Verizon Buys AOL, As Sizmek Seizes StrikeAd

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John Bastick
By John Bastick



Even as it expands rapidly to fill the volume of ever growing demand, the adtech space simultaneously consolidates. The week was book-ended by two deals. The first was big and interesting because of the price and who was involved. The later for its intent.

On May 12 Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion. And the second, announced this morning is at a much smaller scale, but very interesting in its intent. Ad management platform Sizmek today revealed it has acquired online advertising demand side platform (DSP) StrikeAd.

By connecting mobile programmatic buying directly with rich media and video authoring, dynamic creative, in app data as well as viewability, verification, and attribution capabilities, the promise of the hook up is that marketers will be able to maximize the ROI of their programmatic investment.

Both Sizmek and StrikeAd have an Australian presence while StrikeAd also has a regional office in Singapore.

According to Carolyn Bollaci, VP, Global Accounts, Asia-Pacific, Sizmek, “The Sizmek growth strategy is to expand our suite of services in the key growth areas of programmatic, mobile, video, and data.”

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She said the next wave of the DSP market will be led by mobile and that this acquisition would help brand advertisers ore effectively target and communicate their ad creative to consumers on portable devices.

“The Australian consumer is now leading the world in mobile usage and brands are now increasing their budgets and wanting to make their mobile strategy work. The StrikeAd acquisition is part of our plan to help them accelerate their mobile advertising spend.”

The sales price was a little over $11 million.

Verizon meanwhile paid a 23 per cent premium for AOL for an acquisition that deals them directly into the highly competitive online video marketplace. It also delivers them Huffington Post as a side note for those of you who enjoy your irony served with a giant ladel.

The price tag though pales in comparison to the value of the Time Warner AOL merger in January 2000 which came in at $163 billion. Three months later the dotcom boom busted.

There endth the lesson.

This article originally appeared at www.which-50.com




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