Nexage Joins Parade of Boston Mobile-Ad Acquisitions, for $107.5M

[Updated 4pm, see below.] The Boston area has an impressive history of mobile-advertising startups being acquired for large sums (usually $100 million-plus): Third Screen Media, Enpocket, Quattro Wireless, Where, Jumptap.

Now add Nexage to that list. The mobile-ad exchange is being acquired by Millennial Media, the Baltimore-based advertising giant that also bought Jumptap last year. Nexage’s acquisition price is $107.5 million, most of it in stock ($85 million), the rest in cash ($22.5 million). That’s a significant fraction of Millennial’s (NYSE: [[ticker:MM]]) market cap, which is a little over $200 million.

Nexage didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But when I talked to the company last fall, it said it had about 70 employees and was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue. What’s more, it claimed to be the last independent ad-exchange standing, at least in the U.S.

[Added paragraph with new comments] Reaching out by e-mail and phone, Nexage’s chief marketing officer, Victor Milligan, said the firm has about 85 people in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and London, and that the combined companies are complementary to one another. “The strategic intent of the deal is centered on revenues,” Milligan said. “The combined company will be the largest independent, scaled mobile-ad marketplace to compete with Google, Twitter, and Facebook.” By “independent,” he meant that the other players have a stake in publishing content, but Nexage doesn’t.

With deals like Twitter buying MoPub and Google being the perennial giant in digital advertising, the race has been on to connect advertisers with mobile Web publishers and app developers. (I won’t get into the details of ad exchanges, but the well-named Ad Exchanger has more context around mobile ad-tech.)

Nexage had raised about $24 million from investors including GrandBanks Capital, Relay Ventures, Hearst Ventures, and SingTel’s venture group. The company is led by CEO Ernie Cormier and chairman Mike Baker, who’s also chief executive of Boston-based DataXu.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.