Last week Yandex, the Russian search giant, announced the acquisition of ADFOX, a Russian technological platform for ad serving, independent statistics and advertising campaign analysis. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Founded in 2005, the platform enables advertisers to place banners, mobile ads, videos and other popular formats. ADFOX claims to serve more than 750 clients, including major publishers, agencies and direct advertisers placing “more than a billion ads” every day.
The ADFOX team will join the Yandex advertising technologies group and expert team to further develop the platform for large publishers.
“Yandex will continue to operate ADFOX platform under its current brand. The terms of service for existing clients will remain unchanged”, said Dmitry Popov, head of the Yandex Advertising Network. “Over time, ADFOX publisher clients will gain new capabilities, including ad targeting based on Yandex’s Crypta technology and revenue optimization through Yandex RTB and Yandex.Direct.”
“I think this acquisition makes a lot of sense – and I’m actually surprised it took Yandex so long, considering that Google acquired DoubleClick, which is ADFOX’s equivalent in the West, already seven years ago,” international e-marketing expert Bas Godska told East-West Digital News.
“As Yandex is not, in my opinion, fully up-to-speed in the remarketing and dynamic display areas, this acquisition can push Yandex even better into the RTB arena,” he added.
Russia’s online advertising maintained fast growth in 2013, reaching $2.25 billion, up 27% from 2012. In early 2014, while the contextual ad segment continued growing fast, the display ad market slowed down noticeably.
