Alibaba acquires China’s biggest adtech company, AdChina

Alibaba announced in a statement today it has bought a majority stake in AdChina, the country’s largest independent digital advertising technology platform. The investment sum was not disclosed.

AdChina will now work closely with Alimama and Aliyun, Alibaba’s marketing and cloud computing units, respectively. Together they will developed an end-to-end marketing service, which Alibaba says will allow it to increase brand-building and sales integration now used by companies and merchants. Alimama sells marketing to merchants on its popular marketplaces Taobao and Tmall.

“The rapid rise and development of the e-commerce industry in China has made the relationship between ecommerce and marketing ever-more linked," says Hua Wang, general manager of Alimama. "AdChina’s data marketing platform and Alimama’s existing online marketing business are very complementary."

He says the next three to five years will be crucial in building a marketing platform to aid ecommerce merchants in Alibaba’s ecosystem.

AdChina runs both a supply-side platform for those selling ad space and a demand-side platform for those buying that advertising space. It places those ads in both mobile apps and websites. At the end of 2013, AdChina was integrated with more than 60,000 mobile apps and reached over 80 percent of China’s mobile internet users.

AdChina, despite operating mainly in China, was founded in Silicon Valley in 2007. It received three rounds of funding, the latest in 2010 to the tune of US$40 million. It filed for a US$100 million IPO in early 2012, but pulled out one year later.

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