Recognified founders sell to Spanish company

Contextual advertising is likely to become the successor to cookies. Now two companies of this technology have joined forces: Seedtag buys the Munich-based start-up Recognified.

The three founders of Munich-based start-up Recognified are selling their company to Madrid-based advertising specialist Seedtag for an undisclosed sum. Recognified works on contextual advertising, a concept that will become important in the near future:

From 2022 Google wants to block third party cookies, other cookies are also controversial and users have more and more options to opt out of tracking.

Contextual advertising works by recognizing editorial content, for example, and drops ads into it. This way, no user data needs to be intercepted, but ads are placed via AI where users seem most receptive. Seedtag and Recognified both deal with this technology, and the merger will lead to more international power and "exceptional high-impact ads for our clients," Jan-Philipp Kröll, one of Recognified's founders, told Handelsblatt

. "With Seedtag, we not only share the same product and a complementary technology, but also have the same ambitious ambitions."

Recognified has 14 employees in Munich and Düsseldorf, Seedtag, founded by two former Google employees, has 170 employees and is present in nine locations.