ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: Marketo is snapped up by private equity firm; Facebook retires LiveRail; DoubleClick connects advertisers and marketing experts; Adsquare partners with Adelphi; and New partnership between Tapjoy and Ironsource. 

Marketo sold to Vista Equity Partners

In a deal worth USD$1.79bn (£1.24bn), private equity firm Vista Equity Partners is acquiring Marketo. The publicly traded martech provider is the last in a string of acquisitions by the equity firm. The final confirmation of the acquisition puts an end to the rumours among industry insiders of an impending Marketo sale, potentially to IT giants such as Microsoft and SAP.

According to the terms of the deal, Vista is buying up all outstanding shares of Marketo common stock, resulting in 64% premiums for Marketo shareholders.

“After careful consideration and deliberation, our Board of Directors unanimously concluded that the sale of Marketo to Vista Equity Partners was in the best interest of Marketo and its shareholders”, said Phil Fernandez, chairman and CEO of Marketo. The company plans to continue business as usual, focussing on product innovation.

The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2016, subject to approval by the relevant US authorities. Vista Equity Partners are also among the potential candidates for an acquisition of Yahoo’s core business.

Facebook retires LiveRail

Bought almost two years ago – and now obsolete? ​​Facebook wants to retire their video ad exchange LiveRail. After taking the LiveRail ad server off the net in January, 2016, LiveRail’s fate was sealed – in favour of the Facebook Audience Network.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook will shut down the video ad exchange in order to focus on other channels that will deliver video ads to consumers.

"We are discontinuing the LiveRail Private Exchange to focus on finding better ways for publishers to sell their ad space directly to advertisers, as well as expanding our video ad offering via Audience Network”, the WSJ cites a Facebook spokeswoman. “We believe this will make video ads more relevant to the people who watch them.” The decision was driven by publisher feedback, the spokesman said.

The news is not unexpected. After shutting down LiveRail’s ad sever, CEO Mark Trefgarne left the company in April 2016.

Facebook acquired LiveRail in 2014 for approximately USD$500m (£346m). Last week, Facebook announced it was also retiring their ad exchange FBX.

DoubleClick launches 'Certified Marketing Partner' programme

In a bid to connect advertisers and digital marketing experts, DoubleClick has just announced their 'Certified Marketing Partner' programme. Certified Marketing Partners offer access to a range of technology and service solutions, including creative or media management services, data or technology integrations, as well as help with measurement and attribution, and access to the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform.

According to Chip Hall, MD media platforms, Google, more than 40 certified marketing partners are already part of the programme and accessible to interested advertisers from all over the world.

“When a partner has the DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner badge, it means they’ve been carefully vetted and meet our rigorous qualification standards”, Hall writes in the DoubleClick blog.

In order to become certified, marketing partners have to prove knowledge of the DoubleClick suite of marketing products, pass the certification process and ongoing training, and display the partner badge on their pages.

Among the certified marketing partners listed so far are companies such as Acceleration, Bmind, and NetBooster.

Adelphic partners with Adsquare

German mobile data exchange Adsquare and Adelphic have just announced a new partnership, aimed at leveraging new sources of mobile audience data for the European market.

Using Adsquare’s Audience Management Platform (AMP), Adelphic customers will be able to activate audiences based on app usage data such as sociodemographic, purchase behaviour, location etc.

The European market has recently been a priority for Adelphic. The DSP hired Nicholas Mills as EMEA general manager last year and has expanded their European-based teams in order to grow sales in the region. "Mobile programmatic advertising is experiencing considerable growth across Europe as brands realise the opportunity existent in mobile and the return on investment available through a data-driven approach", says Mills.

For Tom Laband, CEO and co-founder, Adsquare, the partnership is a way of bringing their audience data to new clients: "We are really happy about the integration with Adelphic, as it is one of the leading Mobile DSPs globally. Agencies and Trading Desks want the freedom of choice when it comes to activating our audience data to their preferred buying platform."

Tapjoy and ironSource partner

Combining Tapjoy’s user-level segmentation and predictive analytics capabilities with ironSource’s video mediation solution, the monetisation platform and the software distribution company are announcing a partnership.

The co-operation is aimed at helping mobile developers improve the user experience and, thus, create more revenue. Via platform integration, developers access the Tapjoy SDK and infrastructure, enabling them to analyse consumer behaviour in real time and optimise campaigns accordingly. At the same time, adapter integration uses the Supersonic by ironSource SDK to access Tapjoy's video ad demand as another network option in the mediation waterfall.

“This partnership enables us to offer our mutual developer customers a powerful combination of services, which preserves an enjoyable app experience, while maximising revenue potential”, explains ironSource CRO Gil Shoham. “At the end of the day, it’s the user that matters most and it’s pivotal your partners share that vision.”

Customers of both Tapjoy and ironSource can access the new mediation options through their respective dashboards.