AOL said Tuesday that it has acquired buy.at. AOL said that buy.at will operate as a business unit of its subsidiary Advertising.com. This is likely a decent return on investment for Cazenove Private Equity (CPE) who invested 7.3 million pounds back in 2006. I seem to also recall that one of the executives who joined at that times was an ex-Advertising.com executive.
Congratulations to Malcolm Cowley and the others at buy.at!
With Buy.at, Advertising.com (AOL) acquires technology in addition to relationships with top UK and US publishers. But any CPA network can supply relationships. It is the value adds that make the difference in whether the Network can amass technology assets execute an exit strategy with advertising companies and agencies that have gaps in their coverage.
Buy.at has invested heavily in technology assets and thus has proven value as an acquisition. There are so many CPA Networks out there and many are trying to build platforms, tracking technologies and useful merchant side add ons and widgets. Those that succeed in my opinion will be targets for acquisition. Those networks that don’t will either have to polarize to a vertical or verticals, or fade away as their publisher base finds other networks with similar offers/payouts and better features and functionality.