MOBILE ADVERTISING
Zynga | August 10, 2021
Zynga Inc., a global leader in interactive entertainment, and Chartboost, a leading mobile programmatic advertising and monetization platform, announced today that the companies have closed the transaction under which Zynga acquired 100% of Chartboost for a total purchase price of approximately $250 million in cash. The close of this acquisition is effective as of August 4, 2021.
Chartboost is a unified advertising platform that includes a Demand Side Platform (DSP) as well as Supply Side Platform (SSP) and mediation capabilities delivered through an SDK solution. By leveraging advanced machine learning and data science capabilities, Chartboost brings together premium inventory, global scale and audience-based targeting to optimize programmatic advertising and yields.
Together, Zynga and Chartboost possess all the elements of a complete, next generation platform for mobile advertising leadership: high-quality content, direct player relationships, massive reach and full-stack advertising technology that can be applied across Zynga’s game portfolio and Chartboost’s advertising partners.
About Zynga
Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games. With massive global reach in more than 175 countries and regions, Zynga has a diverse portfolio of popular game franchises that have been downloaded more than four billion times on mobile, including CSR RacingTM, Empires & PuzzlesTM, Hair ChallengeTM, Harry Potter: Puzzles & SpellsTM, High Heels!TM, Merge Dragons!TM, Merge Magic!™, Queen BeeTM, Toon Blast™, Toy Blast™, Words With FriendsTM and Zynga PokerTM. With Chartboost, a leading mobile advertising and monetization platform, Zynga is an industry-leading next-generation platform with the ability to optimize programmatic advertising and yields at scale. Founded in 2007, Zynga is headquartered in California with locations in North America, Europe and Asia.
About Chartboost
Chartboost is a leading mobile programmatic advertising and monetization platform, which empowers developers to earn high CPMs while connecting marketers to highly engaged audiences through immersive ad experiences. Chartboost has over 100 employees and offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Barcelona and Amsterdam.
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IAB Tech Lab | October 29, 2020
IAB Tech Lab today released Content Taxonomy 2.2, a common language to help third-party verification vendors and publishers identify content so that the advertisers can make decisions about whether it's appropriate for their ads. Tech Lab worked closely with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to create the update, with the shared goal of creating a safer digital environment. The Content Taxonomy enables buyers to use a consistent, easy-to-understand language across the entire advertising ecosystem (all publishers and platforms) to describe content that may be considered harmful or unsuitable. As part of the update: 11 "sensitive topic" categories were developed that range from adult and explicit sexual content to terrorism. Risk levels were created to identify a range of suitability and are treated as additional attributes of the content. The four levels of risk are "Floor," "High Risk," "Medium Risk," and "Low Risk." Both topics and risk levels work together, dynamically.
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AD NETWORKS
Mediaocean, Flashtalking | July 19, 2021
Mediaocean will buy independent global ad server Flashtalking to establish a "neutral tech platform" with a combined annual media spend of $200 billion.
According to The Wall Street Journal, it will pay $500 million for the New York-based company, which has annual revenue of between $100 and $150 million.
Mediaocean provides advertising workflow software that drives $70 billion in television advertising in the United States, but it is also actively pursuing programmatic opportunities. The deal with Flashtalking comes exactly a year after it paid $200 million for programmatic buying platform 4C. 4C has integrations with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon, and other platforms, placing Mediaocean squarely in the programmatic arena.
The acquisition will combine Flashtalking's ad serving, creative, identity, and verification capabilities with Mediaocean's media planning and buying capabilities across desktop, mobile web, in-app, and CTV/OTT. It is expected to close in the third quarter of this year. Integrating Flashtalking's dynamic creative optimization with the 4C solution, in particular, will enable marketers to utilize dynamic creative in both open and walled gardens. In addition, the merged platform will have over a trillion monthly ad impressions.
In 2018, Mediaocean and Flashtalking partnered to connect ad serving data with media buying.
As CTV adopts some of the features of new media's walled gardens, the companies emphasized the independence of their integrated tech platform as an alternative to Big Tech providers such as Google's ad server.
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