Tag: Company acquisition

California, USA – Global media platform Digital Turbine has announced that it has recently entered a signing of definitive agreement in acquiring mobile game advertising platform AdColony, through its mother company Otello Inc.

The acquisition value was disclosed to a total of US$400M, and will add value to Digital Turbine through AdColony’s brand and user acquisition, as well as its publishing businesses to expand its collective experience, reach and suite of capabilities to benefit mobile advertisers and publishers around the globe.

“We look forward to welcoming the AdColony team to the Digital Turbine family and believe that this strategic transaction accelerates our growth and is a positive for our partners, advertisers, employees and shareholders. AdColony saw the secular tailwinds toward mobile, video and high-speed networks like 5G before most and has been able to capitalize on its vision,” said Bill Stone, CEO of Digital Turbine.

Meanwhile, Jude O’Connor, AdColony’s chief revenue officer commented, “Digital Turbine offers many complementary and additive solutions to AdColony’s performance business, while we bring an industry-leading SDK footprint and a mature and thriving brand and agency team to the partnership. When you combine the reach and capabilities of both companies, you have a powerful platform that will drive growth and outcomes for any buyer that participates in the mobile app economy.”

AdColony has a large presence in the Asia Pacific, also recently partnered with blended in-game advertising platform Anzu.io to expand presence in the region in November last year. AdColony has also recently won an exclusive sponsorship deal with mobile game Mobile Legends.

“We believe that Digital Turbine, with its massive user base, extensive global relationships and distribution, will be uniquely positioned to benefit via the seamless integration of AdColony’s mobile video advertising expertise and global brand advertiser awareness. The combination will yield a highly-differentiated and more vertically-integrated solution for the mobile advertising industry. We look forward to joining Digital Turbine to help navigate this innovation,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO of Otello and AdColony.

Sydney, Australia – Global digital agency Jellyfish is ramping up its global presence by acquiring five companies, including one in Australia, Data Runs Deep.

The Australia-based Google marketing agency provides consultancy and training to clients. Data Runs Deep assists its clients with the structure and implementation of Google Analytics in their business – most importantly, giving companies the ability to produce outputs through large amounts of customer behavior data in order to make fast business decisions.

The newly-announced acquisitions speak to the rapid acceleration of businesses looking into integrating digital transformation strategies into their company. This is done in response to the global pandemic that has created a greater need for brands to partner with companies to help them navigate and meet the challenges of driving growth and sustainability.

Other of Jellyfish’s global acquisitions include tech agency Seelk, e-commerce content production Quill, creative technology company Splash, and technology services Webedia Brand Services.

“These acquisitions bring powerful enhancements to our portfolio of services by expanding our depth of expertise, geographical reach, and our offerings across several continents and regions,” says Chris Lee, COO at Jellyfish.

Jellyfish’s rapid expansion comes against a backdrop of consolidation and challenges in the traditional agency sector as the company’s capabilities lie in helping brands during their digital transformation journey.

“Our mission is to ensure that our clients have all the resources needed to fully embrace digital transformation and reach results that transcend every expectation. These acquisitions are key in driving prominence and growth in the marketplace and we believe nothing is impossible or beyond the reach of our clients,” said Rob Pierre, CEO of Jellyfish.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Marketing technology consultancy, admiral.digital, has acquired Fresh Sports Group (FSG), strengthening its consultancy offering across the entire digital spectrum, and rebranding FSG as admiral.sports.

Under the acquisition, admiral.digital will bring expertise in brand creation, content development, campaign execution, and business strategy. The uniting of the two companies enables admiral.digital to enhance its executive team, strengthen its marketing technology consultancy offering and expand into an exciting new sales channel – sports. 

For Pieter Van den Eynde, founder of admiral.digital, the recent acquisition is in line with their company mission of making them thrive in the digital world. As such, being digitally-inclined is especially relevant for businesses to innovate aggressively, therefore, the deal will further enhance their digital capabilities to service clients better.

“We see this as a natural move in the right direction. Even prior to the deal, we found the FSG team to be a strong ally, having worked closely with them on multiple collaborations over a number of years. We also recognize that sports technology is an exciting market to dive into with tremendous potential. Moving forward, admiral.sports will play a highly integrated and complementary role, creating a dynamic synergy, thereby fortifying our core business where the end result is truly greater than the sum of its parts,” he stated.

Furthermore, the acquisition will have Van den Eynde lead the Group’s aggressive growth agenda, with co-founder Alec Van Noten focused on building the company’s ‘Technology as a Service’ proposition in the role of chief product officer.

Other leadership movements include FSG’s co-founder Sam Middlehurst taking up the role of chief executive officer and is tasked with setting the strategic direction and assembling the building blocks for the next stage of growth. Completing the impressive executive team as chief marketing officer is fellow FSG co-founder Tim Johnston, who brings with him a wealth of brand creation, marketing, and managerial expertise.

“We collectively share a vision to make marketing technology more accessible to more brands. By joining forces, we now cover the entire digital spectrum, from strategy to technology to creative; enabling us to service a broad spectrum of cross-industry and cross-category clients,” Middlehurst commented. 

The acquisition will serve as an opportunity to launch a new ‘go-to-market’ execution framework for clients; connecting technology, data, and marketing to drive better customer experiences and deliver results for clients. This new strategy has been supported by a refreshed brand identity, which projects a shared passion for marketing and technology. 

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has recently acquired ENGAWA, a Japan-based marketing company that focuses  inbound and outbound marketing solutions for Japanese businesses and local governments in Japan to reach international audiences.

The recent acquisition is the fourth move of AnyMind Group to acquire a Japan-based business to further bolster its efforts in the direct-to-consumer base market expansion in Japan. Furthermore the acquisition will tap into ENGAWA’s expertise in merchandising and distribution, and network of over 700 manufacturers throughout Japan.

ENGAWA, which is a subsidiary of the SUNNY SIDE UP Group, also focuses in providing marketing and influencer marketing solutions, and helps Japanese manufacturers and businesses distribute their products internationally. Additionally, ENGAWA owns and operates Tokyo Weekender, an English language lifestyle print and digital publication in Japan.

“The lifestyle of consumers and the ways businesses reach their customers are changing dramatically, with digital becoming increasingly important. New digital solutions will be the key element for market recovery in the future. By providing AnyMind Group’s superior technology and offerings to local governments and regional clients together with Engawa’s strong marketing know-how, we will look to create a new infrastructure for businesses in Japan and the region,” said Takanobu Ushiyama, CEO and founder of ENGAWA.

AnyMind Group has previously made a joint venture with the SUNNY SIDE UP Group in July 2019. The joint venture, known as AnyUp, provided g marketers, public relations professionals and influencers in Japan with a combined offering of AnyMind Group’s influencer network, AnyCreator, and platform for influencer marketing, AnyTag (formerly known as CastingAsia), together with SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP’s public relations expertise.

“Consumers today expect businesses to have more digital touchpoints, whether it is interacting with a brand or buying products. As such, businesses need to quickly transform to fit the needs of modern consumers. The acquisition of ENGAWA takes us a step closer to creating the business infrastructure for next-generation businesses, ultimately enabling us to fulfil our mission of making every business borderless,” said Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group.

San Francisco, California, USA – Marketing technology company Kenshoo has announced its acquisition of market intelligence company Signals Analytics, which entails enhanced accelerated e-commerce adoption for their clients in the midst of the pandemic.

As businesses are facing the need to rapidly transform engagement from physical to digital, there is a rise in the emergence of disruptive direct-to-consumer models and increased sensitivity to consumer privacy. Through the establishment of an AI-powered platform that connects internal and external data sets to surface insights across the entire marketing value chain, Kenshoo will empower enterprise clients to make stronger predictions and unleash their growth potential.

“Given the exponential growth we are experiencing in performance marketing, specifically around e-commerce, Kenshoo sees firsthand how brands make decisions to bring products to market online. The channel discussion is changing from media platforms to distribution types—direct-to-consumer or retail—and we are relied upon to support those decisions,” said Kenshoo CEO and co-founder Yoav Izhar-Prato.

He also added, “We looked for a powerful platform that best captured holistic consumer and market insights by connecting external data sets layered with cutting-edge, advanced analytics capabilities, and we found both in Signals Analytics. With a proven record in curating and augmenting external data and utilizing unique assets in artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to infuse decisions with relevant, actionable insights for very prestigious brands, the team wowed us.”

Through the acquisition, the combined company assets will help create a connected knowledge graph across brand, consumer, product, campaign, publisher, and market data silos. This then allows consumer insights and analytics teams to streamline trend analysis in order to identify white space opportunities; provide marketers the ability to build more effective strategic plans, and give social, retail, and publisher partners access to broader cross-channel intelligence to generate value.

“Signals Analytics was founded on the premise that more sound, timely market intelligence could improve business outcomes as a critical bridge to fast-moving customers. My co-founder Kobi Gershoni and I recognized that the way to get there was by extracting available market signals from the noise that were often missed given the sheer volume of data constantly generated online,” said Gil Sadeh, Signals Analytics co-founder, and CEO.

“By connecting these signals in a robust, configurable data fabric using patented AI and natural language processing, we have helped some of the world’s most discernible consumer brands accelerate product innovation, improve launch metrics, support marketing teams, and ultimately drive growth. Joining forces with Kenshoo means we can advance our collective mission of enabling smarter, faster go-to-market decisions in the current, highly dynamic digital commerce era,” Sadeh added.

Kenshoo has established its presence in Asia Pacific and Japan back in 2014, with its regional headquarters located in Hong Kong and two satellite offices in Singapore and Japan.