OpenX Announces Acquisition of Two Technology Companies To Provide Advanced Audience and Inventory Quality Protections for Publishers Globally

Company announces it has completed the acquisition of Mezzobit and PubNation

LONDON AND LOS ANGELES, 25 September 2017 – OpenX, the global leader in quality programmatic advertising, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of privately held technology companies Mezzobit and PubNation. The acquisitions further OpenX’s commitment to empowering publishers with total quality control over their business with the ability to maximize audience and inventory protections.

In the coming months OpenX will integrate Mezzobit and PubNation’s technology management and quality control technologies within its platform to provide publishers with an advanced enterprise solution, specifically designed to address the increased complexity of managing ad creatives in a header bidding and container environment. The acquisitions will complement OpenX’s substantial quality initiatives, which have consistently earned the company top rankings globally in independent quality reviews.

“Publishers are overwhelmed with quality concerns and, now more than ever, they need to have a partner that aggressively helps them to identify and manage the risks and opportunities of this new era of programmatic,” said John Murphy, head of marketplace quality at OpenX. “By rolling up two of the most advanced quality technologies in the market, OpenX is best equipped to provide publishers with the tools and insights they need to materially improve performance as they seek greater visibility, transparency, and control.”

Mezzobit allows publishers to track and control how third-party tags and pixels interact with their sites, helping to regain control over critical factors like page performance and data leakage. This holistic approach to site management enables publishers to not only know which third-party vendors are touching their audiences, but also assess what value, if any, the tags provide to the publisher. The Mezzobit discovery tool also assesses the potential negative impact a tag could have on user experience, such as increased latency. One recent study conducted by Mezzobit found that some Comscore 500 publishers had more than 75,000 third party tags on their site, with more than 1,000 tags found on a single page of inventory – many without the knowledge of the publisher.

Mezzobit’s technology will be integrated into OpenX’s suite of quality and insight tools to enable publishers to know what is happening on their page and empower them with the right information to ultimately improve overall site performance. As part of the deal terms, Mezzobit’s Poland-based engineering team will form the basis of OpenX’s new EMEA engineering and data science center of excellence.   

“As the digital world becomes more complex, publishers need to better protect their businesses by understanding how ad and marketing technology vendors interact with audiences,” said David Bennett, senior director of digital audience insights and engagement at Corus Entertainment, one of Canada’s largest media companies. “For Corus, our audience data is valuable, and we need to understand what is happening on our websites. Mezzobit’s technology gives us deep insights into tags and their actions, no matter how they arrive on our sites, giving us the information to take action where needed.”

PubNation’s technology equips publishers with the necessary tools to manage advertising quality at scale, irrespective of how many containers or exchanges they work with. With PubNation’s technology, publishers are able to quickly pinpoint and remove slow, resource-intensive and low-quality ads through real-time user feedback and automated page scanning. The streamlined reporting process helps publishers rapidly remove deleterious ads to ensure consumers have an optimal digital experience. According to an assessment from the Independent Journal Review, a top 50 website in the U.S., the ability to automate inventory quality with PubNation’s technology suite saved the publisher as much as 60 hours per month in time spent manually addressing advertising quality.

“As our header bidding partnerships have grown, PubNation has become an invaluable tool in maintaining ad quality from multiple SSPs,” said Emry Downinghall, vice president of advertising at Chegg Inc, the leading student-first connected learning platform. “It’s an excellent addition to the OpenX suite and a meaningful tool to improve the quality of programmatic advertising.”