Former Adelaide Crows ruckman Brad Moran sells CitrusAd start-up for $205m, a decade after his AFL career was cut short

A decade ago, Brad Moran’s AFL career was cut short by injury. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

Former Adelaide Crow Brad Moran has sold his start-up CitrusAd for $205m. Picture: Paul Harris

Former Adelaide Crows ruckman Brad Moran is celebrating a $205m payday following the sale of his start-up software company CitrusAd.

The sale to French multinational advertising and public relations firm Publicis Groupe comes a decade after Mr Moran’s AFL career at the Crows was cut short by injury.

Mr Moran, 35, who’s now based in Brisbane, describes his forced retirement in 2011 as a “sliding doors” moment that kick-started a successful career in business.

“Would I have liked to play another ten years, maybe, but I look back now and probably think it’s the best thing that’s happened,” he said.

“I heavily lent on the club to help springboard me into business. Rob Chapman was the very first person I went to about my first business idea and he helped set me on the train to meet various others individuals across town.

“The footy club had a really influential and pivotal moment in the journey of my business career.”

Brad Moran during his AFL career with the Crows.

CitrusAd is an online advertising platform that enables supermarkets and other retailers to charge brands a premium for the best product placements on their online stores.

Just like brands compete for eye-level product placements in physical stores, CitrusAd replicates that concept for online shopping.

Since it was launched by Mr Moran and Adelaide-based business partner Nick Paech in December 2017, CitrusAd has secured prominent customers including Woolworths, Coles and Dan Murphy’s in Australia, Tesco in the UK and Target in the US.

Other backers of the company include John-Paul Drake of Drakes Supermarkets, ASX-listed MA Financial and a number of private investors.

Mr Moran said the technology had struck a chord with many supermarket chains that were grappling with the high cost of running an online store.

“What we learned after talking to the grocers for a long time was that they used to make a lot of their money from the eye-line shelf space,” he said.

“And so we basically decided to build the digital version of that - a system where the retailer could allow their suppliers like Unilever and Coke and Pepsi to bid like they would on Google for the top spots on Google, but for the top spots on woolworths.com or coles.com

“There was a lot more focus on online towards the back half of last year and there was a lot of focus around how do we make online profitable.

“Naturally they started to look for monetising solutions and things that could bring them advertising revenue to offset the cost of the growing the online presence.”

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing for CitrusAd, with the company facing somewhat of an uncertain future when the Covid-19 pandemic hit amid due diligence for a major capital raising.

However investor MA Financial followed through with the funding in early 2020, and continued to invest as CitrusAd increased its revenue by more than 10 times over the 18 months leading up to the sale.

CitrusAd is Mr Moran’s second start-up venture to get off the ground, selling out of mobile ordering platform NoQ in 2016 after launching that product on the day of his retirement from the Crows.

He played 18 games with the Crows from 2008 to 2011 after being traded from North Melbourne where he played three games.

CitrusAd will now form part of Publicis Groupe’s data analytics business, Epsilon, with Mr Moran and Mr Paech remaining as chief executive and chief marketing officer.