AOL to acquire mobile ad firm Millennial Media
04 Sep 2015
Verizon Communications-owned AOL is acquiring mobile advertising company Millennial Media Inc for around $250 million, a move to grow its app monetisation services.
The announcement comes within three months of AOL being acquired by Verizon (See: Verizon to acquire AOL in $4.4-bn deal).
Millennial Media is among a handful of companies selling mobile ads across numerous websites and apps, saying it had the potential to deliver ads to over 65,000 apps. The company had gone public in 2012 at $13 a share, but its stock had plummeted as losses piled.
Millennial had started embracing automated, or programmatic, ad selling - a major focus of AOL's revival even before its acquisition by Verizon this year.
With Millennial, AOL could blend its consumer data with Verizon's wireless customer data to create a powerful ad-targeting offering for mobile devices.
The deal is expected to close before year end.
According to commentators, as media moved towards phone, the purchase of Verizon by AOL looked like a big step for the company in the direction of digital media and marketing.
''By Joining AOL, we will be adding additional mobile expertise to AOL's growing technology assets. I'm excited by what this acquisition means for our shareholders, our employees and our partners,'' said CEO of Millennial Media, Michael Barrett, thetechbulletin.com reported.
AOL will acquire Millennial Media's assets including TapMetrics, Condaptive, Metaresolver, Jumptap and Nexage.
Bob Lord, president of AOL said, ''AOL is well positioned as consumers spend more and more time on mobile devices, and as advertisers, agencies and publishers become more reliant on programmatic monetization tools. As we continue to invest in our platforms and technology, the acquisition of Millennial Media accelerates our competitive mobile offering in ONE [mobile app] by AOL and enhances our current publisher offering with an 'all in' monetisation platform for app developers.''
AOL had evolved slowly to where it was positioned today, moving from well-known internet service provider to operating a subscription service platform as also a scaled global content delivery network and scaled global content brands.
