Imagine Communications acquires OpenTv from the Kudelski group

OpenTv's portfolio of advanced advertising solutions will be key in the development of Imagine's next generation of advertising management platforms.

Imagine Communications has acquired the assets of OpenTV's advanced advertising business unit from the group Kudelski. The acquired assets so far managed by Nagra will allow Imagine to expand and improve its portfolio of advertising management solutions that already control more than 25,000 million in annual advertising revenues worldwide, providing MVPD markets with new multi-platform billing capabilities as well as support for advertising actions based on impressions and ratings.

Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine, highlighted that "the acquisition of OpenTV's advanced advertising technologies business will amplify our commitment to the MVPD market and accelerate the investments we are making in our portfolio of advertising business systems. The advanced advertising management technologies we have acquired from OpenTV will add new capabilities to our portfolio and complement our media, broadcast and network platforms. The addition of an experienced R&D team from OpenTV will further expand our world-class engineering and expertise. support to develop innovations for this growing market segment.”

Products purchased from OpenTV include the billing systems EclipsePlus, EclipsePlus/xG, and the advertising management systems EclipsePlus/xG Insights and EclipsePlus/xG Linear.

Many of the world's leading MVPDs use these products to manage more than 1.2 billion impressions and more than $3 billion in annual advertising revenue. These solutions offer campaign, traffic and billing management for both small broadcasters and large networks. Additionally, these software-based solutions help address the need to simplify and combine the billing and reporting of traffic management systems for multiple orders with a single customer invoice based on metrics and pricing for each ad for any campaign type, including linear, on-demand, addressable, web, mobile, long-form and over-the-top (OTT).

Steve Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer at Imagine, emphasizes that "broadband, Internet and mobility are contributing substantially to the change in habits of the new video consumer, so the challenges of managing video advertising campaigns are increasingly complex and impact the ability of media companies to monetize their content. The assets acquired from OpenTV are the result of significant investments in innovation to solve these challenges for MVPD in order to streamline operations, reduce costs, have rich analytics, and have complete management in traditional environments and new media.”