Onetag Acquires Aryel to Merge Curation and Creative Tech
Adtech curation platform Onetag has acquired Aryel, an interactive creative tech startup. The move signals a growing trend of sell-side and curation platforms embedding creative automation and immersive ad formats directly into their offerings. This allows them to differentiate in a crowded market by offering buyers a more integrated solution for both supply path and creative optimization.
London-based Onetag, founded in 2015, began its journey as a DSP partner for agency giants like Dentsu and Publicis before being acquired by private equity firm Wise Equity in 2022. Aryel, a Milan-based startup founded in 2019, is a no-code platform for AR marketing campaigns and has raised approximately €3.7 million in seed funding to date. This acquisition is part of a significant consolidation trend in the adtech market, which saw a 73% increase in deal volume in 2024. As third-party cookies deprecate, companies are aggressively pursuing M&A to integrate new technologies, particularly those that combine privacy-safe targeting with compelling creative capabilities to stay competitive. The strategic driver is the convergence of supply-side curation and creative technology. With signal loss making traditional targeting less effective, the ability to match high-quality, contextually relevant inventory with immersive ad formats like AR becomes a key differentiator for delivering campaign performance. For engineering leaders, this merger highlights the technical challenge of integrating two distinct platforms: an AI-driven programmatic curation engine and a no-code, creative-focused SaaS tool. The goal is to build a seamless workflow that automates both media buying and creative optimization, moving beyond siloed point solutions. This deal reflects a broader shift from manual campaign management to agentic workflows. By combining Onetag's AI for semantic targeting with Aryel's accessible creative tools, the new entity can offer a system that automates decisions on both ad placement and ad content, a crucial pattern in the evolution of enterprise software. The transaction also underscores the growing importance of technical due diligence in M&A. Evaluating the scalability of Aryel's creative platform and its compatibility with Onetag's core AI-powered infrastructure would have been a critical task for the engineering leadership, directly impacting the long-term value of the acquisition.
