Amobee After its $321 Million Acquisition with SingTel

Many folks in the internet industry know about SingTel’s whopping $321 million acquisition of Amobee. But Amobee’s business is actually more than a mobile ad network management platform. It is also a mobile ad agency, helping clients with creatives, copy, strategy, and media buys. It’s an end-to-end mobile ad solution business.

Over the past few months, the acquisition raised eyebrows and discussions in the Southeast Asian internet industry. Several reliable sources told me that the integration between Amobee and SingTel hasn’t been that smooth. But other sources said that things are okay so far.

So what’s going on with the companies’ integration? I was told that SingTel’s grand plan is to have all its subsidiaries using the Amobee platform. This way, it is easier to plan and push mobile ad campaigns across Southeast Asia: Singapore (SingTel), Thailand (AIS), Australia (Optus), Indonesia (Telkomsel), and Philippines (Globe). A reliable source told me that the subsidiaries weren’t forced to use Amobee, but in the end all of them chose to anyway. In fact, Amobee CEO Trevor Healy told me that all the integrations have already been completed except for Thailand’s AIS.

One of my sources in a company that has integrated with Amobee told me about his experience working with Amobee:

It has been smooth so far. Our technology team is working with Amobee and there isn’t any major problem with the integration. We haven’t actually used it for mobile advertising. So we can’t fully comment until we run it. Even if we don’t use Amobee, our company will not be affected much. We will just use our previous mobile ad management system we had.

But not everyone’s comment has been great when we asked about Amobee. One of our sources from SingTel told me:

Yes, we’re having problems with Amobee which is true. We’ve tried using them, the consumer side has also tried using them but they do not produce results and they are actively pushing for us to use Amobee but most of us are refusing. Besides, they are charging big media agency rates like Zenith, even though we are “related.”

Trevor Healy, CEO of Amobee

To be fair, I also took time to speak to Trevor Healy, the CEO of Amobee. When I raised the problems mentioned above, Trevor was very open and transparent in answering my questions. He took the long route in explaining why these problems can’t be true:

First, Amobee kept almost 100 percent of its employees and if there were really big integration problems, employees wouldn’t be staying, he says. He also commented that out of the four acquisitions he experienced so far, this one with SingTel has been the smoothest.