According to multiple sources, and the company itself has now confirmed, Collective will announce the acquisition of dynamic creative ad tech company Tumri shortly as the ad tech ecosystem M&A has continued to accelerate in recent weeks (AdMeld by Google on June 13, Performable by Hubspot and MediaMind by DG on June 16).
After competitor Teracent was acquired by Google in November of 2009 – as well as Adroit Interactive by MediaMath, Dapper by Yahoo! and ADISN by CrowdGather in 2010 – Tumri has gone through a change in management and a strategy shift which moved the company towards providing multi-variate, creative ad tools versus services.
Last September, Tumri CEO Hari Menon told AdExchanger.com (AdExchanger.com Q&A), “Going forward, we believe that value will come much more from our clients using our software and less from Tumri providing direct services to those clients. Either way, what is important is that the advertiser sees the value of our solutions and achieves their objectives.”
With this announcement, Collective will have made its third acquisition of the year after buying Oggifinogi, a rich media ad tech company focused video ad creative, in February, and UK-based WebTV Enterprise, a video ad network, in March. Tumri not only brings display ad multi-variate tech in-house but additional staff familiar with the details of today’s display advertising challenges and opportunities.
In general, dynamic ad creative tech has been increasingly seen as a “point solution” within a larger media buying, ad tech platform or end-to-end marketing stack which Collective appears to be building.
According to CrunchBase, Tumri had raised $31 million since its founding in 2004. Investors include Time Warner Investments and existing investors Accel Partners, Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital.
UPDATED at 1:30 p. ET: Collective formally announced the acquisition of Tumri. Release is below:
Collective Acquires Tumri;
Brings Power of Dynamic Creative Optimization to Brand AdvertisersNEW YORK, July 6, 2011 — Collective, a full service provider of media and technology solutions for display and video advertising, announced today that it has acquired Tumri, the leading provider of dynamic creative optimization and personalization solutions for advertisers and agencies. The deal closed for an undisclosed amount.
Just months after the acquisition of video ad platform and services company Oggifinogi, the transaction further empowers Collective’s end-to-end audience buying solutions for brand advertisers by enabling the delivery of massively customized creative content at scale.
“A lot of companies can deliver impressions. At Collective, we help brand advertisers turn that impression into an expression,” said Joe Apprendi, CEO, Collective. “Tumri gives us the capability to target the right audience with the right messaging and ad format, dynamically based on data intelligence.”
Apprendi maintains that most optimization to date has focused on the ‘who’, which represents the data piece, and the ‘where’ –the ad environment– while not enough emphasis has been placed on optimization of the creative, the ‘what’. Further, the delivery of creative content leads to interaction rates that are over ten times the interaction rates of the campaign control group.
The acquisition strengthens Collective’s ability to manage the entire ad delivery process, enhancing audience buying, optimization and overall ad efficacy while adding much greater cost efficiencies for advertisers.
“DCO has been largely relegated to the direct and ecommerce channels, but its application can have spectacular results for brand advertisers as well. The combination of Tumri and Oggifinogi provides a rich, video-enabled canvas through which brands can connect with consumers across the entire spectrum of online display advertising,” Apprendi added.
Tumri powers dynamic marketing campaigns for many of the world’s most prominent brands including Nike, HP and Travelocity among others, who leverage the platform to cross-sell and up-sell a catalog of products and services based on a user’s actual site browse or action, driving maximum relevancy and ROI.
“Collective’s evolution as a business has brought incredible market opportunities across the entire display ecosystem,” said Hari Menon, CEO, Tumri. “Combining Collective’s AMP audience buying platform with intelligent ad versioning has created a powerful tool for advertisers, allowing them to engage with consumers with exact using the right creative.” Luma Partners advised Tumri on the transaction.
Continued Platform Development
Tumri’s deep engineering expertise in data-driven marketing platforms, ad serving optimization and analytics will be applied to Collective’s own AMP® Data and Media Management Platform technology roadmap. The combined engineering operation will greatly enhance and accelerate AMP product development, enabling Collective to release new features and functionality to both buy-side and sell-side customers using AMP.
By John Ebbert
