Another day, another acquisition of a mobile company by a Chinese conglomerate. Publisher-focused mobile ad exchange Smaato will be snapped up by (this is a mouthful) Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communications Group, a Beijing-based offline marketing service provider. Spearhead will shell out $148 million on the deal, pending the usual approvals. Getting acquired by a Chinese […]
With additional reporting by Sarah Sluis. Mobile app marketing platform Fiksu was quietly acquired last Wednesday by an obscure holding company for an undisclosed sum. But it’s a fate that could have been avoided. Fiksu’s cautionary tale has multiple chapters. It’s the story of what happens when a company pegs its future to the dynamics […]
Exploding smartphone growth makes Brazil more than just a mobile market to watch – which is why German mobile performance marketing firm glispa is putting down local roots. On Tuesday, glispa announced the acquisition of Mobils, a 10-person mobile-focused digital agency based in Sao Paulo. Glispa declined to share how much it spent on the […]
Pinterest’s rumored acqui-hire of deep-linking startup URX is a go. On Tuesday, Pinterest announced that it’s bringing the San Francisco-based URX team into the fold, but not its technology. URX, which started as a deep linking provider before becoming a mobile retargeting platform, will work with its customers to sunset its advertising product. As of […]
With additional reporting by Kelly Liyakasa. Rovi Corp., a maker of cloud-based analytics technology for TV and media companies, revealed Friday it would acquire TiVo for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. The combined company will be called TiVo once the deal, which is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, closes. “The combined capabilities of […]
With Oracle’s acquisition of Israeli cross-device vendor Crosswise on Thursday, the number of independent cross-device vendors is getting thin on the ground. Although Oracle declined to comment or disclose details around the transaction, The Times of Israel reported a deal price in the neighborhood of $50 million, citing a source with knowledge of the matter. […]
When YP Canada quietly acquired programmatic mobile ad platform JUICE Mobile for $35 million on March 17, its main concern was to assuage any potential investor concerns that the directory and listings behemoth wouldn’t be able to make its debt payments. YP Canada was $1.7 billion in debt and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy […]
[pullquote][/pullquote]Telcos continue to be big ad tech acquirers. Norwegian mobile carrier Telenor on Monday snapped up cross-device company Tapad for $360 million. Tapad is one of the two largest cross-device vendors in the space; Drawbridge is the other. It’s a move somewhat reminiscent of the AOL/Verizon deal, but with more global scale, said Tapad CEO […]
To date, IBM’s internal digital agency Interactive Experience (iX) has flown under the radar, through quiet, organic growth – reaching a global headcount of 10,000 employees. That changed Thursday when IBM iX – not to be confused with IBM’s consulting unit Global Services – revealed its first-ever acquisition: the digital/creative agency Resource/Ammirati, which has 300 […]
Berlin-based Fyber is on a tear. On Friday, Fyber, an SSP for mobile app developers, and its parent company RNTS Media announced that they’ve acquired mobile ad network Heyzap for as much as $45 million. RNTS Media will pay $20 million in cash upfront, with an additional $25 million in cash and shares available down the […]
GroupM hopes its purchase of digital/media agency Essence on Wednesday (for undisclosed terms) will add a whole lot of Google expertise into WPP’s cluster of media agencies. After all, the formerly independent Essence is Google’s digital agency of record. “Google, as you might imagine, is keen on its global digital agency using the full set […]
Developers are up to their ears in mobile SDKs – and they’re not going to take it anymore. The trend toward consolidated mobile solutions is real, said Omer Kaplan, deputy CEO and co-founder of app discovery platform ironSource, which has acquired mobile monetization platform Supersonic. The deal was officially announced Thursday following a leak in mid-July when […]
Mobile numbers are moving up and to the right – and social is along for the ride. Taptica is looking to take advantage of that trend. The mobile DSP announced Tuesday that it would fork over $17 million to acquire programmatic social marketing tech company AreaOne, formerly known as SocialClicks. Both companies maintain their headquarters in […]
AOL’s acquisition of Millennial Media for $238 million was a coup for its purchaser, if not for its investors. The mobile ad platform went from an opening-day share price of $23.50 to $1.75 when AOL announced its intent to purchase Thursday. But Elgin Thompson, managing director at investment firm Digital Capital Advisors, cautioned not to […]
What leads users to install an app is important, but what happens after the install is critical. That’s one of the main reasons behind attribution company TUNE’s purchase of real-time analytics and messaging startup Artisan Mobile, announced Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Rumors about the buyout were first circulated by VentureBeat on July […]
If mobile and video are the twin engines driving ad tech, then AOL’s rumored $300 million to $350 million acquisition of Millennial Media would put the pedal to the metal. The potential deal, first reported by AOL-owned TechCrunch on Thursday, comes just a few weeks after the official close of Verizon’s $4.4 billion purchase of […]
Undertone is consolidating around creative. The programmatic ad network acquired Buenos Aires-based rich media startup Sparkflow on Thursday as part of a move to integrate data-driven creative capabilities into Undertone’s overall tech stack, which it calls Virtuoso. The deal was on the smaller side, clocking in at “less than $20 million,” said Corey Ferengul, CEO […]
App marketing platform AppLift has made a move to strengthen its stack with the acquisition of Singapore-based mobile DSP Bidstalk. Terms of the deal, revealed Thursday, were not disclosed. AppLift’s technology centers on user acquisition and lifetime value (LTV) optimization for its roughly 500 clients, among them Match.com, King, Zynga, Glu Mobile and Indian fashion […]
Acquisitions and earnings – Sizmek likes to multitask. On Thursday, the company announced its Q1 2015 results and its intention to buy mobile DSP StrikeAd for $11.7 million. Excluding StrikeAd, revenue from mobile formats, in other words HTML5-related revenue, was up 103% YoY in Q1 2015, while in-stream video revenue increased 10% in the same timeframe. […]
Verizon has access to deterministic data – and now it ostensibly owns the programmatic tech to put that data to work via AOL, which the telecom bought for $4.4 billion on Monday. This isn’t Verizon’s first stab at ad tech. Precision Market Insights, the company’s addressable advertising division, has been groping about, with various degrees of […]
Twitter is taking cross-device retargeting under its wing with the acquisition of digital ad platform TellApart. “Direct response advertising has been a major growth engine for our ads business over the last several quarters. … TellApart will accelerate that trajectory further,” said Kevin Weill, Twitter’s SVP of product, in a blog post Tuesday. According to […]
Partner, build or buy? WPP Group has decided on the last in the case of Medialets. The global holding company said Wednesday it will acquire the mobile ad platform as a wholly owned subsidiary. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clients across the breadth of WPP’s holdings will have the option to use Medialets’ tech. Medialets CEO […]
China is a market on the programmatic verge – Magna predicts that China and Japan will surpass the UK programmatic ad market by 2017 – and Alibaba seems more than ready to embrace it. The Chinese ecommerce giant revealed Wednesday that it’s become a majority shareholder in AdChina, a Shanghai-based digital ad platform that combines supply- and demand-side […]
One week after completing its $2.3 billion acquisition of ad tech company Conversant on behalf of its Epsilon subsidiary, Alliance Data Systems has made some C-level org changes. Epsilon President Andy Frawley has become Epsilon’s CEO, reporting to Bryan Kennedy, the former Epsilon CEO who has been placed in charge of a joint Conversant-Epsilon unit. His title? That’s right. […]
Nexage is the cherry on top of Millennial Media’s multiscoop technology sundae. Millennial’s acquisition of Nexage, first announced in September, officially closed on Thursday evening. “Not to sound like Jerry Maguire, but the Nexage deal completes us,” said Matt Gillis, president of platforms at Millennial Media. Millennial has been actively acquiring tech since early last […]
Audience Partners, which provides an advertising platform focusing on advocacy, political and healthcare verticals, reached an agreement Wednesday to acquire Bering Media for an undisclosed sum. Audience Partners expects the deal to close in October. For Audience Partners, Bering Media – with whom it has partnered over the past two years – provides an ad-targeting solution […]
Early in September, Russian search engine Yandex acquired ad tech company ADFOX, generating a bit of buzz around the relatively early stage programmatic buying market in Russia. Yandex only entered the RTB market in 2012 and ADFOX, a Moscow-based sell-side platform, was originally founded in 2005 but also introduced its RTB offerings in 2012. “We expect […]
Yahoo has $6 billion in its wallet thanks to Alibaba’s IPO last week. But investors showed little faith in Yahoo’s core business, sending the stock plummeting. An article in Businessweek went so far as to value Yahoo’s business at zero. That means CEO Marissa Mayer needs to go shopping. “I think she’ll do a big […]
Mobile analytics and marketing platform Upsight (formerly Kontagent/PlayHaven) is divesting itself of the mobile ad network side of its business in the name of neutrality and simplification. Upsight – which got into a little hot water with Facebook earlier this year for failing to honor certain policies around data retention and disclosure – is selling the […]
Mobile ad platform Millennial Media is buying up mobile exchange Nexage and the message to agencies seems fairly clear: We want to be your everything. Announced Tuesday, the $107.5 million deal, a mixture of cash and stock, is expected to close in Q4. The tech integration will start in earnest in the new year. With […]
