Orange buys Unanimis

European telecommunications giant Orange has announced the purchase of UK-based digital advertising sales house Unanimis, for a reported GBP£15m. Until today, Unanimis had been one of the few independent digital ad networks that had not been swallowed up by buyers. The company sell online advertising space for companies such as Channel Five, Gumtree and Ticketmaster.

Orange's parent company France Telecom wants to boost revenues outside of its core areas of business, such as telephony charges, from 9 percent of total revenue to 20 percent.

Orange Advertising executive vice-president, Paul Francois Fournier, said, "with the acquisition of Unanimis, Orange now has strong footholds in two of Europe's three main digital advertising markets, France and the UK...enabling us to accelerate our plans for growth from the mobile (cell phone) and online environment." Orange will be desperate for the deal to do well, after an unsuccessful attempt to launch their own online ad network in 2007.

According to Orange, the addition of Unanimis's roster of publisher sites to its existing mobile and Web properties will allow it to reach over 70 percent of UK users, and 66 percent of users across the UK, France, Spain, and Poland combined.

Until the recession took hold, the UK's online advertising industry was booming, and Orange are hoping the industry will quickly regain momentum once the worst of the recession is over. Last year, online display advertising still grew by 7.7 percent to GBP£637m, but experienced a 9 percent fall in the second half of the year.

Digital classified advertising was up 22 percent year on year in 2008 to GBP£715m, despite posting a fall of about 2.2 percent in the second half of the year. The paid-for search sector, dominated by Google, propped up UK internet advertising spend figures with 22.7 percent year-on-year growth in 2008 to GBP£1.9bn.

The internet sector pushed its share of UK advertising to 19.8 percent in the six months to the end of December, overtaking the print display sector, at 19.7 percent, to become the second largest medium in the UK. This suggests that Orange, and any other companies that chose to invest in UK digital advertising, stand to gain from the market despite internet ad spending declining for the first time since Q1 and Q2 of 2001.

Despite the financial downturn, it is estimated that online display advertising, where Orange's ambitions lie, is still worth more than GBP£700m a year in the UK.

On the other side of the pond the mobile game advertising outfit Greystripe has secured a USD$2 million in Series C finding from General Electric and NBC Universal. Meanwhile mobile ad network AdMobhas acquired AdWhirl, the startup that lets developers of iphone application access different ad platforms. Watch this space.

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