‘It’s hard to be a $7 billion company’: The investment banker’s diagnosis for ad tech’s public woes

Public ad tech is disappearing and an investment banker just explained why. 

According to Josh Wepman, managing director of technology investment banking at Houlihan Lokey, it isn’t a performance problem. It’s a size one. Most public ad tech companies, he said at Exchanewire’s ATS London conference yesterday, sit at market caps too small for the investors who move real money to bother with. 

“It’s hard to be a $7 billion company, right?,” he said in response to being asked whether all publicly-traded ad tech companies should be taken private. “You’re looking at trying to attract investment dollars from different indices or mutual funds, they often don’t. It’s hard to put real volume into a business that has an $800 million market cap.”

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How Reuters’ dynamic paywall is boosting subscriptions and ads

“It’s basically like magic. Overnight, the dollars start to flow.”

That’s how Phil Andraos, gm for digital at Reuters, described the dynamic paywall Reuters launched earlier this year, speaking onstage at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami on Monday. 

Though Reuters’ subscription offering will reach its two year anniversary in October, the more recent dynamic paywall has been fundamental in growing Reuters’ subscriber base while also protecting its ad revenue business, Andraos said. 

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