Mobile demand-side platform Jampp was acquired by Affle on Wednesday. It’s a mobile marketing company with a presence in India and Singapore. There’s nothing like a little uncertainty (ahem, Apple) to spark M&A. The mobile advertising industry has been experiencing a massive wave of consolidation in the wake of privacy-related platform changes. Since February, AppLovin […]
Remember when telcos kept dropping billions on media and ad tech assets because they just couldn’t wait to activate their first-party data for advertising purposes? Didn’t pan out. This week on The Big Story, the team dives into the “why” in the wake of private equity firm Apollo Global Management’s $5 billion acquisition of Verizon […]
Zynga is buying in-app growth and mobile monetization platform Chartboost for $250 million. It’s an excellent exit for a company that’s only raised $21 million since its $2 million Series A in 2011. The deal, expected to close in the third quarter, was announced on Wednesday on Zynga’s Q1 earnings call, during which the company […]
Remember when telcos wanted to be digital media companies? That was so 2017. On Monday, private equity firm Apollo Global Management announced its intention to acquire Verizon Media for $5 billion. The new company will be called Yahoo – yes, for real – and Verizon will maintain a minority 10% stake in it. Read the release. […]
On Monday, on-device media technology company Digital Turbine bought app monetization platform Fyber for $600 million. Digital Turbine has become one of the most prolific acquirers of mobile ad tech over the last two months – beginning with its $400 million acquisition of mobile ad network AdColony in late February, followed by its early March […]
Apparently ad tech is so hot right now that ad networks can get acquired in the year 2021 for hundreds of millions of dollars. On Friday, Digital Turbine acquired AdColony for $400 million from its parent, Norwegian internet company Otello Corp. (formerly Opera Software). The transaction is expected to close in March. Otello and Digital […]
Centro said on Wednesday that it’s acquiring search engine marketing platform QuanticMind with plans to integrate the technology into its automated ad management platform called Basis. Although Shawn Riegsecker, Centro’s CEO and founder, declined to say how much Centro paid, he did share that QuanticMind reached $10 million in yearly revenue at its pinnacle and […]
And the beat goes on. iHeartMedia acquired programmatic audio marketplace Triton Digital from EW Scripps for $230 million on Wednesday, its second acquisition of a podcast tech company in less than four months. In late October, iHeart bought Voxnest, an audio technology company that provides analytics and programmatic advertising tools for publishers. The year before, […]
Magnite has acquired video supply-side platform SpotX from European entertainment network RTL Group for $1.17 billion. The cash and stock deal, announced Friday morning, is part of Magnite’s vision to go big in the connected TV space. LUMA Partners and Goldman Sachs advised on the transaction. CTV is so hot that Magnite bought SpotX for […]
AppLovin has struck again. Bloomberg scooped late Wednesday afternoon that AppLovin is on the cusp of acquiring mobile app attribution startup Adjust for $1 billion. The news was confirmed by AppLovin in a press release. [Read the release]. AppLovin is an app marketing platform that helps advertisers automate their user acquisition and re-engagment campaigns. Adjust, […]
The DSP Beeswax, founded in 2014 by ad tech gadfly Ari Paparo, is off the market. Comcast’s video ad tech company FreeWheel said Thursday it will acquire the “bidder-as-a-service” for undisclosed terms. Over the last couple of years, FreeWheel has increased its buy-side capabilities, building out a more advanced exchange, hosting upfronts and integrating with […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let’s Make A Deal HuffPost finally has a home. After being on the market for quite some time, the Verizon-owned publisher was acquired by BuzzFeed on Thursday in an all-stock deal that unites two of the larger players in digital media, The Wall Street […]
Guess telcos really aren’t that into ad tech after all. On Thursday, Norwegian telco Telenor sold cross-device company Tapad to Experian in a transaction advised by LUMA Partners. Experian is acquiring 100% of Tapad for a cash consideration of roughly $280 million. Not too shabby for an ad tech company getting sold in 2020. Tapad’s […]
TransUnion has its eye on the cookieless future with its acquisition of Tru Optik, announced on Thursday. This is the credit bureau’s third ad tech acquisition over the past year and a half. TransUnion acquired marketing tech platform TruSignal in May 2019 and cross-channel marketing company Signal in August. TransUnion declined to share the Tru […]
Hypercasual dominated the mobile gaming charts even before the pandemic. Installs of hypercasual games, characterized by extremely lightweight, free-to-play mobile titles, more than doubled between December 2019 and March of this year, according to joint research from Adjust and Unity. Once lockdowns started, the growth accelerated, with play sessions up by 72% in March. But […]
AppLovin is set to snap up Machine Zone. Put another way, a mobile ad startup is acquiring one of the largest mobile gaming companies in the world. Terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were not disclosed, and the acquisition is subject to approvals. MZ’s valuation was reportedly around $6 billion in 2015. Machine Zone has […]
It’s been a big week for location data-related deals. PlaceIQ acquired location data and measurement company Freckle IoT on Tuesday. And a day before, Foursquare said it would merge with Factual. Together, Foursquare and Factual have more than $150 million in combined revenue, data derived from over 500 million devices worldwide and 400+ employees. The […]
On Tuesday, PlaceIQ announced its acquisition of Toronto-based location data and measurement company Freckle IoT. Terms were not disclosed. Foot traffic may be way down during the pandemic, but consolidation in the location data space is heating up. The day before, Foursquare revealed merger plans with location data provider Factual less than a year after […]
M&A is at an all-time low due to coronavirus fears, but some deals are getting done even in challenged sectors. On Tuesday, Bain Capital divested itself of SRDS, a 101-year-old business within Kantar that compiles contact info, audience insights and ad rates for more than 6,700 B2B and consumer-facing US-based traditional media sources. The acquirer […]
Location data is a privacy landmine. But there are still buyers out there for providers, including Media And Games Invest (MGI), the public German conglomerate that acquired mobile location company Verve earlier this week. The last few years haven’t been kind to Verve. The company experienced multiple rounds of layoffs last year and closed its […]
After running out of money and closing its doors in mid-December, video ad tech company Eyeview has a happy ending of sorts. Mobile ad platform Aki Technologies on Thursday completed its acquisition of Eyeview’s assets, which include a DSP and bidder, an ad server that ingests data signals to inform which video creative to deliver […]
S4 Capital, Martin Sorrell’s scrappy new holding company, acquired Mexico City-based multicultural digital content agency, Circus Marketing, on Wednesday – its 11th deal in just over a year. Here’s why: an expanded footprint, more capacity in existing markets and data, data, data. “It’s a smart deal that makes sense for their strategy,” said Jay Pattisall, a […]
OTT giant Roku will acquire the demand-side platform (DSP) dataxu for $150 million, the companies said Tuesday. The deal, which is a mix of cash and stock, will strengthen Roku’s self-serve ad buying capabilities, the company said in a press release. Roku has 30.5 million active accounts on its platform and a growing programmatic advertising […]
This is not a test: App messaging platform Airship is buying Apptimize, an A/B testing platform that helps mobile marketers rapidly run experiments across apps and sites, including OTT apps. Airship, which rebranded from Urban Airship in April, declined to share terms for the deal, which was announced on Tuesday. But around 20 people from […]
You can never have enough automated content recognition (ACR) data. Samba TV added to its store of smart TV data on Tuesday with the acquisition of Axwave, a company that uses audio fingerprinting to catalog and measure linear TV and over-the-top content across panels in the United States and Europe, with a particular focus on […]
Former Fox executive Joe Marchese is getting ready to kick the tires on some ad tech assets for his new company, Attention Capital. But first, he needs a few media brands in his portfolio. On Monday, Attention made its first acquisition, throwing in with Lupa Systems, James Murdoch’s private investment firm, for a controlling stake […]
Ascential, the company that owns the Cannes Lions festival and MediaLink, just bought a slice of the ad tech ecosystem with a 35% stake in marketing analytics company Jumpshot. The investment, worth $60.8 million, values Jumpshot at nearly $173 million. What does the parent company of ad land’s favorite international get together want with a […]
When private equity firm Blackstone announced its plan this week to acquire video-focused mobile ad network Vungle, multiple sources pegged the deal at $750 million – a remarkably large price tag for a company that only raised a little over $25 million. The question is, why so high? Mobile gaming is massive For one, Vungle has […]
Placed has found a new home. Foursquare is buying the location-based measurement company from Snap. Separately, it raised $150 million in fresh funding courtesy of The Raine Group, some of which is going to fund the acquisition. The rest is earmarked for R&D. The deal, announced early Friday morning, comes less than two years after […]
On the surface, LinkedIn’s plan to acquire cross-device data company Drawbridge may seem like a head scratcher. What does a B2B social network want with a probabilistic cross-device vendor? The deal creates potential for LinkedIn’s marketing products that go beyond Drawbridge’s existing technology assets. If LinkedIn wanted access to an identity graph, it could have […]
