BuySellAds Acquires Ad Startup LaunchBit

LaunchBit, an ad startup focused on helping software-as-a-service businesses find new customers, is announcing that it has been acquired by ad platform BuySellAds.com.

The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. LaunchBit co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Yin told me via email that the LaunchBit ad network will continue to operate, “business as usual,” while it’s “too early” to say what will happen to the LaunchBit team.

The startup first launched as an email ad network in 2012, raising a seed round of a little under $1 million from 500 Startups (where LaunchBit was incubated), Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s VegasTech Fund, TriplePoint Capital, and others later that year. More recently, it shifted focus to lead generation (though it included email ads as part of that mission) — a shift that involved partnering with BuySellAds.

Asked how she feels about the deal, Yin said, “Honestly, we would’ve liked to have gone all the way to become the next Google, and I wish we could’ve gone IPO! But, as a small ad network (with just a couple hundred customers and a few thousand publishers), teaming up with a larger company with a lot more resources made a lot of sense, and it’s a solid outcome.”

BuySellAds has acquired a number of other ad networks in the past, including Carbon Ads, Fusion Ads and Beacon Ads.

“We really like how LaunchBit is performance driven for advertisers, while also helping publishers monetize a medium that’s pretty tricky to monetize (email),” BuySellAds founder Todd Garland said in an email. “To high-quality content creators, BSA is the monetization solution that drives independence and sustainability through scalable, innovate ad products. To marketers, BSA is the on-demand solution for reaching relevant audiences at scale via creative ad products. So, for us, adding LaunchBit into the mix makes perfect sense.”