AppLovin Offers To Buy Unity Software For $17.5B in All-Stock Deal

Mobile app marketing company AppLovin on Tuesday made a $17.54 billion all-stock offer to buy online gaming business Unity Software. From a report: Palo Alto-based AppLovin said the deal would have an enterprise value of about $20 billion, an 18% premium on San Francisco-based Unity's Monday closing price. AppLovin said in a news release that its offer would create a company with a combined market cap of about $35 billion. The non-binding offer appears to be aimed at warding off potential damage to AppLovin's business by a plan Unity announced about a month ago to buy Israel-based app monetization company ironSource for $4.4 billion. A number of Unity shareholders and game developers have reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with the IronSource deal, which may help AppLovin win support for its offer. While Unity investors would hold 55% of shares in the combined company, AppLovin's would have 51% of the voting power. Unity chief John Riccitiello would be CEO under the proposal and AppLovin chief Adam Foroughi would be chief operating officer. A Unity spokesperson acknowledged the offer in a neutral statement the company issued on Tuesday morning, saying, "We have received the offer from AppLovin and our board will thoroughly evaluate it."

Idea for law

[DarkRookie2]

That ad companies are no longer allowed to buy other companies. That if they was a product to slap ads all over, they got to make it themselves.

AppLovin?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like a sexy computer program.

Rock and a hard place

[mrwireless]

Both AppLovin and IronSource seem like surveillance nightmares...

IronSource:
"Increase your app’s ARPDAU and maximize the value of your users with powerful ad mediation and high-impact ad formats"

AppLovin:
"Receive the best value for each user through our real-time auction that optimizes based on your parameters."

*le sigh

Re:Rock and a hard place

[tlhIngan]

Of course these companies are - they're basically the app level data brokers that suction up a user's personal information and then sell it to third parties for advertising and other purposes.

Although, it isn't too unusual to go after Unity since Unity has the same thing - they have bitcoin miner plugins you can use to make your app "free", alternative ad networks, and other things to help developers monetize their use of Unity.

So it's really more of a consolidation in the mobile ad market that happens to involve a popular game engine on the side.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it essentially makes use of the end-user's power supply to generate income while it also increases heat generation that could lead to part failure or decreased part lifetimes. Click based revenue exacts nothing from the end user but time, you dont get charged extra for browsing another link. A miner increases my power bill while earning another company money. I doubt many would accept that sort of deal. Its ethicality in my mind is predicated on how informed the user is about its action. If the user

McLovin would have been better

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Gotta love some of these LSD-induced unicorn names for companies.

Prepare to be monetized!

[AmazingRuss]

... and if you ain't a whale, prepare to fuck right off.