The Greenbids Exit, More European Algo Magnificence; FPC Portfolio Companies Filling The Ad Tech Void; Sign Up For The Cannes Social
Greenbids $65 Million M&A Deal
It’s an excellent outcome for founders and investors. The company is rumoured to be doing about 5 to 6 million dollars in revenue, representing a 10x multiple on revenue.
The valuation was likely based on a multiple of forward revenue.
Regardless, the French lads have done well. The FPC M&A tracker for European ad tech stands at $1 billion for the year, which is not bad, given that we are only 4 1/2 months into the year.
Greenbids was plying its trade in the ad tech sustainability category, which was very hot last year. There have been a few pivots in the sustainability space of late, from Scope3 (now an SSA) to Duration Media (now an SSP).
Greenbids, too, has moved away from “sustainability” and into the more lucrative area of algorithmic trading.
Looking past all the AI marketing BS, the algo trading category is the one part of ad tech where AI has a significant impact.
Custom algorithms are hot, and there will be more acquisitions in this category.
Greenbids looks a lot like Scibids, and its integration into DSPs and big platforms was a factor in this purchase. Perion not only gets a custom algo solution but also an AI story for the market. Everyone is winning.
Congratulations again to our French friends. And proves again that European ad tech is proving a happy hunting ground for tech-savvy buyers.
FPC Portfolio Ready To Accelerate Industry Innovation
This week, there has been an avalanche of news affecting the industry - DSP shuttering, signal throttling and ongoing privacy shit shows.
FPC believes all of these are opportunities to advance the industry. And FPC portfolio companies will be instrumental in that process.
Here are the three stories shaping the week with the ever-optimistic FPC take.
Xandr DSP closure, a big opp for Bedrock Platform: It’s sad to see a great platform heading to the ad tech knacker’s yard. Many traders have fond memories of the AppNexus DSP, which blazed a trail in programmatic.
AppNexus morphed into Xandr via multiple transactions, finding an eventual home at Microsoft.
Microsoft now believes the Xandr DSP is not at the core of its strategy.
Its spin on the closure was a messy and confusing mix of privacy concerns and agentic AI advancement.
Reading between the lines, it would seem Microsoft wants to focus on O&O inventory. Microsoft is turning its back on the open web.
There is a growing trend among big platforms to focus on building out automated buying tools for O&O (cc PMAX and Advantage+). These black box solutions are self-serving and ignore the greater media landscape. OK for small performance marketers but not serious brands.
Jeff Green on a recent TTD earnings call indicated that DV360 would also abandon the open web to focus on YT and Google properties.
This would leave a handful of DSPs servicing one of the biggest opportunities in media - the open web.
There is a misguided view that the open web equals browser-based display. FPC is unsure how that idea became the consensus.
The open web includes CTV, DOOH, app, retail media, audio and the browser-based eco-system (see our handy graphic below). It’s a big opp. In Europe alone, it is about a $100 billion opportunity. Tasty numbers, readers.
Just reread the above and ask yourself why Microsoft, Google, et al. would move away from the open web. The reason: competitive conflict (competing with clients for budget) and concentrating demand on their platform. Amazon will 100% fall into this bucket over the next 12 to 24 months.
There is a third and more obvious explanation: ad tech innovation. None of these walled gardens can - or want to - build for the open web. The focus is elsewhere.
There is a fear that we are concentrating spending power into a handful of DSPs. FPC disagrees.
There will be a bunch of new buy-side solutions on the market powered by prop signal and algo tech.
To achieve that, you need a new breed of ad tech infrastructure companies. Bedrock Platform is the company powering the ad tech middle.
Bedrock will be the go-to for bleeding-edge ad tech, taking on the mantle of the great “enabler platforms” like AppNexus and IPONWEB.
OpenSincera opens the door for Picnic: There was great fanfare around this week's OpenSincera release.
And rightly so. Any initiative that highlights the quality of the open web should be applauded and encouraged.
OpenSincera will be built into Kokai, TTD’s DSP platform. An open API will enable access to this data.
Metadata is relatively easy to collect with a functional scraper. However, the more you collect, the more complex the process becomes. Sincera are the best in show.
One of our portfolio companies, Picnic, has been quietly building a metadata product for some time and can deliver. After the TTD acquisition, Picnic has been picking up several ad tech customers.
Competition is healthy, and it's good to have choices. OpenSincera and Picnic are positive signs that ad tech keeps innovating.
TCF, Wult has never been more critical: Johnny Ryan, self-appointed privacy freedom fighter, did a victory lap on social media this week. He claimed victory in a Belgian court verdict on the TCF. The court found that the TCF was illegal under GDPR.
IAB Europe came out swinging and countered this assumption as false, as the Belgian DPA's original ruling has been struck down. You can read the IAB’s response here on this Adexchanger piece: http://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/the-legality-of-rtb-in-europe-has-been-settled-and-nobodys-a-winner/.
Business as usual. Not quite. It’s an absolute mess, and there will need to be more processes put in place. Confused? So you should be.
The reality is that privacy and compliance are paramount for digital marketing - table stakes.
Our portfolio company has built a privacy and compliance infrastructure for the open web. It is the insurance layer you need when government agencies and privacy mavericks like Johnny Ryan come calling. There has never been a better time to partner with Wult on privacy.
The Cannes Social - Come Along
The Cannes Social will be held at Ma Nolan’s on Tuesday, June 17, from 4 to 7 pm CET. We are taking over the whole pub for the afternoon. FPC looks forward to welcoming you.
You can book your spot for The Cannes Social here: https://events.exchangewire.com/CannesSocial25.
Over 800 people have registered for the event, which is the marquee guerrilla ad tech event at Cannes, where the real people of ad tech congregate to network and do business.
That’s it for this week’s edition. Stay safe. Stay positive. And keep innovating.