Israeli digital marketing and ad services company WhiteSmoke (TLV: WSMK) has acquired Israeli company Wise Data Media for up to $5.3 million. The acquisition is part of WhiteSmoke’s growth strategy to deepen its operations in web and mobile ad services and expand operations in video ads.
The acquisition will be carried out by a fully owned subsidiary of WhiteSmoke, which will pay $750,000 in cash for Wise Data Media and a further $4.55 million in payments linked to performance over the next three years.
Wise Data Media has developed a technological solution for advertising media buying processes, with a focus on video advertising - automatically with no human intervention. The company swung to profit in 2016, with NIS 18.8 revenue, 170% up from 2015. Wise Data Media has dozens of customers, and collaborations many ad agencies and digital ad exchanges. Wise Data Media expects $63.5 million revenue over the next three years.
Wise Media Data’s solution allows streamlines the existing manual media buying process, and in particular the match between advertisers and publishers. The company’s Bidder system enables automatic programmatic media trading in ad spaces and ads, and its Wise Air system enables information collection and analysis from different systems in the field of activity (including a first SaaS agreement). Wise Data Media also offers advertisers video advertising based monetization solutions, in desktop and in mobile. According to Wise Data Media’s data, 80% of its revenue in 2016 derived from programmatic activity.
WhiteSmoke CEO Itay Meroz said, "The acquisition of Wise Data Media’s operations is the realization of our business strategy of rapid growth in income, improved profitability and WhiteSmoke’s augmentation of income sources. The acquired operations, which significantly improve our competitive positioning, has outstanding technological features such as the ability to carry out programmatic media buying which is expected to improve the profitability of our video field alongside a strong ability to quickly reach large volumes of activity. Wise Data Media’s operations join the acquisition of GMS Digital’s operations which led us to show record income in the recent years with the strong growth of the video advertising field in the third quarter of 2016. We estimate that there will be a synergy between the two operations so that we can grow rapidly in order to generate a high value to the Company's shareholders."
Wise Data Media Corporation was founded in 2012 by CEO Tomer Sade, former CEO of Publicis Group's E-dia og IL advertising agency and CEO of the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi Interactive Israel. As part of the acquisition Sade and 16 Wise Data Media's employees will join WhiteSmoke's Israel office.