Ari Paparo, CEO, Beeswax
FreeWheel have been in the market for a DSP for some time now, and announced today that it has agreed to acquire Beeswax, a DSP founded by CEO Ari Paparo. Financial terms were not disclosed. FreeWheel say the acquisition will expand FreeWheel’s current programmatic marketplace capabilities across all forms of television and video advertising, including Connected TV (CTV) and Set-top Box Video on Demand (STB VOD).
Beeswax positioned their programmatic advertising capabilities through its unique Bidder-as-a-Service™ (Baas) customizsable bidding stack, used by leading media companies and brands. FreeWheel say that this capability will complement their existing technologies and add value to its current supply-side and demand-side clients. The exponential growth of programmatic transactions has driven a need for more customisable and flexible bidding technologies to serve a diversifying user base.
“ As the ecosystem becomes increasingly complex, sellers and buyers of media want similar capabilities: great automation, simplicity, and the ability to manage data-driven campaigns across hundreds of endpoints. By incorporating Beeswax’s technology into FreeWheel’s offering, we can deliver even more value to clients of both companies, helping them better navigate and succeed in this new landscape,” said Dave Clark, General Manager, FreeWheel.
FreeWheel say that Beeswax’s complementary capabilities will help expand and accelerate FreeWheel’s current programmatic technologies, improving FreeWheel’s clients’ abilities to trade inventory with automation. In particular, Beeswax’s bidding technology will allow for FreeWheel users to access broader pools of inventory to fulfill complex campaign requirements. The company said that this is particularly important to their clients across both the demand side and the supply side.
“We’re looking forward to integrating our BaaS platform into FreeWheel’s global infrastructure to accelerate our vision of giving our customers greater flexibility, transparency, and control over their media buying,” said Ari Paparo, CEO, Beeswax. “Now, together with Freewheel, we can deliver scale across all programmatic channels, including advanced TV advertising.”
This transaction is expected to close in January 2021, pending regulatory approvals.
