PointRoll gets acquired for $20 million, to lay off nearly 100 locally

Ten years after its acquisition by Gannett, PointRoll once again has new owners. It’s also laying off nearly 100 employees — roughly one-third of its workforce and half of it locally, according to an employee count we got last year.

The King of Prussia adtech company, owned by Tegna (formerly Gannett), sold to Austin-based ad-tech company Sizmek for $20 million earlier this month. That’s just a fifth of its original sale price to Gannett in 2005: $100 million. That sale was one of the biggest Philly tech business acquisitions since 2000.

The company is laying off 93 employees from their KOP office, according to a federal notice reported by PhillyMag. The layoffs will begin in January and end in June.

If you’ve been laid off, let us know. We’re working on getting together a list for our new jobs column, On the Market.

Sizmek CEO Neil Nguyen said the company will keep its KOP office open and “continue to invest in it.”

He added that “several PointRoll employees have also moved over to Sizmek offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”
Sizmek declined to provide specifics on how many employees PointRoll employed at the point of sale and how many will join Sizmek post-acquisition.

Last year, PointRoll employed 300 (and laid off 20 employees in an effort to update its tech team, according to a spokesman). The majority of its employees worked out of its 40,000 square foot KOP office, but it also had a Boston office. It’s not clear what will happen to the other employees or if a Philly office will remain.

Through a spokesman, PointRoll CEO Mario Diez declined to comment.

PointRoll CTO John Galvin, who joined the company last year from Exton-based Hoopla Software, and director of product management Tim O’Hare, are among the employees who are looking for their next roles, according to their LinkedIn accounts. Other execs, like VP of Product Management Rob Avery and VP of Product Joe Sullivan, left earlier in the year.

In September, PointRoll merged with the Chicago-based ShopLocal to become a Tegna brand called Cofactor. Tegna only sold PointRoll, not ShopLocal, and several Cofactor execs remain in Chicago, according to LinkedIn.

Since the 2005 Gannett acquisition, PointRoll has had four different CEOs.