RTL Group latest to jump into video ad fray

Contact: Scott Denne

German broadcasting company RTL Group’s $144m pickup of SpotXchange pushes independent video ad exchanges to the brink of extinction. The programmatic video market is still in the early stages, but a series of acquisitions has left few independent players.

SpotXchange’s sale comes weeks after one of its closest competitors, LiveRail, was picked up by Facebook, and a year after AOL bought Adap.tv, the early leader in programmatic video exchanges. RTL is taking a 65% stake in the business (valuing the company at $221m), with an option to buy the rest plus a performance-based earnout. We believe SpotXchange has trailing revenue of $40-50m, which would give this deal a multiple that’s in line with those transactions.

This acquisition leaves BrightRoll as the only remaining independent video exchange with substantial scale, and that company (which is a combination of video ad network and exchange) is several times larger than SpotXchange in terms of revenue and would be an expensive purchase.

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