The Year of…?

Within the digital marketing world, we often hear industry dignitaries provide “year of” predictions – 2015, the year of video? The year of native? Year of cross-device? Or will this finally be the year of mobile? One that could potentially make a run for its money is the year of acquisitions. As company acquisitions are a commonplace among partners we utilize on a daily basis, it is vital to understand how these companies are working together and the impact it might have on our campaigns. With this, I thought I would highlight a few of the company acquisitions that have already been announced so far this year:

Integral Ad Science acquires Veenome: With many tech companies putting more of an emphasis on video inventory and targeting capabilities, we will start to see a shift in the way brands analyze their video campaigns. The acquisition of Veenome is a step for Integral to provide additional analytics into video impressions such as how long or how much each video was in-view on the page, whether sound was turned on, and how a user engaged.

http://adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/integral-ad-science-acquires-video-measurement-startup-veenome/

Rubicon Project acquires iSocket and Shiny Ads: In this case, both of these acquisitions were focused on programmatic direct buying, which aligns with Rubicon Project launching its own programmatic direct platform in earlier 2014 and investing more in the automated programmatic space. This will allow Rubicon to offer more automated buyer/seller deals, which continues to be a growing market within the industry.

http://adexchanger.com/platforms/rubicon-project-acquires-two-companies-supporting-direct-deal-automation/

Nielsen acquires eXelate: With cross-device targeting continuing to dominate conversations with brands, this acquisition aligns with the idea of TV ad sales shifting to a more programmatic market. Having eXelate will give Nielsen access to audience segmentation tools that could be utilized to target users for programmatic TV buys. This comes shortly after comScore has made pushes into cross-device and TV buy platforms.

http://adage.com/article/digital/changing-tv-industry-leads-nielsen-acquire-exelate/297435/