Outbrain Expands Video Offering With A Swiss Start-Up Acquisition

Open web recommendation platform Outbrain has strengthened its brand and video offering after entering a definitive agreement to acquire a Swiss contextual video start-up VI.

Video intelligence(VI) is a contextual video technology platform for digital and Connected TV media owners. It combines contextually matched content and in-stream video advertising for desktop, mobile, and CTV. 

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The Deal Makes Absolute Sense

Outbrain works with many publishers who are indexing more towards videos such as Rakuten TV, Pluto TV, and Samsung TV Plus. Media owners and advertisers benefit from Outbrain’s acquisition of the company. 

-vi’s contextual and machine learning technologies enable media owners to add relevant video content to their articles to enhance user engagement and monetization.

-vi’s solution is cookieless by design and serves media owners ranging from IDG to Der Spiegel and Funke.

-Advertisers can leverage the high-impact, incredibly viewable, brand-safe video ad inventory that drives awareness and engagement.

Recently, vi partnered with Samsung TV+ to get into the connected TV space.

Outbrain will acquire vi for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $55 million and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.

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And That’s What They Said

Yaron Galai, Co-Founder and Co-CEO said is excited to have the VI team on board and share significant synergies between both companies.

“The combination with vi will allow us to deepen our partnership with media owners, providing mid- and top-of-article video solutions. It will also expand our addressable market, introducing high-quality in-stream video inventory to support our brand advertisers.“

Kai Henniges, Co-Founder and CEO of VI said that both companies share the same vision of the future media. 

“Our years of video expertise and unique offering for publishers and CTV providers are a perfect addition to Outbrain’s leading market position and premium global media owner partnerships. Together we will accelerate our mission to inspire, inform and entertain users by putting video in context.”

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