Advertising Giant WPP On The Prowl For Acquisitions: Spot Runner, VideoEgg Rumored As Potential Targets
Erick Schonfeld
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Advertising conglomerate WPP is looking to increase its Web advertising revenues through more acquisitions. Last year it purchased 24/7 Real Media for $649 million, and is currently making a run at Nurun, a Montreal-based interactive ad firm. But it may try to boost its Advertising 2.0 cred even further with more small acquisitions.
The NY Post, not always the most reliable source but pretty good when it comes to Madison Avenue, reports that possible acquisition targets include Spot Runner (cheap TV ads for local businesses), VideoEgg (video ads and a Facebook play), or JumpTap (mobile ads). WPP is already a minority investor in both Spot Runner and VideoEgg. Quick, sell those ad startups before the recession hits.
Looks like old, legacy agency desperation time…
Dearly
They should buy AdBrite. Which they could probably get for around $300 million. It makes more sense than VideoEgg or SpotRunner.
Adbrite has too much revenue coming from undesirable places. They “shopped” the company and failed to find a buyer. Few companies recover from such a set-back. WPP won’t buy Spot Runner because they are “all-hype, no substance”. VideoEgg is a possibility because they own 24/7 which could handle the unsold inventory.
Be careful with the NY Post being a reliable source. I hate it.
Makes much more sense to look at these sort of acquisitions that Publicis’ approach of creating utter rubbish like Honeyshed.
(@ Don Jones, if you want an example of legacy company desperation, visit http://www.honeyshed.com - the similarities to Boo.com are uncanny.)