The digital advertising business ain’t easy – just ask any traditional publisher. But there are bright spots. The New York Times had its best year last year for ad revenue – $709 million – in the roughly 15 years since print writ large really started to suffer, said NYT COO and EVP Meredith Kopit Levien, speaking Tuesday at […]
Q1 2019 in a nutshell: Ad tech isn’t doing as poorly as you’d think (all things considered), TV and data are colliding, DTC is sizzling, private equity is still gung-ho on M&A, and so are the marketing clouds. It’s not a bad report card, despite a general sense of caution and trepidation about macro factors […]
Investors are well over their brief love affair with independent ad tech, but other categories –namely mar tech, customer data platforms (CDPs) and advanced TV technology – are now catching their eye. Why? In a word: growth. “Growth is still what commands exit premiums – growth is what people pay for,” said Deborah Farrington, founder and […]
If you’re a mature marketing technology platform: Congrats. 2018 was your year and the future looks bright. But if you’re an ad tech company without a unique value prop that’s jonesing for an exit, apologies, the outlook remains fairly bleak. Although digital advertising is still growing – it’s a $100 billion market today – Google and Facebook […]
“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO at LUMA Partners. Allbirds. Warby Parker. Brandless. Peloton. Dollar Shave Club. Over the past several years, an explosion of relatively young startups has garnered significant market share from major […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO at LUMA Partners. There was great uncertainty in the two years leading up to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). During this time, only […]
Publishers like to pretend that consumers can’t live without content – but if 95% of media brands disappeared tomorrow, no one would care, said Rafat Ali, CEO and founder of travel publisher Skift, at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit in New York City on Tuesday. Despite the value media people ascribe to the importance of what they […]
Despite broad concerns about the viability of online media and advertising, M&A in the sector is heating up thanks to the growth of ecommerce and commerce-based media solutions, like Apple’s purchase of digital subscription service Next Issue Media for an undisclosed amount. The total number of deals in media, marketing and technology dropped by 7% […]
Media and telco M&A volume in the US increased 29% year over year in 2017 to nearly $140 billion, driven mostly by megadeals like Disney’s $68.4 billion bid for 21st Century Fox, according to new data from PwC. More specifically, there were 18 megadeals in 2017, including Discovery’s $11.8 billion merger with Scripps. Although large […]
2017 was a busy year of M&A for the digital media and marketing sector, according to reports released by investment banks JEGI and Luma Partners this week. Last year included 2,000 transactions in the sector hitting $272 billion in deal value, according to JEGI. It was the fourth consecutive year of increasing transaction value in […]
Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. 2018 will see the same amount of deal activity as 2017 as the field of potential buyers expands, predicts Luma Partners’ Brian Andersen. The ad tech acquirers are much different from when Andersen joined […]
Digital offers more precise measurement than most channels, which has helped move the industry from an art to a science, according to Brian Andersen of Luma Partners. “And as part of that [transition], they need to know: How do we manage our data? How do we use our data for targeting? How do you understand […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Brian Andersen, partner at LUMA Partners. There have been numerous articles published about the convergence of ad tech and mar tech, and whether it’s happening or not. As I presented […]
Despite predictions that winter is coming to ad tech, deal activity for the ad tech, mar tech and digital media sectors was tentatively healthy in 2016, according to reports released this week by investment banks LUMA Partners, JEGI and Petsky Prunier. Deal activity rose to the $100-to-$200 billion range. JEGI reported deal activity at roughly […]
Brian Andersen, a partner at LUMA Partners, will read the tea leaves on marketing clouds and omnichannel marketing at Industry Preview on January 18 in New York City. Remember when everyone kept predicting the seminal year of mobile, year after year, until the question became moot because mobile was everywhere? The same thing is happening […]
Are the Chinese buyers that have been feasting on Western ad tech companies just starting on their appetizers? Eastern buyouts marked the biggest shift in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the ad tech space this past quarter, said Terry Kawaja, CEO of Luma Partners, which released its Q3 M&A report on Friday. “What’s been […]
LUMA Capital Partners, the newly minted venture capital arm of LUMA Partners (per an SEC filing earlier this year), announced Wednesday its first public investment with the ecommerce performance marketer HookLogic. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. HookLogic, which positions search and display ads within a network of retail sites, is only six months […]
2015 wasn’t the best time for an ad tech company to tap the public markets. And 2016 seems like it will be equally uncertain – one need only look at the strange ongoing saga of AppNexus to see that. But it’s an overstatement to say that all ad tech companies are in trouble, according to […]
The past year has seen numerous private equity firms buy ad tech companies. Although there has been slight uptick in the overall volume of transactions and investment bankers predict more of these types of deals on the horizon, they are divided on what’s piquing the growth and timing of PE investor interest. These include Rockbridge […]
Terence Kawaja, founder and CEO at LUMA Partners, has surveyed the past few week’s notable deals — demand side platforms MediaMath’s acquisition of Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions (ADS) unit (which his firm helped broker); exchange platform AppNexus’ $75 million venture capital funding; and the shuttering of adBrite’s exchange business. And he sees the clear formation […]
Over the past two years, Ziff Davis has transformed itself from a digital-only tech publisher primarily known for PCMag.com to a broader content/digital marketing play by adding audience ad targeting, e-commerce and enterprise IT functions. Now, after roughly five acquisitions since CEO Vivek Shah took over the media property with investment assistance from Great Hill Partners, […]
