private equity

Lesser-known browser Brave comes out of the woodwork; agentic chatbots require new ad practices; and private equity can endanger both brands and publishers.

The layoffs at TripleLift come roughly four months after the company hired Dave Helmreich as its new CEO.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tough Math MediaMath came to the end of its decade-long venture capital tether last year when it sold a stake to PE firm Searchlight Capital, wiping out the equity of its founders, early investors and employees. It’s a bitter outcome, reports Insider in […]

With cookies (finally) cooling off, contextual targeting tech is starting to heat up. On Tuesday, ShowHeroes Group, a video and contextual targeting tech provider based in Europe, announced its acquisition of cross-screen ad platform smartclip LATAM (as in Latin America). The rationale behind the deal is to help ShowHeroes Group bring its solution to the […]

Is ad tech’s hot streak on the public market sustainable? No, and that’s not a bad thing. After four quarters of spiking valuations and an IPO runway so crowded that one ad tech company opted to postpone its IPO until next year, the market is starting to stabilize. Although some ad tech stocks achieved all-time […]

Brand Velocity Partners (BVP), a private equity firm founded in 2019, is creating a new business model as both a marketing services provider and as an owner of small brands. BVP’s first deal was in January for Original Footwear, which makes gear for police departments and military groups. Last week, it acquired Magma Products, a […]

Sizmek filed for bankruptcy Friday night, ending the private equity-backed effort to integrate Sizmek and Rocket Fuel into a cohesive buy-side tech stack, and possibly ending the Sizmek brand. Sizmek’s bankruptcy filing estimates its assets between $100 million and $500 million. Though its liabilities are in the same range. Sizmek’s four largest outstanding debts are […]

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Nielsen’s hire of IBM Watson honcho David Kenny as CEO, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is a major bet for the measurement company as it rises to meet new competitive challenges and prepares for a possible sale of the business. Kenny oversaw IBM’s artificial intelligence initiatives, using machine learning to support enterprise […]

When Adobe acquired the B2B marketing company Marketo for $4.8 billion last week, investors pressed CEO Shantanu Narayen to explain the gulf between Adobe’s price tag and Wall Street’s valuation of Marketo two years ago, when Vista Equity Partners snapped it off the stock market for $1.8 billion. Private equity investors have shown they have […]

It seems everyone wants a piece of AppLovin. Private equity firm KKR bought a $400 million minority stake in the app marketing and discovery platform on Tuesday, lifting AppLovin’s valuation to around $2 billion from $1.4 billion just eight months ago. Bank of America Merrill Lynch advised AppLovin on the investment, adding a new wrinkle […]

MediaMath is flush with cash and ready to ignite consolidation in ad tech. Thanks to a $225 million investment by private equity firm Searchlight on Tuesday, MediaMath will end up with a $180 million cash infusion to spend on acquisitions and building new products. MediaMath, whose flagship product is a DSP/DMP, used $45 million of […]

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in ad verification vendor Integral Ad Science. Terms were not disclosed. IAS detects ad fraud by scanning billions of insertions from both buy and sell sides, searching for anomalies. It also assesses whether individual impressions are fraudulent or not. Industry insiders had wondered about […]

Is opportunity fading for ad tech startups to go public or be acquired at a healthy premium? The answer is no, at least not for everyone, said Elgin Thompson, managing director of the technology investment advisory firm Digital Capital Advisors, at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I/O in San Francisco last week. A look back at IPO filings […]

Growth Catalyst Partners (GCP), a mid-market private equity a private investment firm, and PSP Capital, backed by former US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, have acquired a majority stake in mobile video ad platform Beachfront Media. The companies declined to disclose the deal terms. As a result of the transaction, Beachfront co-founder and CEO Frank […]

Digital marketing platform Valassis acquired ad network MaxPoint for $95 million, the companies said Tuesday. Read the release. Valassis itself was acquired by private equity firm Harland Clarke Holdings in 2013, and it will take the public company MaxPoint private. “The acquisition of MaxPoint … will create greater strength in managing integrated media delivery campaigns […]

DoubleVerify said Wednesday that private equity firm Providence Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. AdExchanger reported in July that DoubleVerify was exploring a sale that would have valued the company in the $350 million range. The exact size of the Providence stake was not disclosed in the deal announcement, but The […]

Tolman Geffs of global investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group, along with Bill Wise, the CEO of Mediaocean, will speak about the “private equity path” at Industry Preview on Jan. 19 in New York City. What really happens during – and after – a private equity (PE) investment? While the experiences of different companies vary, one thing […]

Private equity firm Clarion Capital Partners said Thursday it had acquired B2B marketing shop Madison Logic for an undisclosed sum. Clarion reportedly spent “hundreds of millions,” according to Fortune. Madison Logic hadn’t previously raised any institutional funding and specializes in account-based marketing, which sends targeted content to specific enterprise decision-makers. “We see an opportunity to […]

Marketing automation giant Marketo has been snapped up by a private equity buyer in a deal that values it among the top ad and marketing tech investments ever. Vista Equity Partners, which took a majority investment in agency billing and workflow software Mediaocean last June, agreed to acquire Marketo in a $1.79 billion all-cash deal. Upon […]

Once again, a private equity firm has bought a majority stake in a marketing tech company. Email marketing solutions provider StrongView will get a strategic growth investment from private equity firm HGGC. The deal is expected to close in 30 days, and financial terms weren’t announced. Read the release. HGGC has a solid background in […]

The past year has seen numerous private equity firms buy ad tech companies. Although there has been slight uptick in the overall volume of transactions and investment bankers predict more of these types of deals on the horizon, they are divided on what’s piquing the growth and timing of PE investor interest. These include Rockbridge […]