Tremor International acquires ad tech company Amobee for $239M
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Tremor International's CEO said Tuesday that the Tel Aviv-based ad tech company's Amobee deal will "vastly increase" demand for its platform.
Why it matters: The Amobee agreement is Tremor's fourth acquisition over the past five years and strengthens its ability to support clients running linear and digital ads — a necessity in the era of streaming.
What the CEO is saying: "We expect the acquisition will vastly increase advertisers' demand flowing through our platform, particularly around self-service, CTV and video while enhancing our programmatic activities," Tremor CEO Ofer Druker said in a Tuesday conference call.
Details: Tremor agreed to acquire Amobee, a Redwood City, Calif.-based ad tech platform, for $239 million. Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) had acquired Amobee for $321 million in 2012.
- The Wall Street Journal reported Singtel said it booked non-cash impairment charges of $438 million against Amobee last year and that Amobee had seen nearly a yearlong decline in ad spending.
- The deal includes Amobee's demand-side and advanced TV platforms, but not its email marketing platform.
- Amobee supports more than 500 customers, including Verizon, McDonald's, Comcast, Johnson & Johnson and Mastercard.
The intrigue: Tremor has been an active consolidator of ad tech firms, acquiring Spearad last year, News Corp's Unruly in 2020 and RhythmOne in 2019.
- "The pending transaction reflects our largest to date and builds upon our proven track record of successfully buying and integrating companies," Druker said on Tuesday.
- In response to an analyst question about potentially selling third-party data to compete with Nielsen, Druker said the acquisition "can give us the option to provide and to engage with another source of revenue, which is measurement and tracking."
What's next: The company expects the deal to close in Q3 2022.
- Tremor has 600 employees, whereas Amobee has about 900 staff, including third-party contractors. A Tremor spokesperson declined to disclose how many would join following the transaction.
Go deeper: The ad tech industry's record rebound
