AOL goes deeper into video with Vidible acquisition

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)