Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Akamai Sells Its Ad-Targeting Business to MediaMath

More consolidation in the ad tech space. But this time it’s a big company helping a smaller one bulk up: Akamai is selling off its ad-targeting business to digital ad platform MediaMath.

I don’t have terms of the deal, but my hunch is that it will involve some equity from New York-based MediaMath, which has raised at least $30 million. It is buying Akamai’s Advertising Decisions Solutions unit, which the company created when it got into the ad business in 2008 by buying Acerno for $95 million.

Akamai makes the bulk of its money as a content delivery network, helping move bits around the Internet. At the time of the Acerno deal, the thought was that the infrastructure it had built up would help make it a big player in Web ads.

But the company never made an aggressive push into the new business, and it’s unclear if it will remain in ads following the MediaMath deal. I’ve asked both companies for comment but haven’t heard back.

Update: AdAge has more details — it confirms the equity component, and says 70 Akamai employees will join MediaMath.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik