Facebook Buys LiveRail to Make Video Ads Better

What's This?

Image: Flickr, Maria Elena

By Seth Fiegerman2014-07-02 18:08:52 UTC

Facebook has agreed to acquire LiveRail, a video advertising platform, the two companies announced on Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.

LiveRail was founded in 2007 and helps companies ranging from Major League Baseball to DailyMotion to optimize delivery of video ads on mobile and the web through real-time bidding and its proprietary market data. The company delivers 7 billion video ads a month.

See also: Facebook News Feed Update Sets the Stage for Video Ads

"We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month," Brian Boland, VP of ads product marketing at Facebook, said in a statement announcing the deal. "More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too."

LiveRail was reportedly on a $100 million revenue run rate in 2013 and considering an IPO for later this year, but opted to join with Facebook instead.

"We realized that by joining forces we’d be able to draw upon our respective strengths to move even faster towards our shared vision of creating the advertising platform of the future," Mark Trefgarne, CEO and cofounder of LiveRail, said in a blog post.

In recent months, Facebook has been laying the groundwork to serve video ads to its billion-plus user base. The LiveRail acquisition may not be quite as exciting as Facebook buying a hugely popular messaging app or a virtual reality platform, but it should help the company boost a promising new revenue area.

Facebook stock was down about 1.5% on the day following the news.

Topics: Business, Facebook, video ads