Adtech wiz Bidstalk’s journey to acquisition traces the rapid evolution of online advertising

Tim Koschella, co-founder and CEO of AppLift, with Vaibhav Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Bidstalk

Adtech startup Bidstalk, based in Singapore and India, today announced its acquisition by AppLift from Germany.

Little over a year old, Bidstalk has a cool tool to help advertisers bid for ad slots from publishers in real time on ad exchanges. The real-time bidding (RTB) product, launched at the Mobile World Congress last year, unshackles advertisers from traditional ad networks, while at the same time throwing open new revenue possibilities for publishers.

AppLift, which is in the business of marketing and monetizing apps and games, was one of Bidstalk’s clients for the last six months. That association inspired the two companies to meld.

Vaibhav Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Bidstalk, explains the rationale behind it in an exclusive chat with Tech in Asia:

In a way, we are a more technologically advanced company, while they are a very successful business with strong sales and marketing. Both of us are a good fit because we can help them grow their business programmatically and they can help us get more sales.

Tim Koschella, co-founder and CEO of AppLift, also explains what it means from the German company’s point of view:

We believe that in order to build an outstanding mobile marketing company, one needs to master the three pillars of data, technology, and services. AppLift has been strong on leveraging data for our clients’ user acquisition campaigns. What Vai and his team at Bidstalk bring to the table is their RTB expertise paired with rockstar technical skills. The RTB module was a missing part in our mosaic.

The deal is on a thin line between a merger and an acquisition. “It was more of a stocks swap. Our whole team has become part of AppLift, but our product will stay as Bidstalk,” says Gupta.

Fast moving space

Adtech is one of the most rapidly evolving spaces. It hasn’t even been a decade since ad networks that connected publishers and advertisers burst onto the scene. They aggregated inventory from multiple publishers to help marketers buy impressions across many websites.

Then came a more dynamic model – ad exchanges where ads are auctioned. Publishers too could now pick and choose advertisers easily, and vice versa. Both could do business programmatically and real-time bidding (RTB) became a game-changer.