Adference co-founder Dr. Florian Nottorf as a guest on the fynax podcast "Thanks for Shopping"

From the ivory tower to the business model

Money, time, passion, luck - all important ingredients for a successful start-up. Adference co-founder Dr. Florian Nottorf reveals the important role that knowledge plays in the search for a promising business niche in the latest episode of the fynax podcast "Thanks for Shopping".

Adference is a software that has been automating and optimizing advertising on Amazon and Google for eight years. The aim is to make the most accurate predictions possible about decisions on the platforms in order to enable successful and data-driven marketing. In conversation with the fynax managers Saravanan Sundaram and Nadja Müller give Nottorf an exciting insight into the development of the company.

It all began in 2014, when four prospective doctoral students and their supervisor at Leuphana University Lüneburg joined forces to use their expertise in algorithms and statistics and their scientific findings on predicting people's purchasing behavior to found their own company. All five founders also shared a "passion for e-commerce", as Nottorf emphasizes. Adference was born.

Even before the company was founded, the team had already started developing software to automatically control bids in Google's search engine marketing - a Google Ad Bid Management Tool. Just one year later, Adference was certified as a Google Premium Partner. A success that, according to Nottorf, was achieved despite limited financial resources, but with all the more passion and the advantage of in-house expertise. The young company quickly focused on further developing the optimization and automation of advertisers on Amazon.

Amazon merchants and manufacturers as well as store owners who are trying to drive traffic to their own website as efficiently as possible are still Adference's main target group today. In 2018, the company launched one of the world's first Amazon PPC tools (pay per click - advertisers pay per click on the ad). It was quickly accepted into the exquisite ranks of the Amazon Solution Provider Network. Adference has also been a wholly owned subsidiary of About You since 2019.

Adference has therefore successfully made its way out of the "scientific ivory tower" to become a profitable company. And it is not without pride that Nottorf sums up that the company has nevertheless remained true to its own DNA: "We have never been workaholics, but have always placed value on a work-life balance. Our mentality is rather atypical for start-ups. Work is important, but you should also have and live out other passions." Nottorf has never lost his connection to his own roots, science. Today, he passes on his experience to students in Lüneburg.

You can find out why Adference always has to be two steps ahead of the competition and where a lot of perseverance was required in the entire Episode of "Thanks for Shopping!" to hear.