Social Ad Tech Provider BLiNQ Media Acqhires Looxii Analytics Founders

Poaching talent through the “acqhire” model isn’t just for giant consumer-facing web services. BLiNQ Media, provider of social ads tech to agencies including Havas and Starcom, tells us that yesterday it acqhired the founders of social media data and analytics firm Looxii. Daniel Upton and Adam Rice’s company provided search, monitoring, and sentiment analysis of big social media data sources, while BLiNQ licenses white-labeled tools to ad agencies for buying ads through the Facebook Ads API and other social services. As advertising on social services incorporates more social context and brand mentions, the ability to pick out and amplify positive mentions will become crucial to BLiNQ, and Upton and Rice will help. Looxi will continue to operate.

A few years ago, successful social advertising meant developing high quality targeting and creative combinations, then A/B testing them. But Facebook is now moving more towards Sponsored Stories that amplify word of mouth, and Twitter’s ad products are centering around trending topics. Knowing what ad targets are saying is becoming just as important as who they are. BLiNQ needs talent that can make sense of the conversational firehoses, and these new hires have a background that will allow them to deliver.

On the specific role of the new hires, BLiNQ Media co-founder and CEO Dave Williams says Daniel and Adam will be “developing simple-to-use user interfaces and rich data visualizations that filter social media KPI’s (key performance indicators), such as demographic information, interests information, online influence, and sentiment. These measurements will help the brands we work with gain better intelligence, so they can more effectively measure what is working in their social campaigns — and what needs adjusting.”

[Image Credit: Samdobrow Photography via Examiner]