Big Village Media and EMX Digital file Chapter 11 proceedings
Big Village Media, formerly known as Engine Group, and its ad tech entity EMX Digital have filed for bankruptcy protection, a development that will have creditors pondering if they’ll ever receive payment.
Chapter 11 papers filed in a District of Delaware Court this week (Feb. 8) by Big Village and EMX Digital, plus affiliated entities, list its estimated number of creditors between “5,000-10,000.”
The same documents listed its estimated assets between $10-50 million while estimated liabilities are in the range of $50-100 million with the largest creditors including a roster of names including Pluto TV, Yahoo, and Google.
Of the 30 largest creditors listed in the filing, sizes of the claims vary between $6.6 million (CPX Interactive) and $348,527 (Roku) with the former filing for payments in mid-January according to separate court papers seen by Digiday.
The developments follow the departure of senior executives including the chief executive of both Big Village — its former CEO Kasha Cacy recently joined Known — and EMX Digital with Michael Zacharski understood to have left the company last week.
EMX has closed most of its operations; AdExchanger reported that a “small skeleton crew” remains at the entity, while Zacharski was unable to respond to Digiday’s request for comment by press time with the developments coming a week after Big Village’s Australia also appointed administrators.
Seasoned observers of the sector will recall how the downfall of EMX Digital, a supply-side platform, is evocative of the 2019 bankruptcy of Sizmek — then a full-stack ad tech offering before it was sold off piecemeal — whose decline was interpreted as symbolic of the “end of an era” at the time.
Similarly, publishers will be reminded of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a number of ad tech vendors citing force majeure clauses in their contracts in developments that left media owners receiving less than they had bargained for in the immediate term.
More in Media
Brands turn to creators to build World Cup buzz amid a logistics nightmare
A US-based World Cup poses unique problems and opportunities for brands; activating creators away from the games may be the solution.
Reuters and Time adopt bot-blocking whitelists to rein in AI crawlers
Reuters and Time adopt a ‘block-all’ AI bot strategy, part of a broader publisher move toward whitelist-only access.
Google’s AI opt-out leaves publishers with a choice they can’t safely use
The CMA has, on paper, given publishers a right to refuse AI in search. But because it’s opt-out, and Google is slow-walking the data needed to judge the impact, that right is barely usable, publishers say.