Affle buys Perion for $420 million with its AI buying agent

Perion brings agency and brand clients, mostly in North America, while Affle sells mobile campaigns where advertisers pay only for converted users. Perion chief executive Tal Jacobson told AdExchanger that he does not expect the two AI systems to be merged: Affle’s AI handles the conversion end of the funnel, Perion’s Outmax agent mostly trades media inside walled gardens, and both companies have invested heavily in AI over the past two years. Perion’s 2025 purchase Greenbids, an AI media buyer, is what opens TikTok, Meta and YouTube to the group.

Once the deal closes, Perion leaves both the Tel Aviv exchange and Nasdaq and sits under Affle’s Israeli arm as a subsidiary. About 500 Perion staff stay on, the deal needs shareholder and US antitrust approval, and a 40-day go-shop lets Perion seek rival offers before an expected close in early 2027.

Meta’s own ads MCP setup page, read for our database on 26 September, lists Claude and Claude Code among four supported AI agents (see our Meta ads tools page).

Outmax buys mostly inside walled gardens such as Meta, where Meta already lists Claude among the agents its ads MCP supports, so Affle is paying for an AI buyer in a channel whose owner also lets general assistants connect.