TiVo to acquire Digitalsmiths

TiVo Inc. has announced that it will acquire Digitalsmiths, a cloud-based content discovery and recommendation service. Digitalsmiths offers personalised video search, recommendations and browsing, social trending, and mood-based discovery which can be used to instantly connect consumers to the most relevant movies, TV shows and live events available, at any time, on any screen including set-top boxes, tablets, smart phones, computers and gaming consoles. Digitalsmiths currently works with 46 blue-chip U.S. and international service providers including seven of the top 10 pay-TV operators in the United States, content providers and consumer electronics manufacturers.

“The Digitalsmiths acquisition opens new opportunities to commercialise and deploy TiVo’s cloud based services and technologies to operators, in an extremely cost-effective way that can be offered either independently or in conjunction with TiVo’s renowned user interface,” said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo.

“Additionally, Digitalsmiths contributes approaches, expertise, and data opportunities that complement and extend TiVo’s extensive work in advanced television to customers seeking search, recommendations, and portability. Our acquisition of Digitalsmiths will expand TiVo’s role with Tier-one U.S. Service Providers through its significant relationships with the 7 of the top ten 10 U.S. Pay-TV providers, which serve 64% of the country’s Pay-TV households. Finally, we believe Digitalsmiths’s revenue growth trajectory and attractive margin structure can help accelerate TiVo’s long-term Adjusted EBITDA growth.”

“The Digitalsmiths team is excited to be part of TiVo,” said Ben Weinberger, CEO and co-founder of Digitalsmiths.

“Both Digitalsmiths and TiVo share an acute focus to improve the consumers’ viewing experience, and we understand the importance of the ‘service’ or ‘cloud’ to achieve this goal through next generation personalised video discovery solutions. “I look forward to working as part of the TiVo team to provide a best-in-class product set to service providers, consumer electronics manufacturer’s and content providers.”

“TiVo values our core mission of providing superior personalized video discovery experiences for our customers and partners”, said Matt Berry, COO/CTO and co-founder of Digitalsmiths.

“TiVo’s acquisition of Digitalsmiths underscores the robust technology and deep customer base Digitalsmiths powers. We are confident joining forces with TiVo profoundly enhances our ability to seamlessly deliver industry leading video discovery solutions that drive superior customer satisfaction and better usage metrics for video services.”