Enpocket

Sep 23, 2014

Submit to Hacker News The Boston area has an impressive history of mobile-advertising startups being acquired for large sums (usually $100 million-plus): Third Screen Media, Enpocket, Quattro Wireless, Where, Jumptap. Now add Nexage to that list. The mobile-ad exchange is being acquired by Millennial Media, the Baltimore-based advertising giant that also bought Jumptap last year . Nexage’s acquisition price is $107.5 million, most of it in stock ($85 million), the rest in cash ($22.5 million). That’s a significant fraction of Millennial’s (NYSE: MM ) market cap, which is a little over $200 million. Nexage didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But when I talked to the company last fall, it said it had about 70 employees and was doing tens of millions in revenue. What’s more, it claimed to be the last independent ad-exchange standing, at least in the U.S. With deals like Twitter buying MoPub and Google being the perennial giant in digital advertising, the race has been on to connect advertisers with mobile Web publishers and app developers. (I won’t get into the details of ad exchanges, but the well-named Ad Exchanger has more context around mobile ad-tech. ) Nexage had raised just under $20 million from investors including GrandBanks Capital, Relay Ventures, Hearst Ventures, and SingTel’s venture group. The company is led by CEO Ernie Cormier and chairman Mike Baker, who’s also chief executive of Boston-based DataXu. Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's Deputy Editor, National IT Editor, and the Editor of Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com or call him at 617-252-7323. Follow @gthuang Share or Leave a Comment