Adconion Media Group buys Joost assets, ending a long saga

Content network firm Adconion Media Group said today that it has acquired the assets of Joost, the online video service founded by Skype founders and the subject of a lawsuit drama this fall.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company was founded by Skype and Kazaa founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Adconion, which has 300 million monthly unique users, said it will pursue Joost’s new strategy, announced in June, of focusing on providing white-label video platforms for other companies. Among Adconion’s deals: it will provide the exclusive display and video ad-serving solution for European firm Goldbach Media Group.

Joost caused a stir earlier this summer when chief executive Mike Volpi left the company to join Index Ventures. Then Friis and Zennstrom sued Volpi, Index, and eBay for engaging in a deal that allegedly took the technology that belonged to the Skype founders. They also sued Volpi for using insider information. eBay eventually sold Skype to an investor group, but only after Index Ventures was jettisoned from the group.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Adconion said it will continue to operate the Joost web site. Meanwhile, the Adconion.TV division will add Joost videos to its library of professionally-produced video content used by 2,000 publishers. Adconion inserts pre-roll video ads into those videos. Prior to the Joost deal, Adconion was serving 80 million video streams per day to those 2,000 web sites. We covered the company when it made another acquisition and raised money.

In a statement, Adconion CEO Tyler Moebius said, “Video is a top priority for our company, and through the acquisition of the Joost assets we will be able to provide advertisers, content owners and website publishers with an end-to-end global video platform and cross-channel video and display ad-serving solution.”