Helsinki-based social advertising platform provider Smartly.io has acquired London-based Google advertising firm Ad-lib.io.
While the two companies did not disclose a value for the transaction, the Wall Street Journal reports that the deal is being made for over $100m (£74m).
With the acquisition, Smartly aims to integrate Ad-lib’s suite of offerings into its own platform.
Smartly offers a SaaS platform that’s primarily geared towards enabling advertising on platforms such as Tik Tok, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat and Instagram. It also enables social media advertising automation, is Facebook’s marketing partner and is currently serving over 700 brands.
The company claims to manage over $3bn in ad spend annually and cites Under Armour, eBay and Uber Technologies as some of its clients.
Kristo Ovaska, CEO and co-founder of Smartly.io, said: “Ad-Lib.io’s knowledge of the Google stack is unmatched in the industry and combining that with Smartly.io’s deep understanding of Facebook and the social stack across creative, media and data allows us to now serve customers across all major digital channels.”
With this acquisition, it aims to integrate Ad-lib’s creative optimisation platform with its own offering. This is expected to help the company expand out of social media advertisements. A Google Certified Creative partner, Ad-lib employs ‘intelligent automation’ with its tools and services to connect media workflows. This is claimed to help hasten up relevant ad creative creation across digital channels. The company says its ads are 60% more cost-efficient to produce.
This isn’t the first time Smartly has acquired a company to expand its offerings. Back in May 2021, it acquired Viralspace.ai, a startup in artificial intelligence-driven creative optimisation for digital advertising. This helped the company combine the latter’s AI and machine learning tech with its digital advertising automation platform.
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