Location Data Firm Gimbal Buys Disney's TrueX

Mobile engagement platform Gimbal has bought ad tech company TrueX from the Walt Disney Company, which acquired it as part of 21st Century Fox last year.

Gimbal's platform combines macro-location geofences and micro-location beacons with a cloud-based solution to help users build, manage, and analyze location-based mobile experiences. A year ago it launched a location and foot traffic analytics platform called 'Trends', to provide a view of consumers' physical-world behavior over time.

The amount paid for TrueX was not revealed but was 'less than $100m' according to sources quoted in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. TrueX's technology asks users to interact with an ad before viewing content in exchange for fewer or no commercials, and is billed as enhancing both ad effectiveness and the user experience - especially those watching long videos with many commercial breaks.

Gimbal CEO Rob Emrich (pictured) says the buy will give his company a better foothold in advanced TV advertising, including streaming and the fast-growing addressable TV segment. The new combination could allow clients to pinpoint advertising impact as well as helping with targeting; and Emrich says it will also help combat bot fraud by establishing that viewers are real humans.

Emrich says the combined company is profitable, with revenue exceeding $100m and similar expected this year; and that no job cuts are planned as a result of the transaction.

True[x] is headquartered in Los Angeles and New York with offices in four other US cities. The company was sold to Fox for an estimated $200m in 2014 - the year Gimbal was spun off from parent Qualcomm - but was seen by Disney as non-core, and had reportedly been ready for sale for some time.

Web sites: www.gimbal.com and www.truex.com .