Automated online-advertising company AppNexus Inc has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) which is likely to come in Q2 of 2017, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. 

 

The company, in which WPP owns a 15% stake, was valued at $1.8bn in a 2015 funding round, so is expected to seek an offering between $1.5bn and $2bn, with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase expected to serve as lead underwriters.

It has been a busy few months for AppNexus, which recently teamed with Vibrant Media to enable programmatic trading of in-view formats and was also reported to have submitted S1 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at around the same time as the Trade Desk.

In September, News Corp was pegged to invest $10m in the ad tech firm, which is carrying out a global overhaul to streamline how it sells ads to clients that could lead to as many as 150 redundancies.

AppNexus follows in the footsteps of Snap, which confidentially kicked off its IPO two weeks ago, according to reports, with an estimated value of $25bn expected around March.