AOL Buys Video Ad Platform Adap.tv

NEW YORK: AOL has purchased Adap.tv, a video advertising platform, for around $405 million in cash and stock, marking its largest acquisition since becoming an independent company.

The arrangement sees AOL paying $322 million in cash and about $83 million in stock. The purchase gives AOL a unique end-to-end solution and video stack for publishers and advertisers, allowing them to deliver premium original production, content aggregation and syndication platforms, video CMS technology and now a leading programmatic video platform.

Last year Adap.tv supported more than 26,000 global ad campaigns.

"AOL is a leader in online video and the combination of AOL and Adap.tv will create the leading video platform in the industry," said Tim Armstrong, the chairman and CEO of AOL. "The Adap.tv founders and team are on a mission to make advertising as easy as e-commerce and the two companies together will aggressively pursue that vision.

"Two trends are prevalent in the video space right now—the movement from linear television to online video and the shift from manual transactions to programmatic media buying. Adap.tv is positioned squarely in front of the huge opportunity these trends are presenting," said Armstrong.

"At Adap.tv, we are focused on building the most important business within the most important category in digital advertising," said Amir Ashkenazi, the CEO of Adap.tv. "We believe that most TV advertising will soon be traded programmatically on platforms like ours. The combination of AOL and Adap.tv accelerates our vision of efficient and effective TV and video advertising."