AOL's content and advertising firehose is about to get a bit more targeted.
The service provider-turned-online content platform has acquired Internet personalization specialists Gravity for $90.7 million.
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The move will also elevate Luke Beatty, a former college roommate and business parter of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong (as noted by Re/code), to the position of head of product for AOL's Brand Group, which oversees the content side of the company.
Gravity was founded in 2009 by former MySpace employees Amit Kapur, Jim Benedetto and Steve Pearman with the goal of "personalizing the Internet." The company specialized in understanding user preferences online and creating visual graphs based on that data.
The acquisition will give AOL a tool to focus its publishing network of more than 2,000 partners to 116 million unique visitors — and crucially the 4.3 billion video ads served in December — that the company attracted in the third quarter of 2013.
Gravity is the first major acquisition since the company bought video advertising platform Adap.tv in August 2013 for $405 million, of which $322 million was in cash. AOL did not release details of the split for Gravity's $90.7 million.
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