Millennial Media Reports Q3 Revenue Of $69.8M, Continues Shift To Programmatic

Millennial Media, a mobile ad network turned programmatic exchange, has released its Q3 2014 earnings, reporting $69.8 million in revenue for the quarter. Revenue was up from $56.1 million one year ago, or 24.4%.

The revenue was toward the top of Millennial’s expected revenue for the quarter, which is projected to be in the range of $65 million to $70 million.

However, Millennial lost $109.4 million on the quarter, attributing $93.5 million of the loss to an “impairment charge,” which arose “based on a substantial decline in its stock price and market capitalization resulting in an excess of the book value of the Company's net assets,” per its earnings report.

Michael Barrett, president and CEO of Millennial Media, said in a statement that the company “took significant steps towards straightening and accelerating [its] programmatic capabilities" during Q3, the largest of which was its $107.5 million Nexage acquisition.

Nexage is a large mobile RTB (real-time bidding) ad exchange that Millennial acquired for three main reason, according to Mobile Marketing Daily: to provide a “leading exchange that lets demand-side platforms and trading desks buy impressions via open auctions or privately; a supply-side platform (SSP) for publishers and developers; and an ad server publishers can use to run directly sold campaigns.”

Millennial launched its own RTB ad exchange in 2013, and when it acquired Nexage, the company was mum on the future of its existing exchange -- telling Real-Time Daily that it wasn't ready to discuss plans about the two mobile ad exchanges, citing the unfinalized deal.

Barrett noted in the statement that the company has “begun to align [its] management organization towards best addressing both the manual and machine-based segments of the mobile advertising market,” indicating that Millennial is still in the midst of its pivot from a people-driven ad network to a machine-driven ad exchange.

Millennial projects Q4 2014 revenue to be in the range of $70 to $75 million, with a loss of between $5.5 million and $6.5 million.

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