The new Xaxis—now merged with 24/7 Media—officially unfurled its new corporate structure today. The union of the two entities, which are companion companies under WPP Group, created a supersized programmatic advertising platform, according to the announcement today.
Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser said the merger was finalized this week and the two companies are now fully integrated. Xaxis now houses its full-service digital shop under one roof, catering to advertisers and publishers and buying and selling access to audiences across the Web.
“By consolidating both the buy and sell sides within a single platform, we’re bringing advertisers and publishers closer together, enabling a more efficient marketplace for both brands and media owners,” Lesser said in a statement today.
The move comes amid a changing landscape in which audiences are mobile and harder to pin down. Traditional holding company rivals Omnicom and Publicis are merging, creating yet another behemoth.
And tech companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo control more data about users, and that data is more targetable.
Post-merger, Xaxis says it is focusing on technology to target audiences who are switching devices and can’t be targeted solely by tracking desktop habits using cookie-based software.
In today’s announcement, Xaxis called itself “the industry’s single most comprehensive platform for programmatic audience buying across all digital media channels and devices.”
The merged company counts more than 800 employees. The reorganization led to 29 layoffs, according to sources at the company. The 24/7 CEO, David Moore, will serve as chairman of the new company.