Imagine Communications Acquires OpenTV’s Advanced Advertising Business Unit from the Kudelski Group

Imagine Communications announced it has acquired the assets of the advanced advertising business unit of OpenTV, Inc., from the Kudelski Group. The acquired assets will expand and enhance Imagine Communications’ advertising business systems portfolio – which already manages more than $25 billion in annual advertising revenue worldwide – and provide the MVPD markets with new capabilities for consolidated, multi-platform billing and extended support for both impression-based and ratings-based advertising.

“The acquisition of OpenTV’s advanced advertising business amplifies our commitment to the MVPD market and accelerates the investments we are making in our advertising business systems portfolio,” said Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine Communications. “The advanced advertising management technologies we have acquired from OpenTV add new capabilities to our portfolio and complement our media, playout and networking platforms. The addition of the experienced and talented research, development and services team from OpenTV further expands our world-class engineering and support expertise to create new innovations for this growing market segment.”

The products acquired from OpenTV include the EclipsePlus, EclipsePlus/xG Billing, EclipsePlus/xG Insights and EclipsePlus/xG Linear advertising campaign management solutions. Many of the world’s leading MVPDs use these products to manage over 1.2 billion spots and over $3 billion of advertising revenue annually. The products provide campaign management, traffic and billing for the smallest to largest operators, handling thousands of local and interconnected networks and channel environments. In addition, these software-based solutions help address the need to simplify and combine the billing and reporting from multiple order management and traffic systems into a single client invoice based on each ad’s metrics and pricing for any type of campaign, including linear, on-demand, addressable, Web, mobile, long-form and over-the-top (OTT).

“Broadband, the Internet and mobility are substantially contributing to the changing viewing habits of the new video consumer, making the challenges of managing video advertising campaigns increasingly complex and impacting media companies’ ability to monetize their content,” said Steve Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer at Imagine Communications. “The advanced advertising assets acquired from OpenTV are the result of significant investments in innovation to resolve these challenges for MVPDs by streamlining operations, lowering costs, providing rich analytics, and managing the complexity of working across both traditional and new media environments.”

The acquired products will be supported alongside Imagine Communications’ existing advertising business systems offerings while providing a foundation for future developments that include linear, online, OTT and programmatic business models for TV and radio.