GSI Commerce announced today that its Global Marketing Services division has acquired Columbus, Ohio-based, attribution analytics firm ClearSaleing. From the GSI Commerce release: “The acquisition of ClearSaleing broadens and deepens the division’s portfolio of marketing services offerings and overall market position. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.” Read more.
Chris Saridakis, CEO, GSI Global Marketing Services, briefly discussed the acquisition and its implications.
AdExchanger.com: What was the trigger at GSI Commerce for recognizing that having an attribution solution in-house made sense?
CS: The acquisition of ClearSaleing expands the breadth of GSI’s marketing services capabilities and technology suite by adding the market-leading advertising analytics and attribution platform. The acquisition also expands GSI’s reach into existing and new vertical markets.
ClearSaleing is the market-leading advertising analytics and attribution technology company offering comprehensive advertising analytics, attribution management and modeling, and marketing portfolio optimization.
The acquisition of ClearSaleing presents immediate cross-selling opportunities across the GSI Commerce and GSI Global Marketing Services client base.
Can you share plans for how the ClearSaleing team be integrated into GSI?
Yes, the ClearSaleing management team will be retained and Randy Smith will now report to Chris Saridakis, CEO, GSI Global Marketing Services.
In addition, Deann Harvey, the Chief Sales Officer for GSI Global Marketing Services, will transition over to ClearSaleing to serve as Chief Revenue Officer. As part of this transition, Dustin Engel will become ClearSaleing’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer effective immediately.
The rest of the ClearSaleing organization chart will remain the same and there are plans to maintain ClearSaleing’s offices.
What are the key digital channels that ClearSaleing targets and that GSI sees as particularly crucial?
Currently, ClearSaleing targets all digital channels; search, display, email, affiliate, mobile. Based on consumer behavior, all of those channels are crucial for an advertiser to successfully market products. In addition to the digital channels, we see opportunity to apply attribution analytics and modeling across offline channels like traditional direct mail.
ClearSaleing and MBS Insight are already working on delivering this capability.
By John Ebbert
