AOL Buys Mobile Specialist Millennial Media

Veteran online company AOL has acquired end-to-end mobile platform Millennial Media, Inc., whose services include ad targeting and analytics. The deal, $1.75 per share of the acquired firm's common stock, values it at around $US 238m (£156m).

AOL, itself recently acquired by telecoms giant Verizon, has been increasingly active in the programmatic technology field, launching its own TV targeting and analytics platform a year ago as part of its flagship data management platform ONE. It also has a relationship with TV data collection and analytics specialist Fourthwall Media, which it expanded in the Spring, and three months ago it acquired and shut down New York-based predictive analytics firm Velos.

Millennial Media itself, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Baltimore, MD, has a long history in ad tech services, having acquired Jumptap in August 2013, Metaresolver six months earlier, and TapMetrics and Condaptive in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

AOL says the deal adds a leading supply-side platform for app monetization (more than 65,000 apps); access to approximately 1 billion global active unique users and robust addressable and cross-screen targeting capabilities; better coverage of key international markets, including Singapore, Japan, the UK, France and Germany; and world-class mobile-specific engineering, sales and product talent. As a result, the company says it now operates 'scaled global content brands, a scaled global content delivery network, a scaled global programmatic advertising platform and a subscription services platform'.

Web site: www.corp.aol.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.