WPP Group Buys Japanese DSP, SSP; DoubleVerify Adds $33 Million; BlueKai Adds Analytics To DMP

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

WPP Group Buys DSP, SSP

Yesterday, agency holding company WPP Group announced that it was going to play in holding company competitor Dentsu’s backyard by purchasing a majority of shares in Japan-based D.A. Consortium Inc.(DAC). Read more. This transaction looks to be just north of $40 million when approved. WPP Group continues to buy tech and now has its sights firmly set on the Japanese display market as DAC’s Platform One (see website) product claims to provide demand-side platform (DSP) and sell-side platform (SSP) services. Russia-based, ad ecosystem engineering powerhouse IponWeb is the maker of DAC’s DSP and SSP products and a “strategic partner” (see the note on Iponweb’s website). For background, IponWeb was involved in the early deployment of Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange before Yahoo! purchased the exchange in 2007. Has WPP Group happened upon a Japanese ad exchange in waiting? Exchangewire has a Q&A with DAC’s CTO Akihiko Tokuhisa two weeks ago here. Xaxis, The MIG, Platform One – WPP Group is all-in for audience-based, digital media buying.

DoubleVerify Gets $33 Million

Ad verifier DoubleVerify closed its Series C round of financing for a very healthy $33 million. JMI Equity (the private equity firm that took DCLK private and sold to it Google according to TechCrunch) and Institutional Venture Partners led the investment. Read more from PaidContent. To date, the company has received $47 million in funding. DoubleVerify was transparent in their press release about how the funds will be used – there are acquisitions ahead!: “The new funding will help fuel DoubleVerify’s global growth and allow it to make strategic acquisitions that will help enhance its product set…”
Read it. Some cash and a lotta stock could end up being enough to acquire … (gasp)… AdSafe Media? Why not wrap it up for ad verification? – all those agency relationships under one roof could be a tasty morsel for some big systems integrator.

DG Grabs Eyewonder

As announced yesterday on AdExchanger.com, DG made yet-another-acquisition of a rich media company as it bought Eyewonder from Limelight Networks for $66 million in cash yesterday. Eyewonder was originally bought by Limelight for $110 million in 2009. Read more from Kate Kaye in ClickZ. Now that DG has Unicast, MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) and Eyewonder in-house, would Gannett be willing to sell PointRoll to DG? Rich media FTW! Read the press release.

BlueKai Adds Analytics

BlueKai added a new analytics suite to its platform product line. In a release, the company announced TrackSimple RAD 360 Analytics which it says is “offered as part of BlueKai’s data management platform (DMP) and marks the company’s continued focus on measurement as transactional analytics becomes the next big trend in data management solutions.” Read more. Annalect CEO Scott Hagedorn is quoted in the release as the new product appears to be already in use at Omnicom Media Group’s trading desk. TrackSimple was acquired by BlueKai in January and the company’s CEO, Jon Ingalls, has now moved into the CMO role at BlueKai.

Bidding On Context

Australia-based Brandscreen announced that it has integrated Peer39’s semantic technology into its demand-side platform. In the release, Phil Cowlishaw, who runs the trading desk at agency Ikon Communications, notes the importance of understanding context for each display ad impression prior to bidding. Read the release.