News Corp has announced it will spend $125 million acquiring Unruly – a social-video advertising platform. The move will give its Australian operations more expertise in digital and video ad tracking.

The move was announced over night and was confirmed in a release to media this morning by Australian chief operating officer Peter Tonagh (pictured below).

Unruly is a video ad tech company, with 200 people in 15 offices, including Sydney, and regional hubs in London, New York and Singapore. As part of the acquisition, Unruly will operate as a separate business and report to the now infamous Rebekah Brooks who is chief executive of News in the UK.

News Corp businesses will begin offering Unruly products to local advertising partners in the coming months. The move is expected to result in more premium video and mobile ad inventory.

Unruly’s suite of advertising products includes:

• ShareRank – proprietary technology that is able to predict the virality of videos across social and digital media. ShareRank can also inform the changes that need to be made to video content in order to improve the number of times a video is viewed, liked and shared.
• In-Feed advertising – a mobile-first, video ad format that dynamically adapts to the unique look and feel of news feed formats. Leveraging Unruly’s ViewPlay technology, the ad plays as soon as the unit is in view on the page.
• In-Page advertising – video advertising that appears as video player units within the body of article pages, across desktop and mobile.
• Skippable In-Stream Advertising – offering programmatic targeting and prominent branding within the player.

Mr Tonagh said:  “The utilisation of Unruly’s technology will significantly increase our standing in the rapidly growing digital video advertising space.

“For our advertising and agency partners this means that, over the next few months, News Corp Australia will begin to offer access to Unruly products through our sales teams. This means more premium video and mobile inventory than ever before, an even stronger content marketing offering and, ultimately, improved returns for our advertisers.

Mr Tonagh added:  “The utilisation of Unruly’s technology is the latest in a series of commercial digital innovations at News Corp Australia, following the recent launches of News Connect powered by Quantium, MBX and News Corp Studios.

“In a fragmented world of media, News Corp Australia is leading innovation in video, mobile, data and content integration. We are the number one company in delivering scale and certainty of audience, and our ability to source, create, distribute and amplify content is streets ahead of anyone else.”