News Corp is continuing its interest in buying in technology platforms to help it to its journalism and ad sales, following its acquisition of Storyful by buying the video marketing platform Unruly Media.
What does the deal mean? Media banker and adviser Terence Kawaja, whose company LUMA Partners advised Unruly in the transaction, gave three talking points to Beet.TV:
- “This is the first scaled transaction in the native space. Video has expanded greatly – Unruly was one of the leaders. This technology will allow (News Corp) to enhance yield maximisation across all of their premium titles.”
- “This is a scaled exit for European technology. It’s $90m upfront, $86m contingent. It’s a $176m transaction, which is pretty scaleable for Europe, (where) exits are very few and far between.”
- “It’s always pleasing to see female tech entrepreneurs do well, and there’s none better than Sarah. She’s a great tech entrepreneur.”
As co-founder Sarah Wood explained to Beet.TV in May, Unruly systems have analyzed viewing and sharing data for two trillion online video views. Using everything Unruly has learned about viral video, they can predict the likely shareability of given video content or themes, and also provide analytics to track virality.
Unruly will now report in to Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News Corp’s News UK division, who was recently returned to the helm there following her acquittal of phone hacking charges last year and who also has oversight of Storyful.
This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C Insights + Teletrax.