Ebuzzing & Teads Merge To Create Global Video Ad Group, IPO Pegged For 2015

Ebuzzing and Teads, a pair of European adtech companies focused on video advertising, are to merge — setting their sights on an IPO in 2015.

The “Ebuzzing and Teads” group is being created in the hopes of building a global online video ad giant with complementary technology offerings that it can continue selling to both advertisers and publishers.

The combined Ebuzzing and Teads group will have more than 300 employees based across 10 countries (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Mexico and Korea), including an R&D team of more than 100 engineers based in France.

Both companies have developed what they term ‘outstream’ video ad formats — meaning the ads can be displayed outside of a video stream, within any content on a webpage, such as a text article or slideshow. The advantage of this (to paying clients) is it does not require publishers to produce their own video content in order to house video ads on their websites so helps video ads spread further.

Teads has also developed private marketplaces for publishers where they can manage the monetization of their video ad inventory — including instream video, not just outstream.

Ebuzzing, which was founded back in 2007, has been in the space for longer than Teads (the latter was founded in 2011), and describes itself as the largest online video platform in Europe. It’s developed various ad targeting tools, and also offers ad analytics and a self-serve platform for advertisers to manage their own campaigns.

Ebuzzing has received a total investment of $47 million, with its main investors being Lightspeed Ventures, Gimv, TF1 and Pierre Chappaz. While, last October, Teads closed a $5.2 million Series A round from Elaia Partners and Partech Ventures. It also previously raised €300,000 from seed investors/private angel investors back in 2011.

The combined revenue of the group reached $70 million last year, and is expected to exceed $100 million in 2014. Based on projected growth and combined turnover, the group is planning to go public on the NASDAQ in 2015.

Following the merger, Pascal Gauthier, formerly COO of Criteo, is joining the group’s board of directors, along with Anthony Rhind, formerly co-CEO of Havas Digital. Teads’ investors, Partech Ventures and Elaia Partners will also join the board.

Commenting in a statement, Marie Ekeland from Elaia Partner, said: “The ambition of Ebuzzing and Teads group is to quickly become the Criteo of video. The group has everything required to succeed.”