MAM
Social Donut acquires publisher first network Traffic Venue
Mumbai: A performance-driven network, Traffic Venue, has been acquired by Social Donut for an undisclosed amount. Traffic Venue will become part of Social Donut, a global digital marketing and performance agency. From now on, the network will be known as Traffic Venue, a Social Donut Company.
With marketers demanding increased accountability for their marketing spend and building brands through performance marketing channels, Social Donut’s continued growth strategy will be supported by the acquisition of Traffic Venue. In addition, it extends Social Donut’s suite of performance marketing solutions for marketers.
With a vision that creativity and marketing should combine in an era of digital transformation, Social Donut was established in 2018. Besides emphasising creativity, the firm develops data-driven concepts targeted at new-age clients, as well as outreach skills to influencers and talent. This acquisition will provide Social Donuts clients with better access to new data-driven solutions, and the existing clientele of Traffic Venue will benefit from the overall creative emphasis in marketing.
“Creating brands online through smart targeting, engaging creative, and seamless experiences is what advertisers care about, and Traffic Venue is the leading solution provider in this hyper-growth category. The combination of their expertise in this segment and our experience working with large portfolio enterprises and global performance marketers has enabled us to offer clients at all stages of their growth a full suite of performance marketing solutions,” said Social Donut co-founder and head of performance marketing Himanshu Pandey.
Traffic Venue was founded by Anurag Kalra and combines expertise in digital performance and ad platforms.
“We truly share the same DNA. Together with Social Donut, Traffic Venue serves the leading brands on a global scale, extending our capabilities and offerings to provide solutions beyond traditional solutions,” said Kalra.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
