Marking its first acquisition, Marin Software announced today that it has acquired self-serve retargeting start-up Perfect Audience for $22.8 million, including $5.4 million in cash and the remainder in common stock.
The company said of the Perfect Audience purchase:
With the acquisition, Marin Software expands its cross-channel capabilities, adding new programmatic display and social advertising functions while strengthening its audience targeting tools. Real time search intent data will be combined with behavioral and other data sources to drive audience buying and retargeting across Facebook, Twitter, mobile, and other display ad placements.
Perfect Audience’s SaaS platform launched in 2012 to give mid-sized companies the ability to set up and manage retargeting campaigns on various ad exchanges including Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Facebook Exchange and Twitter on their own rather than through third-party vendors.
Marin Software, which went public in March of last year, claims $6 billion of ad spend now runs through its online advertising management platform annually. Last month the company named David Yovanno as CEO to replace founder Chris Lien, who now serves as executive chairman.
“As display and social advertising evolve, performance marketers are looking for ways to achieve the same financial return with these channels that they’re accustomed to with search,” said David A. Yovanno, chief executive officer at Marin Software in the announcement. “Search brings a wealth of real-time intent data and is a perfect match for retargeting. We believe by building-out our capabilities in display and social, our customers will be able to combine their search, display and social data to build and target audience segments across channels to drive better performance and scale. “
Perfect Audience customers include American Apparel, bebe, Eventbrite, New Relic, 99 designs, and Rackspace. This spring, the company added dynamic search retargeting on both Facebook and Twitter and recently launched a test allowing like-minded companies to target each others’ audiences.
Brad Flora, Perfect Audience co-founder and chief executive officer, said of the acquisition, “Combining the cross channel visibility and control of the Marin platform with our unique approach to retargeting allows marketers to reach their highest value audiences across the web, Facebook, and Twitter.”
The entire Perfect Audience team will join Marin, which imparted $2.7 million in equity retention grants to the continuing employees.
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