With the rise of supply-path optimization, SSPs are under pressure to prove they aren’t just interchangeable pipes.
Their drive to differentiate helped spark the sell-side curation trend over the past few years – and is also part of the rationale behind Onetag’s acquisition on Monday of Aryel, a creative ad tech platform based in Italy.
The acquisition equips Onetag’s curation solution with new tools for tweaking and testing interactive ad creative. These features will also be used to help train the new AI-based deal optimization engine that Onetag plans to release at the end of the month.
Interactive impact
Onetag, also headquartered in Italy, is a global ad exchange and curation platform that originally launched as a DSP in 2015 before building a performance-focused SSP for Procter & Gamble and expanding that platform globally in 2020. To try and separate it from the SSP pack, Onetag launched its sell-side curation platform, called Smart Curation, in 2022.
Since then, the curation market has become crowded with non-differentiated middlemen, Onetag co-CEO Filippo Gramigna told AdExchanger. The best way to stand out in this increasingly crowded market, he said, is to make it easy for advertisers of all sizes to get started with curation and create their own deal IDs.
One way to do that is to offer tools that can adapt existing creative to programmatic formats – and that’s exactly what Aryel’s tech does. The platform reformats creative assets to fit IAB standard banner sizes and online video specs.
Aryel also specializes in interactive creative, Gramigna said, which complements Onetag’s curated marketplace of 50,000 high-impact ad units that it sources via more than 2,000 direct-to-publisher connections.
In other words, placing interactive ads within already high-performing ad slots should make those placements even more effective at driving outcomes, Gramigna said.
For example, Aryel offers a “try it on” creative format for apparel and accessories brands. An eyewear brand could use it to let people try on different frames using their device’s camera. The experience happens entirely within a standard IAB banner, so users can interact without leaving the site, Gramigna said.
Aryel has also been experimenting with interactive formats for AI chatbot interfaces, he said, which should help Onetag tap into new advertising opportunities on those platforms.
CTV and US expansion
Onetag and Aryel began working together about a year and a half ago, and the success of the relationship led Onetag and its largest shareholder, Wise Equity, to pursue the Aryel deal, Gramigna said. This marks Onetag’s first-ever acquisition.
Gramigna declined to disclose the deal price, but confirmed that the acquisition is complete and that the combined company has $70 million in net revenue, based on last year’s numbers.
In addition to gaining exclusive access to Aryel’s creative tech, Onetag is also taking on all 45 of Aryel’s employees, bringing the total headcount to about 130. Aryel’s four co-founders will be added to Onetag’s leadership team, with Aryel CEO Mattia Salvi taking on the role of chief growth officer and head of go-to-market.
Next on the agenda is to integrate Onetag and Aryel’s cultures and workflows, which should be relatively easy, Gramigna said, since Aryel is based about an hour away from Onetag’s tech hub in Tuscany.
Onetag’s long-term go-to-market play is to shore up its existing foothold in the European market, and then to eventually build a larger US-based presence beyond the small New York office the company currently has to serve its US publisher clients, Gramigna said.
It also plans to expand its curation offering this year beyond display and online video. Even without a connected TV business, Onetag grew its net ad revenue by 34% last year, Gramigna said, so embracing CTV should bring incremental growth opportunities.
Meanwhile, because Onetag and Aryel didn’t have much overlap in their respective client portfolios, the acquisition has already helped shore up Onetag’s client base on the buy side.
“That’s another element of why we decided to do this deal,” Gramigna said. “The fact that they’ve been able to get the brands and the CMOs they typically talk to excited about working in programmatic thanks to these formats helps the narrative when it comes to our relationship with media agencies.”
