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Adteractive, Lead Gen, and Exits
Another rumor is that Adteractive is a shell of what it once was and that makes sense too. Adteractive had four or five major verticals. The ones I remember are:
- Incentive traffic - GONE
- Mortgage - GONE
- Thank you page offers - I don’t think that ever really worked well for them though
- Online Education - still around.
So, Apollo makes a ton of sense to me. EDU is where Adteractive must still be doing well.
What is interesting though is Sam mentioned it’s the year to acquire lead gen companies. But, is it? Some ad networks have been bought, but I think they were bought for their technology infrastructure as much as anything else. Right Media and Blue Lithium come to mind. Then, shopping guys such as Smarter and Nextag have been bought. Yes, I know Nextag has mortgage and edu, but the majority of the money is from shopping - so, none of these are really traditional lead gen players in the service space.
The more traditional lead gen companies such as QuinStreet, Adteractive, etc are still having trouble exiting. Owning that profitable relationship with a customer is just so important to a buyer, so perhaps that is why they are having trouble exiting or perhaps their shareholders don’t want to exit.
In either case, its this point that makes me think wonder if this rumor is true. But if it is, I wonder how much will Adteractive will get given its current state. Finally if they do sell, will the others more traditional lead gen players follow?
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Unless Adteractive has seriously imploded, Apollo would have to publicly disclose an acquisition, I think. They disclosed Aptimus, a $48 million acquisition, for instance.
http://reactionwheel.blogspot.com/2007/09/adteractive-acquired.html
Based on my discussions w/ execs at such companies I don’t think anyone is having trouble exiting. I think they’re all doing just fine ramping revs — especially in the .edu space. It take time to exit properly from IPOs to acquisitions.
There have been several sales of smaller ($10-$15mm in revs, that is) companies recently also, mainly to private equity players looking to aggregate a larger entity.
Adteractive has been acquired by Next Internet, an holding company . If you dont know nextinternet (www.nextinternet.com) they own webjuice and a stake in datran. Their founder is Kenneth Chen from Netblue. Apollo has been spurring this along or may have been involved in this deal. There were layoffs in Adteractive in the last couple of weeks. Adteractive is still strong on .edu and they have some good people there. The real question is that whether their phenomenal shop of broad and deep offers have narrowed permanently? This is a great story of the decline of one of the best companies, if not the best, in the space. How it came to be that a pool of amazing brilliance with aggressive piranhas and sharks in the past became a lazy big -company management heavy fat duck and puppy show happy with some bones since early 2006, god only knows! I hope this acquisition will bode well for Adteractive and Kenneth and the space in general including the FTC. Adteractive needs to get back the sharks of the past to have a chance in hell in this space. Maybe Next Internet is the silver bullet.
Next Internet has acquired Adteractive. Come on guys, this is 2008, not 2005. The brilliance is long gone. Appropriate acquisition though. Next Internet has Webjuice, now they have Lemonjuice. Before long, they will bring in the Six Sigma Juice managers who will suck the lemons dry. “pool of amazing brilliance with piranhas and sharks” that is right! They are long gone, and Ken got a dud. It spells the same backward. Ken spells nek backward. He is nek deep in lemons! hohoho he will wish he had old adteractive guys behind him now but they aint there; he should overhaul adteractive- fire all the late 2005 and after and hire the before 2005. Adteractive was raising 100m+ with 40 people. And then could not sell for a dime with 150 people. Leeeeemonjuice.com