MGI Acquires Verve Wireless To Advance Its Market Position In Programmatic Mobile Location Display And Video Advertising

By MTS Staff Writer On Jan 23, 2020

MGI Acquires Verve Wireless To Advance Its Market Position In Programmatic Mobile Location Display And Video Advertising

Media and Games Invest or MGI announced that its subsidiary gamigo AG agreed on acquiring Verve Wireless, Inc.’s business. Verve is a leading North American Mobile Location data platform for location-based programmatic video and display marketing.

Technology is actively used to create efficiency improvements and competitive advantages within the group. Synergy and integration potentials are important criteria for the expansion of the portfolio. MGI is a fast and profitably growing company focusing on a “buy, integrate, build & improve” strategy through organic growth and acquisitions in the media and games markets.

Verve brings technology, intellectual property, and domain expertise in branded programmatic advertising and location-based analytics and data management. MGI Group welcomes Verve’s team, its customers and partners and plans to support further expansion of the business globally utilizing synergies within its portfolio of companies.

The acquisition of Verve strengthens MGI’s position in Media and Advertising and will boost the marketing of the game companies. While the MGI group already offers online performance marketing (Adspree), an influencer marketing agency (Mediakraft), a influencer SaaS platform (ReachHero), a supply-side performance platform (Pubnative), and a global app performance agency (Applift), the MGI Group is now extended by Verve’s programmatic mobile brand marketplace, as well as its data management and location-based platform.

At the time of this announcement, Tom Kenney, co-founder and CEO at Verve said, Since day one, we have always believed in the power of the mobile internet and mobile apps and never doubted the multi-billion dollar opportunity it would deliver, particularly when anchored to first-party mobile and location data.”

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Tom added, “We’re excited to join the MGI family and partner with the MGI’s portfolio to expand globally to help our clients achieve their mobile marketing objectives. I am proud of our team and thank them for their loyal and amazing efforts over these last 15 years.”

Verve was founded in 2005 with offices in New York and San Diego. The acquisition is expected to generate additional net revenues in the lower double-digit million range in the current fiscal year for MGI Group. Depending on the speed of finalizing and integrating the transaction within the coming weeks, management expects an additional EBITDA in the low single-digit million range.

The acquisition of Verve’s business assets expands the MGI Group’s product portfolio, customer base and sales organization and strengthens its position in the North American adtech market, furthermore, there are great synergies by teaming with MGI’s media and gaming companies.

“With the acquisition of Verve, we are expanding the position of the MGI Group in the media and advertising sector. Combined, the Group has a powerful global offering with over 600 million monthly active direct users, innovative proprietary technology, over 18 registered patents, a global sales team with offices and employees in over 20 countries worldwide and a strong customer base, including many blue-chip companies. This powerhouse in the media sector will also further strengthen the gaming sector, especially in the area of user acquisition for our portfolio games as well as for our new game launches,” said Remco Westermann, CEO of MGI.

Verve’s customers will benefit from a significant increase in inventory reach and a wider range of advertising services. On the other hand, the other MGI companies will profit from Verve’s true performance solution that leverages the power of first-party mobile data in the context of location, including strong and unique ad products such as Tap-to-Map, which enables retailers to drive store visits and pedestrian traffic.