ad tech consolidation

Who bought what and why this year? Here’s a (mostly) comprehensive list of all the notable ad tech, agency and digital content deals of 2025.

Since Connatix and JW Player first announced their merger in October, JWP Connatix – a temporary name for the newly joined companies – says things are going well at the six-month mark.

Inspire Brands, the fast-food franchise that owns popular chains such as Dunkin’, Sonic and Arby’s, is rewriting parts of its TV playbook to better manage reach and frequency in streaming media campaigns.

Broadcasters and brands love the idea of applying digital targeting to CTV ad campaigns. But there are still roadblocks stopping CTV advertisers from fully embracing programmatic, including price and transparency (or the lack thereof).

Innovid added a new machine learning feature to its measurement product that automatically optimizes CTV campaigns based on how they’re performing.

Innovid confirmed plans to lay off 10% of its global staff this year. But considering the external pressures, the numbers it reported for Q4 could’ve been worse.

Ad exchanges used to be a regular feature of the ad tech landscape. Now? You can hardly find a stand-alone ad exchange because other ad tech players (including SSPs) and ad servers rolled all the exchanges into their service suites. And consolidation is a system in which the best company doesn’t always win, writes Jayson Dubin, CEO of Playwire. Publishers can protect themselves in the midst of disruption by taking a few easy steps.

Consolidation is a natural and necessary part of a maturing industry’s life cycle. But not all consolidation yields the same outcomes, particularly when it comes to mobile gaming, writes Itai Cohen, head of marketing and corporate strategy at Digital Turbine.

Special purpose acquisition companies have fallen out of favor. But demand-side platform AdTheorent, which went public via SPAC late last year, has no regrets about the route it took to IPO.

The programmatic advertising landscape has never faced more complexity or challenges than it does today. However, at the same time, the opportunity for growth and refinement has never been greater. Here’s how marketers can take advantage of key trends shaping the space in 2022 and beyond, writes Sameer Sondhi, Co-CEO at Verve Group.

After a pandemic-induced lull in deal activity in 2020, last year was wall-to-wall consolidation across the media and marketing technology sectors. Total deal making activity in 2021 was up more than 82% year over year, according to LUMA’s 2021 market report, released last week.

Mobile demand-side platform Jampp was acquired by Affle on Wednesday. It’s a mobile marketing company with a presence in India and Singapore. There’s nothing like a little uncertainty (ahem, Apple) to spark M&A. The mobile advertising industry has been experiencing a massive wave of consolidation in the wake of privacy-related platform changes. Since February, AppLovin […]

It’s mobile mania. There were three big pieces of mobile news before lunch on Monday – evidence that the mobile app market is white hot and only getting hotter. Content discovery provider Digital Turbine is acquiring app monetization company Fyber for $600 million in cash and stock – less than a month after spending $400 million to […]

District M and Sharethrough will merge to form a single exchange covering native, display, mobile, instream and video. Their combined scale serves a dual purpose. First, it puts them in a better position with buyers, who are working with fewer, but larger exchanges. Second, the two companies will double their revenue, putting them in a […]

AppLovin’s recent acquisition of mobile attribution provider Adjust for $1 billion is evidence that M&A doesn’t necessarily decline in times of uncertainty. The mobile advertising ecosystem may be in a holding pattern waiting for Apple to release its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) framework, which should finally happen by March or early April. But the fact that Apple’s […]

Here’s 2020 in a nutshell from the investment banker’s point of view: “Turmoil caused acceleration and unexpected change, and it was a breeding ground for opportunity,” says Conor McKenna, a VP at LUMA Partners. After stalling to near zero during the first three months of the pandemic, conversations and negotiations started to pick up again […]

Ad tech had a stellar 2019. You heard that right. The year started slow for ad tech M&A, but merger activity gained steam and the fourth quarter was one of the most active in recent memory, according to a Q4 market report released Tuesday from investment bank LUMA Partners. The number of scaled deals worth […]

The programmatic ecosystem spent the last 10 years in a state of hyper growth, and programmatic spending surpassed $100 billion dollars globally for the first time in 2019. While the next 10 years will likely bring a slowdown due to market maturation and data regulations, it’s indisputable that programmatic buying and the rise of ad […]

MediaMath is flush with cash and ready to ignite consolidation in ad tech. Thanks to a $225 million investment by private equity firm Searchlight on Tuesday, MediaMath will end up with a $180 million cash infusion to spend on acquisitions and building new products. MediaMath, whose flagship product is a DSP/DMP, used $45 million of […]