Otello Corp (OSE: OTELLO), Inc, owner of AdColony, the in-app marketplace for brands, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to sell the global leader in mobile game advertising and monetization, to Austin-based Digital Turbine (Nasdaq: APPS), a global on-device mobile platform company, for a total estimated consideration of $400 million.
“We are extremely excited to announce the acquisition of AdColony today,” said Bill Stone, CEO of Digital Turbine. “We look forward to welcoming the AdColony team to the Digital Turbine family and believe that this strategic transaction accelerates our growth and is a positive for our partners, advertisers, employees and shareholders. AdColony saw the secular tailwinds toward mobile, video and high-speed networks like 5G before most and has been able to capitalize on its vision.”
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“Digital Turbine offers many complementary and additive solutions to AdColony’s performance business, while we bring an industry-leading SDK footprint and a mature and thriving brand and agency team to the partnership,” said Jude O’Connor, AdColony’s chief revenue officer. “When you combine the reach and capabilities of both companies, you have a powerful platform that will drive growth and outcomes for any buyer that participates in the mobile app economy.”
AdColony has had a very successful turnaround over the last three years, which was crowned with 15% year-over-year growth in 2020 versus 2019 with very solid EBITDA margins, said Otello and AdColony CEO, Lars Boilesen.
“AdColony is excited to join the successful team at Digital Turbine. The underlying strategic rationale for the combination is very promising,” said Boilesen. “We believe that Digital Turbine, with its massive user base, extensive global relationships and distribution, will be uniquely positioned to benefit via the seamless integration of AdColony’s mobile video advertising expertise and global brand advertiser awareness. The combination will yield a highly-differentiated and more vertically-integrated solution for the mobile advertising industry. We look forward to joining Digital Turbine to help navigate this innovation.”
The news comes less than a week before AdColony’s official tenth anniversary as a company. The mobile game developer-turned-ad-network officially became AdColony from Jirbo, Inc. on March 3rd, 2011, and changed the mobile monetization and user acquisition industry almost overnight with its InstantPlay™ video technology, and has continued to innovate over the past decade, after being acquired by Otello in 2014.
