Roku is to purchase dataxu, an advertising platform centred on OTT operators, that enables marketers to plan and buy video ad campaigns.
Roku will pay $150 million in cash and shares of Roku Class A Common Stock.
Boston-based dataxu provides marketers with an automated bidding and self-serve software solution to manage ad campaigns programmatically across digital platforms.
It uses advanced TV and OTT media planning tools, a proprietary device graph, and data science to help marketers optimize for business outcomes across TV, OTT, desktop and mobile.
“TV advertising is shifting toward OTT and a data-driven model focused on business outcomes for brands,” said Anthony Wood, chief executive officer at Roku. “The acquisition of dataxu will accelerate our ad platform while also helping our content partners monetize their inventory even more effectively.”
In January 2016 Sky, which is also a minority shareholder in Roku, invested $10 million in the company.