AOL acquires Vidible, another video marketing startup

AOL thinks the future lies in video advertising, and has spent quite a bit of money in pursuit of its video strategy. The latest example is AOL’s purchase of video marketing startup Vidible, which the company announced today.

Vidible helps businesses sell their video content quickly and easily across multiple platforms to those looking for content, and provides analytics to content producers. Since AOL has quite a lot of video content thanks to its strategy of boosting efforts from its online news publications (as well as its AOL On Network content hub), Vidible seems like a pretty logical service to help the company raise revenue in this area.

It’s one of many acquisitions of ad-tech companies in the past twelve months, including Yahoo’s $640 million purchase of Brightroll, also a video advertising network, in November.

“Adtech has seen a huge amount of investment and startup activity … which means it’s a sector ripe for the kind of consolidation that we’re seeing today,” said John Koetsier, the vice president of product for VentureBeat’s VB Insight.

In the past few years, AOL has spent big on acquiring video startups and services — such as its $405 million purchase of Adap.tv — that can help further its overall theory that the ad industry will soon be dominated by online video spending.

“In our studies, video ads are at or near the top in terms of both user engagement and monetization. That means it’s a hot space that, along with native ads, is growing quickly,” Koetsier added.

Financial terms of the Vidible acquisition deal were not disclosed, but Re/code is reporting that AOL spent around $50 million. Vidible previously raised $3.5 million in funding from Greycroft Partners and IDG Ventures.