Adelphic Purchase
Adelphic, which was founded in 2011 is a mobile-focused DSP that allows agencies and their clients to buy Advertising programmatically (in the cloud) and specifically target users based on their online habits. The company has been backed by some serious VC’s to the tune of over $20m, including Google Ventures and Matrix Partners.
Viant Inc.
Viant describe themselves as “a premier people-based advertising technology company, enabling marketers to plan, execute and measure their Digital media investments through a cloud-based platform.
Built on a foundation of people instead of cookies, the Viant Advertising Cloud™ provides marketers with access to over 1.2 billion registered users, one of the largest registered user databases in the world, infusing accuracy, reach and accountability into cross-device advertising”. In layman’s terms they use the registration data from their owned and operated Myspace service, email addresses etc. instead of the standard model of tracking people via cookies.
Obviously, the hope here will be for the Adelphic platform to merge seamlessly into the Viant ad stack allowing clients to buy Viant’s people based targeting tool programmatically across Time Inc.’s premium inventory and ad exchanges. Tim Vanderhook, Viant Inc.
CEO confirmed the deal by saying “Adelphic will bring superior media execution capabilities to Viant’s advertising cloud platform as one of the only DSPs (demand-side platforms) built mobile-first. This addition will give marketers and their agencies the globally scaled people-based platform they have been consistently asking from us.”
Time Inc.
Time Inc.
has been on a bit of a spending spree of late, initially buying Viant Inc. in February 2016 then, rather peculiarly, purchasing their direct rivals, Collective (UK) in July the same year. This is obviously part an ongoing strategy to beef up Time Inc.’s digital presence due to the rapid decline in revenues of the magazine business.
This will be seen by most as a shrewd move, however the question still remains, do advertisers and their agencies need this technology and, can Viant Inc. and any company that sits under its banner shake off the Specific Media network tag that still weighs heavily on their shoulders in ad land? Only time will tell.
