Klarna quickly integrates sponsored ads into their mobile app using Kevel.
Klarna is Europe’s highest-valued private fintech company and the second-highest worldwide. They provide payment solutions to both consumers and over 200,000 merchants and retailers. Klarna is on a mission to reshape shopping, by elevating the entire shopping experience for avid consumers.
As they grew, Klarna wanted to launch a platform for advertisers to promote their deals, products, and stores natively within the app — thereby creating a new high-margin revenue stream. Being in fintech, they also needed a highly secure, privacy-first ad product.
Unfortunately, standard ad servers weren’t customizable or secure enough for what they needed, and they recognized that building it from scratch would be costly and time-intensive.
So Klarna turned to Kevel’s ad APIs to easily build what they were envisioning. Within a month they had launched sponsored placements, which incorporate first-party data for targeting and soon became a revenue driver for them.
These sponsored placements incorporate first-party data to show the most relevant content to the right person, and they look exactly like organic content (except for the “Ad” tag).
For Klarna, this ad platform is a win-win-win: advertisers like having additional visibility; users continue to have the same browsing experience; and Klarna now has a new high-margin revenue stream.
"Kevel made it easy to integrate native ads into our mobile app, allowing us to monetize without sacrificing the user experience or security."
– Sam Wright, Group Lead, Media Services
All of these Kevel-powered sponsored listings and native ads are white-labeled, and the decisions are requested server-side — giving Klarna control over how and where the content is displayed, as well as ensuring no user data is shared with Kevel without Klarna’s permission.
"From the start of scoping out Kevel, they provided sufficient support, demos, and follow-up material to make our decision easy. Support didn't stop after we signed — we are very happy with the service provided."
– Katie Ball, Lead, Klarna Advertising
Having access to Kevel’s UI and Management APIs makes it simple for Klarna to set up campaigns and manage their sponsored ads. This automation ensures the Klarna team can focus on improving and scaling their ad product — not spend time managing and troubleshooting targeting, pacing, reporting, etc.
In addition, Klarna uses Kevel to power another ad unit: carousel ads in their app’s home screen. Like the other placements, these seamlessly fit into the user experience and employ first-party data targeting.
Included in the rotation are Klarna’s own internal promotions, which are native, user-targeted, and promote any special offers they are running.
"We were surprised at how easy Kevel was to integrate with and work with. Super helpful team that can help with anything from technical questions to advice on how to scale your ad platform."
– Hannes Sandahl, Engineering Lead, Klarna Advertising