NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) today announced the continued strategic investment in its programmatic platforms by entering into an agreement to acquire Convertro Inc., a leading provider of multi-touch attribution modeling technology for brands and agencies. Convertro helps marketers and agencies maximize their return on advertising spend across online and offline media channels through granular insights into each channel, format, ad creative and audience segment. This transaction follows the recent announcement of ONE by AOL, a programmatic enterprise platform that will drive powerful brand insight and actions across all screens including linear and connected TV, all formats, and all inventory. Convertro will provide AOL’s customers with the ability to manage the consumer journey across the entire purchase funnel and across all channels, driving economic efficiencies and media effectiveness.
The addition of Convertro into AOL Platforms will enable marketers and agencies to:
- Plan, activate and optimize multi-channel media ad spend effectively, in real-time, across every channel and inventory source;
- Understand and repeat successful paths to conversion;
- Adapt creative and messaging to a consumer’s stage in the purchase funnel;
- Pinpoint the intersection of brand and direct response dollars at a granular level;
- Implement and derive insights from attribution modeling in real time at the individual consumer level; and
- Access AOL’s open, modular and unbiased platform which is committed to preserving the integrity of Convertro’s attribution modeling methodology.
“AOL is making advertising easier for marketers and agencies, as well as publishers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO, AOL. “Our agreement to acquire Convertro demonstrates our continued commitment to bring efficiency to the advertising industry through automation and machine learning. Our focus on the AOL Platforms business has positioned AOL for growth as the trend around programmatic advertising continues to transform the industry.”
"Convertro's vision has always been to provide its clients visibility and recommendations on how their advertising investment works and how to improve that return on investment,” said Jeff Zwelling, CEO, Convertro. “We believe the future of attribution is applying this data to programmatic buying and automated analysis. Integrating with AOL is going to bring our leading technology into the hands of some of the world's leading and biggest advertisers and we couldn't be more excited!"
Customers can garner access to Convertro one of three ways: through AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) or Adap.tv; as a standalone attribution modeling tool; or through ONE by AOL when launched, which will feature Convertro’s attribution modeling capabilities.
AOL has agreed to acquire Convertro for a closing purchase price of approximately $101 million. The aggregate purchase price is comprised of approximately $89 million in cash funded at closing plus approximately $2 million in converted stock awards and a $10 million earn-out, payable over a period of up to 17 months subject to satisfaction of certain product development milestones.
About AOL
AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) is a brand company, committed to continuously innovating, growing, and investing in brands and experiences that inform, entertain, and connect the world. The home of a world-class collection of premium brands, AOL creates original content that engages audiences on a local and global scale. We help marketers connect with these audiences through effective and engaging digital advertising solutions.
About Convertro
Convertro provides clients with actionable spend recommendations that empower them to confidently reallocate marketing from unprofitable sources to more profitable ones. Convertro accomplishes this by means of its algorithmic attribution models that meld marketing cost and conversion data, including in-store, with customer marketing exposures captured at the most granular level. This algorithmic-based system, combined with other proprietary technologies developed in-house, affords extreme flexibility and enables Convertro to generate spend optimizations for all marketing channels that a client may leverage, whether online (PPC, SEO, display, affiliate and social, for example) or offline (such as TV, radio and direct mail). Convertro is based in Santa Monica (California), and maintains offices in New York and Israel. For more information, visit: www.convertro.com or find us on Twitter at @convertro or on LinkedIn.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated benefits of the transaction, the expected closing date and other statements identified by words such as "may," "will," "intend," "estimate," "should," "expect" or similar expressions. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations and beliefs of AOL's management, and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances, including, but not limited to, the satisfaction of the closing conditions to the transaction, the competitiveness and quality of our combined offerings and significant competition in the internet advertising industries generally, our ability to timely and successfully integrate Convertro’s operations into our operations, our ability to retain, hire and develop skilled employees and the parties' performance of their obligations under the agreements. Any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the statements herein, due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, strategic and/or regulatory factors, as well as factors affecting Convertro’s and AOL's operations and businesses. More detailed information about these factors as they relate to AOL may be found in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in AOL's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013, filed with the SEC. AOL is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter the forward-looking statements contained in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
