Chartboost, a leading mobile programmatic advertising and monetization platform has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by Zynga Inc., a global leader in interactive entertainment. Along with its talented team, Chartboost brings a global audience of more than 700 million monthly users and more than 90 billion monthly advertising auctions. Together, Zynga and Chartboost possess all the elements of a complete, next generation platform: high-quality content, direct player relationships, massive reach and full-stack advertising technology that can be applied across Zynga’s game portfolio and Chartboost’s advertising partners.

Chartboost is a unified advertising platform that includes a Demand Side Platform (DSP) as well as Supply Side Platform (SSP) and mediation capabilities delivered through an SDK solution. By leveraging advanced machine learning and data science capabilities, Chartboost brings together premium inventory, global scale and audience-based targeting to optimize programmatic advertising and yields.

“Chartboost is one of the most dynamic monetization and discovery platforms in mobile, and we could not be more excited to welcome their talented team to our company,” said Frank Gibeau, Chief Executive Officer of Zynga. “By combining Zynga’s high-quality games portfolio and first-party data with Chartboost’s proven advertising and monetization platform, we will create a new level of audience scale and meaningfully enhance our competitive advantage in the mobile ecosystem.”

We are thrilled to join with Zynga to further build and expand our full stack advertising platform that will serve Zynga and the entire mobile ecosystem,” said Rich Izzo, Chief Executive Officer of Chartboost. “Together, we share a vision of the future where a combined advertising, analytics and content platform will accelerate growth across both of our companies. Zynga already feels like family and an extension of our own company culture.”

LUMA advised Chartboost on the Transaction.

We are pleased to announce that Vungle, a leading mobile performance advertising platform, has acquired GameRefinery, an industry-leading SaaS mobile gaming analytics company headquartered in Finland. GameRefinery’s Game Intelligence platform provides developers with retention and monetization insights through its cloud-based developer tools for world-class studios such as Zynga, King, Rovio, Ubisoft and more. The company’s deep contextual data sets across 160,000+ gaming apps bring unique and innovative targeting capabilities to Vungle’s platform, helping advertisers deliver contextually relevant campaigns and increase user acquisition performance in today’s privacy-focused, post-IDFA landscape.

GameRefinery also brings image recognition and creative tagging capabilities that will be leveraged by Vungle Creative Labs (VCL). Combining VCL’s extensive experience in cutting-edge creative and UA, with granular reporting on visual elements including styles and genre fit, provides industry-leading performance recommendations for its biggest customers.

Vungle CEO Jeremy Bondy stated, “Together, Vungle, GameRefinery, and Algolift offer the only platform that speaks to game and product teams in the development process, marketing, UA, and growth teams in the scaling stage, and data teams when measuring and refining outcomes.”

LUMA advised Vungle on the transaction.

We are pleased to announce that Otello (OSE: OTELLO) has sold AdColony, an in-app marketplace for brands, to Digital Turbine (Nasdaq: APPS), for a total estimated consideration of $400 million. AdColony is a global leader in mobile game advertising and monetization, with a reach of more than 1.5 billion monthly users globally. AdColony’s mission is to drive business outcomes that matter for advertisers and publishers using its leading mobile technology, high-quality mobile ad experiences and leveraging its curated reach. AdColony is known throughout the mobile industry for its third-party verified viewability rates, exclusive Instant-Play™ and Aurora™ HD video technologies, rich media formats, global performance advertising business, programmatic marketplace, and extensive SDK footprint in the Top 1000 apps worldwide.

Digital Turbine is a global on-device mobile platform company that simplifies content discovery and delivers relevant content directly to consumer devices. Per Digital Turbine’s CEO, Bill Stone, “The ability for Digital Turbine to utilize AdColony’s unique mobile advertising solutions across our vast device distribution footprint unlocks significant new monetization opportunities for the combined company’s platform offerings. With the addition of AdColony, we will expand our collective experience, reach and suite of capabilities to benefit mobile advertisers and publishers around the globe. Performance-based spending trends by large, established brand advertisers present material upside opportunities for platforms with unique technology deployable across exclusive access to inventory.” The transaction is expected to close by the end of March 2021.

LUMA advised Otello on the transaction.

We’re proud to announce that Parse.ly, a top content analytics solution, has been acquired by WPVIP, the leading provider of enterprise WordPress and part of Automattic’s suite of innovative brands. Together, WPVIP and Parse.ly will offer an unparalleled enterprise content management, commerce, and analytics platform — with best-in-class content creation agility and the insights to understand the impact of those digital experiences. The acquisition of Parse.ly augments WPVIP’s content and analytics solutions, by incorporating Parse.ly’s capabilities for real-time content analytics and its personalized recommendation engine. Together, WPVIP and Parse.ly will lead a powerful enterprise ecosystem for an array of global brands including Salesforce, NBA, Condé Nast, Facebook, and Microsoft.

In addition to Parse.ly customers receiving access to the full suite of WPVIP offerings, current WPVIP customers will gain access to added features that allow users to take action on content analytics, dynamic audience segmentation, and AI-driven content recommendations. With the acquisition, WPVIP will provide additional investment, support staff, and development resources to Parse.ly customers. More than 800 combined enterprise customers worldwide will now have access to this expanded set of capabilities, including Spotify, CNN, The Atlantic, and Slack.

LUMA advised Parse.ly on the transaction.

We are pleased to announce that Magnite, the largest independent sell-side advertising platform, has acquired SpotX from RTL Group for $1.17 billion in cash and stock. SpotX is one of the leading platforms shaping CTV and video advertising globally.

Together, Magnite and SpotX will create the largest independent CTV and video advertising platform in the programmatic marketplace. The combined company will provide better support for sellers, create an alternative to the CTV advertising market’s largest players, and will greatly improve scale and efficiency for buyers.

Magnite’s expanded technical capabilities and teams will offer swift solutions that cater to a broader set of client needs, including sellers that are newer to the world of programmatic and those who have mature, programmatic-only operations. Likewise, the acquisition will make it easier for brands and agencies to buy premium CTV inventory at scale with standard features and a single, addressable pool of audiences.

LUMA believes we will see more deal activity in CTV as strategics default to inorganic growth initiatives in order to timely capitalize on the significant inflection in the sector brought about by the pandemic. Beneficiaries of this accelerated focus are likely to span a variety of companies including media, distribution, monetization, workflow, data and analytics.

LUMA advised Magnite on the transaction.

We are pleased to announce that Alphonso Inc. (Alphonso), a TV data and measurement company, has agreed to a significant investment by LG Electronics (LG), through one of its US subsidiaries, Zenith Electronics LLC. This investment brings together the two TV industry leaders’ technologies and innovations into LG’s smart TV lineup, and gives LG a controlling stake of more than 50 percent.

Alphonso’s combined offerings will enrich consumer services including content recommendations and LG’s own streaming service, LG Channels, to create a robust owned and operated first-screen, cross-device advertising platform with integrated analytics for the smart TV marketplace generally and for LG smart TVs specifically.

This is Alphonso’s first investment round since its Series A financing of $5.6 million in 2017, led by Manifest Investment Partners. Alphonso is being rebranded as LG Ads and will continue to operate as an independent business
under its leadership based in Silicon Valley.

LG Ads will offer connected TV ad inventory on its smart TV platform — as well as TV data for activation, measurement and attribution across CTV, linear TV and digital — on 20 million U.S. smart TV and connected TV devices.

Overall, on a worldwide basis, LG’s smart TV footprint is more than 120 million TV sets.

Current TV set manufacturing partners for LG Ads include LG, Sharp, Hisense, Toshiba, Seiki, Skyworth, TiVo and Sling Media. The company says there are other original TV equipment makers committed to using LG Ads this year.

In addition to exclusive access to connected TV inventory, LG Ads says it will continue to focus on media planners’ efforts to improve reach on linear TV buys, as well as insights into hard-to-reach audiences in using connected TV advertising.

LUMA advised Alphonso on the transaction.

We are pleased to announce that Liftoff, a global performance-based mobile app marketing optimization platform, has reached a definitive agreement for a majority investment from private equity funds managed by Blackstone (NYSE:BX). This strategic partnership marks a new phase in Liftoff’s continuing mission to develop industry-leading technology and product solutions that help marketers grow their engaged user bases through initial and ongoing engagement efforts. Liftoff partners with mobile app marketers to grow their platforms globally, delivering more than one billion engaging ads each day to high-value users in more than 90 countries and across more than 500,000 mobile publishers. As content consumption increasingly shifts to mobile devices, Liftoff is well positioned to serve the high-growth mobile app ecosystem as a leader in programmatic user acquisition and retention. Blackstone’s investment will enable Liftoff to further accelerate investment priorities, expand its global footprint, and fuel future growth initiatives. LUMA advised Blackstone on the transaction.