15 years in: How AdGibbon became AGCS
AGCS just turned 15.
If you work in digital advertising, you’ll know surviving is no small feat.
Digital agencies rarely last three years. Formats die. Trends come and go. The rules? Yeah, sorry, they changed last week.
Yet here we are, thousands of HTML5 banner designs and HTML5 display banner campaigns later, still creating digital experiences for brands like Universal Pictures, Yamaha Motor Europe, and Axel Springer.
A milestone like this feels like a good moment to look back.
Where it started: a bedroom and a wobbly desk
Our story starts with Niels Berkhout and Kees Sadeq. Kees and Niels met at eBuddy – a social media messaging app that paved the way for apps like WhatsApp.
Back then, mobile ads were everywhere, but they lacked soul. They loaded slowly. They took up prime space, but never spoke for their brands.
Niels and Kees knew the era of mobile ads was coming. After a few months of working in a cold bedroom, they decided to build AdGibbon – a rich media platform that would be the MailChimp of mobile ad building. Quick and easy to use and scalable, with excellent analytics.
Niels and Kees founded AdGibbon to change that. They envisioned a rich‑media ad platform that could power better HTML5 banner design and graphic design that allowed brands to speak to their customers.
Find out how AGCS can help you with all your advertising needs.
Stepping in as third co‑founder
I was asked to join AdGibbon after the pair received funding as part of a joint venture with DQ&A. My background was sales and agency‑side in the UK, Netherlands, and Germany. I’d watched brands pour budget into campaigns nobody remembered.
When I joined AdGibbon, the goal was simple: make creative people actually notice.
One week we’d be deep in HTML5 display banners for Universal. The next, we were whipping up HTML5 rich media banners for Havas. Many late nights, broken builds, and that affirmation that when you treat banners like they matter, people notice.
The day Flash died
Then Flash disappeared.
For a company that built so much on Flash, this could’ve spelled the end. Instead, we used it as a chance to rethink everything.
We went all‑in on HTML5 and digital design. We rebuilt our workflow, sharpened our skills, and launched AGCS – AdGibbon Creative Services.
Our first win was a lucky strike to build a rich media ad for Mediacom and their client Mini. Mini wanted to run rich media mobile ads, which were still very much in their infancy. It was an exciting and sizable project – one that set us on an extraordinary path to work as a supplier to the biggest and best agencies.
After some time, Kees decided to explore new challenges, and Niels and I continued our journey building better digital experiences for clients.
Our aim always stayed the same: make digital designs that look good, move well, and reach the right people. Nothing gimmicky. Just creative, built with care.
We grew into one of Amsterdam’s leading HTML5 banner agencies, delivering HTML5 banners and rich media for partners like Volvo and Flora. Along the way, we picked up awards like a Mobile Marketing Campaign of the Year with Yodel Mobile for an interactive HTML5 mobile ad for The Economist, and a commended Drum Award for an interactive game for Universal Pictures.
The trophies were nice. The real win was realising we could survive a major shift and come out stronger.
Landing Yamaha, Volvo and PayPal in the same year.
If someone tells you running an agency is all smooth sailing, they’re lying.
We truly hit our stride when we won Yamaha Motor Europe for a huge HTML5 Banner Development project as their chosen HTML5 Banner Development agency. Alongside that work, we produced all their social media assets and supported the campaign set up.
It was a crazy time. We were riding the wave, with a big team of experts. Our employees have since gone to work at companies including Rituals, Takeaway.com and Booking.com. Our beloved project manager at the time, Laura Sanna, would reach out to me a few years later to say that we were the best managers she’d ever had. That compliment alone is worth its weight in gold. It made all the crazy ups and downs of that rollercoaster worth it.
“What if this ran on a screen… at the station?”
Eventually we started wondering if our HTML5 banners could translate to Digital Out Of Home Advertising (DOOH)
We took what we’d learned from our HTML5 display banner campaigns and began experimenting with Digital Out Of Home Advertising – creating screens at high-traffic places like shopping centres, train stations, and bus stops.
We picked up large, feed‑driven DOOH projects for Westfield in the United States, building data‑driven digital out of home advertising that updated in real time across shopping malls.
We would go on to win the Ocean Outdoor Digital Out of Home creativity award for the Plastic Soup foundation. We took mobile connectivity in our hands – no, literally, by connecting a mobile to a huge screen at Westfield in London so that people could play a ‘plastic soup’ game. It was a huge success.
If the bedroom years were about proving we could build, the DOOH years were about proving we could scale without losing the craft.
Going it alone
After a while, we parted ways with DQ&A to become an independent boutique agency. We’d like to thank the key players at that company along the way. We ran some fantastic projects with them.
AGCS has been a fully independent agency for many years now, and always been on the lookout for new partnerships with new brands and agencies. As founders, we do see our company as that little Gibbon jumping around in the forest looking for new routes and ways to grow.
After all, it’s been our flexibility that allowed us to continue on for 15 years!
Fifteen years in
From the outside, AGCS might look like a list of services: HTML5 banner design, Digital Out Of Home Advertising, WordPress website development, video creating and editing, and the graphic design that holds it all together.
From the inside, it feels simpler. We ask one question over and over:
“Is this actually good for the person who’s going to see it?”
That question guides everything – from a tiny mobile banner to a full website development project.
Some of our partnerships have lasted for years. Westfield and Newsday have trusted us with campaigns and email design work across hundreds of launches. Torpedo has stayed with us for close to a decade.
That trust doesn’t come from one hero project. It comes from many small ones, and a dedication to show up, ship on time, fix things (before people notice them), and tell the truth when something isn’t right.
We'd love to chat and see how we can help you with your project.
The Next 15 Years
We are looking ahead to the next 15 years, I don’t think many agencies make it to 30 years right? We are incredibly proud to work with our long standing clients including TwoFish, Newsday, Forward•Inc, Torpedo, Orchid Creation, and Socoto!
The team is focusing on services including the good old HTML5 Banner Development, Website Development, Website design, DOOH and Dynamic DOOH, social media production, HTML emailer development, and video production.
Closing off
Fifteen years in, I don’t feel like we’ve “made it.” Formats will keep changing. Some of the things we’re good at now will be obsolete soon.
But we’re still here. Still curious. And I’m still convinced that a small, well‑crafted piece of digital creative can make someone pause for half a second.
Sometimes, that half‑second changes what happens next.
Justin Campbell
Non Executive Director & Co-Founder
