MarketShare has acquired DataSong, a San Francisco-based marketing analytics startup that catered to omnichannel retailers like Neiman Marcus and Williams-Sonoma. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
MarketShare, which creates tools for marketers, agencies and media companies to assess business performance, will also roll out the MarketShare DecisionCloud, a marketing analytics, attribution, planning and execution platform.
The DataSong deal follows a busier-than-usual year in the marketing analytics and attribution space. Google bought Adometry, AOL grabbed Convertro and Rakuten Marketing snagged DC Storm.
Deal activity in the data-management platform (DMP) and tag management space have also kicked into high gear in the last two years, leading some to predict these respective technology capabilities were, in fact, converging.
“For marketers, the future is about engaging with customers on a one-to-one basis,” said Jon Vein, co-founder and CEO of MarketShare, in a statement. “Adding DataSong’s technology and expertise in this area … takes [MarketShare’s] actionable analytics to a whole new level for our clients worldwide.”
MarketShare bought DataSong for its technology and client list. At the same time, MarketShare has invested in additional data partnerships, including Acxiom/LiveRamp, J.D. Power, Twitter, SAP and Amazon Web Services.
MarketShare also works with a number of media owners and broadcasters like Turner, which uses DecisionCloud to pipe in Polk automotive or Rentrak purchase data to enable richer audience segmentation and targeting for its advertisers.
“Traditional media mix models and attribution have become increasingly obsolete because consumers do not act in neat, nice ways,” Wes Nichols, MarketShare’s CEO told AdExchanger.”We built a DecisionEngine for marketers to make much more informed decisions around where their next dollar should go.”
While MarketShare’s sweet spot was applying data to improve business resource allocation, Nichols said that DataSong brings a strong campaign execution element.
DataSong’s technology will transition to new ‘apps’ in MarketShare’s DecisionCloud, such as event-based targeting or in-flight course correction.
“This will allow marketers to connect the dots between digital consumer behavior and retail store sales,” Nichols said. “For too long, companies have been measuring media simply at the campaign or channel level, and oversimplistically doing attribution. This not only happens in digital attribution, but in measuring offline media like TV.”
