Dive summary:
- AppNexus, an ad tech firm, raised $75 million in private funding thus ending any predictions of acquisitions or IPO in the near future.
- AppNexus CEO Brian O'Kelley says the only way an acquistion will happen is if the buyer is completely in line the advertising goals of AppNexus.
- IPO could happen within the next two or more years, but O'Kelley says with private funding there is no need to gather public funding too.
From the article:
"For now, O’Kelley aims to build on the business that last year served more than 13 billion ads a day—quintuple the company’s 2011 mark—and $700 million in ad spend. In a blog post announcing the latest funding round, O’Kelley teased new products and features that will roll out over the next few months and bring about the third generation of the ad exchange era, but he didn’t say much more during Thursday’s call. "There’s some stuff I’m not going to talk about until [AppNexus Summit in April]. As a Steve Jobs fan, there’s something fun about going on stage to announce something," he said, before hinting at AppNexus’s focus on automating publishers’ reserve inventory."
