Mobile ad firm Amobee has bought Adconion and Kontera, for $235m and $150m respectively as it looks to expand into the wider digital ad space.
Amobee was itself bought by Singapore’s main carrier SingTel two years ago for $321 million and was formed back in 2005. The company says it has some 2,000 clients on its platform.
Adconion, a cross channel digital advertising company, offers digital advertising solutions to Fortune 500 brands across key marketing channels — display, video, email and social — on all devices from a unified technology platform.
Kontera is a digital content intelligence and marketing technology company with offices in the US, UK and Israel. Its real-time digital content analysis platform analyses data across mobile, web and social networks, and enables advertisers to use its native advertising capabilities to serve the most relevant ads to consumers.
Allen Lew, CEO, Group Digital L!fe and Chairman of Amobee, said: “The SingTel Group has significant scale and customer relationships with over 500 million mobile customers, as well as intelligent networks, billing capabilities and extensive touch points. Together with Amobee’s advanced digital marketing technology and solutions, we will create relevant and innovative marketing campaigns across multiple channels for brands and advertisers. These acquisitions will further differentiate Amobee and help solidify its position in the digital advertising market.”
“We are excited to join forces with Adconion and Kontera, two companies that have led the industry with innovative marketing solutions and cutting edge technology to achieve outstanding returns for Fortune 500 companies,” said Mark Strecker, CEO of Amobee. “Amobee offers the most advanced mobile advertising technology and solutions to large advertisers and publishers on a global scale.”
Strecker added: “The digital advertising business is about scale and capitalizing on the market opportunities with technology as a core differentiator. With these two acquisitions announced today, we have extended our product offerings, increased our sales footprint and reinforced Amobee’s leadership position in the fast growing digital advertising market.”
“We have admired Amobee’s strong mobile technology capabilities and expertise and are thrilled to combine our two companies to become the undisputed leader in the global digital marketing space,” said Kim Perell, CEO of Adconion Direct and President of Adconion Media Group. “With Amobee, we can now offer our customers a complete suite of digital marketing solutions combined in a single platform.”
“Data has become the essential ingredient to successfully reach the right customers with the right message at the right time,” said Yoav Shaham, CEO of Kontera. “Being a part of Amobee, we can more fully leverage our real-time content analysis platform across the entire digital ecosystem, enabling CMOs to measure and evaluate the success of their brand in ways never possible before.”