Connexity completes fourth acquisition in two years with Hitwise deal

Digital marketing company completes deal to take company of Experian's hands.

Digital marketing company Connexity Inc. today announced it has acquired Hitwise, a leader in large-scale online clickstream data collection and consumer behavioral analytics. Hitwise will operate as a division within Connexity.

Hitwise’s broad, audience-based insights into consumer online behavioral trends will bolster Connexity’s offering to marketers, agencies and publishers, according to both parties.

Hitwise’s recently-launched audience segmentation and behavioral analytics platform, AudienceView, provides companies with a comprehensive view of demographic and psychographic enriched behavioral insights on their target consumers, including visibility into behavior patterns by device type, such as mobile phones.

“Hitwise’s shift from website analytics to audience-based analytics aligns perfectly with our audience activation approach at Connexity, which is focused on delivering highly-targeted audiences created from our expansive shopping network,” says Bill Glass, CEO of Connexity.

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“The combination of AudienceView’s clickstream and panel-based data with Connexity’s programmatic audience targeting will enable our customers to research, understand and identify their target audiences (and their behaviors) and, eventually, in the same interface, activate those audiences.”

“Adding Hitwise extends the services we provide to retailers, marketers and agencies,” added Glass. “With AudienceView we help them simplify the process of identifying their customers, segmenting them and then activating them with media.”

This acquisition—the company’s fourth in less than two years—furthers Connexity’s position as a digital marketing platform for retailers, brands and agencies. Connexity is adding Hitwise to a collection of established businesses including retail product listings (second only to Google), voice of the customer feedback via Bizrate Insights, and programmatic audience targeting—all powered by data from its retail network touching over 100 million in-market consumers per month.

In a simultaneous transaction, Connexity’s private equity parent, Symphony Technology Group (STG), acquired Experian’s Simmons division, the publisher of the National Consumer Study (NCS), a syndicated consumer research database in the US.

Simmons and Hitwise operate today under the combined entity called Experian Consumer Insights. The two business lines will continue to operate as a combined entity, though Connexity and Symphony will seek to separate the two properties over the course of 2016.

Terms of the two transactions in aggregate were $47 million plus a further potential amount of up to $5 million based on an earn out.

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Praseeda Nair

Praseeda Nair

Praseeda was Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2016 to 2018.

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