AppLovin Completes Acquisition of Wurl to Extend Reach into Connected TV Market
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP), a leading marketing platform, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Wurl, a world leader in powering streaming TV, for approximately $430 million in cash and stock. The acquisition extends AppLovin's software platform capabilities into the Connected TV (CTV) market.
"We are excited to complete the acquisition of Wurl and provide advertisers with a seamless way to enter the rapidly growing CTV market," said Adam Foroughi, CEO and co-founder of AppLovin. "This partnership will allow us to scale our technology beyond mobile with the goal of bringing performance marketing to the CTV market and becoming the world's largest advertising ecosystem in the world."
Wurl enables content companies to distribute streaming video content to more than 300 million TVs and reach 30 million users globally each month. Through its performance advertising products, they can manage and monetize ad inventory, and build and track global distribution for branded linear channels, live events, and on-demand programming.
"This is a pivotal moment in our company history and for Wurl customers," said Sean Doherty Sr., CEO and co-founder of Wurl. "Combining with AppLovin will enable us to bring new advertising and marketing services to both CTV and mobile, while opening the door to many new opportunities for advertisers, content companies, and streamers alike."
In 2021, eMarketer projected that U.S. advertisers spent $14.4 billion on CTV, an increase of 60% compared to 2020, with ad spending projected to surpass $30 billion by 2025.1
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati served as legal advisors for AppLovin, and Fenwick & West LLP acted as legal advisor for Wurl. LionTree Advisors acted as exclusive financial advisor to Wurl.
About AppLovin
AppLovin's leading marketing software provides developers with a powerful, integrated set of solutions to grow their businesses. AppLovin enables developers to market, monetize, analyze and publish their apps. The company's first party content includes more than 350+ popular, engaging apps and its technology brings that content to millions of users around the world. AppLovin is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with several offices globally.
About Wurl
Wurl, the world leader in powering streaming TV, interconnects over 1,200 streaming channels from the world's top content companies with the leading streaming distribution services in over 50 countries. Reaching over 300 million connected TVs around the globe, the Wurl Network platform helps leading studios such as A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Bloomberg, BBC Studios, CNNi, Reuters and Sony Studios, deliver programming to the biggest streaming platforms, including Amazon IMDb TV, LG, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, Rakuten, and VIZIO, while maximizing monetization. Wurl is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "can," "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "will," "going to," "could," "intend," "target," "project,""believe," "estimate," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, priorities, plans, or intentions. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the expectations for our acquisition of Wurl and the CTV market, our expectations regarding our financial performance and how we intend to capture the synergies between our Company and Wurl. Our expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize, and actual results in future periods are subject to risks and uncertainties, including changes in our plans or assumptions, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks include fluctuations in our results of operations, our ability to expand our expertise to the CTV market, and changes in the overall economy. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
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1 US connected TV advertising will approach 60% growth by year-end, emarketer.com, eMarketer, November, 10 2021
Source: AppLovin Corp.
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