April 22, 2013 MOBILE M&A VOLUME CONTINUES ITS UPWARD TRAJECTORY

Berkery Noyes’ Online and Mobile Industry report showed an improvement in M&A activity throughout several market segments. Overall deal volume increased three percent relative to the prior quarter. However, transaction value decreased 50 percent, from $15.8 billion in Q4 2012 to $7.9 billion in Q1 2013. The SaaS/ASP segment experienced the largest quarterly rise in volume, improving 16 percent. 

Transaction volume in the E-Commerce segment increased six percent between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013. The segment’s highest value deal in Q1 2013 was Google’s announced acquisition of Channel Intelligence for $125 million. In addition, major financial technology players completed several large Online and Mobile payments acquisitions during Q1 2013. For instance, ACI Worldwide acquired Online Resources Corporation for $203 million and FIS acquired mFoundry for $120 million.

M&A involving transactions with a large mobile component increased 33 percent over the past three months. Along these lines, there were several acquisitions in the food service information and content space. This included Yahoo!’s acquisition of Alike, which enables users to make recommendations about their favorite food establishments; and OpenTable’s acquisition of Foodspotting, an application that helps users share information about particular dishes.

As for the E-Marketing & Search segment, M&A activity increased nine percent in Q1 2013. Regarding the segment’s social media marketing subset, one notable acquisition in Q1 2013 was Twitter’s acquisition of BlueFin Labs. A key goal of acquiring the social television analytics company is for Twitter to gain additional advertising revenue by leveraging viewer data. TiVo and The Nielsen Company completed E-Marketing acquisitions in 2012, both of which focused on improving the ability to measure digital audiences.