First Acquisition for Ad Platform Collective Audience

Audience-based performance advertising and media firm Collective Audience has agreed to acquire European martech and ad tech company BeOp, whose software helps measure attention, engagement, attribution and time spent. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Collective Audience operates an advertising and media cloud infrastructure platform called AudienceCloud, giving users advanced tools and audience data in one place.

BeOp's Creative Studio allows users to quickly create new advertising campaigns focused on engagement and interaction, incorporating native and cookieless user data collection and attention tracking. BeOp has bases in New York, and in France (Paris and Montpellier), and says it works with more than 80% of the top French advertisers and 90% of the country's premium publishers, as well as more than 200 premium global publishers across the UK, North America and Australia. The firm was founded in 2017 and in 2023 grew revenue 35% to $3.7m.

The buy gives Collective Audience a cloud-based modular performance advertising and data platform accessible as self-service or through APIs integrating it with other environments; as well as conversational ad units for retail media, and integrations with major DMPs (data management platforms).

BeOp co-founder and CEO Louis Prunel says the deal builds on the company's success in Europe and leaves it 'set to conquer the North American market as an integral part of the Collective Audience platform'. Collective Audience CEO Peter Bordes says BeOp's technology is 'the most advanced, modern AI plus data-driven AdTech stack we have seen', adding: 'It solves many of the issues the industry faces with its cookieless targeting and next generation high speed ad serving that empowers publishers with an audience data DMP, along with attention-based ad units that are the highest performing in the industry. We see BeOp as two to three acquisitions rolled into one'.

Bordes adds that BeOp is planned as the first of many acquisitions and/or partnerships which the firm is 'currently pursuing' and notes: 'We expect to make additional related major announcements over the coming weeks'.

The all stock acquisition is dependent on closing conditions and is expected to close this quarter.

Web site: www.collectiveaudience.co .