Yieldex (aquired by Nexus)

Yieldex was an ad tech company that provided digital advertising forecasting, analytic pricing, and trading tools for publishers. Founded in 2007 by Tom Shields and Doug Cosman, the company was headquartered in New York with a significant presence near Boulder, Colorado. Cosman, the technical founder, invented the Yieldex technology, drawing on his experience as a chief architect for advertising technologies at MatchLogic and Excite.com.

The company's core products were Yieldex Analytics and YieldexDirect. Yieldex Analytics offered a suite of forecasting and analytics tools designed to help publishers increase revenue and yield. YieldexDirect provided an integrated catalog management and direct-booking system for guaranteed advertising buys. These tools gave publishers visibility into audience segments, allowed them to create products combining content and audience, and provided accurate inventory forecasts up to 15 months in advance. The business model centered on providing these SaaS tools to major publishers to manage their direct sales efforts and optimize ad inventory value. Its client roster included prominent names like The New York Times, Expedia, Pandora, and CBS Interactive.

In March 2015, Yieldex was acquired by AppNexus, a leading independent ad tech company, for a reported $100 million. The acquisition was a strategic move by AppNexus to build a full-stack publisher platform and to lead the market in programmatic direct advertising. Following this, AppNexus itself was acquired by AT&T's Xandr division in 2018, which was later sold to Microsoft in 2022.

Keywords: publisher analytics, ad forecasting, ad inventory management, programmatic direct, yield optimization, ad pricing, direct sales tools, advertising technology, ad revenue management, digital media sales, SaaS, publisher monetization, online advertising, audience analytics, big data analytics