Waterland and Yieldkit enter into partnership

Performance marketing specialist Yieldkit and Waterland enter into partnership for further growth

• Founder Oliver Krohne, CEO Daniel Neuhaus and tech entrepreneur Lars Hinrichs plan buy & build strategy together with Waterland
• Yieldkit GmbH is a technology leader for content monetisation

Hamburg 12 January 2021 – Waterland Private Equity has acquired a majority stake in Yieldkit GmbH, a global leading platform in the area of in-text advertising, content monetisation and performance marketing. With a workforce of 30 employees,  Yieldkit generated revenues of €33 million in 2020, an increase of around a third compared to the previous year. Together with founder Oliver Krohne, CEO Daniel Neuhaus as well as tech entrepreneur and Yieldkit investor Lars Hinrichs, Waterland is planning for an additional boost to organic growth at Yieldkit and to develop the software platform towards market leadership through a buy & build strategy. Founder, CEO and venture capital provider have each taken out significant stakes.

Yieldkit was founded in 2009 in Hamburg, Germany by Oliver Krohne. The platform offers both digital publishers and advertisers a straightforward and simple solution for optimised execution of performance marketing strategies while boosting sales and increasing traffic. Yieldkit works with over 60 performance networks and has built up a base of more than 45,000 active advertisers that can be deployed on over 374,000 domains. Globally, Yieldkit delivers content to over 80 million users every month and is currently active in over 160 countries. This makes the company a hidden champion in marketing technologies. In terms of regional split, the largest revenue contribution comes from the DACH region, followed by the UK, other European countries, USA, Brazil, India and Russia.

“Our automated platform has amply demonstrated its strength and flexibility over the course of the pandemic. Within a short space of time, we were able to completely adapt the system while continuing to achieve record results. We are now launching the next stage of our business expansion. We are delighted to have Waterland as a strong partner at our side to support us in driving this expansion,” says Oliver Krohne.

CEO Daniel Neuhaus adds: “Over the past few years, our team has built a powerful, cutting-edge platform for performance marketing worldwide, securing our place in a rapidly growing and dynamic market. We are now entering into a new phase and we look forward to the next steps.”

Dr. Carsten Rahlfs, Managing Partner at Waterland, says: “The advertising market is increasingly shifting from traditional media to internet and mobile applications. Yieldkit quickly made a name for itself in this relatively young industry and has since been writing its success story for over a decade. Through our buy & build strategy, we will now drive further development and internationalisation so that we can convert technology leadership into market leadership.”

Online advertising remains a major growth market. Global spending is expected to exceed EUR 330 billion in 2020. According to forecasts, spending in this highly competitive market is set to rise to some € 530 billion by 2024.

The transaction is subject to approval by antitrust authorities.

About Yieldkit

Yieldkit is an in-text advertising and content monetization platform that currently connects 5,000 publishers and 45,000 advertisers worldwide. Matching is done using Yieldkit’s machine learning technology. It analyzes publishers’ text-based content and matches specific publisher-approved terms and keywords with matching advertisers’ e-commerce offers and services. Publishers can additionally monetize their content and advertisers have access to a high-performance in-text advertising format. Yieldkit is owner-managed and was founded in 2009 by Oliver Krohne in Hamburg. He is also a shareholder of Yieldkit together with Lars Hinrichs, and Daniel Neuhaus joined the management team as Managing Director in February 2020. The team currently has 27 employees. Yieldkit is located in Hamburg.

About Waterland

Waterland is an independent private equity investment group that supports entrepreneurs in realizing their growth ambitions. With substantial financial resources and committed industry expertise, Waterland enables its portfolio companies to achieve accelerated growth both organically and through acquisitions. Waterland has offices in the Netherlands (Bussum), Belgium (Antwerp), France (Paris), Germany (Munich and Hamburg), Poland (Warsaw), UK (Manchester), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copenhagen) and Switzerland (Zurich) and currently manages EUR 8 billion of investor commitments.

Since its founding in 1999, Waterland has consistently achieved top-tier investment performance. The company ranks fourth globally amongst private equity companies in the HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Performance Ranking (December 2019) and seventh in the Preqin Consistent Performers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Report 2020. Real Deals presented Waterland in its PE Awards with the title “Pan-European House of the Year 2020“