AdTech has been pretty hot in Paris in the past few years, and with Criteo’s IPO paving the way for M&A, it would seem that the best is yet to come. Sources close to the two companies have confirmed that French AdTech startup eBuzzing will announce a merger with Video AdTech startup Teads this week, in a move that will likely put the 300*-employee company one step closer to an IPO/exit.
Ebuzzing has raised over $45 Million from investors since being founded in 2007 by Bertrand Quesada & Pierre Chappaz. A series of mergers & acquisitions brought on board talent like Frederic Montagnon (Overblog, 2010), along with acquisitions of Nomao, BeeAd & Beezik, bulking up Ebuzzing’s Video AdTech product suite. (This paragraph has been updated to reflect certain inaccuracies originally reported using Crunchbase data).
Teads, founded in 2011 by Loïc Soubeyrand, Loïc Jaurès, and Olivier Reynaud, raised €4 Million from Partech & Elaia back in October for their Video AdExchange platform, quickly putting themselves on our list for potential future “Criteo”s, alongside Ebuzzing & StickyAds. With Teads joining Ebuzzing, and StickyAds recent spin-off (it separated in AdExchange from its services business line), Ebuzzing is on a good path for an IPO in the coming years, a trajectory confirmed by its founders, according to sources close to the company.
I’ve been saying it since Criteo announced they would IPO and Publicis announced their merger with Omnicom : Paris, seemingly overnight, has become a central hub for AdTech innovation, whether on the client side or the technology side. We’ve got the agency, we’ve got the technology, and we even have the media (Dailymotion, Prestashop, Overblog, etc.) to go with it. Expect more to come in the near future.