AOL has recently announced that they are acquiring the mobile ad company Millennial Media. The deal is reported to be worth about $238 million. The move is not entirely unexpected since AOL has been making moves to improve their mobile advertising position though few people predicted that Millennial Media would be the target.
The move pushes AOL further into mobile than it would have been able to get on its own. Millennial Media was not the largest player in the industry but they certainly had a huge reach. AOL will also get significantly better targeting technologies, which would have taken them some time to develop on their own, which makes this deal even smarter for the tech giant.
Millennial Media was founded back in 2006 and has been functioning as an independent mobile ad marketplace since that time. They are known for effectively driving monetization for publishers and partners by bringing them together with networks, advertisers and others who need the service. The company was largely seen as the major competition for AdMob (owned by Google) in the mobile ad network space.
Using the resources gained by this acquisition AOL will be able to send ads to over 65,000 apps on 8000 different mobile device types. It will also give AOL access to about a billion global active unique users, which puts them on a level that allows them to compete with ad networks like Google and Facebook.
This is certainly a major move in the mobile ad industry and one that could have a lot of impact in the near future.
