24/7 Real Media today announced the acquisition of privately held Decide Interactive, a provider of paid search management and optimization technology and services headquartered in Australia.
24/7 Real Media acquired all outstanding shares of Decide Interactive for $15 million in cash and 4.5 million shares of 24/7 Real Media’s common stock, valued at $11 million. Additionally, the terms included a contingent earn-out payment of up to $7.5 million to be paid to the former Decide Interactive shareholders based on financial performance of the Decide Interactive business through 2005.
Decide Interactive’s market-leading, proprietary technology, Decide DNA, powers an array of service offerings and enables online marketers to manage thousands of keyword and content-based campaigns across all major international paid search engines, including Yahoo!/Overture, Google, FindWhat.com/Espotting and others. These offerings include paid inclusion and pay-for-placement management. As Overture’s trusted feed generator partner, Decide Interactive works with clients of Overture’s Site Match Xchangetm Program to provide XML implementation, reporting and ongoing feed optimization.
According to 24/7 Real Media, Decide DNA’s sophisticated optimization algorithms allow advertisers to achieve multiple performance-based goals, such as aggregate ROI and campaign yield management, in an automated, real-time environment. Decide Interactive customers include companies such as Walmart.com, Citysearch Australia, Hotwire and Carat Interactive.
“This acquisition expands and enhances 24/7 Real Media’s suite of paid search marketing technology and services, providing our clients with enhanced campaign effectiveness and transparency,” said David J. Moore, chairman and chief executive officer of 24/7 Real Media. “With Decide Interactive’s proprietary technology, 24/7 Real Media is well positioned to capitalize on the significant global growth opportunities for paid search spending in the United States and throughout the rest of the world.”
“We believe that 24/7’s global footprint, combined with our technology, business and capabilities, provides a very compelling growth platform in paid search,” said Keith Lambert, chief executive officer of Decide Interactive.
Lambert said, “Having designed Decide DNA from day one to handle advanced character language sets, such as Korean and Japanese, we are very excited to make a strong push into these markets through 24/7 Real Media’s local operating subsidiary, 24/7 Real Media Korea. The collective strengths of the Decide DNA technology, along with 24/7’s established sales force and local relationships, make the combined businesses a very exciting prospect.”
Decide Interactive’s existing relationships with Australian-based advertisers and online publishers also create many early cross-selling opportunities for the combined entity. Lambert will spearhead these efforts as 24/7 Real Media’s new president of Australian Operations and senior vice president of Global Search Solutions.
“In addition to Decide Interactive benefiting from the distribution capacity of 24/7 Real Media’s existing sales networks in North America, Europe and Asia, this acquisition provides numerous additional products and services for the Australian Internet advertising market,” Lambert said. “Decide Interactive’s existing clients will gain from our ability to offer 24/7 Real Media’s broad range of analytics and ad serving technology solutions.”
Decide Interactive generated positive net income over the past seven months. 24/7 Real Media anticipates that Decide Interactive’s operations will generate more than $3 million in revenue for 24/7 Real Media in the fourth quarter of 2004. The Company anticipates this acquisition to be neutral to 24/7 Real Media’s pro forma operating income per share during the fourth quarter of 2004, and accretive to pro forma operating income per share throughout 2005. 24/7 Real Media also currently anticipates that Decide Interactive will grow revenues consistent with the Company’s long-term, organic revenue growth rate.
Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
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