Bee Media, the makers of a mobile shopping platform that serves location-specific offers and info to mobile devices, today announced that it has acquired Adcentricity, a similarly location-focued digital media startup. Under the terms of the acquisition, Bee Media secures rights to the Adcentricity name and will operate as Adcentricity going forward. Doug Woolridge, the current CEO of Bee Media will take the helm of the joint venture as its new CEO, while Adcentricity CEO Rob Gorrie will become a senior strategic advisor. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
So, why did the two companies agree to enter into the deal? Gorrie explains that there is a plethora of companies currently targeting different pieces of the shopping pie, whether it be local, marketing, mobile, in-store radio and video networks, all of which has led to a fractured landscape that limits their ability to grab the attention of (and find adoption by) big brands. The two companies believe that, in combining their assets, they will be able to more effectively target and distribute content across any digital channel with location attached to it. This includes mobile shopping apps, which Bee Media has been building over the last year.
Said another way, Bee Media has built expertise in consumer mobile apps, whereas Adcentricity specializes in the location-based delivery side of marketing, so together the two give brands, advertisers, and retailers a more unified platform that makes it easy to create, launch, and measure hyper-local mobile marketing campaigns.
The new Adcentricity aims to help brands execute and respond to localized events and activities, and to easily scale communication and campaign creation to include thousands of places and big customers bases. To do this, it will be leveraging existing products (and continue to offer ADCentral, a hub for venue-specific planning, targeting and content creation) and in turn is today announcing two new products, ADMobile and ADFormat, designed to give brands access to new channels and functionalities in one platform.
ADMobile, for one, offers brands and advertisers to use a single platform for creating location-based mobile shopping experiences, which includes mobile interfaces, shopping tools, location services, mobile payment, content management, analytics and reporting. Its second product, ADFormat, builds on the service’s customizable shopping experiences with an automated content generation tool which enables advertisers to easily create customizable campaigns, be they video, copy, images, or graphics, for any screen. Those campaigns can then be uniquely messaged to any market or location.
Adcentricity has already worked with brands like Toyota, American Express, GM, Samsung, and more, and will be looking to capitalize on its strategic partnerships with The Nielsen Company, Polk, Environics Analytics, Computer Sciences Corporation and PwC, and build upon those. It hopes that an integrated platform that enables the creation, localization, and distribution of ad campaigns to any and all location-based digital media will have the appeal to do just that.
For more, check out Adcentricity here.