Operative announced today the completion of its acquisition of STAQ, a data collection, normalization and visualization technology company, and a leader in programmatic digital business management. The acquisition will further expand upon Operative's capabilities to aggregate, automate, normalize and optimize data, allowing Media companies to take full control of their entire supply and demand chain. The parties have signed a definitive agreement and expect to close in the coming days.
STAQ technology automates the collection of revenue and inventory information from over 400 sources, centralizing data for customers. The centralization of data is complemented with the ability to create and merge data sets and apply complex decisioning, providing customers with the necessary insights to increase yield and optimization. Data is surfaced to users through customizable visualization tools, making it easy to identify actionable insights to deliver meaningful business results.
This acquisition solidifies Operative's commitment to provide leading digital advertising business management capabilities to customers. Combining direct and programmatic sales data in a single system gives customers the ability to make more informed pricing and inventory allocation decisions, ultimately resulting in higher yield. The benefits of easily accessing data across platforms embedded in a seamless workflow creates significant operational efficiencies for digital media companies, as well as providing holistic customer views. This has become increasingly important as marketers continue to diversify their advertising investments. These added capabilities dovetail with Operative's launch of the AOS digital beta program slated for May. AOS is an open, highly configurable business management solution built on modern technology to support the entire pitch-to-pay workflow across all inventory types.
A combined Operative and STAQ will provide market-leading capabilities in an environment where fragmentation of viewership, data and technology has created remarkable complexities for media organizations to horizontally optimize their assets. The investment allows Operative customers to unify and analyze information across all supply and demand channels in an automated way, providing advanced decision-making capabilities embedded within the pitch-to-pay functions of AOS. STAQ's next generation integration technology and data processing services will also provide fully automated stewardship and verification across all campaigns regardless of inventory type.
"Operative continues to provide customers the tools needed to succeed in a dynamic and complex market. Our investment in STAQ reinforces our commitment to help propel the industry forward by enabling media companies and marketers to optimize their business outcomes through unification of data and automation of process," said Lorne Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Operative.
"The combination of Operative and STAQ is as natural as it gets, with a common customer base and complimentary product offerings. The benefit of improved interoperability coupled with Operative's unbiased approach to partner with the long list of companies STAQ integrates with today, seemed like a win-win for our customers," said Andy Ellenthal, Chief Executive Officer, STAQ.
"It's not about building a media plan; it's about building the best media plan. This acquisition will combine the best-in-class data aggregation and normalization capabilities STAQ has to offer with open and highly configurable ad and content management capabilities of AOS. The investment validates our commitment to provide the gold-standard of digital advertising business management solutions, and to provide customers with a future-proofed converged operational tool set," said Jason Witt, Chief Product Officer, Operative.
About Operative
Operative is the preferred broadcast management for linear and digital, and a software partner for over 300 of the world's top media brands, including NBCU, CBS, ABC, AT&T, STARZ, Star India, Seven Australia and Sky. No other software company brings a comparable depth of experience to create truly innovative software that performs across all platforms, revenue models, and business units. Since 2000, Operative has grown to over 1200+ employees in 12 offices around the world and processes more than $40 billion in linear and digital advertising revenue for the best-known companies in the industry. For more information, visit www.operative.com
