OpenX purchases LiftDNA to compete with Google

The VC-back digital ad company acquires a new company to compete with Google, Yahoo

The six-year-old ad technology company OpenX announced Monday that it has acquired LiftDNA, a tool that helps publishers automate their advertisement selling.

The amount of money agreed upon for the acquisition was not publicly disclosed, but OpenX has proved, in a shot period of time, just how profitable it has been in a highly competitive market.

The Los Angeles-based OpenX stated Monday that it is already profitable, has a $100 million annual run rate and is handling 200 billion advertisement transactions every month.

Digital advertising platform OpenX announced back in May that it raised a Series D round of funding to the tune of $20 million, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $50 million. The round was led by SAP Ventures, with help from AOL Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Inc., and Presidio Ventures, the investment arm of Sumitomo Corporation.

Advertisers in OpenX can use geographic or domain targeting, or they can retarget previous Web visitors. And OpenX’s analytics allow publishers to see which of their ads have been purchased, while advertisers can see where their ads are being shown and get delivery and performance data.

OpenX is focused on helping publishers and enterprise companies sell valuable ad space, and it is clear how the company can use LiftDNA since that company specializes in tracking how much money publishers make off of individual ad campaigns.

OpenX is in the same space as Google's Double Click and Yahoo's Right Media.

Last year, OpenX launched OpenX Enterprise, an ad server and ad exchange that helps publishers manage several advertising services in one place. This product was focused on going head-to-head with the big boy on campus, Google’s DoubleClick, by offering publishers a more all-inclusive approach for advertising sales, bids and impressions.

"We're so excited about this acquisition because of the unique and innovative approach LiftDNA has taken to yield optimization," said Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer, OpenX, in a statement. "Building yield optimization directly into the ad server breaks the mold of remote, third party services, dramatically increases revenue and aligns perfectly with OpenX's vision of providing publishers with a comprehensive revenue serving platform."

As of this acquisition, OpenX is releasing a new product dubbed LiftDNA by OpenX. This product will  offer a large inventory of ads and combine services from both companies, which have been working closely together for several months.

LiftDNA by OpenX will also be able to work within any ad server, not just OpenX Enterprise. This means that publishers could quickly transform their existing ad servers into profit centers without switching. 

Since its launch in September 2009, LiftDNA customers have achieved revenue increases of 50-150% on average and will be a great boost of functionality to current and future OpenX customers that want to be able to track their ad success in real-time.

"The philosophies of our two companies are so deeply aligned it made perfect sense to combine them," said Vadim Telyatnikov, founder and chief executive officer, LiftDNA, in a statement. "Furthermore, we have already been working with OpenX at a product level and together have successfully helped multiple clients since 2010. We're thrilled at the opportunity to help more publishers make more money and build their businesses."

The new LiftDNA by OpenX is available immediately.

This acquisition does, however, echo Google’s $400 million purchase of supply-side platform AdMeld, which closed at the tail-end of 2011. Since the Google product is OpenX's main competitor, it is likely that we will see more similar actions in close proximity with these two entities.

(Image Source: Forbes.com)