Global media giant News Corp. has acquired video advertising come “viral video” firm Unruly Media Ltd. for up to $176 million.

The purchase price for the acquisition is reported to consist of a cash payment £58 million ($90 million), subject to certain adjustments, and up to £56 million ($86 million) on top in “future consideration primarily related to payments contingent upon the achievement of certain performance objectives,” or in layman’s terms the company hitting performance targets.

Founded back in 2006, Unruly was one of the early video advertising firms in the first great wave of what was then commonly referred to as Web 2.0.

The company’s video distribution platform delivers verifiable video views via paid media across mobile, desktop and tablet devices, and comes complete with sophisticated targeting capabilities that utilize historical sharing behavior to predict the potential for video ads to go viral across all digital touchpoints.

Unruly’s products include Sharerank, tech that is said to predict the “virality” of videos across social media; In-feed advertising, a mobile-focused video ad format that adapts to news feed formats; In-page advertising, delivering video advertising on article pages; and skippable in-stream advertising that programmatic targeting and prominent branding within an existing video player.

“Unruly is a feisty and creative company with a start-up sensibility that fits perfectly with our own approach to developing businesses in the digital age, News Corp. Chief Executive Robert Thomson said in a statement. “The acquisition will serve as a catalyst for our brands, helping to extend our expertise in the digital and mobile video area, whether through the fast-growing realtor.com in the U.S., Fox Sports in Australia, News America Marketing, HarperCollins Publishers, or our market-leading mastheads around the world”

A personal note

The most staggering thing about this news, on a personal note, is that I can’t believe Unruly got this big.

I ran their video ads nearly a decade ago, back when they were a new company offering serious money at the time to have video ads play on blogs; I think the couple of times I ran the ads I was paid generally not a lot of money (maybe $20-$30) as I was using them on non-high trafficked sites that didn’t really lend themselves to the sorts of campaigns they were running. That said, I know of others who have worked with them over the years and have profited handsomely from what they offer.

Clearly they’ve moved away from simply the placing video ads on blog model in 2015, to the point that they now claim that they’ve served 2 trillion video ad views, a staggering number for a company which had humble beginnings in London.

It’s not entirely clear how much Unruly raised prior to acquisition, but they are known to have raised a $25 million Series A round in 2012.

Image credit: screenshot/ Unruly.