Yahoo has been working on reaching a deal with BrightRoll for a while now, but it finally succeeded

Nov 12, 2014 10:36 GMT  ·  By

Yahoo has finally taken the final step and closed the deal with BrightRoll, the digital video advertising service that it has been courting for some time now. The purchase cost Yahoo $640 million (€514 million), which is more than what the company has been paying on companies lately.

The company now has a real chance at becoming a huge video advertising platform, something that it’s been trying to achieve for some time now.

“Video, along with mobile, social, and native, is driving a surge in digital advertising. Here at Yahoo, video is one of the largest growth opportunities, and BrightRoll is a terrific, strategic and financially compelling fit for our video advertising business,” said Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO.

She added that as with every acquisition, Yahoo has been thoughtful about how it approaches the video advertising space. Mayer believes this acquisition will accelerate the growth of both companies. BrightRoll can scale to even more advertisers at a global level, while the huge platform offering BrightRoll can be offered to Yahoo’s own advertisers.

As for the video advertising platform, they believe the next step for the industry is extending and standardizing globally, making cross-device buying simple and measurable, while complementing and integrating with TV.

“We are excited to join Yahoo to materially advance efforts in each of these areas. We're still in the early innings as an industry, and together, BrightRoll and Yahoo are committed to the vision of helping grow the entire video advertising ecosystem,” said Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll CEO and Founder.

A purchase that makes sense

The acquisition is expected to be closed sometime in the first trimester of 2015. Following this moment, BrightRoll will continue to offer its current suite of industry-leading products and services. Yahoo’s additional investment and global support is expected to help BrightRoll’s platform and advertising solutions to continue to improve and expand.

The deal between the two companies has been rumored for a while now, although it was originally estimated that the price would be closer to $700 million (€562 million). Even so, the estimates are quite close to the actual sum that the two companies convened about, which is more than we can say about other occasions when the differences were in the hundreds of millions.

BrightRoll is one of the leaders of the programmatic video advertising platform for reaching audiences across desktop, mobile and connected TV. The company powers digital video advertising for the largest brands and agencies in the world, including 87 of the AdAge Top 100 US advertisers, all of the top 15 advertising agencies, and all 10 of the leading demand-side platforms.

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BrightRoll joins Yahoo
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