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Unity announced today that it has entered into an agreement with iron source† The latter will merge with Unity and become a wholly owned subsidiary.
The entire equity transaction values IronSource at approximately $4.4 billion and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022. Unity shareholders will own 73.5% of the combined company, while IronSource shareholders will own 26.5% to own. IronSource CEO Tomar Bar-Zeev will join Unity’s board of directors following the merger.
Following the merger, Unity’s game engine, advertising platform and game services will be merged with IronSource’s brokerage, publishing and monetization solutions. According to Unity, this will “[give] developers a seamless and interoperable way to create, grow and monetize their creations throughout their lifecycle.” In more direct terms, IronSource’s brokerage will “utilize the combined strength of the two companies’ ad networks to provide greater user reach and data scale, and deliver higher returns on ad spend for advertisers.”
As for why the two companies are merging, Roman Garber, marketing director of Tenjin, explained: “I think both companies needed this merger to compete with ad-molnauts like Google, Meta, TikTok and AppLovin. And they can They certainly do if they play their cards right — our data shows that Unity and ironSource were the third and fourth largest ad networks in terms of iOS ad spend from hypercasual games in the first quarter of 2022. Together, they are a formidable force. References to a “platform for Creator Economy” also point to plans for an all-in-one platform where users can create, monetize, and promote games and other content.”
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