10-04-2011

Lijit Acquired by Federated Media Publishing

by Ryan McIntyre

Today we’re happy to announce that Federated Media Publishing has acquired Foundry Group portfolio company Lijit Networks. The deal is a great outcome for the company and its investors. As part of the transaction, Foundry Group Partner Seth Levine will join the Federated Media board of directors and Todd Vernon (Lijit’s CEO and founder) and Walter Knapp (Lijit’s COO) will take on senior operating roles at the combined business (both will report directly to Federated’s CEO Deanna Brown).

Lijit has built up an impressive business by focusing on providing web publishers with tools to better engage with, understand, track and ultimately derive revenue from their site visitors. Through Lijit’s search, analytics and insight products, a rapidly growing number of publishers are discovering more about their users and finding new and better ways to engage with them. Federated brings a similar passion for publishers to the combined entity (powering “the best of the independent web”). And together we think the two businesses provide a broad set of tools and monetization capabilities to their combined over 77,000 publishers.

You can read more about the transaction from All Things D, The Lijit Press Release or the Federated Media Press Release. Seth also has a post up on his blog about the combination as does John Battelle and Todd Vernon.

Please join us in congratulating Todd, Walter and the rest of the Lijit team on this significant milestone for the business.