Roku said today it has reached an agree­ment to acquire the data-dri­ven adver­tis­ing plat­form Dataxu for $150 mil­lion, giv­ing the stream­ing media plat­form more ways to grow its pro­gram­mat­ic video adver­tis­ing busi­ness.

Boston-based Dataxu, which has a demand-side plat­form for plan­ning and buy­ing pro­gram­mat­ic video ad cam­paigns, will com­bine with Roku’s exist­ing adver­tis­ing busi­ness to reach 30.5 mil­lion active users across a vari­ety of desk­top, mobile, OTT (media streamed direct­ly over the inter­net) and TV devices.

Accord­ing to Scott Rosen­berg, Roku’s senior vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the com­pa­ny’s plat­form busi­ness, the acqui­si­tion is a “nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion” and will help meet grow­ing inter­est across a “broad­er spec­trum of adver­tis­ers.”

“I think OTT is a unique media that through tech can be much more acces­si­ble to mar­keters than tra­di­tion­al lin­ear TV,” Rosen­berg tells Forbes. “And so the buy tools and plan­ning set is an impor­tant even­tu­al result of the work that we’re going to do with the team here.”

The video adver­tis­ing mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow. Accord­ing to a report released on Mon­day by the Inter­ac­tive Adver­tis­ing Bureau, spend on video ads for the first half of 2019 totaled $9.5 bil­lion, a 36% increase over the same peri­od in 2018. Mean­while, Roku point­ed out that adver­tis­ers spend more than $70 bil­lion in tra­di­tion­al TV even while Magna Glob­al esti­mates that OTT counts for 29% of view­ing but just 3% of TV ad bud­gets. That’s led a vari­ety of stream­ing media com­pa­nies, tra­di­tion­al TV net­works and oth­ers to race for the best tech­nol­o­gy to reach view­ers with data-dri­ving adver­tis­ing.

Roku would­n’t dis­close any details on how many Dataxu employ­ees would be join­ing the firm as a result of the acqui­si­tion. How­ev­er, back in April, Adweek

As the increased com­pe­ti­tion around data-dri­ven TV adver­tis­ing heats up, so is the dia­logue around data reg­u­la­tion. In Jan­u­ary, the Cal­i­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­va­cy Act will begin reg­u­lat­ing how com­pa­nies col­lect, use and share data. There’s also the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er laws in oth­er states while some mem­bers of Con­gress and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates talk about the need for fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion.

Asked how the chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape informed the acqui­si­tion, Rosen­berg says the direct-to-con­sumer nature of Roku’s plat­form gives con­sumers more con­trol over their data—something he said will be attrac­tive to view­ers and adver­tis­ers alike.

Dataxu, found­ed in 2009, got an ear­ly head start in the pro­gram­mat­ic video adver­tis­ing sec­tor. Since then, it’s raised near­ly $87.5 mil­lion, accord­ing to Crunch­base. In a blog post pub­lished today, Dataxu CoFounder and CEO Mike Bak­er wrote “our vision has always been to bring these capa­bil­i­ties to the most pow­er­ful form of media — TV.”

“And now, as the con­sumer TV expe­ri­ence is trans­formed by stream­ing, we have brought our advanced data sci­ence tech­nolo­gies to help TV adver­tis­ers dri­ve valu­able out­comes,” he wrote. “Today dataxu has been rec­og­nized by firms like For­rester and our cus­tomers alike as a lead­ing video-cen­tric DSP, con­tin­u­ing to inno­vate with advanced OTT audi­ence, fore­cast­ing, inven­to­ry and mea­sure­ment capa­bil­i­ties.”

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Roku said today it has reached an agree­ment to acquire the data-dri­ven adver­tis­ing plat­form Dataxu for $150 mil­lion, giv­ing the stream­ing media plat­form more ways to grow its pro­gram­mat­ic video adver­tis­ing busi­ness.

Boston-based Dataxu, which has a demand-side plat­form for plan­ning and buy­ing pro­gram­mat­ic video ad cam­paigns, will com­bine with Roku’s exist­ing adver­tis­ing busi­ness to reach 30.5 mil­lion active users across a vari­ety of desk­top, mobile, OTT (media streamed direct­ly over the inter­net) and TV devices.

Accord­ing to Scott Rosen­berg, Roku’s senior vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the com­pa­ny’s plat­form busi­ness, the acqui­si­tion is a “nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion” and will help meet grow­ing inter­est across a “broad­er spec­trum of adver­tis­ers.”

“I think OTT is a unique media that through tech can be much more acces­si­ble to mar­keters than tra­di­tion­al lin­ear TV,” Rosen­berg tells Forbes. “And so the buy tools and plan­ning set is an impor­tant even­tu­al result of the work that we’re going to do with the team here.”

The video adver­tis­ing mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow. Accord­ing to a report released on Mon­day by the Inter­ac­tive Adver­tis­ing Bureau, spend on video ads for the first half of 2019 totaled $9.5 bil­lion, a 36% increase over the same peri­od in 2018. Mean­while, Roku point­ed out that adver­tis­ers spend more than $70 bil­lion in tra­di­tion­al TV even while Magna Glob­al esti­mates that OTT counts for 29% of view­ing but just 3% of TV ad bud­gets. That’s led a vari­ety of stream­ing media com­pa­nies, tra­di­tion­al TV net­works and oth­ers to race for the best tech­nol­o­gy to reach view­ers with data-dri­ving adver­tis­ing.

Roku would­n’t dis­close any details on how many Dataxu employ­ees would be join­ing the firm as a result of the acqui­si­tion. How­ev­er, back in April, Adweek

As the increased com­pe­ti­tion around data-dri­ven TV adver­tis­ing heats up, so is the dia­logue around data reg­u­la­tion. In Jan­u­ary, the Cal­i­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­va­cy Act will begin reg­u­lat­ing how com­pa­nies col­lect, use and share data. There’s also the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oth­er laws in oth­er states while some mem­bers of Con­gress and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates talk about the need for fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion.

Asked how the chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape informed the acqui­si­tion, Rosen­berg says the direct-to-con­sumer nature of Roku’s plat­form gives con­sumers more con­trol over their data—something he said will be attrac­tive to view­ers and adver­tis­ers alike.

Dataxu, found­ed in 2009, got an ear­ly head start in the pro­gram­mat­ic video adver­tis­ing sec­tor. Since then, it’s raised near­ly $87.5 mil­lion, accord­ing to Crunch­base. In a blog post pub­lished today, Dataxu CoFounder and CEO Mike Bak­er wrote “our vision has always been to bring these capa­bil­i­ties to the most pow­er­ful form of media — TV.”

“And now, as the con­sumer TV expe­ri­ence is trans­formed by stream­ing, we have brought our advanced data sci­ence tech­nolo­gies to help TV adver­tis­ers dri­ve valu­able out­comes,” he wrote. “Today dataxu has been rec­og­nized by firms like For­rester and our cus­tomers alike as a lead­ing video-cen­tric DSP, con­tin­u­ing to inno­vate with advanced OTT audi­ence, fore­cast­ing, inven­to­ry and mea­sure­ment capa­bil­i­ties.”

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