In a recent post, Sarah Lacy posed the question of whether Israel has lost its mojo. It looks like AOL believes the mojo is still very much somewhere in the Holy Land, as evidenced by its tapping Avichay Nissenbaum as AOL’s first Country Manager for Israel.
Nissenbaum, considered by Israel’s startup community as “one of the good guys” is known for two startup successes:product lifecycle management company SmarTeam which was acquired by Dassault Systemes back in 1999, and most recently, Q&A site Yedda which was acquired by AOL in 2007.
Will Microsoft’s hunger for advertising startups sever be satiated? Even as it continues to pursue the big Yahoo merger, it keeps picking up small startups to fill out its advertising software business. A couple weeks ago it was micro-segmenting software startup Yadata (for $20 to $30 million) . Today it is Rapt (the price was not disclosed). Rapt offers Web-based “yield-management” software for Web publishers to help them manage their advertising inventory based on price and other factors. According to AdWeek:
Rapt is used by several top Web publishers to manage ad-inventory sales. It forecasts how much a publisher can get for ad placements, and whether they should sell the spots themselves or use ad networks. The company works with publishers like CNET Networks, Dow Jones and The New York Times. Rapt also helps Microsoft manage inventory on its own sites.
Rapt will be rolled into the Atlas Publisher Suite within the aQuantive business (which Microsoft bought for $6 billion last May). Rapt, with 85 employees, is a small deal that helps Microsoft fill out its technology checklist. With the recent conclusion of Google-DoubleClick deal, it looks like the massive consolidation of pure-play advertising deals is trickling down. (Quigo, bought by AOL for more than $300 million, was the last major exit). We’ll see more small technology acquisitions like this one, but for the big ad networks that didn’t get bought by now, their chances of a big payday going into a recession are slim.
The frenzy around online ad networks never stops (maybe because there are so many of them). This morning, Specific Media, announced a whopping $100 million investment by private equity firm Francisco Partners. This follows a $10 million venture round last June led by Enterprise Partners. Specific Media is the fourth largest ad network in terms of audience reach, according to comScore (after Advertising.com, Yahoo, and ValueClick). The 130.7 million people it reached across the Web in September was just below the 133.5 million reached by publicly-traded ValueClick, which has a market capitalization of $2.6 billion.
On the (possible) acquisition front, ad-targeting network Quigo might be bought by AOL for $300 million, according to Kara Swisher. Quigo provides contextual ad-targeting for many media Websites, including ABCNews.com, CNNMoney.com, Forbes.com, and USAToday.com. This would certainly be in keeping with AOL’s strategy to build out its Platform-A advertising network, even as it takes steps to allow consumers to opt out of such targeting. Quigo won’t confirm the rumor. But it didn’t deny it either. I called up Quigo CEO Michael Yavonditte earlier today to ask him about it. His non-response: “There are rumors that we are going public, there are rumors that we are going to be bought. We don’t comment on stuff like that.” Sounds like he is keeping his options open.
(Disclosure: I am a former employee of Time Warner, which is the parent of both AOL and CNNMoney, and I own Time Warner stock.)
