
From what started as a 'what if' idea that two colleagues had in 2019 during their daily lunchtime laps of Bryant Park NYC and which progressed into a 'why not' one, Origin is now embarking on its sixth year of disruption in the highly competitive, deeply fragmented and rapidly evolving $40BN Connected TV advertising eco-system.
Bootstrapped from scratch at a time when its founders felt the 'creative potential' in CTV advertising was being largely overlooked, Fred Godfrey and Stephen Strong shared one clear vision - that 'creative technology' would some day come to play a critical role in delivering the needs and wishes of marketers on Connected TV.
Since then, Origin has grown from 2 people to 15 full time team members (all of whom are as skilled and passionate as the next person), invented and deployed 4 first-to-market CTV ad formats, been engaged by countless local/national/global brands and their agencies, worked our way up from having no case studies to north of 50 success stories, served CTV campaigns in other languages, expanded our horizon to the world of Digital Out of Home (DOOH), had our unique CTV ad formats acknowledged by the IAB, launched a $1mm annual initiative for non-profit organizations called Origin Impact, won awards - and even become the creative/media buying Agency Of Record for an American bank.
The reputation Origin has built is that of being one of the most progressive and trusted names in Connected TV advertising. It's a reputation we are proud to have, one that we do not take lightly and one that we have everyone in our team to thank. Most notably, without the initial risk, dedication and effort Chloe Morawski and Sam Liberto put in as the very first members of our team, none of this could have happened.
5 Cool Facts
Instead of continuing to wax lyrical on the detail, we want to use this metaphorical milestone to share the 5 things we are most excited about having achieved in 5 short years:
If one was to watch every creative ever built by our in-house creative studio that has served on Connected TV, you would need to sit down for over 1,500 years.
From bootstrapping with $30,000 to today, Origin's growth has been fueled entirely by its own profits.
With close to $0 spent on marketing, demand for our first (and flagship) ad format, Slingshot, has grown by an average of 150% year over year since it was released in 2020 - much of which is repeat business.
Working on behalf of one of our most valued clients, Macy's, in 2021 we orchestrated and delivered one of CTV's first ever full 2 minute ad break takeovers for their Christmas 'Anthem' campaign.
We have evolved from renting our ad serving technology to building our own proprietary SSP, DSP and ad server capable of fulfilling the unique and highly complex needs of our CTV ad formats.
It's also important to share that during all this time, we have remained so resolute in our mission that our 'boilerplate' executive summary and 50 second mission statement (both below) have barely been touched since we wrote them on day one.
Phew!
What's next? Well, while that question is all but impossible to answer, we will say that so far this year we have hired two new sellers as well as a client account manager, brought to market our newest and arguably most dynamic CTV ad format, Aperture, and for the first time ever we have cobbled together a dedicated marketing budget.
So where does that leave us as we conclude this article today? That's easy - Stephen and Fred want to say thank you:
Thank you to the clients who believed in us before we had the 35+ CTV case studies we do today.
Thank you to the clients who took a chance on Origin and continue to do so today.
Thank you to our strategic partners upon whose shoulders we dare to stand.
Most importantly, thank you to everyone on our team, past and present, who choose to put their waking hours into the work we do.
Origin is only Origin because of all of you, and it's because of you that we have absolutely.no.interest in slowing down.
ABOUT ORIGIN
Origin is an award-winning Creative Technology company whose zero code CTV ad formats enable marketers to deliver dynamic and responsive ad experiences in the living room and outside the home.
With unparalleled creative capabilities and proprietary ad serving technology, Origin’s off-the-shelf and custom solutions are trusted by agencies, brands, creative teams and programmatic platforms who want the ads they run to get the attention, engagement and outcomes they deserve.
Founded by media veterans Stephen Strong and Fred Godfrey, Origin is driven by the belief that to win a viewer today, we must look beyond how it was done yesterday.
ORIGIN'S MISSION STATEMENT
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