Adtech M&A On Pace For Highest Deal Value In A Decade

Tremor Video, a New York-based maker of video monetization software, has agreed to sell its demand-side platform to Taptica, the provider of a mobile advertising platform, for $50 million. The deal represents just the latest in what could be a record year for M&A deal value in the global adtech space.

Since 2007, adtech has accounted for $47 billion across 1,340 completed deals, per the PitchBook Platform. The wave of consolidation crested in 2015 with 263 completed deals representing some $7.2 billion in total, but this year has already surpassed every other over the past 10 for overall deal value, except one: 2007’s $11.9 billion. Thus far, 2017 has accounted for $9.3 billion across 75 completed deals.

Completed global M&A in adtech

Although Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising, other high-profile players have made some notable acquisitive moves in adtech this year. Snap, for example, picked up Placed for $200 million in June, boosting its ability to track location-based analytics and gain intelligence on ad campaigns for brick-and-mortar retailers. But it’s not just the big names doing big deals.

Just last month, Vector Capital-backed Sizmek agreed to purchase AI-based marketing platform Rocket Fuel at an enterprise value of about $145 million. And the M&A pipeline currently stands at 16 adtech companies looking to close deals of various sizes since the start of the year, per the PitchBook Platform. Topping that list is Oracle’s reported $850 million acquisition of digital ad-tracking company Moat, a deal announced in April.

Adtech companies, though, have performed poorly on the public markets lately. Just take Tremor Video, for example, which went public at $10 per share price in 2013—its shares closed Monday at $2.36. With an overall decline like that, Tremor could well be an acquisition target in its own right soon enough.