Left to right: Frederick Himperich, Managing Director of Traffective, Ilhan Zengin, CEO of ShowHeroes, and Matthias Greiner, Head of Publisher at Traffective.
ShowHeroes, a Berlin-based ad tech business specialising in CTV and video advertising solutions, this morning announced it has acquired fellow German ad tech outfit Traffective for an undisclosed fee. ShowHeroes says the deal is a step towards building “one of Europe’s largest independent monetisation platforms across CTV, video, and display”, with the combined company working with nearly 2,000 publisher partners, generating over 25 billion ad impressions per month.
Embracing the multi-screen ecosystem
Traffective describes itself as a programmatic monetisation platform, offering a range of display advertising monetisation solutions for its publisher partners including yield management and an IAB-certified consent management platform. It also runs its own video marketplace for in-stream monetisation, which includes support for publishers which don’t have their own library of video content. Currently, Traffective works with over 300 publishers in Germany.
ShowHeroes says the two businesses’ offerings are complementary. Bringing together ShowHeroes’ contextual targeting technology and CTV and video capabilities with Traffective’s programmatic monetisation and yield optimisation tools will help the combined business to more effectively serve publishers across all the channels they use to distribute content. Publishers which have traditionally leaned heavily on written content are increasingly launching in-house studios as they push more aggressively into video, ramping up their online video output, and dipping their toes into CTV. Through this acquisition, ShowHeroes hopes to be able to service these types of publishers on all fronts.
“Traffective has built a monetisation logic that has proven itself over many years in one of Europe’s most competitive digital markets,” said Ilhan Zengin, founder and CEO of ShowHeroes. “Our ambition is to scale this technology internationally and connect it with our global demand infrastructure. By combining yield optimisation, contextual intelligence and our AI-powered CTV and video stack, we are strengthening what premium publishers can achieve across the full multi-screen ecosystem.”
Traffective will maintain its distinct brand, operating as ‘Traffective by ShowHeroes’, and ShowHeroes says there will be not operational changes for Traffective’s existing publisher partners. That’s not to say they won’t see an impact – ShowHeroes operates an international sales business, which should benefit Traffective’s publisher network by bringing in more international budgets.
Over time, ShowHeroes plans to roll out Traffective’s solutions across its own international market structures, covering Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The company is experienced in integrating acquired companies into its wider business, having made a number of acquisitions across various markets over the past six years. These have included AI-powered video editing platform Vidds, Asian digital video business iVS, performance marketing solutions provider Agon Digital, and cross-screen ad platform smartclip LATAM.
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