Adknowledge Acquires Hydra

CoreyPeerFly Notable Member Affiliate Manager

Messages:: 394

Likes Received:: 24

Best Answers:: 5

Trophy Points:: 240

#1

http://www.hydragroup.com/press/10/adknowledge-acquires-hydra-leading-cpa-affiliate-network.html

Acquisition Creates Industry's Largest Affiliate Network, Consolidating Premium CPA and CPC Campaign Offerings for Publishers

Los Angeles, CA â€” June 21, 2010 â€” Adknowledge, the largest privately-owned Internet ad network, today announced it has completed its acquisition of Hydra Group (www.hydragroup.com), a premium CPA (cost-per-acquisition) performance marketing network.

Starting immediately, Hydra affiliates will benefit from direct access to Adknowledge's 6,500+ advertiser campaigns from their current Hydra login. After integration, affiliates within the combined Adknowledge-Hydra ecosystem will have access to 7,000+ of the industry's most diverse and highest yielding CPC (cost-per-click) and CPA offers. This will establish Adknowledge as the largest affiliate network measured by its number of diverse offers.

As importantly, the acquisition of Hydra will benefit advertisers using Adknowledge's Bidsystem platform (www.bidsystem.com) by connecting them to thousands of Hydra affiliates. This continues Adknowledge's mission of creating a single "must buy" auction marketplace (www.bidsystem.com) for advertisers looking to expand beyond Yahoo! and Google. Through Bidsystem, Adknowledge advertisers expand their reach across display, social media, search, and email channels.

"We're excited about establishing ourselves as a leader in the affiliate marketing space. We currently maintain market leadership positions with our social media and email advertising businesses, and believe that Hydra will allow us to achieve the leading position in the affiliate industry over the next 18 months," said Scott Lynn, Adknowledge's chief executive officer. "Having looked at dozens of affiliate networks as acquisition candidates, we believe Hydra to be the best fit because of its focus on high-quality distribution for their advertisers. We believe strongly that through Hydra's current compliance efforts, affiliate approval process, and distribution 'best practices,' we will set a higher bar within the affiliate community."

"Since Hydra's launch, we have delivered millions of new customers to clients like AARP and Kraft, and helped thousands of premium publishers financially benefit from their promotion of these campaigns to their audiences. The result is we've built an incredibly healthy advertiser and affiliate marketplace that will increase in scale dramatically as we now join forces with Adknowledge," said Zac Brandenberg, chief executive officer of Hydra. The Hydra brand will be retained in the near term and operate alongside Adstation (www.adstation.com), Adknowledge's existing affiliate offering where publishers are paid on a CPC basis.

"Our bid-based marketplace at www.bidsystem.com allows our affiliates to maximize yield as CPC rates increase over time. By combining our flexible CPC payouts with Hydra's broad portfolio of leading fixed payouts for premium CPA campaigns, we will now offer the most complete affiliate solution in the marketplace," said Greg Bayer, general manager of Adknowledge's Affiliate Division.

The Hydra acquisition demonstrates how industry leaders like Adknowledge are growing strong despite the economic downturn, and evolving the performance marketing space by improving efficiency and increasing scale for advertisers. "Adknowledge is the largest marketplace for advertisers seeking a one-stop-shop for all of their marketing outside of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Facebook. Rather than working with hundreds of small companies, advertisers are able to manage all of their non-search media buying through www.bidsystem.com. The Hydra acquisition simply cements our position as a leader in the industry and helps take us one step closer to a "must-buy" marketplace for these advertisers," said Lynn.

About Adknowledge

Adknowledge, the largest privately-owned internet advertising network, operates a single, auction-based advertiser marketplace at www.bidsystem.com where advertisers can go to solve all of their marketing needs outside of search. Through Bidsystem, Adknowledge syndicates advertisers across multiple channels, including Social, Email, and Web Content. Prior acquisitions include Super Rewards, MIVA, Cubics, Lookery, Mediarun, and Adonomics.

Featured on CNBC as "the next Google," Adknowledge is profitable with annual revenues in excess of $250 million. Headquartered in Kansas City, Adknowledge has domestic offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Florida, and international offices in Vancouver, London, and Sydney. For more information, visit www.adknowledge.com.

About Hydra Group

Hydra operates a leading CPA network for many of the largest and best-known consumer product and services companies. The company distributes customer acquisition campaigns in search, email, web display and social media, via its own internal media distribution groups and its exclusive network of high volume, high quality publishing partners. Learn more at www.hydragroup.com.

Advisors

Keith Biancamano of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represented Adknowledge.

A team from New York-based investment bank Petsky Prunier, led by Sanjay Chadda, served as Hydra's financial advisor in the transaction.
Click to expand...

CoreyPeerFly, Jun 21, 2010 IP

mtmjohn Peon

Messages:: 1,757

Likes Received:: 15

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 0

#2

Corey, which network will be the next to be acquired? LOL.

mtmjohn, Jun 21, 2010 IP

theofferz Active Member

Messages:: 146

Likes Received:: 0

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 51

#3

Is it good news for publishers? Is the buyer AdKnowledge.com really big ad network and can bring benefits to Hydra's existing publishers?

theofferz, Jun 21, 2010 IP

tobby13 Peon

Messages:: 40

Likes Received:: 0

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 0

#4

theofferz said: ↑

Is it good news for publishers? Is the buyer AdKnowledge.com really big ad network and can bring benefits to Hydra's existing publishers?
Click to expand...

Hydra publishers will now have 6500+ more campaigns list, which will make Hydra the no 1 CPA network with most no of CPA offers compared to other networks.

tobby13, Jun 22, 2010 IP

ChrisBa Well-Known Member

Messages:: 1,240

Likes Received:: 22

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 148

#5

Does anyone here still run traffic with Hydra?

ChrisBa, Jun 23, 2010 IP

jehnidiah Active Member

Messages:: 451

Likes Received:: 4

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 60

#6

Lots and lots of people still run traffic through Hydra, myself included.

As for whether this is good or bad, IMO it's not a good thing (I'm not a huge fan of how Adknowledge does things in general, such as how you have to send them an invoice just to get paid -- no automatic payments per month and the like), but only time will tell whether it's advantageous or not.

jehnidiah, Jun 23, 2010 IP

getjimmy Prominent Member

Messages:: 17,260

Likes Received:: 1,005

Best Answers:: 0

Trophy Points:: 360

#7

jehnidiah said: ↑

Lots and lots of people still run traffic through Hydra, myself included.

As for whether this is good or bad, IMO it's not a good thing (I'm not a huge fan of how Adknowledge does things in general, such as how you have to send them an invoice just to get paid -- no automatic payments per month and the like), but only time will tell whether it's advantageous or not.
Click to expand...

I was chatting with my AM, she said there will be no change in payment terms and those 6500+ campaigns will be integrated into hydra by this weekend.

getjimmy, Jun 24, 2010 IP

Log in or Sign up

Adknowledge Acquires Hydra

CoreyPeerFly Notable Member Affiliate Manager

mtmjohn Peon

theofferz Active Member

tobby13 Peon

ChrisBa Well-Known Member

jehnidiah Active Member

getjimmy Prominent Member

Useful Searches