Adknowledge Acquisition Is a Giant Leap for Video Advertising

KANSAS CITY, MO and LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 10, 2014) -  Adknowledge, Inc., the largest privately owned online advertising marketplace, announced today that it has acquired Giant Media, an industry-leading video ad platform. The purchase recognizes the explosive growth of video as an advertising vehicle that will enable advertisers and agencies to scale the viewership of their content.

"We're excited to be joining Adknowledge. We're proud of the platform and technology that we've built and believe that together with Adknowledge, we can build a world-class video product at massive scale," said Giant Media founder David Segura, who started the company in 2009.

"This is the twelfth acquisition Adknowledge has completed since the company was founded in 2004, and we're excited to have David and his team become part of the Adknowledge family," said Scott Lynn, founder and chairman of Adknowledge. "This allows us to continue our mission of helping advertisers unlock their digital audiences across all types of ad formats, including social media, display, mobile, apps, email, and video."

The combination of Adknowledge and Giant Media grows the abilities of two highly complementary companies; each is recognized as a leader in the rapidly growing digital marketing world. "As digital video is expected to account for $7 billion of ad spending next year, many of our current clients are interested in exploring video as a way to engage consumers," said Marco Ilardi, president of Adknowledge. "Giant Media has worked with some of the leading brands in the world, including Johnson & Johnson, 20^th Century Fox, Honda, American Express, Red Bull and Pepsi. This deal allows us to deliver more capability to those clients, and others in the market," Ilardi said.

Giant Media made a name for itself by developing a suite of video products designed to maximize earned media and social sharing. An example of that is Giant Media's distribution of the viral (and hilarious) Dollar Shave Club video that has more than 13 million views and served as the public debut of the popular, low-cost shaving supply company.

"Adknowledge has a great track record of building new products internally, plus using acquisitions to fill strategic gaps," said Adknowledge CEO Ben Legg. "The acquisition of Giant accelerates our momentum in video, and enables Adknowledge to continue applying our data-driven approach to helping large brands get a great ROI -- at scale -- from their digital media spend. We also plan to scale Giant globally."

Giant Media, headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New York and Detroit, will expand Adknowledge's Southern California presence.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the acquisition's financial terms.

About Adknowledge
Adknowledge helps leading advertisers acquire digital consumers and maximize their lifetime value, at scale. With unique reach, ad formats, data, insights, targeting algorithms, creative approaches and high volume optimization, Adknowledge provides advertisers with quality leads from fragmented, hard-to-reach places around the world. These include social networks -- such as Facebook and Twitter -- display, video, mobile, apps and email. With hundreds of self-proclaimed ROI junkie employees located throughout the world, Adknowledge aims to set the standard in optimizing online advertiser ROI across multiple channels. Glassdoor named Adknowledge as one of the Top 25 best companies to work for in 2014.

For more information about Adknowledge, visit www.adknowledge.com.

About Giant Media
Giant Media is a video distribution company working with top agencies and brands to generate measureable viewer interest and engagement through its extensive targeting capabilities. The company achieves success for clients on all platforms through both paid and earned media placement. For more information about Giant Media, visit www.giantmedia.com