Case Study
Portfolio Spotlight: Croud
3 Jan 2025
Croud is a leading digital marketing agency that helps businesses to drive sustainable growth. Operating from offices in London, Shrewsbury, New York and Dubai, Croud works with a diverse portfolio of clients, including Amazon Prime Video, The North Face, Compare the Market, and AXA, and has over £400m of media under management.
The business uses its proprietary technology, Croud Control, to support the planning, automation and execution of digital marketing campaigns – and then scales this capability via its unique global network of 2,900 on-demand digital marketing specialists, known as ‘Croudies’.
LDC completed a £30m minority investment in Croud in 2019, backing co-founders Luke Smith and Ben Knight to accelerate global growth and M&A activity. In October 2024 LDC exited its investment in Croud to ECI Partners, following a successful five-year partnership. The transaction provided a money multiple return of 2.8x for LDC.
With the support of LDC, the management team completed five complementary acquisitions – VERB Brands (now Croud Luxe), impakt Advisors, Born Social, Metageni and Vert Digital – alongside investing heavily in talent and technology to support growth at home and overseas.
As a result, during its partnership with LDC, Croud grew threefold. Its US business now accounts for almost a third of the company’s revenue, overall revenue has increased by more than 360% and headcount by more than 250%. Today, the business employs more than 600 people across its offices in London, Shrewsbury, New York, Atlanta and Dubai.
Jerry Buhlmann, former Chief Executive of Dentsu Aegis Network, also joined Croud in 2020 as its Non-Executive Chair, bringing more than 30 years’ experience in media and advertising to the business.
In 2023, Croud enhanced the leadership team with key hires including data analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, who joined the business as Chief Strategy Officer after 16 years at Google.
At Croud, Avinash is helping to harness the benefits of AI and has overseen the growth of an in-house data science and engineering team, to maximise the potential of the technology. A recent example is the introduction of a Croud-specific version of ChatGPT, the generative AI service. Created by Croud’s in-house team, the new technology has increased the speed of its search engine-optimised (SEO) content-creation processes by 40%. By fully embracing AI and the capabilities it is offers, Croud has seen its business win rate increase by 50%.
Avinash understood the importance of setting out an AI execution strategy that enabled Croud to use the technology efficiently: “For businesses of this size, a common-sense framework is important to be able to have a realistic and efficient approach to innovation. It was key to apply AI to enhance our business in three ways; as a tool to analyse data, as a co-pilot to build applications, and finally, as a muse to speed up content creation”.
Croud also recognises that retaining talent is essential to remain one of the UK’s leading technology-enabled media businesses. The management team is committed to maintaining its award-winning, people-first culture. In both 2024, and 2023, Croud was named as a Sunday Times’ Best Place to Work (Big Organisation) and this year Performance Marketing World named Croud as Performance Employer of the Year. This recognition followed Campaign Magazine naming Croud as Performance Marketing Agency of the Year in 2020 and 2022.
Our agency prides itself on finding innovative ways to incorporate new technologies to maximise client benefits and deliver meaningful value. LDC has shared our vision from the outset and offered the ideal platform for us to continue on our mission – which very much remains to become the world’s finest digital technology and communications group."
Luke Smith, Co-Founder and Global CEO, Croud said: “The US is Croud’s most important strategic growth area over the coming years, and we are always looking at ways to supplement that growth with acquisitions that enhance that strategy.”
David Andrews, Partner, LDC said: “When Luke and Ben founded Croud in 2011, they brought a truly disruptive mindset to an established market. Their ability to innovate and invest in the right areas has set them apart from the competition and underpinned their remarkable growth, both here in the UK and overseas. They’ve also achieved this while continuing to create opportunities for their people and being independently recognised as a great place to work.”