Yahoo’s Acquisition
ArabCrunch broke the news at the global level, that Yahoo has acquired Maktoob and I updated the acquisition post and wrote with the completion of the deal, the remaining Maktoob Group companies – including Souq.com an e-commerce and auction website, cashU.com online payment card , Araby.com an Arabic search engine, and Tahadi.com an MMO games provider – will operate under a new entity called the Jabbar Internet Group , managed by Samih Toukan cofounder of Makto0b.
E-Marketing MENA which we profiled here, was recently completely acquired by Jabbar and rebranded to iKoo, sources told ArabCrunch it was at a market valuation of 20 million USD.
E-Marketing MENA (now iKoo) which was founded by Khaled Jabasini using only$15,000 USD of investments has become the largest online advertising network in the Arab world. Now serving 1.4 billion impressions, with a reach to 39 million unique users in the Arab world, according to Khaled Jabasini. That is around a 50% increase of last February stats of 780 million monthly banner impressions and over 19 million unique users.
Khaled Jabasini was a speaker at ARABCRUNCH DEMO and eMarketing MENA was a platinum sponsor to our event.
According to sources, Maktoob Group (now JABBAR) was an unannounced investor in E-Marketing MENA with majority shares of 75% since 2006, but now they had acquired the remaining share of Khaled, that makes Khaled the first self-made Internet millionaire from the Arab world. Former Maktoob Chief Product Officer, Isam Bayazidi is appointed as General Manager of iKoo.
AlKhaleejiah Online which is part Saudi Research and Marketing Group that has a network of websites that includes the online editions of more than 25 of the most well known regional multilingual newspapers and magazines is part of ikoo’s network of 120 plus publishers.
Seems like iKoo is an acquisition target for Google, which some say might not be too long to happen.
According to Maktoob Business, as part of the acquisition deal, Yahoo! and the Jabbar Internet Group will continue to have a strong commercial relationship going forward, which will include the promotion of Jabbar companies on the Maktoob.com portal.
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