RNTS Media completes $45M acquisition of Heyzap

The combined company of Heyzap and Fyber will have 500M monthly active users

(Updated with comment from Jude Gomila)

RNTS Media, the parent company of mobile advertising technology platform Fyber, has completed its deal to acquire Heyzap, a provider of mobile advertising for app developers.

The deal, which was first announced in December, is worth up to $45 million, with an initial $20 million in cash, along with an additional $25 million earn-out payments in cash and shares, based upon achievement of certain "ambitious targets" until 2017. 

Founded in 2008 by Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund, the San Francisco-based company, which graduated from Y Combinator in 2009, started out as a widget service for embedding flash games on the Web, before becoming a social network for gamers, providing them with a way to check-in to their favorite games, discover new games and find a community of gamers. It allows users to let other gamers know what they are playing, leave or find tips for their favorite games and earn badges.

In 2013 the company launched an ad network, which eventually became its main business. It offers an SDK for Android and iOS apps so that game developers can monetize, providing a mediation layer, an ad exchange, publisher tools and cross-promotion services to mobile developers.

Heyzap’s technology and product will be combined with Fyber, and the entire Heyzap team will be joining Fyber, coming to work for the company in its San Francisco office. 

Despite that, Heyzap will not be shutting down, at least not right now, according to a blog post from Amy Choi, Head of Operations at Heyzap, though the two platforms will eventually be integrated. 

"We want to assure you that all Heyzap products and features will continue to fully function without interruption as we begin working on the combined platform with Fyber. You’ll continue to receive your publisher earnings on schedule, and keep working with the same people in support and sales that you know and trust," she said.

"Very little is going to change right now, but in the long term we’ll be combining forces to facilitate the best developer and advertiser experiences possible."

Becoming part of Fyber is expected to boost Heyzap's revenue to $20 million in 2016. The company was profitable in the second half of 2015.

"It helps Heyzap in the long run because the companies have a common mission and can learn from each other in terms of best practices," Gomila told me.

"Also we have complementary product offerings so we think this is going to be a good thing for the developer community,"In terms of specifically Fyber, this company had the closest DNA to Heyzap and our team has respected them the most in terms of their product and growth."

For Fyber, meanwhile, the company clearly outlined what it sees as the benefits of adding Heyzap, including adding the company's 130 million MAUs with Fyber's 411 million MAUs which "creates one of the largest independent mobile advertising technology companies globally."

It also gives Fyber a total of 7,600 apps on its platform, and gives users a more robust platform.

"Our goal is to bring Fyber and Heyzap together as one company with a similar mission to empower mobile app and game developers by creating the best solutions for ad monetization and user acquisition. Both technology and business teams will work closely together in optimizing and evaluating how to leverage the successful elements of the Heyzap platform to integrate into Fyber over time," Janis Zech, Fyber's co-founder and COO, told VatorNews.

"Both Fyber and Heyzap share core values and a dedicated mission to build the most advanced developer-friendly monetization platform that will fuel the app economy of the future; the shared vision will help accelerate future product development."

This is the second acquisition for RNTS Media that is mean to "strengthen and expand Fyber's offerings." The other was the the acquisition of ad tech company Falk Realtime in April 2015.

Heyzap had raised $8 million in venture funding, most recently a $4.3 million round in January of 2013. Investors in the company included Union Square Ventures, Qualcomm, Naval Ravikant, Y Combinator, and Ashton Kutcher.

(Image source: blog.fyber.com)