The acquisition establishes Searchspring as the global leader in product discovery, optimizing conversion rates across merchant sites in addition to over 1,500 third-party sites, including Google Shopping, Facebook, and Amazon

Searchspring, the global leader in ecommerce site search, product merchandising, and ecommerce personalization, announced today it has acquired Intelligent Reach, a UK-headquartered, full-service data feed management software provider trusted by brands such as HP, Asics, Avon Cosmetics, Black and Decker, Seraphine, and Burberry. 

Searchspring is a leading global ecommerce search and personalization platform that has been providing merchants with powerful, unique, proven product discovery and shopping experiences since 2007. Purpose-built for ecommerce, merchants use the Searchspring platform to facilitate better product discovery through semantic site search capabilities and flexible product merchandising, which includes business rules as well as AI-driven campaigns. The Searchspring personalization suite further helps to get the right product to the right shopper at the right time.

Intelligent Reach empowers mid-market and enterprise merchants by curating their product data to optimize for distribution across more than 1,500 advertising channels, shopping sites, and marketplaces by managing product data effectively, integrating it across platforms, and syncing orders with existing systems to streamline operations. These channels include the biggest consumer-facing in the world, including Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, and more. The platform reduces the time it takes a brand, retailer, or agency to access new channels to days rather than weeks. It streamlines operations, accelerates entry to new markets, manages the complexity of marketplaces and social commerce, and increases return on ad spend (ROAS).

"Integrating Intelligent Reach's robust product data optimization and smooth syndication across countless channels with Searchspring's expertise in site search, personalization, and merchandising is set to redefine how merchants and brands enhance their conversions and efficiency," said Alex Kombos, CEO of Searchspring. “With this acquisition, Searchspring is poised to be at the forefront of connected commerce, and the combined platform will soon enable us to deliver comprehensive Product Information Management (PIM) capabilities.”

As US ecommerce channel advertising spending is anticipated to surpass $55 billion by 2026 (as reported by eMarketer), this combined solution from Searchspring and Intelligent Reach allows merchants to enhance advertising effectiveness, improve conversion rates, and significantly increase gross merchandise value (GMV).

"We are excited to join forces with Searchspring and embark on this new chapter of growth and innovation," said Robin Martin, CEO of Intelligent Reach. "Our combined technology offers clients a complete on-site and off-site product discovery solution. Searchspring specializes in enhanced onsite product discovery through dramatically improved site search, merchandising, and personalization; Intelligent Reach supplies superior technology for managing and optimizing product data to external sales channels. Together we provide merchants of all sizes with a comprehensive omnichannel ecommerce solution."

The acquisition of Intelligent Reach is Searchspring's second acquisition within a year, supported by a significant strategic investment from leading growth equity firm PSG. In September 2023, the company acquired UK-based Increasingly, which provides advanced onsite bundling technology that is proven to increase basket size and conversion rates. It is now available as a fully integrated Predictive Product Bundling solution in Searchspring’s core platform.

This latest investment reinforces Searchspring’s commitment to being the leading global conversion optimization platform for ecommerce merchants, enhancing both on-site and off-site product discovery. This acquisition delivers innovative solutions to boost revenue and improve the digital shopping experience. With these developments, Searchspring is strategically positioned to transform the ecommerce sector by providing merchants with a comprehensive range of tools to elevate their online engagement and drive growth.

Doceree, the leading global healthcare marketing platform building unprecedented programmatic solutions for HCP marketing with proprietary data tools, appoints Deepak Kandaswamy as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy. This strategic appointment underscores the company's commitment to enhancing its M&A capabilities and fueling global expansion, evident in its remarkable 3X year-on-year revenue growth. The announcement coincides with Doceree's strategic recruitment of top talent from leading Ad/MarTech organizations, showcasing its expertise, influence, and success in the global healthcare marketing industry.

From its initial operations in only two countries, Doceree has rapidly expanded its footprint to encompass over 25 countries globally, reaffirming its belief in leveraging advanced healthcare marketing technology to improve patient outcomes. With the appointment of Deepak Kandaswamy, renowned for his expertise in mergers and acquisitions, Doceree is poised to accelerate its strategic initiatives and growth in targeted regions, fueling its ongoing expansion and innovation journey.

Deepak Kandaswamy brings to Doceree extensive experience spanning over a decade in Corporate Development and Strategy, having held pivotal roles in some of the world's leading media and advertising organizations. His impressive track record includes key involvements in high-profile global mergers and acquisitions, such as Comcast's acquisition of Sky and Softbank's purchase of Sprint, and leading numerous corporate venture capital deals that have spurred progress and delivered successful exits. With an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BS in Finance from Rutgers University, Deepak's expertise is set to empower Doceree's strategic initiatives, fostering further growth and advancement.

Harshit Jain MD, Founder and Global CEO of Doceree, expressed his enthusiasm about Deepak joining the team, stating, "We are pleased to announce that Deepak has joined Doceree as a key member of our leadership team. His distinguished expertise in corporate development and strategic planning, along with a commendable history of fostering growth through innovative strategies, aligns perfectly with our mission to redefine the healthcare marketing landscape. Deepak's appointment is a strategic move, underscoring our commitment to not just expanding our global footprint, but also enhancing our capabilities to deliver cutting-edge solutions in healthcare marketing. With Deepak's expert insights and leadership, we are poised to further our vision and solidify our position as healthcare marketing pioneers, globally."

Deepak Kandaswamy shared his excitement about his new role, "I am thrilled to be a part of the exceptional team at Doceree. The company's track record of achieving remarkable organic, profitable growth is truly impressive, and I am eager to contribute by identifying and capitalizing on strategic inorganic opportunities that will further accelerate Doceree's expansion trajectory. Together, we will certainly unlock new growth avenues and solidify Doceree's position as the industry leader."

Doceree sees mergers and acquisitions as a strategic approach for achieving inorganic growth and is dedicated to utilizing this strategy to enhance its global footprint in the upcoming years. With the inclusion of Deepak in its impressive team of experts, the company is set to elevate its global operations and services to unprecedented levels.

Akooda, the world's first operations intelligence platform, today launched the newest way to get the answers every company is looking for through its AI-powered Enterprise Search platform that allows any employee to ask any question and get any answer.

Powered by a patent-pending combination of AI, statistical modeling, NLP and military-grade security, Akooda's platform provides a nuanced understanding of natural language queries. Akooda integrates with nearly all major software platforms including Salesforce, Atlassian, Google Suite, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, Slack, Hubspot, Github, Notion, Asana, Zoom, Box, Okta, and more. Its answers are enriched with advanced analysis, providing not only relevance and timeliness but also significant insights.

Examples of questions answerable by Akooda's platform include:

• Who is the best person to reach out to about <internal project>?
• What issues did we have with <feature> for <customer>?
• How many deals have we closed in Q1?
• How much time has been spent in meetings regarding <topic>?
• What are the latest happenings around <customer>?
• What does <internal lingo term> stand for?

Akooda's AI-driven solution leverages advanced natural language processing, machine learning, and statistical modeling techniques to swiftly and accurately identify relevant data within an organization's ecosystem. Akooda's engine breaks down every unit of work from the tools companies already use, and connects the dots so that everyone - across all business units and disciplines - can speak the same language. It employs a security and privacy-first mindset that is not only SOC-2 Type-2 compliant but also never stores any raw customer data.

"Our mission is clear: to empower organizations in optimizing their operations by providing a holistic understanding of what's going on across all tools, personnel, and assets. With the aid of our advanced AI models, we're revolutionizing access to information, ensuring that they can ask any question and get the exact answer that they need," said Akooda CEO and founder Yuval Gonczarowski. "Our vision? A world where every individual, irrespective of title or role, can effortlessly access the insights needed to drive progress and achieve greatness."

NextRoll, the San Francisco-based marketing technology company delivering products for ambitious marketers to grow their businesses, today announced the launch of its latest Privacy Sandbox test. Building upon its commitment to privacy-forward enhancements, NextRoll embarks on this pivotal phase following years of early involvement in Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, including previous testing of proposed APIs last year, as well as its ongoing role as a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These efforts are also intended to inform the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on the competitive state of the advertising ecosystem.

This phase encompasses rigorous testing of the Protected Audience API (PAAPI), Topics API and Attribution Reporting API (ARA) at no additional cost to advertisers. NextRoll’s efforts focus on testing PAAPI’s ability to serve remarketing and custom audiences without the use of third-party cookies. In addition, NextRoll is also testing the efficacy of alternative probabilistic and deterministic ID solutions and how they compare to Privacy Sandbox results.

“NextRoll is proud to stand at the forefront of this new technology, fueled by eagerness to test, learn and share our unfiltered findings with the community,” said Justin Rau, group product manager at NextRoll. “We extend our sincerest appreciation to Google and our supply partners for their invaluable support throughout this journey, a journey that traces back to our initial TERN proposal in 2020.”

OpenX, another early adopter of Privacy Sandbox solutions, has become one of NextRoll’s most trusted programmatic supply partners as the two continue to collaborate to test new privacy-first technologies.

“As the programmatic ecosystem prepares for third-party cookie deprecation, the role of rigorous testing is critically important in determining which solutions are most viable for buyers,” said Gil Sommar, vice president of product at OpenX. “This initial testing phase is just the beginning of our collaborative efforts with NextRoll. We are committed to pioneering innovation to ensure buyers have access to all methods of reaching their intended audiences as programmatic evolves.”

In launching this latest test within Google’s Privacy Sandbox, NextRoll reaffirms its position as a pioneer in privacy-forward marketing and advertising solutions. Through this testing, NextRoll aims to empower marketers with powerful tools for targeted advertising while prioritizing user privacy.

AppLovin invests $50 million into Flip’s $144 million Series C funding round

AppLovin Corporation, a leading marketing platform, and Flip, a fast growing social commerce platform, today announced Flip will soon be relaunching its marketing platform for brands utilizing AppLovin’s AXON technology. Additionally, Flip announced it is raising $144 million in a Series C funding round, including a $50 million investment by AppLovin. 

AppLovin’s AXON technology was launched in early 2023, and helped its advertisers achieve substantially more scale at higher performance across AppLovin’s network. With this partnership, AppLovin is making its AXON technology available to others. Flip brands will leverage the AI advertising engine via AXON Connect, and will be able to reach more customers in measurable ways, with higher returns on the Flip platform. In addition, the partnership will enable Flip to extend its audience network to AppLovin’s 1.4 billion daily active users (DAUs) on behalf of all the brands on Flip.

“We have seen the significant impact AXON makes on campaign performance as brands see stronger return on investment. With AXON powering Flip’s ads, the Flip consumer will find more products to purchase. Likewise, brands on Flip will be positioned to drive significantly more sales,” said Adam Foroughi, Co-founder and CEO of AppLovin. “Noor, an incredibly talented founder, has led Flip through the hard part of finding a product market fit. Now that market fit has been clearly established, we believe this partnership will catalyze an exciting phase of growth for Flip and their brands.”

Flip’s funding round was led by Streamlined Ventures with participation from previous investors Mubadala Capital and WestCap, and AppLovin as a new investor, bringing the company’s pre-money valuation to $1.05 billion.

“With the recent launch of our MagicOS ads manager, and now the upcoming launch of our advertising powered by AXON, we are confident we can help tens of thousands of brands find the right customer profitably,” said Noor Agha, CEO of Flip. “We are thrilled to have continued support from our investors and to add AppLovin to the mix.”

Partnership brings together data and technology to power actionable insights for marketers, their agencies, and their media partners

TransUnion today announced a partnership with MRI-Simmons, a leading provider of insights on the American consumer. As two leading data and technology companies, this collaboration will benefit clients with improved actionability across the addressable marketing ecosystem.

MRI-Simmons data can now be layered on to the TransUnion identity spine, enhancing MRI-Simmons' 60,000 consumer variables for data enrichment and activation. Additionally, MRI-Simmons’ audiences are now available in TransUnion’s TruAudience® Data Marketplace, enabling advertisers and publishers to reach precisely defined audiences in 80 million streaming households.

Powered by a probabilistic and address-based sampling methodology, MRI-Simmons’ single-source consumer dataset provides a nationally representative and culturally diverse view of Americans that is an essential asset for brands and their agencies.

"Our partnership with TransUnion simplifies how clients and partners can drive successful outcomes using consumer data," said Josh Pisano, SVP of Business Development and Product Strategy at MRI-Simmons. "By leveraging TransUnion’s graph, we can increase data interoperability without sacrificing the quality of our consumer signals."

“We work closely with both TransUnion and MRI-Simmons, so we are excited to see two powerful consumer insights providers come together to promote addressability at scale,” added Brian Lin, SVP, Product Management Ad Sales at TelevisaUnivision. “This partnership will help fuel simpler data activation for publishers and our advertisers which is exactly what we need in today’s complex advertising ecosystem.”  

TruAudience marketing solutions combine the expansive consumer data, advanced identity resolution, audience building, and targeting capabilities of TransUnion and Neustar into a comprehensive and interoperable suite of marketing solutions.  Additionally, the product suite offers closed-loop marketing measurement and attribution, and credit-informed marketing solutions. TruAudience powers these solutions for leading brands, agencies, publishers, data owners, and technology providers. 

“With the concurrent forces of media fragmentation, data deprecation, and privacy changes coming to a head, our customers are seeking sustainable solutions for the future of audience-based marketing,” said Julie Clark, SVP of Media & Entertainment at TransUnion. “Our partnership with MRI-Simmons will power simpler, more interoperable, more readily available data insights and audiences that the ecosystem needs today.”

Expanded offering of xAOC to bring Comprehensive, Actionable, and Customizable Coverage Insights without Blind Spots

NIQ is excited to unveil the Full View^TM - Measurement, an evolution of core capabilities poised to transform the consumer intelligence industry. This expanded offering ensures that retailers, manufacturers, and the financial services community can access data. The Full View^TM - Measurement will provide unmatched coverage, granularity, and accuracy by offering an omnichannel view that marries data across critical online retailers, direct-to-consumer brands, social commerce, quick commerce, and emerging e-commerce platforms. To further complement NIQ’s portfolio, the Full View ^TM - Measurement will offer an expanded version of xAOC, including account level-details from the U.S.’s largest online marketplace. 

With the Full View ^TM - Measurement, NIQ clients will benefit from a suite of features designed to provide a deep and broad understanding of the market. This advanced solution transcends basic analytics by revealing the intricacies of online and offline markets with unprecedented clarity, all available in client custom or syndicated data hierarchies. This data will empower NIQ clients to make informed decisions with greater confidence by consolidating comprehensive insights into NIQ’s Discover platform, providing unparalleled convenience and eliminating the need for multiple analytical tools.

"With the Full View ^TM - Measurement, we are redefining how the CPG industry views and utilizes data,” said Kim Cox, Managing Director of NA E-Commerce with NIQ. “Our unparalleled approach to integrating online and offline insights ensures our clients are always one step ahead in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Our expanded market coverage also uncovers blind spots for our CPG clients. They rely on us to provide comprehensive visibility into retail account performance and granular data, empowering them to make informed decisions for their growth strategies.”

Key benefits of NIQ’s Full View ^TM - Measurement solution include:

Expanded Coverage for a Comprehensive Market View: NIQ is expanding the horizons of market understanding by integrating new data sources to provide clients with the most actionable omnichannel insights. Today’s expanded xAOC offering ensures that retailers and manufacturers can access a full spectrum analysis of the CPG landscape, capturing nuanced consumer behavior and market trends and setting the stage for future enhancements.

Unmatched Granularity for Competitive Edge: NIQ has built the Full View ^TM - Measurement with a focus on granularity, not just increased coverage. Clients can delve deeper into retail accounts, categories, brands, and thousands of key product attributes, including size, form, flavor, and sustainability or ingredient profiles. This game-changer hasn't previously been available alongside sales volume for items on top e-commerce marketplaces. This competitive point of differentiation enables clients to analyze the market with a previously unavailable precision, offering insights down to the most minute details.

Minimize Private Label Blind Spots: Our standout feature surpasses competitors by thoroughly tracking private-label products. Using next-generation data techniques this capability addresses a crucial market blind spot, empowering brands with a comprehensive understanding of private label dynamics down to the item level.

Customization at Your Fingertips: The Full View ^TM - Measurement goes beyond standard analytics, offering customized hierarchy views that cater to clients' specific analysis needs and allow them to view the market through the lens that best suits their business strategies.

Accuracy, Power, and Convenience: The Full View ^TM - Measurement stands out for its unwavering commitment to accuracy. It empowers clients to make confident decisions based on billions of meticulously collected data points offered through a comprehensive suite of solutions. In addition to its accuracy, The Full View ^TM - Measurement's strength lies in its ability to merge what previously necessitated multiple tools into one seamlessly integrated solution. This amalgamation enhances users' convenience by providing a unified view and delivers powerful insights through intuitive reports, guided workflows, and interconnected data, revolutionizing how businesses access and leverage e-commerce data within Discover.

"We've designed Full View ^TM - Measurement with our client's actionability in mind,” said Liz Buchanan, President of NIQ North America. “Merging comprehensive insights into a single, intuitive platform means that actionable data is just a few clicks away, eliminating the complexity and clutter of using multiple tools and helping our clients reclaim countless hours they would otherwise spend piecing together data independently. We believe new coverage shouldn’t create new blind spots for our clients.”

This Full View ^TM of the market with item-level granularity, enriched with NIQ attributes, account-level breakouts, and visibility into private labels, is the first phase of NIQ’s Full View ^TM - Measurement expansion in 2024.

The certification affirms TicketRev's Unmatched Data Security Protocols and Protection 

TicketRev, the first demand-driven technology platform for live event tickets, today announced it has attained System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type 1 Certification, underscoring its unwavering dedication to fortifying customer data protection.

SOC 2 Type 1 certification evaluates an organization's systems and controls based on standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It assesses the effectiveness of controls over information security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

This milestone underscores TicketRev's commitment to implementing robust security measures, positioning the company as a trusted ally for the sports teams and organizations they partner with. With this certification, TicketRev reiterates its promise to maintain unparalleled security protocols, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of customer data while empowering teams to engage with fans seamlessly.

"Securing our SOC 2 Type 1 Certification isn't just a milestone for us at TicketRev; it's a clear reflection of our unwavering dedication to security, data privacy, and maintaining reliable service for all our stakeholders. This achievement underscores our commitment to safeguarding customer data and ensuring the best experience possible," said Frank Perez, Chief Strategy Officer of TicketRev. "Our continually evolving and improving security protocols make TicketRev the ideal trusted platform for teams seeking to democratize ticketing access for their fans, while gaining invaluable insights into consumer preferences safely."

TicketRev is the first demand-driven technology platform for live event tickets, allowing teams to let their fans choose their preferred price for tickets.