By Sarfaraz A. Khan.
Summary: Facebook
has recently announced the acquisition of LiveRail for reportedly between
$400mn and $500Mn.LiveRail is one of the biggest players in the online video
space that offers its unique real time bidding platform ecosystem. This is part
of a bigger trend fueled by the growth in advertising spending on online
videos, as pointed out by online video research analyst Paul Ritter.
On Wednesday,
Facebook announced that it has decided to acquire a seven-year-old
video-ad company LiveRail in an effort to increase its foothold in the video ad
business. Facebook did not disclose the terms of the deal but according to
TechCrunch, the start-up came with a price tag of between $400 million and $500
million.
LiveRail
calls itself the "leading monetization platform for publishers." The
company helps its clients in selling their video ad inventory. Some of its
leading customers include Univision, Major League Baseball (mlb.com), PBS,
Condé Nast Digital, CBS Interactive and ABC Family.
Overall, the
company has hundreds of customers and delivers more than 7 billion video ads
per month. According to ComScore, in May 2014, LiveRail's video ads reached out
to 37.2% of Americans, making LiveRail the third biggest player in the
industry, ahead of AOL and Google and behind BrightRoll
and Specific Media.
LiveRail's
biggest strength is its real time bidding platform ecosystem through, which it
selects the best-priced ads for marketers from the video ad inventory of its
publishers. The company also offers …. Read full article at Seeking Alpha
