MTS has purchased 67 percent stake in Buzzoola Group, a leader in the advertising market in Russia and the CIS, to accelerate the development of its own AdTech business. MTS will purchase the remaining 33 percent stake in 2024.
Buzzoola will operate as a separate independent company as part of Stream LLC, a subsidiary of MTS. The company’s operational management will be carried out by the current team of founders and executives.
The acquisition of Buzzoola will enable MTS to accelerate the development of its AdTech business and increase its share of the advertising market. MTS will be able to include Buzzoola’s advertising exchange (AdEx) and SSP platform, which will complement the company’s DSP and DMP solutions (developing under the brand MTS Marketer), in its AdTech business.
Since 2007, MTS has been developing AdTech and MarTech products based on data from the MTS digital ecosystem, Big Data and AI algorithms, as well as cloud technologies.
Russia is demanding for import-substituting technologies that can perform at the same level as solutions made by global players such as Google, Criteo, RTR House and others. MTS believes that this requires investments in infrastructure.
“Our main product is the MTS Marketer advertising platform, whose revenue in January 2023 increased by 37 percent. We are growing and solidifying our position in the Russian advertising market,” said Elena Melnikova, Director of Advertising Technologies at MTS.
“The goal of the merger is to achieve the highest quality standards for advertising campaigns on the market and provide a high level of income and service for Buzzoola SSP partners. After joining MTS, we will maintain our autonomy and the atmosphere that our employees are accustomed to,” said Natalia Solodukhova, co-founder and President of Buzzoola.
Buzzoola network unites all major Runet websites, as well as the traffic of key Russian SSPs. The network coverage is more than 70 million monthly users, and monthly traffic volume is 450 billion advertising requests.
