sprinklr-acquires-nanigans-social-ad-business,-now-managing-more-than-$1.5-billion-in-ad-spend

Martech platform Sprinklr has acquired Nanigans’ social advertising business, bringing the total amount of ad spend managed via Sprinklr’s Modern Advertising platform to more than $1.5 billion. Nanigans, a performance ad company supporting retail and gaming advertisers, will keep ownership of its incrementality business which focuses on measuring advertising effectiveness.

Sprinklr said “many former” ad specialists from Nanigans will be joining Sprinklr’s team. The deal includes the acquisition of Nanigans data management, predictive analytics, optimization, campaign management and granular real-time reporting attached to Nanigans’ ad business across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Why we should care

Sprinklr has positioned itself as a leading marketing technology platform and is aiming to be a full-scale customer experience provider, offering marketing, advertising, research and customer service solutions. The addition of Nanigans’ social advertising business will boost one of its primary areas of focus (social ad campaigns) and give Sprinklr access to new talent and a sizeable pool of performance advertising data.

“Sprinklr is also gaining an experienced team of leaders who understand how to help brands drive real business goals on social. I’m looking forward to seeing this team thrive as part of the Sprinklr family,” said Nanigans CEO Ric Calvillo.

More performance advertising data from Nanigans gives Sprinklr deeper insights into social ad campaigns, which, in turn, could help the platform better optimize client campaigns — especially with a new team of experienced ad specialists to back it up.

More on the news

  • The social advertising will be managed via Sprinklr’s Modern Advertising product.
  • Sprinklr CEO Ragy Thomas said the acquisition will enhance the company’s Modern Advertising platform while also helping brands, “Reduce the number of point solutions in their martech stack.”
  • Sprinklr recently rolled out more than 400 new updates to its platform, including integrations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Trustpilot.


About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.



hubspot-acquires-data-synchronization-platform-piesync

HubSpot has announced the acquisition of integration as a service (iPaaS) provider PieSync, marking the company’s first major acquisition since acquiring Kemvi and Motion.ai in 2017. With the acquisition, the companies seek to provide users with up-to-date customer profiles created from data spanning various platforms.

Why we should care

Many marketers know the grief of gathering data from disparate sources to keep customer profiles as valid as possible. Some rely on a combination of automated and manual processes which create a time-consuming and heavy lift, even for the brightest marketers.

PieSync provides both current and historic two-way data synchronization that runs in the background. And through the integration, HubSpot will allow users to sync their data in real-time. The synchronization can help users have the most current customer information pulled in from a number of apps to create the most accurate view of the customer.

“The HubSpot platform has grown significantly over the past four years, with more than 300 integrations now available to customers. While those integrations are powerful on their own, the addition of PieSync’s two-way sync technology will amplify that power and enable our customers to get the most value out of the tools they use every day,” said Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.

More on the news:

  • HubSpot’s acquisition strategy is to acquire companies that can accelerate items on their roadmap.
  • HubSpot’s open platform has over 300 app partners. The PieSync acquisition seeks to provide a more efficient way for users to manage multiple apps.
  • The average employee uses at least eight apps on any given day according to data from Blissfully.


About The Author

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.



tapclicks-acquires-client-reporting-platform-megalytic

The marketing intelligence, analytics and workflow management platform TapClicks has acquired Megalytic, an automated client reporting and dashboard provider.

TapClicks is a unified data solution for advertisers, agencies, brands and media companies with connectors to marketing and advertising platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, LinkedIn Ads and SnapAds. As part of the acquisition, the company will now be able to integrate its data connectors into Megalytic for reporting.

“We are excited to bring Megalytic into the TapClicks ecosystem to give marketers a robust but streamlined reporting solution that seamlessly integrates with the TapClicks Marketing Operations Platform suite of intelligence capabilities,” said TapClicks President Colby West.

Why we should care

The acquisition benefits existing customers of both companies. TapClicks’ users will gain access to Megalytic’s reporting and dashboard solutions, while Megalytic’s users will be able to access the “hundreds of proprietary data connectors” available via TapClicks MarketPlace and take advantage of TapClicks’ upgrade options.

TapClicks is planning to expand its data offerings with more advanced attribution, lead scoring and trend analysis features.

By integrating Megalytic into its platform, TapClicks aims to be more competitive against analytic solutions offered by industry leaders like IBM, Adobe and Salesforce.

More on the news

  • TapClicks currently integrates more than 200 different data sources into its Connector Marketplace platform.
  • The company’s full set of intelligence solutions include SEO, social and PPC reporting, along with automated order entry, set-up and approval workflow management.
  • Megalytic founder and CEO Mark Hansen will join TapClicks as its new VP of data product, focused on building out TapClicks’ marketing cloud and monetizing the company’s data sources.
  • Prior to starting Megalytic, Hansen was founder and CEO of Kinderhook Systems, a software engineering firm acquired by Xpedior.


About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.



sparkpost-acquires-edatasource,-adding-inbox-insights-to-its-email-platform

Email marketing platform SparkPost has announced plans to purchase reputation management, email deliverability and analytics provider eDataSource.

The acquisition is expected to provide SparkPost and eDataSource customers the combined abilities to create, send and measure email performance and inbox placement analytics. The announcement also included plans to launch new capabilities, including automatic seeding and real-time blacklist alerting.

Why we should care

Reaching the managed inbox continues to pose challenges for marketers. Deliverability is becoming increasingly complex, and email marketers often feel the negative impacts on their email marketing efforts every day. Many email service providers (ESPs) can give users insight into email performance based on metrics, but marketers often turn to third-party deliverability solutions to enhance placement and deliverability insights, and the upcoming merger seeks to address these challenges for its customers.

Integrating deliverability insights into the platform could have a strong impact on email marketers’ understanding of deliverability. With one in five emails never reaching the intended inbox, the integration between SparkPost and eDataSource could signal a coming change in how we can leverage martech and data to better understand and manage our relationships with subscribers.

“By better
understanding deliverability and inbox performance, customers will be able to
optimize their sending for improved engagement and business results from their
email,” said SparkPost CEO Rich Harris. “Deeply integrating sending
and analytics will provide richer insights and new capabilities like automatic
seeding, accurate weighting of inbox placement and blacklist impact based on
actual sending patterns.”

Deliverability and optimization are two of the most important factors for reaching the managed inbox, and gaining a holistic understanding of the science email marketing is critical for marketers who want to achieve better outcomes.

More on the news

  • According to SparkPost, 37% of B2C organizations use its technology to deliver email.
  • SparkPost plans to integrate eDataSource’s brand, employees and products in the coming months.
  • eDataSource customers will have the option to migrate their email services to SparkPost if they choose. It will continue to be offered for use with other providers.

More about the Managed Inbox



About The Author

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.



mavrck’s-acquires-grouphigh-to-increase-its-influencer-search-index-tenfold

Influencer marketing platform Mavrck announced Tuesday it was acquiring the blog and social search SaaS solution GroupHigh for an undisclosed amount. GroupHigh will operate as a separate product post acquisition, with the company’s founder Bill Brennan and its CTO David Pinto continuing to lead operations.

“GroupHigh has built relationships with an impressive cohort of 9M bloggers, which is differentiated and complementary to our influencer index of social creators and micro-influencers,” said Mavrck co-founder Sean Naegeli.

Why we should care

Marketers already using Mavrck’s platform to identify and build relationships with influencers will now have access to ten times the number of influencer profiles with the acquisition, the company said. GroupHigh’s blog and social search tool, which helps marketers find influencers that align with their brands, will also broaden Mavrck’s offerings, opening up new custom search and segmentation capabilities for brands.

“The expansion complements Mavrck’s recent platform updates supporting influencer personalization, which enables marketers to customize their own influencer networks and search based on the influencer data and attributes that matter most to the brand,” said Mavrck in its announcement on the acquisition.

And while Mavrck has long been a resource for large enterprise brands, serving companies like P&G and PepsiCo, the company said it plans to use GroupHigh’s technology to create an influencer solution designed specifically for SMBs.

More on the news

  • GroupHigh will keep its branding, now called “GroupHigh, A Mavrck Company.”
  • Brennan will serve as COO of GroupHigh and Pinto will remain CTO, both reporting to Mavrck CEO Lyle Stevens.
  • Mavrck, which was founded in 2014, is headquartered in Boston and has raised $13.8 million in venture funding.


About The Author

inmarket-acquires-rival-thinknear,-suggesting-consolidation-ahead-for-location-intelligence

Location-based ad platform inMarket is buying Thinknear from owner Telenav. Thinknear is a location-based ads and analytics provider that competes with numerous other companies in the segment.

Todd Dipaola, CEO and Founder of inMarket said in an email that the acquisition will provide inMarket clients with “best-in-class managed as well as self-service platforms.” He added, “they’ll gain access to all of Thinknear’s products such as Geotype and Geolink, as well as their location score performance tech. Notably, inMarket clients will gain access to the Thinknear self-service platform. InMarket previously did not offer self-service.

Thinknear a non-core asset. Telenav is a connected car, navigation and fleet management platform. The transfer of Telenav to inMarket received a quick mention in Telenav’s earnings release yesterday and zero discussion on the company’s earnings call, suggesting its ads business was a tiny fraction of revenue. Telenav is thus likely shedding the ads unit to focus on its core, connected cars business.

Telenav said, however, it plans to work with inMarket to offer in-car advertising to consumers through its relationships with car manufacturers. As part of the deal, the value of which was not disclosed, Telenav will gain a minority equity stake in inMarket.

The acquisition follows Foursquare’s purchase of Placed from Snap in May. InMarket told me the deal was not a response to Foursquare-Placed. However, it still suggests more consolidation may be ahead for the segment.

Too many companies that sound the same. Many companies in the location intelligence segment began life selling media but later moved into selling data and analytics exclusively. Telenav and inMarket continue to sell location-targeted media. Early on, inMarket emphasized digital-to-store analytics and in-store marketing but has broadened its offering considerably in the past five years. The company says it only works with first party location data from its SDK integrations.

There are at least 20 companies that make similar-sounding claims about using mobile-location data to target audiences and measure the offline impact of media (digital and traditional), store visitation and sometimes sales. A partial list includes Foursquare/Placed, PlaceIQ, Factual, Ubimo, Cuebiq, Blis, Skyhook, GroundTruth, Verve, Unacast, Reveal Mobile, NinthDecimal, HERE, Spatially, Pitney Bowes, Gravy, X-Mode, UberMedia and others.

Google and Facebook offer similar targeting and analytics capabilities.

A potential data reckoning ahead. The coming of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) next year may put pressure on some of these companies as third party location data becomes potentially less available and mobile operating systems give consumers more control over who can access location and how often. However, the precise impact of CCPA on location data throughout the broader programmatic ecosystem remains to be seen.

There are also wild cards such as New York’s proposed law substantially banning the transfer of location data collected within the city to third parties. Other municipalities may follow and introduce similar legislation.

Therefore, expect companies that have their own “first-party data” (via developer SDKs) to be near-term acquisition targets.

Why we should care. Putting aside the issue of data privacy (a major one), all brands and enterprise marketers should be working with location data for audience segmentation, business intelligence insights and media measurement. Unless you’re a pure e-commerce company this data is the only way to get a clear and complete picture of media efficacy and the buyer’s journey. Location data can also be utilized as the centerpiece of multi-touch attribution.

For questions to ask location intelligence companies before deciding how to proceed see How to choose a location data provider.



About The Author

Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google .




microsoft-acquires-e-commerce-advertising-vendor-promoteiq

Microsoft has acquired vendor marketing platform PromoteIQ. PromoteIQ is an automated product marketing platform that enables brand manufacturers to run sponsored ads on participating retailers’ e-commerce sites to generate visibility and revenue from those sites. The company offers analytics dashboards both retailers and advertisers to track campaign performance.

acquired in 2016 by Criteo. Google experimented with running its product listing ads on retailer sites through a program called AdSense for Shopping, but it hasn’t gone anywhere since launching in 2014. Amazon, and now Walmart, have their own sponsored product ad offerings.

Why we should care

Programs aimed at supporting retail customers is an area of focus for Microsoft, and the PromoteIQ acquisition fits into this effort. Microsoft is looking to pair its AI and machine learning technologies with PromoteIQ’s targeted ad placement capabilities and expects the integrations to be completed later this year. Additionally, it can help Microsoft Advertising address consistent calls from advertisers for more reach.

Microsoft Advertising offers product ads on Bing.com, but its limited reach put its reach behind Google and Amazon. PromoteIQ’s portfolio of clients includes thousands of global brands and retailers.

“PromoteIQ has pioneered the private marketplace approach to digital vendor marketing. PromoteIQ’s technology strategically complements Microsoft’s current retail advertising offerings, and together, we can enable retailers with a portfolio of technology solutions to modernize their e-commerce platforms and maximize their monetization opportunity,” said Rik van der Kooi, corporate vice president of Microsoft Advertising.

More on the news: 

  • PromoteIQ will keep its own branding and become a division within Microsoft Advertising.  Terms of the deal have not been provided at this time.
  • Kroger, Kohl’s and Overstock.com are among PromoteIQ’s current retailer customers.  
  • PromoteIQ advertisers include Sony, P&G, Kraft and HP.


About The Author

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