Rubicon Bumps Up Plans With FAN Acquisition
ADOTAS – Back in September the rumor mill went wild with speculation that publisher-side platform the Rubicon Project was fixing to buy News Corp’s Fox Audience Network, which seemed stuck in limbo after being spun off into MySpace following the departure of CEO and co-creator Adam Bain (now Twitter’s president of revenue). Though the whispers settled down, last week they got stronger before Rubicon’s official announcement this morning.
CEO and Founder Frank Addante said that FAN’s technology assets — including its real-time bidding algorithms, MyAds self-service ad-buying platform and audience hypertargeting and insights — will enable the company to reach its goal of becoming an end-to-end display advertising platform geared at publishers 18 to 24 months ahead of schedule.
John Carnahan, formerly CTO and EVP of FAN Product, Technology and Operations, will become Rubicon’s new CTO. Also joining Rubicon’s staff are 100 FAN employees, including a healthy deployment of engineers. Not included in the deal are FAN’s third-party ad network, which will likely stay in the hands of MySpace, and the direct ad sales team, which was reportedly laid off last week. News Corp. is also gaining a non-controlling minority equity stake in the combined entity.
Rajeev Goel, CEO of revenue optimizer and Rubicon competitor PubMatic, reiterated his opinion that the deal “smacks of desperation” (he previously called it a “Hail Mary pass”) and argued that Rubicon will have a difficult time innovating while painfully integrating FAN’s technology.
“This is a huge gamble on Rubicon’s part to try and catch up with the technology leaders in the space and it will be at least a year before anyone will know if the deal was even worth it,” he said.
However, Rubicon had more sunny news to go around — News Corp. joined investors Clearstone Venture Partners, IDG Ventures Asia, Mayfield Fund, NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund and Jarl Mohn in an $18 million round of funding, bring Rubicon’s investment total to $60 million.
The company, which expects $100 million in revenue this year, also noted that it reached profitability in October 2010, and is averaging 60 billion ad transactions each month. Rubicon believes it will process 500 billion real-time bidding transactions in the fourth quarter. The company also acquired SiteScout earlier this year to provide clients protection from malware.
Reader Comments.
No comments yet
Leave a Comment
Article Sponsor
More News
- AdTruth Assembles Industry Leaders in Gambit for a “Mobile Universal Identifier”
- Adobe Announces “Simulcast” Solution to Make Cross-Device Viewing More Like TV
- Two Reports: Photo/Video Is the Fastest-Growing App Category
- Facebook’s IPO: You Knew It Was Coming
- Infographic: The Evolution of Marketing Automation
-
Loading ...
Latest News
- AdTruth Assembles Industry Leaders in Gambit for a “Mobile Universal Identifier” May 22nd 2012 ADOTAS - Device recognition service AdTruth (a division of fraud [...] more »
- Adobe Announces “Simulcast” Solution to Make Cross-Device Viewing More Like TV May 22nd 2012 ADOTAS - Today, Adobe released an updated version of its [...] more »
- Two Reports: Photo/Video Is the Fastest-Growing App Category May 22nd 2012 DM CONFIDENTIAL – According to recent numbers released by Flurry, [...] more »
- Facebook’s IPO: You Knew It Was Coming May 18th 2012 ADOTAS - It’s been a day of superlatives, as the [...] more »
- Infographic: The Evolution of Marketing Automation May 18th 2012 ADOTAS – Marketing automation — the process of automating a [...] more »
- Welcome Aboard: New Hires at BrightRoll, AdSafe, More May 18th 2012 ADOTAS – While one internet-related company has pretty much dominated [...] more »
- Now You Can Be a Certified Digital Media Sales Pro through the IAB May 17th 2012 ADOTAS – You think you’re a digital sales pro, but [...] more »
Features
- Infographic: Where to Sell Online (A Flow Chart) May 22nd 2012
- How Online Measurement Is Transforming the Traditional Ad World May 22nd 2012
- Infographic: The ROI of Tag Management May 21st 2012
- Digital Goes Offline: Can Brands Take Back the Store? May 21st 2012
- What Does the Ideal Publisher Look Like? May 21st 2012
Spotlight
Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...
Reader Favorites
Classifieds
- Business Director-IEB-Microsoft Studios (792444)
- Marketing Communications Manager, Senior-IEB-TV &
- Senior Industry Marketing Manager - Media and Ente
- MARKETING DIRECTOR (medical software company)
- Senior Product Marketing Manager
Recent Comments
- Afternoon Announcements: Seven Essential Email Marketing Tips, How Engagement Can Measure Customer Sentiment & Lessons in Content Strategy From Children's Books | Duncan/Day Advertising: [...] How Much is a Facebook Follower Worth? [Ragan's] How Engagement Can Measure Sentiment &
- Infographic: The ROI of Tag Management - topspur.info | topspur.info: [...] Adotas Posts Related to Infographic: The ROI of Tag ManagementVelti “State of Mobile Advertising”
- cleceOwemazomre2: Asortyment uzupełnia Outcast przestrzenna rozrywka przygodowa tudzież klisza Pięknie Speedway. Już na godzinę zanim wschodem
- Kelly Thompson: Ad Server Solutions provides ad network, ad exchange, ad server so you can run, launch
