At this time, we reflect on the year behind and plan for the one ahead. As LUMA Partners completes its first full year, we are very appreciative of the relationships we have built and business we have transacted with so many great people and companies. We are passionate about helping find strategic matches for digital media companies and look forward to more in 2012.

LUMA Partners wishes you and yours the best for the holiday season. And, of course, there’s a LUMAscape for that . . .

Today, Yahoo! announced an agreement to acquire interclick (NASDAQ: ICLK), a scalable technology platform that optimizes inventory monetization using audience data.  Over the past few years, interclick has built a robust data valuation platform that is optimized to work with large data volumes across multiple providers and marketplaces.  interclick’s OSM and Genome Platform allow marketers to navigate the complex data online ecosystem, and the addition of Yahoo! data will enhance outcomes with substantial network effects.

This is a smart move for Yahoo! as they will leverage this platform to improve yield for their premium class II inventory and deliver stronger ROI to advertisers.  The transaction is conditioned upon a successful tender offer and regulatory approvals.

LUMA Partners advised interclick.

Today, Donovan Data Systems (“DDS”) and MediaBank announced a deal to merge the two entities to form MediaOcean and to build an operating system for advertising.

For years, we have been suggesting that the fragmented landscape of advertising technology intermediaries could use some rationalization. There are too many duplicative systems, platforms, standards, workflows, dashboards, etc., for an efficient ecosystem and the wastage in the digital channel is much higher compared to other forms of media.

One method to rationalize the ecosystem is through consolidation. That is the impetus of the deal to create MediaOcean. This universal OS with its open APIs will allow other companies with innovative technologies in media or data to plug in and benefit from the efficiency of a unified system. Think of what the iPhone/iOS and Android platforms did for the app development ecosystem.

This is a very exciting development that will benefit many companies offering solutions across multiple media channels and spur growth in the overall advertising ecosystem.

LUMA Partners advised DDS on the transaction.

Since their launch in June, the digital media LUMAscapes have really taken off. To date, the charts have been viewed over 175,000 times and downloaded over 12,000 times. We are delighted to see this traction and are committed to continually improving their accuracy.  Since expert crowdsourcing is the most effective way we can make these better, we appreciate all the inbound suggestions we receive. The LUMAscapes are regularly updated to reflect the dynamic nature of the digital subsectors they illustrate.

At LUMA, we were recently discussing the venture capital industry and came to the realization that, to our knowledge, no similar landscape existed. So we made one. Our Digital Capital LUMAscape maps out the sources of capital from Angel to Private Equity and all forms of Venture in-between. Once again, we ask you to help perfect this with your feedback. Note that we are focused on money sources that are relevant for the digital media/internet sectors so we purposely excluded names in healthcare and other tech sectors. Thanks in advance for your help (email to LUMAscapes@lumapartners.com).

The Digital Capital LUMAscape could be very helpful for a variety of constituents, especially as a starting point for entrepreneurs assessing financing sources.

At the Digital Media Summit in June, LUMA Partners Founder & CEO Terry Kawaja gave a talk at lunch entitled: The Art of the Exit; Top 10 Considerations for How to be Bought, Not Sold. The presentation offers tips for entrepreneurial growth companies in terms of how they interact with strategic acquirers, much of which informs LUMA Partners’ go-to-market strategy. Many investment bankers say its better to be bought not sold but then proceed to auction companies. We live it.

LUMA Partners has advised on a variety of transactions where the buyer affected an important inorganic growth strategy and the acquired company achieved a strategic exit at a premium valuation. These are not mutually exclusive but rather tend to coincide. And in most of these cases, LUMA’s involvement in the transaction started with a discussion with the buyer.