Adtech Firm Fork Media Acquires Majority Stake In Digital Audio Advertising Startup Rappio

Digital adtech firm Fork Media has acquired a majority stake in digital audio advertising startup Rappio Advertising. With this move, the company has marked its foray into the digital audio-based advertising sector.

Post-acquisition, Rappio Advertising CEO and founder Nirav Shah will head the business division within Fork Media. The Rappio Advertising team will also join in Fork Media’s sales and technology teams and will operate out of Fork Media’s headquarters in Mumbai.

As stated by Fork Media CEO and founder Samar Verma, “Rappio can cause a disruptive opportunity for brands to take their radio spends into the digital medium with a high degree of measurability, targeting, and transparency.” He further added, “We have always believed in collaborating with the best minds in the adtech space and have been able to deliver many differentiated offerings to brands through our past acquisitions.”

Rappio Advertising was founded in 2016 by Nirav Shah with an aim to help brands in digital audio advertising. With Rappio, a brand can incorporate advertising formats such as ad jingles, promos, and announcements as ad ringtones on end-user smartphones. On the one hand, users get an incentive each time the ad tune plays as their ringtone. On the other hand, a brand gets an opportunity to reach the targeted users effectively and at low cost.

An email sent to Fork Media did not elicit any response till the time of publication.

Founded in 2013 by Samar Verma and Upen Rai, Fork Media is a digital advertising company that leverages online, mobile, and video platforms to create solutions for advertisers and publishers. Fork Media claims to have a reach of around 65 Mn users per month.

Earlier in November 2016,  Fork Media entered into an agreement with digital media company Ziff Davis, to operate IGN, the media brand for games, movies, entertainment and fan culture, and AskMen, the online male lifestyle media brand, in India.

In September 2016, Fork Media acquired a majority stake in adtech firm Inuxu for $3Mn (INR 20 Cr) in a cash and stock deal. The deal gave Fork Media 51% equity in Inuxu.

Recently, in February 2017, music streaming service Saavn also rolled out programmatic audio advertising in India in partnership with AdsWizz.  As per The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and KPMG India report 2017, ‘programmatic advertising’ is the future of digital advertising and will soon command a big share of the pie with traditional advertisers realising its benefits.’ Digital advertising is also catching up with traditional TV advertising and grabs 12% of the overall market share.

With the new acquisition, Fork Media truly has an opportunity to cash upon the Rappio Advertising technology and get ahead of its digital advertising peers in the adtech industry.

(The development was reported by ET.)