acquisitions

Netflix could acquire Warner Bros., unless Paramount swoops in or regulators intervene. How rearranging the streaming leaders could affect the CTV ad business.

M&A started off with a bang in 2025. T-Mobile bought Vistar Media, and The Trade Desk bought Sincera. With a special guest from LUMA Partners, Conor McKenna, we explore the rationale for these ad tech acquisitions.

This year has been a series of highs and lows for Zeta Global. It acquired LiveIntent for $250 million – a high. And it was the subject of multiple withering short seller reports – a low. But CEO David Steinberg says he’s not sweating it.

Another big ad industry acquisition? Truly, it’s a Christmas miracle. Omnicom’s board of directors has unanimously approved a deal to acquire IPG, itself a major holding company.

Goodway Group has chosen Jay Friedman as CEO. Friedman assumes the chief executive position after more than 16 years at the company, most recently as president. Former CEO David Wolk moves into the role of executive chairman.

Personalization platform Dynamic Yield has the distinction of having been acquired by not one but two large brands. McDonald’s bought the company in 2019 and then sold it to Mastercard late last year. “I guess this is just our destiny,” said Ori Bauer, Dynamic Yield’s CEO.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The “Solid” In Consolidation Are you sick of hearing about M&A already? TOO BAD! We’ve still got multiple deals being announced on the regular.  On Wednesday, the publisher services company OpenWeb – known for operating comment sections and targeting ads by user account IDs […]

Vox Media buying Group Nine Media is the latest media mega merger to watch. Plus, Criteo buys IPONWEB. Both acquisitions are part of a strategy to find space unoccupied by Big Tech (and impervious to the demise of third-party cookies).

Will Xandr find a home with InMobi? As InMobi prepares for an IPO, we talk about the Axios report that the company is in talks to acquire Xandr. AT&T has been shopping the company formerly known as AppNexus around for months – so when will a buyer materialize? Ad tech’s stratospheric public market valuations should […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Terence Kawaja, CEO, LUMA Partners. CAVEAT: LUMA Partners is a leading M&A advisor to the ad tech sector. Hammer >>> Nail. The intersection of media, marketing and technology has always […]

Vungle chief exec Jeremy Bondy refers to himself as a “virtual CEO.” Bondy was at Vungle for six years, most recently as COO, before being elevated to the top spot in November, seven months into the pandemic. It’s been a busy few quarters for Vungle, which is evolving from a mobile ad network into a […]

Zynga might be in the market to buy some ad tech. The online and mobile gaming developer, which posted record Q4 earnings on Wednesday, fueled by an all-time best revenue and bookings quarter for Words With Friends, is in the midst of building its own ad network to expand its addressable market. Revenue for the […]

This week’s episode of The Big Story is brought to you by the letters M and A.  Because if you haven’t heard, Magnite bought SpotX for $1.17 billion, and then District M and Sharethrough merged to form a giant exchange. So what’s going on? The team takes a look at both acquisitions, and digs into […]

CDP acquisitions are a bit like snowflakes, no two have been quite alike, at least not so far. Cloud communications platform Twilio’s $3.2 billion all-stock purchase of Segment, confirmed on Monday, is the latest example. Notable acquirers in the space have included a British multibillion-dollar semiconductor firm, an American multinational financial services brand and the […]

San Francisco-based TV and video analytics company Samba TV cut a large portion of its workforce on Wednesday. Sources tell AdExchanger that the layoffs represent somewhere between 15% and 20% of the company, although more toward the lower end of that range. Samba confirmed the layoffs but declined to share how many people or what […]

McDonald’s is starting to throw a few ideas on the grill after spending around $300 million to acquire personalization and decision logic tech startup Dynamic Yield in March. Dynamic Yield’s technology has been integrated into the drive-thru experience at roughly 700 McDonald’s restaurants in North America so far with plans to roll out more and […]

Many broadcasters spent the past decade on a quest for scale, with a major spike in local station M&A last year. Now it’s time to start thinking about monetization, and broadcasters know it. “Once you own a lot of stations, the next logical thing to do is ask, ‘How are we going to monetize these […]

Twitter’s ad tech fortunes haven’t been great. Most recently, it took its 479-million-dollar acquisition TellApart for a long walk behind the barn. However, Twitter isn’t giving up on ad tech, at least not as an investor, said co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey at a Wednesday panel hosted by Omnicom’s OMD in Cannes. “We’re definitely not […]

LiveRamp will drop $140 million to finance its people-based marketing dreams. On Thursday, the Acxiom-owned onboarding company announced its intention to acquire two companies: Arbor, a marketplace for people-based data, and Circulate, which helps app developers monetize their first-party data in a privacy-friendly way. LiveRamp declined to say how much it paid for each company. […]

Independent mobile supply-side platforms (SSPs) are going extinct, the result of commoditization and natural evolution. “It’s been really hard to be a single-point solution player in the ad tech space for a long time, but now it’s almost impossible,” said Christopher Hansen, chief product officer at IgnitionOne. “Just take a look at the Terry Kawaja […]

It’s been a busy 10 months since AdExchanger published its inaugural Marketer’s Guide to Cross-Device Identity. Since then the market has seen significant developments, including technology evolution, merger activity and shots across the bow from government regulators.   Below, we pick up where we left off with an important update to our overview of the […]

IBM’s purchase of three agencies in six days on behalf of its in-house agency Interactive Experience (iX) is uncharacteristic since iX hasn’t been acquisitive in its almost two-decade history. The first purchase, last Thursday, was Resource/Ammirati, known for brand building. IBM then acquired digital agency Aperto on Tuesday and design agency Ecx.io on Wednesday; both […]

If 2014 was a year of big buys in ad tech, 2015 seemed more muted. While 2014 saw a run on attribution companies from big players like Google and AOL, massive consolidation among data management platforms and some big splashes from Oracle and Alliance Data Services, 2015 was about the quiet private equity exit. Sure, […]

EBay has confirmed plans to sell eBay Enterprise, its enterprise commerce and marketing services business, to a handful of equity and commerce firms for $925 million, one day before it spins off PayPal as a standalone entity. The divestiture creates a new standalone commerce and marketing tech company. Marketing components within the eBay Enterprise stack […]

Private equity firm Vector Capital has acquired Triton Digital, a digital audio firm whose proprietary tech connects audio supply to advertising demand. The deal closed Monday morning for an undisclosed sum. Triton Digital has been building out its nascent programmatic business through SaaS solutions designed for publishers and advertisers since 2006. The company has a […]

Russ Fradin’s been around the ad tech block. He sold his self-serve ad network startup Adify, since shuttered, to Cox Enterprises back in 2008; he’s on the board at both TubeMogul and comScore; and he served as EVP of corporate development at comScore for four years, starting in 2000, when the then newly launched online […]

Merkle’s been busy. Since 2011, the privately held CRM and database marketing agency has been on an acquisition roll: Brilig (data exchange); 5th Finger (responsive design); Social Amp (social commerce); IMPAQT (search engine marketing); New Control (digital and direct marketing agency services); and, most recently in July, RKG (search). It’s all part of what Merkle […]

French holding company Publicis Groupe acquired software and consulting firm Crown Partners on Tuesday and intends to align it with digital agency Razorfish. The purchase is a play to power up Razorfish’s ecommerce capabilities, especially as businesses that haven’t traditionally had strong online presences seek to remedy that situation. “Everyone wants to have an ecommerce capability today, even […]

It’s been a busy third quarter on the mergers and acquisitions front. Yahoo has been the most active acquirer of online and mobile companies in 2013, closing seven deals in the third quarter alone. A vast majority of its recent deals were in the mobile and social space, including AdMovate, Hitpost and Rockmelt. Other notable […]

Ziff Davis’ acquisition of tech blog network NetShelter is part of a continuing strategy to expand its vertical content for IT pros and young men. Ziff Davis has been a serial acquirer since former Time Inc. digital chief Vivek Shah took over the company as CEO nearly three years ago, with investment assistance from PE firm Great Hill […]