Stagwell, the Nasdaq-listed marketing services group, has acquired Freestar, a Scottsdale, Arizona, company that helps digital publishers sell their advertising space. Stagwell announced the deal on October 26, 2026, and AdExchanger reported that it has already closed.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Needham & Company acted as Freestar's exclusive financial adviser.
Freestar becomes part of Stagwell's Owned Media unit, within its Media and Commerce segment. Stagwell will keep all of Freestar's employees and its executive team, AdExchanger reported. "We're keeping the same name, the same leadership, the same team and the same offerings," Freestar chief executive Kurt Donnell told the publication.
What Freestar built
Freestar was founded in 2015 by David Freedman. It works on the sell side of digital advertising, managing how publishers' ad inventory is packaged and sold to advertisers through its own platform, pubOS, which it describes as a publisher operating system.
The company works with more than 1,000 publishers, which together serve nearly a billion ad requests a day, AdExchanger reported. Its clients include Boston Globe Media, Fortune Media, Legacy and Enthusiast Gaming, according to Stagwell's release, and AdExchanger listed the Associated Press, Reuters, Sports Reference and SignUpGenius among its partners.
Freestar says it has generated more than $1 billion in revenue for publishers over the past decade. It has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing private companies for seven years in a row and ranked first in 2019, according to the release. The company did not disclose its headcount or any outside funding.
The release also says Freestar manages more of the premium publishers on Jounce Media's Bellwether list than any other publisher services partner, and that it has won awards including Adweek's AI Tool of the Year and a customer service team award from the Titan Business Awards. Axios, which first reported the deal, described Freestar as an 11-year-old company.
“Publishers are essential to a healthy media ecosystem, and we believe their long-term success is critical to the future of our industry.”
What Stagwell is buying
Stagwell is acquiring Freestar's technology, services and client relationships, not the publishers themselves, AdExchanger reported. Freestar's existing partnerships with demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms and other ad tech vendors will stay in place.
The group plans to use Freestar's inventory and data to train The Media Machine, its agentic system for planning and buying media. It also wants to build more precise audiences, extend advertisers' campaigns onto Freestar's publisher network and strengthen its managed services business.
"Publishers are essential to a healthy media ecosystem, and we believe their long-term success is critical to the future of our industry," said Ben Berentson, chief executive of Stagwell Owned Media.
Berentson told AdExchanger that Stagwell sees itself as being on the publishers' side. "We view ourselves as being an advocate for publishers," he said.
What happens to publishers
Freestar's day-to-day operations are not expected to change much, AdExchanger reported. "Publishers will keep working with the same account, yield and support people," Donnell said.
Donnell said the deal gives Freestar more resources to invest in pubOS and its product roadmap, and access to data from Stagwell's advertising business. "This gives us a better understanding of what really drives outcomes for both advertisers and publishers," he told AdExchanger.
Stagwell also tied the acquisition to its Future of News initiative, a coalition of publishers, marketers, journalists and brand leaders that aims to steer more advertising budgets to news organisations.
Neither company said whether Freestar's pricing or contract terms for publishers would change. Freestar's publishers keep their own relationships with advertisers, and Stagwell is not taking ownership of any publisher's inventory.
An agency group moving into ad tech
Stagwell describes itself as a challenger network that uses AI to change how marketing works, with specialists in more than 40 countries. Owned Media already includes businesses such as ReachTV, Ink and Real Clear Holdings, according to Dealroom.
Berentson told AdExchanger that Stagwell, launched 11 years ago, "doesn't have this enormous legacy holding us back", a contrast with older agency holding companies. With Freestar, the group now owns a sell-side platform that publishers use directly, alongside the agencies and media-buying tools it already runs for advertisers.
