TechCrunch April 3, 2014
UK-based Tesco, the world’s second-largest retailer after Walmart, has made a killing in its sector by jumping early into the use of big data, collected via loyalty cards as well as through stores and online, to figure out what its customers wanted to buy. Today, Dunnhumby, the data science group that helped Tesco with that effort, which Tesco eventually acquired, is making an acquisition of its own. It has bought Sociomantic Labs, an ad tech firm that specialises on programmatic and retargeting advertising with an emphasis on e-commerce.
The companies are not disclosing the terms of the deal but a source close to the negotiations tells us that it is in the low hundreds of millions of dollars — Business Insider, which noted a rumor of the deal in March, put the possible price at up to $200 million.
The is the first advertising acquisition made by Dunnhumby, but not its first purchase to expand its marketing muscle: among them, in 2011, it bought BzzAgent – a firm that organises people to compete to be first in line to try free or discounted products and then chat about those products online. Read More