SPAC

The market is not being kind to digital media companies. The nearly 40% drop in BuzzFeed’s stock price on Monday and the decline of its valuation from $1.5 billion when it went public in December to roughly $300 million now is no doubt causing other digital-native publishers to rethink their IPO plans. But any doom and gloom about the long-term viability of digital publishers in public markets is likely overblown.

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.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Flix It Public investor Bill Ackman scooped 3.1 million Netflix shares, a 0.68% stake in the company. The bulk buy by Pershing Square, Ackman’s fund, was inspired by Netflix’s recent stock plunge, reports The Wall Street Journal. Netflix missed […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cookie Cutters A coalition of large German advertisers and Axel Springer, the biggest German publisher, are petitioning the EU legislature to stop Google from removing third-party cookies in Chrome, the Financial Times reports.  Chrome already delayed cookie deprecation from Q2 this year to the […]

“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 Oz Etzioni, CEO at Clinch. 2021 is shaping up to be a breakthrough year for advertising technology. After several fallow years for ad tech companies and a necessary period of […]

Are you tired of SPACs already? Too bad! There are more SPACs. Another market entrant is the performance advertising company System1, which will list on the Nasdaq later this year, likely by November, after completing a merger with one such “special purpose acquisition company,” said CEO and co-founder Michael Blend. System1’s SPAC arrangement isn’t analogous […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. SPAC’s All Folks Vice Media officially nixed plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), at least for now, The Information reports. However, Vice did raise an additional $85 million from existing investors. A portion of those funds are earmarked for […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The SPAC Attack Online publishers are popular takeover targets for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which promise a route to IPO without the typical pre-IPO roadshow – the well-known brand merges with an already-public shell company. First-party data and ad tech companies have boomed […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Publisher Action  Forbes is jumping on the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) bandwagon as a route to go public, CNBC reports. The business publisher announced plans to IPO at a $630 million value. The cash infusion will help Forbes’s “digital transformation,” and CEO Mike […]

The field of public ad tech and digital media companies is growing large – both in number of companies and their market value. To help us untangle all of the M&A, IPOs and SPACs, Progress Partners Chief Operating Officer Domenic Venuto explains how investors approach the digital media and advertising sector. One important tell for […]