Disney Sells Ad-Tech Firm TrueX to Gimbal
September 28 2020 - 2:52PM
Dow Jones News
By Sahil Patel
Walt Disney Co. has sold TrueX Inc., an advertising-technology
company it absorbed as part of its $71.3 billion acquisition of
21st Century Fox assets in 2019, to Gimbal, a company that provides
location-based technology and ad services.
Financial terms of the deal weren't announced. Gimbal, the
customer-facing name of PaeDae Inc., paid less than $100 million
for TrueX, according to a person familiar with the matter.
TrueX is best known for offering video-ad technology that asks
users to interact with an ad before viewing content in exchange for
fewer or no commercials. Some publishers use TrueX ad formats
before TV shows or long-form videos on their sites and apps.
TrueX has pitched its approach as a way to improve both ad
effectiveness and the experience for web users, among them,
long-form digital video viewers accustomed to enduring multiple,
often repetitive ad breaks.
Gimbal acquired TrueX to grab a bigger foothold in advanced TV
advertising, said Rob Emrich, Gimbal's chief executive. That
includes streaming TV as well as "addressable TV," a method that
lets advertisers show different commercials to different households
watching the same shows on more traditional platforms such as
cable.
Addressable-TV ad spending in the U.S. will surpass $2 billion
this year, and is expected to exceed $3.6 billion in 2022,
according to research firm eMarketer.
"It's the fastest-growing part of our industry," Mr. Emrich
said.
Gimbal wants to use TrueX's technology to, for instance, help
marketers tell whether someone who browsed their products online is
worth advertising to, and whether any such ad drove results, like a
store visit.
TrueX's technology was attractive because of the firm's
relationship with TV app owners, Mr. Emrich said, but also because
its system solicits information on what viewers are interested in
-- while also helping establish that they are real humans, not bots
designed for ad fraud.
"Is this a real person because they are interacting with it?"
Mr. Emrich said. "That's a huge problem in the industry."
21st Century Fox bought TrueX in 2014 for close to $200
million.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Disney was
interested in selling TrueX, which it considered a noncore asset
and operated as an independent subsidiary of Fox and Disney.
Mr. Emrich said Gimbal and TrueX combined are a profitable
company, with revenue exceeding $100 million in 2019 and on a path
to do the same this year. No layoffs are planned as a result of the
transaction, he added.
Write to Sahil Patel at sahil.patel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 28, 2020 14:37 ET (18:37 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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