Facebook buys LiveRail
July 3, 2014
By Colin Mann
Facebook is to acquire LiveRail, an advertising technology company that helps companies such as Major League Baseball (MLB.com), ABC, A&E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion serve better ads in the videos that appear on their websites and apps. LiveRail is the world’s largest programmatic platform for video publishers, with 170 employees across four offices, hundreds of active customers and over seven billion video ads delivered each month
LiveRail was founded in 2007 and offers a comprehensive platform for online video publishers that help them find and serve the best ads possible. LiveRail also helps marketers by providing them with access to premium video inventory and the information that they need in order to decide where to show their ads. According to Brian Boland, Vice President of Ads, Product Marketing, and Atlas at Facebook, what LiveRail ultimately offers is a complete advertising solution for video publishers.
“We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month. More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too. Publishers will benefit as well because more relevant ads will help them make the most out of every opportunity they have to show an ad,” he suggested.
“We’re just getting started with our partnership with LiveRail, but we’re very excited about the future for video publishers and marketers. We believe that LiveRail’s excellent product – known in the industry as a video supply-side platform or SSP – and Facebook’s expertise with relevancy, delivery and measurement will help us make video advertising much better for everyone” he added.