Oracle is bowing out of the advertising business. CEO Safra Catz said advertising revenue fell to around $300 million in fiscal 2024 during a call with investors discussing the company’s most recent quarterly earnings. That’s a steep decline from even two years ago, when the segment reportedly generated $2 billion in revenue while still only growing at an anemic rate, according to Business Insider. Catz did not go into further detail about the wind down plans.
The company’s exit from the ad industry represents a “significant opportunity” for other players in the space, according to Adam Schenkel, executive vice president of global platform strategy and operations at contextual advertising intelligence firm GumGum.
“While one might assume that this revenue will simply shift to Oracle’s biggest competitors, it's important to note that this transition coincides with a period of significant innovation within the advertising industry,” Schenkel said in a statement. “As reliance on traditional cookies diminishes, a variety of companies are emerging with great technology that could redefine the landscape.”
The cloud-computing giant built out its advertising division through a series of acquisitions beginning in the early 2010s. Its dealmaking came with some hefty price tags, including $1.5 billion for Responsys in 2013, $1.2 billion for Datalogix in 2014 and $850 million for measurement firm Moat in 2017. Other acquisitions included BlueKai, Virtue and Grapeshot, among others.
Marketing Dive has inquired into Oracle’s future plans for its assets, as well as the timeline for the advertising shutdown, and will update this story pending a response.
Oracle’s advertising bets encountered challenges stemming from changes to Facebook’s data-sharing policies in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 and more stringent regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Oracle ended its third-party data services in Europe in 2020 following a GDPR lawsuit. Last year, it shuttered AddThis, which it bought for $200 million in 2016, AdExchanger previously reported. BlueKai was also in the spotlight due to a class-action lawsuit filed against Oracle in the U.S. over its data-sharing practices in 2022.
