Rakuten Acquires Ad Platform Developer and Provider LOB

Tokyo, July 5, 2018 – Rakuten, Inc. today announced that it has reached a final agreement regarding the acquisition of LOB Inc., a developer and supplier of advertising platforms, as a wholly owned subsidiary.

LOB is an ad technology company founded in 2016 that primarily develops and provides advertising platforms. Rakuten will leverage the company’s technical prowess and development capabilities to strengthen its global advertising platform.

Rakuten is harnessing big data to provide its client companies with full-funnel marketing solutions suited to every stage of consumption behavior. In May 2018, the company consolidated its suite of advertising-related products under the Rakuten Marketing Platform brand, in order to achieve a more integrated approach to marketing. In addition, Rakuten aims to increase advertising revenue to 200 billion yen by 2021. At present, the majority of revenue comes from adverts on the more than 70 services, including the Rakuten Ichiba internet shopping mall. However, Rakuten will collaborate with LOB to develop a global advertising platform in order to deliver adverts more efficiently on platforms other than Rakuten Group services.

Going forward, Rakuten will continue to provide support for the marketing activities of advertisers by providing a variety of different marketing solutions that harness big data, including the provision of advertising platforms.

Company name: LOB Inc.
Address: DF Building 7F, 2-2-8 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Representative: Fumitaka Takebayashi, President & CEO
Date of establishment: April 28, 2016
Capital: 30.5 million yen (including reserve funds)
Details of business:
Development and provision of advertising platforms
Consulting business for running online ads
Development business for marketing support tools for running online ads
URL: https://www.lob-inc.com/