AOL goes deeper into video with Vidible acquisition

Steven Loeb · December 2, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3abb

AOL bought video ad platform Adap.tv last year and is will see double digit ad growth in 2014

Due to AOL's purchase of video advertising platform Adap.tv for $405 million last year, the company is set to see double digit ad growth for the first time since 2008. The purchase might have seemed a little risky at the time, given that t is one of AOL's largest acquisition ever, even more than the $315 million it paid for the Huffington Post in 2011, but now it seems like a no-brainer.

Given the success, it's no surprise that AOL sees video as its future. Now it is going even further into the video space by making its second big video purchase.

The company announced on Monday that it has purchased video management and exchange platform Vidible. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed, but it was revealed that the Vidible team will be coming over to AOL.

Vidible is a multi-platform, programmatic video exchange platform that enables both buyers, and sellers, of digital media to manage and monetize video content across all devices. It's solutions include The Vidible Exchange Platform, or VXP, which is a set of tools for managing content, as well as discovery tools, real-time analytics, and a syndication platform.

By acquiring the company, AOL says that it will gain the ability to expands its video stack with new video content management tools, and to increase the "availability and management of premium video globally to publishers and content owners via a self-serve platform."

It also adds a video content exchange that will plug into AOL's monetization platforms, including ONE by AOL.

For Vidible, as with many smaller companies that are gobbled up by larger ones, it immediately gains access to a reach and audience that it never would have had on its own.

"We're excited to be joining AOL, a company that is at the forefront of video, " Tim Mahlman, President and Co-founder of Vidible, said in a statement. "The combination of AOL Video and Vidible accelerates our vision of making content management and syndication available to video content creators and publishers everywhere."

Founded in 2012, the Bellevue -based Vidible raised $3.5 million in January from Greycroft Partners and IDG Ventures USA. Vidible has 300,000 videos and more than 800 million monthly video plays.

AOL is, of course, not the only company banking on using video to propel future growth: Yahoo has also made it a big part of its strategy, launching new content, such as when it struck a deal to air the sixth season of cancelled NBC show Community, and even launching a new video-streaming app built for iOS, called Yahoo Screen last year. Most recently it purchased video ad network BrightRoll for $640 million.

So it looks like AOL could have some big competition in the video space.

Wait, Yahoo squaring off against AOL? For a second there I seriously felt like it was the late 90s again!

(Image source: vidible.tv)

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Led by a team of Internet advertising veterans and engineers, BrightRoll has served billions of advertisements since we got started. We achieved this growth by enabling agencies and brand advertisers to execute smart video ad campaigns across the industry’s leading publishers, including over half of the top 250 websites in the United States.

Dozens of advertising agencies work with BrightRoll to execute campaigns for their premier brands. By offering full site disclosure, detailed performance reports and flexible targeting, we provide advertisers with the reach, frequency, scalability, and transparency needed to achieve their goals.

Hundreds of branded publishers work with BrightRoll to maximize the value of their online inventory. We are fortunate to work with many of the Internet’s leading branded publishers, including multiple television properties, and most of the leading high-volume video sites.

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Adap.tv: Leadership and Innovation for the New World of Online Video Advertising

Adap.tv helps publishers capitalize on the soaring popularity of online video among viewers and advertisers. Our flagship offering, Adap.tv OneSource, provides a single point of control to serve and manage ads from in-house and third party sources, in all major video formats, using your existing display ad server. OneSource streamlines ad operations, supporting efficient scalability for any online video business, from startups to major media companies.

As the first open and universal video ad sourcing and management platform, the powerful yet simple to use OneSource system has already gained broad industry support. More than 300 publishers in 71 countries use OneSource to monetize hundreds of millions of video streams each month. Whether an already established leader in video publishing—or a publisher determined to become one—Adap.tv provides the tools they need to achieve their online video goals.

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Name of the company