Group IMD and Honeycomb Merge to Shape The Future of Video Advertising

Global video advertising distribution business Group IMD and video management platform Honeycomb have today announced their merger.

The new business will provide customers across more than 100 countries with revolutionary technology that will accelerate access to addressable and programmatic video advertising across TV, online and Video on Demand (VoD).

Together, Group IMD and Honeycomb will enable the TV industry to embrace the new types of video advertising it needs to compete with online publishers like Google and Facebook. The infrastructure of digital publishers offers advertisers advanced audience targeting, accurate data and improved overall performance. Advertisers now want the same advantages in the living room, on TV, so broadcasters like Sky, ITV, RTL Group and DishTV are embracing new types of programmatic video advertising to improve how — and to whom — advertising is fulfilled.

This revolution could double TV ad spend in value from $50 billion to $100 billion in the US alone by 2030, according to predictions made by Credit Suisse.

“TV has always been the darling of the advertising world, but the proliferation of online advertising has made accurate targeting and measurement increasingly important,” says James Carpenter, Founder and CEO of Honeycomb. “By integrating technologies to underpin targeted and trackable advertising, we’re not only able to make TV and all of its variants more accessible making budgets work harder, we can also help broadcasters and publishers create new revenue streams in the face of increasingly sophisticated competitors.”

“This is a view I share with Group IMD’s CEO Simon. We came through the industry together and when we started discussing the future there was a natural alignment in vision. By combining the complementary strengths of both companies, we’re able to realise that vision much quicker, and put our ten-year relationship to good use in transforming the industry.”

Simon Cox, CEO of Group IMD added: “The exciting thing about this merger is that it’s not about sticking with the status quo - this is about driving a bigger shift in the market as a whole. By bringing these two companies together, we will have the game-changing technology, global reach and incredible team needed to transform the industry.”

Founded in 1996, Group IMD has built a global business used by thousands of media owners, agencies and production companies in over 100 countries. Group IMD launched the world's first fully automated broadcast quality video advertising workflow platform, enabling automated quality control, real-time collaboration and fast distribution, 24/7. Group IMD is a trusted partner for global clients including Unilever, L’Oreal and Universal Pictures, and recently fulfilled the first ever digital distribution of TV commercials in Japan.

Honeycomb launched in 2016 with the single purpose of bringing forward the programmatic future of video advertising. Honeycomb’s automation and integration capabilities have been quickly adopted by broadcasters, including Sky and Channel 4 and enabled integration with leading ad servers and CDNs including Yospace, Freewheel and Level 3.

The transaction is a share swap deal which will see continued support from its investors, including Inflexion which invested in Group IMD last year and Beringea which participated in Honeycomb’s Series A funding round last year.