Rubicon Project has closed a deal for Canadian ad tech firm Chango for an estimated $122 million, paid “primarily in stock”. 

A statement from the acquiring firm states that Chango’s ad retargeting technology would enable users of its ad marketplace to access “intent marketing capabilities”, driven by solutions which connect display and video ads with consumer data. 

Rubicon Project believes Chango is worth $35 billion in marketing spend, passed over by brands that want to target users which have already expressed an intent to purchase.

Analysts are also backing the move to give Rubicon the scale it needs to expand globally. 

Changing hands

Prior to the deal, Chango earned a reputation as one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech enterprises, built on a foundation of using basic search queries from users to serve relevant and contextual ads.

The company’s technology now processes data from around one trillion page views per month, also sifting through billions of search events to afford brands the luxury of targeting users that are interested in specific items or services. 

Frank Addante, CEO, founder and chief product architect at Rubicon Project, says: “The team at Chango has done an extraordinary job engineering and deploying their intent marketing technology; they have built terrific products and a stellar team.

“Chango’s technology brings keyword, contextual targeting and retargeting to premium display, mobile and video advertising. This will enable us to bring intent marketing budgets to an independent, open marketplace that serves premium buyers and sellers at scale for the first time.”

Building presence 

Chango has around 150 employees, some of whom will now be used to bake the company’s technology into Rubicon’s various display advertising solutions. 

Chris Sukornyk, CEO and founder of Chango, sees plenty of benefits stemming from his company’s side of the deal. 

“Rubicon Project has been the leader in advertising automation since its inception in 2007,” he commented.

“This deal will enable us to leverage Rubicon Project’s massive reach of sellers, buyers and consumers to accelerate our combined market share and bring intent marketing to premium display, mobile and video advertising at an even greater scale.”