dunnhumby Confirms Acquisition of Sociomantic

Retail analytics giant dunnhumby has confirmed it has acquired Berlin-based ad targeting and retail retargeting firm Sociomantic Labs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

News of the purchase first broke last month, when press reports predicted a price tag of $175 - 200m. Founded in 2009, Sociomantic provides real-time retargeting and prospecting, stream-based data management, and dynamic ad personalization, to enable clients to reach new and existing customers with individually priced and personalized display ads. As well as its Berlin HQ, the firm has operations in London, Warsaw, Paris, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Madrid, Mumbai and New York City, and employs more than 200 professionals. For the year 2013, the firm reported revenues of $100m.

In a statement, dunnhumby said the deal would allow it to combine its own insights on the shopping preferences of 400 million consumers with Sociomantic's real-time data from more than 700 million online consumers. In addition, Sociomantic's people, technology, and experience will immediately expand dunnhumby's global reach and client portfolio.

Simon Hay (pictured), CEO of dunnhumby, comments: 'Our strategic priority is to engage consumers and earn their loyalty wherever they shop, in-store and online, with personalized communications. Our observed campaigns to date have shown that increased relevance leads to significantly better engagement and response rates, and doing that at a scale of more than a billion people is unprecedented.'

Web sites: www.dunnhumby.com and www.sociomantic.com .