Yahoo has just announced that it will be acquiring advertising platform 5to1 for $28 million. We originally broke the news of the acquisition last week.
5to1 first launched at TechCrunch50 in September 2009, and raised around $13 million in various rounds of funding. The startup is an online advertising alliance consisting of major media publishers. Built on a proprietary publisher-controlled platform, 5to1 offers advertisers premium inventory at mass scale.
Yahoo says that the acquisition of 5to1 will enable allow the company “to build upon its publisher partnerships and expand its premium inventory.” 5to1 works with more than 20 premium publishers. The 5to1 team will be joining Yahoo as part of the Ad Marketplaces group.
An acquisition by yahoo isn’t particularly surprising. As we wrote previously, the company has deep ties with Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s EVP Americas and formerly the President of Fox Interactive Media. Levinsohn is actually a cofounder of the company and a former board member and shareholder (he divested himself after joining Yahoo). Cofounder and CEO Jim Heckman worked with Levinsohn at FIM. We first covered the company, including their management team, in June 2009.
Wayne Powers, SVP, Advertising Sales for the North America region, said in a release: 5to1’s innovative platform and premium private marketplace will further enable Yahoo! to extend our advertising leadership…5to1 provides additional access to publishers and unlocks the value of unsold inventory for premium brand advertisers.