Altice acquires Teads
March 21, 2017
Multinational telco Altice has entered into an agreement to acquire Teads, the online video advertising marketplace with an audience of more than 1.2 billion unique visitors including 720 million via mobile.
Teads’ native video advertising solutions encompass a series of formats inserted deep into media content, like the inRead playing inside articles. Teads revenue grew by 44 per cent in 2016 to an estimated €187.7 million.
Altice says the acquisition is a critical component for its global advertising strategy. Altice will provide clients with data-driven, audience-based advertising solutions on multiscreen platforms including TV, digital, mobile and tablets. It will also provide an open and intelligent advertising platform to the media industry, programmers and multichannel video programming distributors.
Together with sophisticated return on investment analysis capabilities, leveraging multiscreen subscriber data information, this puts Altice in a unique position to grow its global advertising platform and better monetize its core telecommunications access and content business. Importantly, the combination is expected to provide immediate commercial and financial benefits to Altice’s advertising business, in particular as it relates making unique first-party data available to Teads in the US and France.
The acquisition values Teads at an enterprise value of up to €285 million on a cash and debt free basis. The acquisition purchase price is subject to Teads achieving certain revenue targets in 2017.
The senior management of Teads, including Executive Chairman Pierre Chappaz and Chief Executive Officer Bertrand Quesada, will continue to lead the business going forward and have agreed to reinvest a significant portion of their proceeds. Pierre Chappaz will join Altice’s Management Board responsible for all of its advertising activities.
The acquisition is subject to certain competition reviews and is expected to close in mid-2017.
Michel Combes, CEO of Altice, said: “Convergence of telecoms, content, and advertising is at the core of our business. There is significant incremental value to be generated from our assets. Teads, a powerful business in itself, with major presence in Altice footprint notably in the US and France, will enable us to offer a truly unique value proposition to brands and agencies on the one hand and the media industry, programmers and distributors on the other. It is that value proposition – data-driven, measurable and multiscreen – which will enable us to significantly grow our advertising business. We are very excited to partner with Pierre, Bertrand and their talented team.”
Pierre Chappaz, Founder and Executive Chairman of Teads, said: “We are excited to start this new phase of Teads and become part of the internationally renowned Altice team. Since our inception we have strived to offer our clients with superior advertising solutions based on measurable performance and technological innovation. As part of Altice, we will be able to offer even more tailored, data-driven solutions and take our value proposition from the digital world to a multiscreen platform, which includes TV, digital, mobile and tablets. It is this differentiated offering which will allow Altice and Teads to uniquely prosper in the global advertising market.”