US-based advertising technology provider Taykey agreed to an acquisition by video marketing platform Innovid yesterday, providing an exit for telecoms group SoftBank.
Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. The press release noted the deal is expected to close “by the end of the month”, though the date suggests the transaction is actually slated to complete by the end of December.
Taykey operates a real-time contextual data platform to understand what content matters to audiences. The platform analyses hundreds of millions of digital interactions per day.
The company’s technology involves a big data platform, natural language processing and artificial intelligence-based machine-learning.
Innovid plans on integrating Taykey’s technology into its own offering to help brands eliminate occurrences of their video advertising being displayed alongside inappropriate content.
SoftBank Capital, the corporate venturing arm of SoftBank that was wound down in 2015, contributed to a $15m series D round in early 2015, alongside Innovation Endeavors, MSR Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital and Marker.
In 2013, SoftBank already took part in a $6m series C round that featured Sequoia and Marker, after the corporate had contributed to a $9m series B round in 2011 that also featured Sequoia and Crescent Point.
Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder of Innovid, said: “There is massive opportunity for marketers to gain higher performance by leveraging real-time contextual intelligence for video content as a factor in how they plan, optimise and ultimately deliver video creative at scale.
“That is why this acquisition is so exciting for us – it enhances the breadth of insights that Innovid’s media agnostic platform already delivers to brands and drives more effective video marketing, and provides an additional input for data-driven video strategies.”