Snapchat Parent Buys Location Targeting Firm Placed

Snap Inc., the parent company of photo and video-sharing app Snapchat, has acquired location-based ad targeting firm Placed in a deal reported to be worth more than $200m.

Seattle and New York-based Placed develops software which measures, aggregates and analyzes the places people visit in the real world, providing app developers with insights into how users interact with their products. Its Placed Insights solution uses a 'place graph' to quantify the relationship between people and the physical places they visit, such as retailers, restaurants, banks, hotels and more, with results categorized by demographic segments and geographic regions. Raw location data is combined with metadata and proprietary modeling, and then normalized to represent the US population.

Announcing the firm's acquisition in a blog post, Placed CEO and founder David Shim (pictured) said in the past twelve months his firm has linked more than $500m in media spend to store visits, across thousands of campaigns and hundreds of partners. He explains: 'By partnering with Snap, we will do even more. Still working independently, Placed's goal continues to be the adoption of a common yardstick that can measure the offline effectiveness of advertising across multiple platforms and publishers'.

Snap says the buy will allow it to demonstrate that ads on its app drive users to stores. In a statement, the company explained: 'Connecting online with offline is a problem that the advertising ecosystem has been working toward solving for a long time, and we share that goal. People use apps like Snapchat when they are out in the real world - not just when they are sitting behind a computer screen. Progress in this area will drive amazing results for advertisers and our community'.

Web sites: www.snap.com and www.placed.com .