London AdTech Ad-Lib has been acquired in a £74 million deal.
Smartly, a Facebook partner and advertising technology giant based in Helsinki, has swooped for the Google expert to expand its reach across the advertising ecosystem.
Ad-Lib has built an enterprise suite of creative tools for YouTube, DV360 and Google Ads campaigns. Smartly says the industry is seeing a growing demand for solutions that bring creative and media closer together across all channels.
“The past two years have proven that creative technology has become the most important lever for driving digital advertising performance,” said Kristo Ovaska, CEO and co-founder, Smartly.
“Ad-Lib.io is a clear leader in the creative space by innovating on the mission-critical dimensions of workflow, automation, brand governance, personalisation and insight.
“Their knowledge of the Google stack is unmatched in the industry and combining that with Smartly.io’s deep understanding of Facebook and the social stack across creative, media and data allows us to now serve customers across all major digital channels.”
Ad-Lib is a Google Certified Creative partner and currently works with 10 of the top 30 global advertisers. Smartly partners with all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and TikTok and works with more than 700 major advertisers globally.
“Smartly.io is the preeminent leader in delivering creative and media effectiveness for social,” said Oli Marlow-Thomas, founder and president, Ad-Lib.io.
“With brand marketers and agencies increasingly uniting their social and programmatic teams into integrated digital creative and media investment teams, this is a natural next step for both companies.”