TripleLift Buys 1plusX For $150 Million; European MadTech, Winning

This is the FirstPartyCapital weekly newsletter.  It covers news and updates about the FirstPartyCapital fund and its portfolio companies.

TripleLift Buys 1plusX For $150 Million, As Ad Tech Preps For Post-Cookie World 

TripleLift acquired European ad tech company, 1plusX, for $150 million this week.  

Some of you will be asking: who is 1plusX?  The company is a European-based publisher DMP focused on contextual segmentation and activation - a bullet-proof, post-cookie audience solution.  

Its closest rival would be Permutive, a company valued close to $500 million. Europe is clearly leading the way in post-cookie and privacy ad tech. 

This is a smart purchase by TripleLift.  It gets them a scalable contextual play, bringing them closer to the publisher.  It gives TripleLift’s massive native media business a competitive advantage as we approach the privacy "event horizon". 

This transaction is another vote of confidence for MadTech in Europe.  The market is hot right now… 

European MadTech M&A Is Stupidly Hot Right Now

FirstPartyCapital is a unique fund: we are the only ad tech, martech and digital media focused fund that invests in pre-seed and seed startups outside the US. 

Because of our rarified status, we regularly need to beat institutional investors (fixated with vanilla money managers and impossible reality-bending crypto multiples) around the head with real world stats - like how MadTech is the tech and data layer that powers the trillion dollar advertising industry. 

We will be sending out such an infographic to investors, giving an overview of MadTech M&A activity in Europe over the past six months (see below). 

Here are the listed highlights: 

• Over $4 billion in M&A deals

• 15 transactions over $50 million

• 4 new MadTech unicorns in Europe

This all points to a healthy M&A market in Europe and a vibrant startup environment.  Just another reason - if you needed anymore - to invest in FirstPartyCapital.  Join us now on the upwards journey to the right. 

The Fundamentals Of Retail Media Need To Be Underpinned By Innovative Tech

ExchangeWire published an overview piece this week on retail media.  It is very good - if I do say so myself.  No, no, no it’s actually epoch-defining. Make sure you read it. 

Here’s the synopsis if you have no free time: it outlines the fundamentals of the emerging retail media channel, and the role ad tech and martech will play in its growth.

Behind every good burgeoning media channel principle you are going to need some innovative technology to run media and attribution.  

Luckily for you, FirstPartyCapital is investing heavily in this space.  

From creative ad infrastructure to attribution to clean room aggregation/segmentation/activation to walled garden execution, FirstPartyCapital has got you covered.

The Instacart ad net launch (packaged with a bullet-proof attribution model) shows you the type of random utility players now pushing into the space. 

It’s pretty exciting. FPC is ready for the opportunity in front of us.  Are you?