Chango, the fastest-growing ad tech company in Canada, has been acquired by the Rubicon Project for $122 million in cash and stock.
Toronto-based Chango specializes in online marketing and retargeting based on user intent data. Rubicon, a Silicon Valley tech company, is known for its publisher platform and open ad exchange, which is used by major publishers to forecast and sell their ad inventory. Rubicon also operates a programmatic buying platform that can be used by advertisers and media agencies.
Rubicon CEO Frank Addante said in a press release that his company was impressed with Chango’s technology for identifying users’ intentions, based on keyword search data and behavioural data. The acquisition will also help Rubicon incorporate Chango’s performance cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition analysis tools.
“This will enable us to bring intent marketing budgets to an independent, open marketplace that serves premium buyers and sellers at scale for the first time,” he said.
For Chango, which calls eBay, Disney and Lego clients, the pairing was largely about boosting the reach of its platform through Rubicon’s large publisher clientbase and many supply partnerships.
“Joining the Rubicon Project team will enable us to collectively provide buyers and sellers with a more complete way of buying and selling premium advertising,” said Chris Sukornyk, founder and CEO of Chango, in a release.
“This deal will enable us to leverage Rubicon Project’s massive reach of sellers, buyers and consumers to accelerate our combined market share and bring intent marketing to premium display, mobile and video advertising at an even greater scale.”
Last year, Deloitte ranked Chango number one on its list of the 50 fastest-growing companies in Canada. Over a five year period, Chango’s revenue grew 69%. In 2014 it earned $55 million in revenue.
Marketing recently interviewed Chango VP of marketing Ben Plomion about the future of the programmatic industry and the company’s dramatic upward trajectory.
