It’s not a case of déjà vu – Israeli performance player Perion has completed its purchase of MakeMeReach, a Paris-based company that specializes in using social networks to monetize apps. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The deal, revealed Wednesday, comes less than a week after Marin Software bought French social advertising player SocialMoov for just north of $20 million. [In other French M&A-related news, France’s Mobile Network Group snapped up French/Israeli mobile ad tech startup Appsfire for $30 million on Tuesday.]
MakeMeReach, which fetched $3 million in venture funding in 2011, has more than 150 clients across Europe, including Coca-Cola, Nestle, IKEA, Match.com, l’Occitane en Provence, Armani and GroupM.
The company is both a Facebook preferred marketing developers and a Twitter marketing platform partner.
MakeMeReach’s AdsOptim will be integrated into GrowMobile, Perion’s self-serve user acquisition and app promotion platform. Perion, which went public in 2006, acquired GrowMobile for roughly $42 million at the end of June.
According to MakeMeReach CEO Pierre-François Chiron, the AdsOptim tool was designed to help developers manage their social campaigns and target specific segments of potential consumers across Facebook and Twitter. A reporting function within the platform allows advertisers to identify where to shift spend depending on real-time results.
That’s what attracted MakeMeReach to Perion, said Shai Gottesdiener, GM of the company’s mobile marketing division.
“Social media advertising has skyrocketed in recent years and will continue to grow, meaning that to effectively compete with other apps, developers have to take advantage of social media sources,” said Gottesdiener. “But in order to stay ahead of the curve and essentially beat their competitors, it’s important for app developers to advertise their campaigns not only on social, but across all possible traffic sources on mobile.”
That’s a big part of the strategy at Perion, which began focusing more of its attention on app monetization last year following the GrowMobile acquisition. The addition of MakeMeReach’s social advertising tech into GrowMobile rounds out Perion’s offering by widening the range of traffic sources available to developers. GrowMobile is integrated with more than 100 ad networks and RTB players. MakeMeReach extends that scale to Facebook and Twitter.
All of MakeMeReach’s 20 employees will join GrowMobile’s existing team of 60. While GrowMobile will continue to run US sales and operations out of its San Francisco headquarters, MakeMeReach will take charge of Perion’s GrowMobile sales and ops in Europe from its base in Paris.
“Being a part of a global company will open up growth and career opportunities for all sides,” Gottesdiener said.
Most of GrowMobile’s business comes out of North America and Asia, largely because the majority of mobile game developers are based in those regions. With the MakeMeReach grab, Perion is looking to expand GrowMobile’s footprint where the growing is good.
While around 80% of GrowMobile’s customers are US-based, the bulk of MakeMeReach’s clients are located Europe.
“Naturally, our aim is to significantly expand our presence in Europe and in Israel since the mobile games market is growing significantly there,” Gottesdiener said.
