Roku is buying ad tech startup Dataxu in $150 million deal
Nickie Louise
Posted On October 22, 2019
Roku is buying demand-side platform started by MIT alumnus Dataxu for $150 million in cash and stock. The Boston-based Dataxu’s platform that lets marketers plan and buy video ad campaigns.The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Roku is becoming the No. 1 U.S. streaming platform. They are a leading provider to Ad Age’s top 200 advertisers and stream more ad-supported TV hours than any other OTT platform according to ComScore.
Founded in 2009 by Bruce Journey, Mike Baker, Sandro Catanzaro, and Willard Simmons, Dataxu provides marketers with automated bidding and self-serve software to manage ad campaigns programmatically across digital platforms. Dataxu leverages big data to choose the most relevant advertisements for users in real-time, with aims of helping companies see the greatest return on investment (ROI) in online marketing. “We’re helping companies compete in a world that’s full of data,” says MIT alumnus Bill Simmons PhD ’08, DataXu’s co-founder and chief technology officer, who co-invented the software.
“TV advertising is shifting toward OTT and a data-driven model focused on business outcomes for brands,” Anthony Wood, Roku CEO, said in a statement. “The acquisition of Dataxu will accelerate our ad platform while also helping our content partners monetize their inventory even more effectively.”
In a blog post on its webstie, Dataxu’s co-founder and CEO Mike Baker, said: “We founded dataxu in 2009 to bring the power of data science to the art of marketing. Along the way, we’ve continuously innovated to help our customers succeed, building a premier DSP to automate campaign management, adding best-in-class machine learning to optimize ROI, and integrating our solution across the industry to make the dream of omnichannel advertising a reality.”
He added: “…our vision has always been to bring these capabilities to the most powerful form of media — TV. And now, as the consumer TV experience is transformed by streaming, we have brought our advanced data science technologies to help TV advertisers drive valuable outcomes. Today dataxu has been recognized by firms like Forrester and our customers alike as a leading video-centric DSP, continuing to innovate with advanced OTT audience, forecasting, inventory and measurement capabilities.
