Sources: Snap has acquired Metamarkets for less than $100M to step up its ad tech play
Context & Ripple Effects
The Metamarkets deal is the third step in a pattern TechCrunch sources have been tracing since late 2016: Snap first picked up San Francisco ad tech firm Flite in what a source called an acquihire, then held acquisition talks with AdRoll — borderline profitable and on pace for $300M in 2017 revenue — while actively scouting other ad tech firms (reported in July).
Buying Metamarkets for under $100M signals the strategy has moved from talent pickups to actual infrastructure: real-time analytics and programmatic tooling are being bolted onto Snapchat's ad business rather than built from scratch.
First-order effects
- Snap gains Metamarkets' analytics technology in-house, giving its ads team measurement and data-processing capability it previously had to assemble from vendors or build itself.
- Metamarkets' existing customers now have their analytics provider owned by a direct competitor for ad dollars, raising conflict-of-interest questions about where their data flows.
Second-order effects
- AdRoll and the other ad tech firms Snap was reportedly evaluating lose one of the few large-cap buyers in their market, narrowing exit options for independent players.
- Facebook and Google, whose self-serve ad tools set the benchmark advertisers compare Snapchat against, face a rival closing its measurement gap through M&A instead of multi-year internal development.
Third-order effects
- If the buy-versus-build pattern holds — Flite, AdRoll talks, Metamarkets — social platforms will keep consolidating ad tech in-house, squeezing standalone analytics and programmatic firms toward smaller acquirers or irrelevance.
- Advertisers get fewer neutral third-party measurement providers as platform owners absorb them, strengthening the case for independent verification standards across walled gardens.
The trend: Social platforms are assembling full-stack advertising businesses through serial ad tech acquisitions, converting independent measurement vendors into proprietary infrastructure.