Terence Kawaja Sees Busy Fall for Ad Tech M&A [Video]

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New York City-- The fall season will bring an uptick of mergers in the display ad sector, according to Terence Kawaja, the showy strategic advisor and founder of Luma Partners who has lately been treated as something of an oracle in ad technology circles.

Speaking at the IAB MIXX conference Monday morning, Kawaja rattled off several companies he says are poised to buy display ad start-ups in the coming weeks and months as they jockey to amass a stack of capabilities to compete with, or at least play second fiddle to, Google.

On the list are Adobe, Akamai, Microsoft, and Yahoo, each of which has significant online ad holdings and a demonstrated appetite for growth. Facebook and Apple are also likely to become major players in display advertising, he believes.

None is within close reach of Google, according to Kawaja, which is easily winning the race to leverage future growth in display. Its diversified holdings include an ad management platform (DoubleClick), an ad exchange (DoubleClick Ad Exchange), an ad network (AdSense), a demand side platform (Invite Media), and a retargeting/creative automation tool (Teracent).

In the below video, Kawaja describes in more detail his expectations for ad industry mergers this fall. He also predicts a day when exchange-traded media encompasses television, radio, print, and out of home.