TubeMogul began by counting views. Its first tools sent online videos out to many sites and tracked how they performed. That data showed where audiences watched, and advertisers wanted to follow them. By its July 2014 IPO the Emeryville, California company sold software that let brands buy video ads automatically, in real time, across websites, apps and connected TVs, while blocking fraud and ugly placements.

From View Counts to Ad Buying

Brett Wilson and John Hughes started TubeMogul, which was incorporated in March 2007. Wilson became chief executive and Hughes ran products. The company rebuilt itself as a buying platform for brands and agencies. Advertisers could run campaigns themselves through Platform Direct, or hand their goals to TubeMogul's team through Platform Services. The bet was that video ads would be bought by software, the way search ads already were.

Seven Dollars to Adobe

TubeMogul priced at $7 a share in July 2014 and listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol TUBE. It kept its headquarters in Emeryville and kept growing its platform. In November 2016 Adobe agreed to buy TubeMogul for $14 a share in cash, about $540 million, to add video ad buying to its marketing tools. The deal closed in December 2016, and the business became part of Adobe Advertising Cloud.

Cover: The Actor Nakamura Kumetaro II Greeting the Audience on His Arrival from Osaka at the Nakamura Theater in the Eleventh Month, 1790, Katsukawa Shun'ei. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an actor greeting the theater audience (video reaching viewers).