Data management platform (DMP) Lotame has acquired AdMobius, a company that identifies audiences across devices for ad targeting purposes, AdExchanger has learned. Terms weren’t disclosed for the deal, which comes two weeks after we first reported on talks between the companies.
With the purchase, Lotame accelerates its ability to use non-cookie methods to find users across their devices, including mobile and desktop. Its clients — including ESPN, The Weather Company (a joint AdMobius client), Advance Publications, and Politico — will be able to create more personalized user experiences that span desktop machines, tablets and smartphones.
“The key element of this is overcoming limitations in the platform space,” said Lotame CEO Andy Monfried, noting identifiers associated with users in various channels, like third party cookies and device IDs, exist in data stores that are completely independent of each other. “This creates a map between various platform specific device IDs by analyzing the relationship between various devices. That is super powerful because it creates a unique device-connected DMP.”
Adding cross-platform tracking is an increasingly urgent priority for DMPs, as documented in AdExchanger’s series, “The Cross-Device Question.” Companies like Acxiom, BlueKai, Krux, Turn, and [x+1] are all heavily focused on it. As these companies move through their separate build-versus-buy calculations, they are likely to look at AdMobius competitors such as like Drawbridge, TapAd, Adelphic Mobile as possible acquisition targets.
Some already have. AdMobius’s sale follows by six months Experian’s acquisition of 41st Parameter, another cross device ID firm, for $324 million.
AdMobius was founded in 2012 by former leaders from Apple’s mobile ad network iAd. The original leadership team included CEO Dan Grigorovici, a product exec at Quattro Wireless (before Apple bought it in 2010) who has stepped into a product role.
Grigorovici and most of the company’s staff of about 12 will be retained by Lotame, but current CEO Peter Bassett is moving on, as is CFO Bill Tinsley. Lotame employs approximately 70.
AdMobius has raised $5 million from Storm Ventures and Opus Capital. Lotame has raised $44 million, including a $15 million “Series D” round that closed earlier this month.
