In keeping with our mission to provide comprehensive advertising analysis, MediaRadar puts together a report of the most important mergers and acquisitions news each week. Stay in the loop, whether you sell advertising space or focus on business development.
This week, Sirius XM Radio advances its podcast push with Stitcher, VersaPay merged with payment services provider Solupay, and Episerver made an important purchase of Optimizely.
Sirius XM Radio gains podcasting company Stitcher
Sirius XM has completed an acquisition of podcasting company Stitcher from broadcasting company E.W. Scripps in a deal worth $325 million. The move comes less than a month after Sirius picked up Simplecast for its podcast distribution and analytics tools.
The addition of Stitcher puts Sirius in a better position to start competing against the leaders in podcasting like Spotify, iHeartMedia, and Apple. Stitcher also comes with its production arm Earwolf, which produces original content such as Freakonomics Radio, Office Ladies, and Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
Sirius will need to figure out how to combine its ad tech and monetization platform AdsWizz with Stitcher’s Midroll Media network for podcast advertising.
Once all pieces have been put in place, between Sirius XM, Stitcher, and Pandora, which was acquired in 2018, the company says it will reach roughly 150 million listeners and boast “the largest addressable audience” in the U.S. for digital audio.
VersaPay merges with Solupay
VersaPay, a fintech company that specializes in accounts receivable software, announced that it has completed a merger with payment services provider Solupay.
Solupay enables suppliers and merchants to simplify payment acceptance, deliver “click-to-pay” invoices and automate receivable processes through cloud-based solutions. The addition of Solupay will further strengthen VersaPay’s accounts receivable (AR) automation and integrated B2B payments offerings.
Following the merger, the enlarged company will operate under the Versapay brand. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
VersaPay currently serves a global network of 8,000 clients and 500,000 users conducting $10 billion in annual payment volume. VersaPay is a subsidiary of capital market company Great Hill Partners since it was acquired in February.
Episerver made acquisition of Optimizely to compete with Adobe
Episerver announced it has completed an acquisition of Optimizely to create “the most advanced digital experience platform to optimize every customer touchpoint across the entire user journey.”
The deal marks Episerver’s third acquisition since 2016, and could be an important addition to help compete against Adobe, which has dominated the digital experience software market for the past few years and grew 31% last year to $3.21 billion in digital experience revenue.
Episerver plans to extend capabilities around content and commerce with the addition of Optimizely’s experimentation tools.
Optimizely announced last year that it had raised $150 million in financing, including a $50 million boost in Series D funding from Goldman Sachs, but the company was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and admitted to laying off 15% of staff in July.
Episerver is a privately held portfolio company of Insight Partners since it was acquired by Insight Venture Partners in 2018 for $1.16 billion.
In Other News
Here are other noteworthy deals coming up soon:
- Market operator and trading solution provider Cboe Global Markets, Inc. announced that it is acquiring BIDS Trading.
- Intel Corporation has agreed to sell its NAND memory chip business to South Korea’s memory chipmaker SK Hynix for $9 billion.
- Verizon Communications Inc. announced that it is acquiring certain assets of Bluegrass Cellular, a regional wireless company.
- Pioneer Natural Resources Co. is buying its rival Parsley Energy Inc. for a whopping $4.5 billion.
- PNM Resources is being acquired by Connecticut-based utility and renewable energy development company Avangrid for $4.3 billion.
- It’s been just seven months since the one-of-a-kind, short-form streaming platform Quib- launched, but it’s already time to say goodbye for good. “On or around December 1st” the platform will close its doors.
