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Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Screen Tonic, a European based mobile advertising pioneer. Screen Tonic is based in Paris and will continue to operate out of its current headquarters. Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
According to Didier Kuhn, CEO and co-founder of ScreenTonic:
Mobile advertising is expected to experience tremendous growth over the next five years. We are very excited to expand our presence in this exciting marketplace with Microsoft. We’re confident that the combined strengths, services expertise and talent of our companies will deliver a great experience for advertisers, publishers and mobile operators alike.
Screen Tonic has developed a mobile advertising platform called Stamp that can deliver banner and text link ads on portals, interstitial ads in Java and MMS applications, video billboards, ad spots in SMS messages, and keyword or context-sensitive ads on geolocated pages. The platform also has an Ad Manager that handles operations such as inventory planning, reserving ad space, stock management, ad verification and testing, programming, performance control and live campaign optimization, detailed report generation and campaign invoicing.
ScreenTonic hit a major milestone in January when it surpassed the one billion mark in the number of page impressions sold for mobile phones. There are around 2.5 billion mobile phones in the world, with 100% population of Europe owning a mobile phone. In addition to this 40 million unique visitors access Internet from their mobile phones every month.
Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft has commented that:
The acquisition of ScreenTonic will be part of our long-term strategy to deliver ad experiences that map to the environment. Together, we will be able to provide relevant ads where consumers are, when they are actively engaged and communicating.
Microsoft wanted to acquire DoubleClick, an online ad exchange platform but could not do so because of Google’s intervention. After the deal there were some serious gossip that DoubleClick actually turned down a higher bid from Microsoft to go with Google, as a result of this disgust Microsoft rallied Federal regulators to investigate Google DoubleClick deal on anti-trust grounds. We are also hearing rumors that Microsoft is interested in buying 24/7 Real Media an online advertising company. But with the Screen Tonic acquisition Microsoft has finally got its hands on an advertisement company. Furthermore this deal would give Microsoft a thumbs up in the mobile advertisement market against rivals Yahoo and Google.
