Ad-Tech Firm DataXu Hires Bank to Explore Possible Sale
October 17 2018 - 4:31PM
Dow Jones News
By Lara O'Reilly
Advertising-technology company DataXu is exploring a potential
sale, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Boston-based company -- which offers software to help
marketers use data to target audiences across the web, apps and
television -- is working with investment bank GCA Advisors LLC on
the process, the people said. The ad-tech company is initially
seeking a valuation of around $300 million.
DataXu didn't respond to requests for comment. GCA declined to
comment.
DataXu was founded in 2009 and has raised around $87.5 million
in funding, according to funding-data provider Crunchbase.
Its investors include European pay-TV giant Sky PLC and
venture-capital firms Flybridge Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures
and Thomvest Ventures. DataXu has about 400 employees, according to
an October report from market-research firm Gartner.
Once a hot space after several companies' share prices soared
following initial public offerings, ad-tech cooled for investors as
it became commoditized and stocks in many players took a hit.
Ad-tech companies are also up against the "duopoly" of Google
and Facebook, which are projected to take a 44% and 21% share,
respectively, of the digital ad dollars spent in the U.S. this
year, according to market research firm eMarketer.
There were 46 deals in the ad-tech space in the first three
quarters of 2018, according to advisory firm Results International,
which defines a deal as any transaction where a company takes at
least a 40% stake in another. That was down from 70 in the
equivalent period a year earlier.
There have been some recent success stories in the space. Public
ad-tech company the Trade Desk is one of the sector's star players,
with a market capitalization of around $5 billion. In July,
MediaMath raised $225 million in funding. AT&T completed its
approximately $1.6 billion acquisition of ad-tech firm AppNexus in
August.
Private-equity and cloud-computing firms have been involved in a
number of recent ad-tech acquisitions. Television and
telecommunications companies increasingly are looking to
advertising technology to modernize their ad offerings to
marketers, and to put their viewing and subscriber data to work to
help monetize their content.
DataXu, which operates what is known in the industry as a
demand-side platform, recently has begun to focus more on
television. In September, for example, the company introduced a
product called TotalTV for Advertisers to help marketers plan and
buy ads across both traditional and streaming television.
Write to Lara O'Reilly at lara.o'reilly@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 17, 2018 17:16 ET (21:16 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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