Imagine Communications has acquired OpenTV’s advanced advertising business unit to complement its media, playout and networking product lines.
Neither Imagine nor the Kudelski Group, which owns OpenTV, revealed the purchase price.
The products acquired from OpenTV include the EclipsePlus, EclipsePlus/xG Billing, EclipsePlus/xG Insights and EclipsePlus/xG Linear advertising campaign management solutions. The product line provides campaign management, traffic and billing. The suite is capable of combining 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), Imagine said.
The OpenTV unit claims a client base of MVPDs around the world, who use Eclipse products to manage over 1.2 billion spots and over $3 billion of advertising revenue annually. Past users of some of these products include Time Warner Cable and Comcast Spotlight.
Imagine also said 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.
The transition to IP means that the entire video chain, from initial image capture to last mile distribution to viewers is beginning to converge on an increasingly heterogeneous set of technologies and standards. Many companies have been staking positions along the length of that chain, including the company that used to be called Harris and is now known after a recent acquisition that got it into service provider distribution – Imagine. Given its Harris provenance in the broadcaster industry, that market remains a focus for Imagine. Imagine Communications vice president product marketing Glenn LeBrun said the company expects to sell that vision to “traditional broadcasters and the local affiliates, but also the ABCs, ESPNs, and BBCs, and then all the way to the distributors.”
LeBrun explained the broadcast market especially is still dependent on unique systems – “snowflakes” – from a variety of different vendors who do not have a common framework as you might see in the cable or telco markets.
“We’re trying to move away from snowflakes and toward an IP-based, virtualized market,” he said. “We see this as one continuous process, and the best way to do it is with software-based systems using data centers – both private and public clouds.”
Imagine CTO Steve Reynolds said, “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.”
“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.”