Interactive TV software and services firm ActiveVideo Networks has completed the acquisition of TAG Networks, a provider of games-on-demand content and systems for TV operators.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. With the acquisition, TAG Networks' management team and staff have relocated from Mountain View, Calif., to ActiveVideo's corporate headquarters in San Jose. TAG Networks has about 30 employees.
TAG Networks customers include Time Warner Cable Oceanic in Hawaii, whose customers used the TAG-powered games-on-demand channel an average of 116.5 minutes per day over the course of 2009, according to set-top box data metrics compiled by Kantar Media (formerly TNS Media).
"Combining TAG's advanced games platform with our own industry-leading cloud platform provides our distribution and programming partners with a single, robust solution for delivering games, social communities, iVOD, Internet video, advanced advertising, interactivity and commerce to TVs around the world," ActiveVideo president and CEO Jeff Miller said in a statement.
Sangita Verma, CEO and founder of TAG Networks, and Robert Craig, chief creative officer and founder, will serve as the president and chief creative officer, respectively, for ActiveVideo's TAG Games division. TAG CTO Cliff Mercer will serve as senior vice president of engineering for ActiveVideo.
"TAG and ActiveVideo Networks have successfully collaborated for many years and together we have proven the value of games as drivers of television interactivity," Verma said in a statement. "Now as a part of the ActiveVideo team, we're looking forward to expanding our vision and making the TAG games platform available to other games developers and content owners."
Verma founded TAG Networks -- originally called "TVHead" -- in May 2003, and as CEO she secured $20 million in funding from private-equity investors including Bay Partners, Mitsui Incubase and Apax Partners.
TAG Networks recently announced that it had established an industry record for streaming-games density, claiming to have delivered 2,000 concurrent MPEG game streams at 1.25 Mbps with a single off-the-shelf 1RU dual quad-core server.
