Altice will acquire Teads, an online video advertising marketplace with an audience of more than 1.2 billion unique visitors, including 720 million via mobile.

In a statement, the multinational telecoms operator said Teads will become “another critical component for Altice’s global advertising strategy.”

Teads’ revenue grew by 44 per cent in 2016 to an estimated €187.7 million and the acquisition gives Teads an enterprise value of up to €285 million. Teads announced record results for 2016, reporting 44 per cent organic revenue growth year-over-year.

“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 monetise its core telecommunications access and content business,” Altice said.

The deal is expected to provide “immediate commercial and financial benefits to Altice’s advertising business”.

Teads was founded in 2011 and claims to be “the inventor of outstream video advertising” – videos inserted into a traditional display ad space, typically between paragraphs of text or images. Company information reveals it raised €43 million in debt financing in 2016 to fund acquisitions and a push into Asia Pacific. It subsequently acquired Brainient, a UK-based company specialising in advanced dynamic creative technologies for video and mobile.

Altice said Teads’ native video advertising solutions are “changing the game within the video advertising market.”

Revenue goals
The acquisition purchase price is subject to Teads achieving certain revenue targets in 2017. At closing, 75 per cent of the acquisition purchase price will be due. The remaining 25 per cent is subject to its 2017 revenue performance and will become payable in early 2018.

Michel Combes (pictured), CEO of Altice, said: “Convergence of telecoms, content, and advertising is at the core of our business.”

“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,” he added.

The senior management of Teads, including executive chairman Pierre Chappaz and CEO Bertrand Quesada, will continue to lead the business and have agreed to reinvest a significant portion of their proceeds.

Chappaz said as part of Altice, Teads “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.”

The acquisition is subject to competition reviews and is expected to close in mid-2017.