Description
Xandr is the advertising and analytics division of AT&T, which operates an online platform, called Community, for buying and selling consumer-centric digital advertising.
History
Following its June 2018 acquisition of AppNexus, Xandr was formed by AT&T to construct a national TV advertising marketplace.
Xandr was launched, on September 25, 2018, at its inaugural AT&T Relevance Conference, in Santa Barbara, California, and was named after its parent company founder, Alexander Graham Bell.
In June 2019, Xandr rebranded its AppNexus DSP, launching Xandr Invest, to serve as its central ad-buying hub.
On October 18, 2019, Xandr acquired Massachusetts-based Clypd, an audience-based sales platform for television advertising.
On April 30, 2020, it was folded into WarnerMedia.
Rumors and speculation spread in 2020 that AT&T was seeking to sell and offload Xandr, along with DirecTV and Crunchyroll. The reasoning is twofold: first, AT&T took on immense debt to purchase WarnerMedia, and any non-core asset sales would help pay off that debt burden. Secondly, Xandr was inherently compromised by its association with AT&T and HBO Max, as many would-be advertisers were reluctant to use what is essentially a competitor for their ad buys, and as such it might be more lucrative on its own.
On May 17, 2021, it was announced that WarnerMedia would be merged with Discovery, Inc. to form a new publicly traded company known as Warner Bros. Discovery, but that the Xandr business would not be included in the transaction and would remain a division of AT&T.
On December 21, 2021, AT&T announced that it had agreed to sell Xandr to Microsoft, for an undisclosed price.
