Roku Buys DSP Dataxu For $150 Million In Cash/Stock Deal

Roku, the big OTT platform, has inked an agreement to buy demand-side platform dataxu for $150 million in cash and stock.

The move is intended to boost Roku -- which has more than 30.5 million active accounts as of June -- as a full-service platform to better compete with other major OTT platforms, including Amazon Fire TV, which has its own DSP.

Amazon claims north of 34 million Amazon Fire TV users.

Back in June, Amazon Fire TV began allowing video publishers to sell advertising through third-party demand-side platforms (DSPs) dataxu and The Trade Desk -- as well as selling advertising through Amazon’s own DSP. 

The Boston-based dataxu provides marketers with an automated bidding, self-serve platform for managing advertising campaigns programmatically across digital platforms. Advanced TV and OTT media-planning tools help to optimize business outcomes across TV, OTT, desktop and mobile.

Speaking at the MediaPost TV/Video Insider Summit on Tuesday, Julie Anson, director of strategic investment of advanced TV for Magna Global, said the positive has been that dataxu was “agnostic” when it came to digital media buying, adding that “they are not agnostic any longer.”

Back in October 2018, a report said dataxu was seeking a $300 million valuation for a potential sale of the company.

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