Europe’s SponsorPay Acquires GratisPay

Today the European ad offer market saw major consolidation, as SponsorPay acquired rival GratisPay for an undisclosed sum. The combination of these two firms results in a new European ad offer market leader based on reach, according to SponsorPay. GratisPay and SponsorPay combined serve "virtually all" European online and social games that monetize through a virtual goods business model. Both SponsorPay and GratisPay were founded less than a year ago, indicating a rapidly-growing market for ad offer monetization in Europe.

SponsorPay's goal with the acquisition is to improve its reach in the social gaming space, specifically on the Facebook platform. SponsorPay currently offers the most Facebook-compliant offers according to Baptiste Mercier, Marketing Manager of French social game developer Cafe.com. SponsorPay offers localized offers rather than simply geotargeting offers in English, which makes a major difference in monetization rates according to competitor Supersonic Ads. Mercier specifically claims that SponsorPay is able to better monetize for Cafe.com than US ad offer networks. 

After the acquisition, all SponsorPay and GratisPay employees will retain their current positions and job titles. The companies will also continue to operate independently, though they will combine their advertising inventories such that both SponsorPay and GratisPay are able to serve from a single large ad library. SponsorPay's existing quality checks will go into effect across the GratisPay network, designed to weed out mobile ad offer scams and similar low-quality offers.

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