Media, Marketing & Commerce Investment Series - Part 3: IPO

by Mathew Broughton on 27th Aug 2021 in News

In the final part of this three-part commentary series on media, marketing, and commerce investment, ExchangeWire speaks to industry professionals involved in initial public offerings (IPOs) over 2021 for insight as to why 2021 is ideal for listing publicly, and how the landscape is set to change going forward.

Key statistics (2021, to-date)*

- Total value of IPO and post-IPO transactions (excluding SPAC-led reverse mergers): USD$6.4bn (£4.6bn).
- Total number of companies to go public: 12
- Average sum raised via IPO: USD$411.4m (£297.0m)

*Investment statistics compiled by ExchangeWire, disclosed investments recorded across the media, marketing, and commerce sectors correct as of 10:50 (BST) Tuesday 17th August 2021.

Four pillars of growth

Following our successful IPO, we continue to focus on four growth pillars at IAS where we’ll invest and drive product innovation including CTV, programmatic, social platforms, and international markets. To accelerate our CTV strategy, we recently acquired CTV ad platform Publica, which will have a significant impact on the growth of our publisher business and future plans to build a global addressable CTV ad platform.

Programmatic buying is also booming, and it’s accelerating our business because we help advertisers maximise these investments. In fact, our Q2 programmatic revenue grew 94% year-over-year, driven in part by the rise of contextual targeting and the impending deprecation of third-party cookies. Major brands are choosing our leading contextual product, Context Control, which represented over 30% of our programmatic revenue in Q2. We launched this product ahead of competitors and our sophisticated technology continues to deliver big results.

When it comes to social platforms, we’re working closely with TikTok and Twitter to bring brand safety and suitability measurement to these dynamic, live social feeds as marketers demand greater transparency. We’re also expanding our offerings across international markets, especially APAC and LATAM, well beyond the 111 countries where we activate today.

Lisa Utzschneider, CEO, Integral Ad Science

Bringing e-commerce to the open web

We joined the Nasdaq in June this year, at a time when online advertising on the open web accounted for an estimated USD$60bn (£44bn) in spending per year.

Taboola is embarking on an exciting new journey as a public company, a milestone only made possible by years of trusted partnerships with tens of thousands of digital properties and advertisers. Taboola’s success is built on a simple idea – deliver value to our partners in a way where we only grow if our partners grow, in a true win-win manner. This is in stark contrast to "walled gardens" of closed ecosystems that don’t always have their partners’ best interests in mind.

I see Taboola growing to power recommendations for anything, such as e-commerce, games, applications, and I see those recommendations everywhere, on every device. They will live on our connected TVs at home, recommending shows people love, as well as in people’s cars surfacing content they love, podcasts, and text-to-audio from the open web. We recently announced our agreement to acquire Connexity for USD$800m (£582m), allowing us to bring e-Commerce to the open web as another strong growth engine.

Adam Singolda, CEO & Founder, Taboola