Millennial Media reports more losses amid acquisition rumors

Millennial Media posted more losses in the second quarter of 2015, doing nothing to tamp down rumors that the adtech company was in line for an acquisition.
The Canton-based mobile ad exchange posted revenue of $65.8 million, down from $67.3 million in the second quarter of 2014. Net losses were $15.5 million, compared with $15.1 for the second quarter of last year.
The latest figures come on the heels of a report in TechCrunch that AOL offered as much as $350 million to acquire the publicly-traded company. That deal would have big implications for Baltimore, given Millennial’s founding here and AOL’s adtech presence here that grew out of its past acquisition of Advertising.com.

Exploring all kinds of strategic alternatives and partnerships makes a lot of sense for us.

On a conference call to report the results, Millennial Media CEO Michael Barrett didn’t confirm the reports, but acknowledged that the company has been in talks about making a move to get more revenue flowing.
“The reality is that it is taking longer than originally expected to grow revenues, and this is going to require Millennial to compete differently,” he said. “While we are not going to comment on any specific rumors, we can acknowledge that, as you’d expect, we’ve had a number of discussions with a variety of companies about potential strategic alternatives, including the potential acquisition of Millennial Media.”
Barrett said he believes in the company’s tech, touting the programmatic offerings in its recent acquisition of Nexage, and an updated version of the company’s software development kit that allows publishers to more easily put video in ads.
However, Barrett said existing “larger players” are getting more of the ad market share. In Millennial’s case, those larger players are companies like Google and Facebook that don’t seem to be going anywhere. The bigger companies have their own inventory of content for ads, while Millennial Media only works with third-party buyers.
“We don’t possess our own inventory source, and that creates a certain economic disadvantage when it relates to monetization,” Barrett said.
As a result, Barrett said, “Exploring all kinds of strategic alternatives and partnerships makes a lot of sense for us.”