AOL has agreed to buy video-ad company Adap.tv in a deal that will add another arrow to the programmatic quiver, with products facing both the buy and sell side.
Adap.tv is one of a handful of mature companies, alongside YuMe, Tremor Video and TubeMogul, that are seizing the digital video opportunity. Its revenue growth has surpassed 100% in each of the last three years, and last year it supported approximately 26,000 campaigns across 9,500 websites.
The company offers (on the buy side) dynamic bidding and ad targeting, including RTB, and (on the sell side) yield-management services to video publishers.
“Two trends are prevalent in the video space right now – the movement from linear television to online video and the shift from manual transactions to programmatic media buying. Adap.tv is positioned squarely in front of the huge opportunity these trends are presenting,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in a statement.
Adap.tv has gone hard after the programmatic opportunity while occasionally shunning the programmatic label.
“There’s a certain view of programmatic that instantly suggests remnant and cherry-picking audiences,” Adap.tv President Toby Gabriner told AdExchanger in a recent interview. “I’ve had some nervousness about Adap.tv being pigeonholed around the idea that we’re completely built around that idea of programmatic. The way we describe it, programmatic is just a subset of the technology tools that we offer.”
It’s been a busy summer for the “old startups” in the video-ad space. Tremor Media went public in June and yesterday YuMe priced its IPO. Neither event has been a smooth ride, as Tremor has seen its stock price slide roughly 16% and YuMe appears likely to raise less in the offering than it had previously hoped.
Adap.tv will be run independently and report up to Ran Harnevo, SVP for video at AOL. It will be added to the diner-sized “ad-tech menu” at AOL Networks that also includes Ad.com, Pictela, AdLearn, Be On and ADTECH.
“We believe that most TV advertising will soon be traded programmatically on platforms like ours,” Adap.tv CEO Amir Ashkenazi said in his statement. “The combination of AOL and Adap.tv accelerates our vision of efficient and effective TV and video advertising.”
