Deals & Moves

Apple acquired mobile ad network Quattro Wireless for $275 million in early January 2010 — the team behind what became Apple’s iAd platform.

Yahoo agreed to acquire mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry on July 21, 2014 for an undisclosed sum reported to be north of $200 million.

Comcast acquired video ad-serving company FreeWheel for $360 million in early 2014, running it as a standalone unit within the company.

AppLovin acquired mobile ad exchange MoPub from Twitter for $1.05 billion in cash, announced October 2021 and completed in early January 2022.

Oracle agreed to acquire marketing-automation company Eloqua for $23.50 per share — approximately $871 million net of cash — announced December 20, 2012.

Google Cloud completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of business-intelligence platform Looker on February 13, 2020.

Salesforce agreed to acquire data management platform Krux for approximately $700 million (about $340 million in cash plus stock), announced October 3, 2016.

Salesforce agreed to acquire integration platform MuleSoft for an enterprise value of approximately $6.5 billion ($36.00 cash plus 0.0711 Salesforce shares per share), announced March 20, 2018.

Publicis Groupe completed its acquisition of Sapient Corporation for total consideration of approximately $3.7 billion on February 6, 2015 (announced November 3, 2014).

Time Inc.'s Viant acquired Adelphic, a mobile-first cross-channel programmatic advertising platform. Announced January 23 2017; integration completed by May 4 2017. Deal value undisclosed. Added self-serve mobile DSP capabilities to Viant Advertising Cloud.

TrustArc acquired privacy management vendor Nymity in November 2019; deal value undisclosed. The combined company offered integrated privacy assessment, risk management, and operational privacy program tooling. Announced 2019-11-19.

Fox Corporation acquired ad-supported streaming service Tubi for ~$440M in net cash consideration, plus up to $50M deferred over 3 years. Announced March 17 2020; closed by end of June 2020. Funded largely from sale of Fox's 5% stake in Roku. Anchored Fox's direct-to-consumer streaming strategy.

Pinterest acquired tvScientific, a connected TV performance-advertising platform. Deal subject to FTC regulatory review (≥$126.4M reporting threshold) and announced earlier; closed February 2026. tvScientific continues to operate under its own branding while being integrated into Pinterest's Performance+ AI ad products. Pinterest's first major CTV-stack acquisition.

Yahoo acquired Artifact, an AI-powered news discovery platform created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Deal closed 2024-03-29 and was announced 2024-04-02. Financial terms undisclosed. Artifact ceased to operate as a standalone app; its personalization technology was integrated into Yahoo News.

Salesforce acquired Qualified, an agentic-AI marketing platform. Announced February 2026; completed April 1, 2026. Deal value undisclosed. Adds agentic marketing capabilities (intent data, conversational AI, meeting scheduling) to Salesforce's Agentforce stack.

Nielsen acquired Visual IQ, an industry-leading multi-touch attribution (MTA) software platform. Announced September 27, 2017; completed October 3, 2017. Deal value undisclosed. Brought Visual IQ's MTA stack into the Nielsen Marketing Cloud / Attribution offering.

Impact Radius (later impact.com) acquired ad-fraud-prevention platform Forensiq on June 14, 2016. Deal value undisclosed. Combined Forensiq's real-time fraud detection with Impact's attribution platform — pitched as the first marketing system of record with built-in fraud detection.

Dun & Bradstreet acquired Lattice Engines, a predictive analytics + customer data platform vendor. Announced June 13 2019; completed July 1 2019. Deal value undisclosed. Added predictive targeting + audience activation to D&B's commercial data platform.

Cardlytics acquired card-linked offers platform Dosh for $275 million in cash + stock. Announced March 1 2021; completed March 9 2021. Cardlytics' first acquisition in its 13-year history; expanded its consumer-side rewards footprint.

AOL acquired video-ad platform Adap.tv for ~$405 million ($331M cash + $82.5M AOL stock; ~$413.8M net of cash acquired). Announced August 7 2013; closed September 5 2013. Deal anchored AOL's programmatic video stack ahead of the Verizon acquisition.

Apollo Global Management acquired Verizon Media for $5B ($4.25B cash + $750M preferred interest), closing September 1, 2021. Verizon retained a 10% stake. The combined entity was renamed Yahoo Inc. post-close. AOL was part of the portfolio bundle.

IBM acquired cloud marketing-automation company Silverpop — a deal valued at approximately $275 million per press reports — folding it into IBM’s marketing cloud in 2014.

Oracle agreed to acquire cloud marketing firm Responsys for $27.00 per share, or approximately $1.5 billion net of cash, in a deal announced December 20, 2013.

DoubleVerify agreed to acquire Berlin-based ad-verification company Meetrics in an all-cash deal to expand its media-quality measurement footprint across EMEA.