's Competence Centre for Cultural Foreign Policy. "We thought it would be a strong signal if a Swiss pianist was the first foreign soloist to perform Western music there again after 14 years of embargo."
His sporting hobby also has to do with freedom. Since secondary school, he has not only surfed the net, but also enjoys gliding through the air - close to nature with a paraglider.
Andreas Panzeri
