The ad tech public era is over. Not literally, of course. A handful of scaled, still-growing platforms remain public. There just aren’t many of them, and the slower-growth, utility-margin names are dropping out one by one.
Nielsen agreed to buy DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion in cash last week (August 6), taking it private less than a year after its biggest rival, Integral Ad Science, went the same route last December in a roughly $2 billion deal with Novacap. LiveRamp is next off the board, headed for a Publicis-owned exit from the New York market by year end. Criteo, coming off a 14% revenue decline, is now in active take-private talks with Vista Equity Partners.
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