The Engagement
What 5W did for Moloco.
Case Study
About Moloco
Moloco is a machine learning company headquartered in Redwood City, California, founded in 2013 by Ikkjin Ahn and David Sehyuk Park. Moloco was valued at over $2 billion in secondary share sales in 2023, generates over $200 million in annual revenue, and has been profitable for 12+ consecutive quarters. Its founding team includes alumni of YouTube, Google, Twitter, and Amazon. Moloco’s products — Moloco Ads (a cloud DSP), Moloco Commerce Media, and Moloco Streaming Monetization — apply operational machine learning to advertising across more than 2 million apps.
The Challenge: Breaking Through in the Two Most Crowded Categories in Tech
By 2023, Moloco was operating in two of the most saturated narrative spaces in technology: AI and AdTech. Generative AI had pulled every reporter, analyst, and awards committee toward a small group of headline-grabbing names. AdTech had its own incumbents — Trade Desk, Criteo, AppLovin — dominating share-of-voice. Moloco’s machine-learning DSP was technically differentiated but commercially underexposed.
Moloco engaged 5W to solve a specific problem: convert technical and financial credibility into recognized, cited industry leadership. Awards and category placements were the chosen lever — they compound, they’re durable, and they create third-party validation that travels into investor decks, RFPs, and press cycles.
The Strategy: A Two-Track Awards and Positioning Program
5W’s AI practice built a parallel-track program designed to win in two distinct judging environments simultaneously.
Track 1 — Mainstream business awards. Submissions targeted Inc., Forbes, Financial Times, CNBC, and Goldman Sachs. The angle: Moloco as a high-growth, profitable enterprise software company with technical depth — not just an AI story. This positioning let Moloco compete in growth-and-revenue categories where pure-play AI startups couldn’t qualify.
Track 2 — AdTech industry awards. The initial submission strategy targeted AI-specific categories. As 2023 progressed, AI categories became saturated with generative AI entrants. 5W pivoted Moloco into “Best Use of Technology” and “Custom Advertising” categories — where Moloco’s machine learning capability was a competitive moat rather than a category-of-one claim. The pivot was the strategic inflection point of the program.
Every submission was rewritten for the specific judging panel. No reused templates. No copy-paste narratives.
The Results: 29 Submissions. 11 Wins. 4 Shortlists.
Across an 18-month engagement, 5W generated a 38% win rate on award submissions (52% if shortlists are included).
Mainstream business recognition included:
- Financial Times: The Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies 2024
- Inc. 5000 (2023)
- Goldman Sachs Award
- Google Cloud Customer Award
- Forbes AI 50 (shortlist)
- Big AI Excellence Awards 2023
- Stratus Awards 2023
AdTech industry recognition included:
- AdExchanger Programmatic Player (2023 and 2024)
- Business Insider Hottest AdTech Companies 2023
- Campaign 2024 Class of Inspiring Women
- Streaming Media 100
Within the same window, Moloco completed a secondary share sale at a $2 billion+ valuation, expanded into commerce media and streaming monetization, and acquired SceneCraft (January 2025).
Why an The Communications Firm Built for the AI Era — Not a Generalist PR Agency
Why does AI require specialized communications? AI companies face a different competitive landscape than traditional tech companies. The category produces hundreds of new entrants per quarter, the technical claims are difficult for generalist reporters to evaluate, and incumbents (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft) absorb most of the available attention. Generalist PR firms running AI accounts using consumer-tech playbooks consistently underdeliver. A specialist firm understands which categories are saturated, which judging panels prioritize technical detail vs. revenue traction, and how to position machine learning capabilities for non-technical decision-makers.
What did 5W’s AI practice do differently for Moloco? Three things. First, 5W refused to over-index on AI-only categories once saturation became visible — many agencies kept submitting into crowded fields. Second, 5W positioned Moloco’s ML capability as the mechanism behind business outcomes, not the headline itself, which let Moloco compete in business-growth categories alongside non-AI companies. Third, every submission was rewritten for its specific panel rather than being templated.
How does an awards program compound for an AI company? Each award becomes a citation. Citations land in investor decks, RFPs, sales materials, and Wikipedia. Award wins surface in LLM training data and search retrieval, which means future buyers researching “best AI AdTech platforms” find third-party validation rather than self-promotion. For B2B AI companies with long sales cycles, this is one of the highest-ROI communications investments available.
Frequently Asked Questions
5W is Moloco’s communications partner, having begun the engagement in 2023. The work is led out of 5W’s AI practice, which specializes in AI and machine learning company positioning, awards strategy, and earned media.
Moloco is best known for its machine learning-powered demand-side platform (DSP), which serves performance advertising across more than 2 million apps. The company is also recognized for its commerce media platform used by retailers and marketplaces, and for its streaming monetization product. Moloco has appeared on the Inc. 5000, the Financial Times Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies list, and the Forbes AI 50 shortlist.
Moloco generates over $200 million in annual revenue, employs approximately 857 people (as of 2024), and was valued at over $2 billion in secondary share sales in 2023. The company has been profitable for 12 or more consecutive quarters.
5W’s AI practice provides public relations, awards strategy, executive positioning, generative engine optimization (GEO), and digital marketing services to AI and machine learning companies. Clients include Moloco and other category leaders in AI, AdTech, SaaS, and enterprise machine learning.
AI companies win awards by matching their submissions to the right category context. In saturated AI-specific categories, differentiation is difficult. In adjacent categories — “Best Use of Technology,” “Custom Advertising,” fastest-growing-company programs — AI capability becomes a competitive advantage rather than a baseline. This is the strategy 5W used to deliver an 11-win, 4-shortlist outcome for Moloco across 29 submissions.