Social media monitor Brandwatch acquires content marketing platform BuzzSumo

Brandwatch, a social media monitoring company, has acquired BuzzSumo, a content marketing and influencer identification platform, for an undisclosed sum. BuzzSumo never raised beyond seed stage and was in effect bootstrapped by its founders. The acquisition adds an important arrow into Brandwatch’s quiver, which raised a $33 million C-round war chest in 2015 for just such a move. Expect more from this company, which seems intent on creating a suite of powerful tools for online marketers.

To date, BuzzSumo has provided data-driven content discovery and performance analytics to nearly 3,400 customers and more than 300,000 users worldwide, including Expedia, BuzzFeed and Disney. Although Brandwatch CEO Giles Palmer says the two companies will be run in parallel, these in effect become Brandwatch clients now.

Palmer told TechCrunch that he had made an offer for the company a year ago, but Steve Rayson, director at BuzzSumo, who also lives in Brighton U.K., demurred.

“I had been tracking them for the last three years. Every six months Steve and I would catch up. And I tried to make an offer last year, but they weren’t interested,” he said.

Rayson told me he had considered raising a further funding round to scale up, but liked the synergy with Brandwatch, hence the deal. “This year we were looking at how we could grow the sales and marketing side. We decided to join forces with Giles. It was a mutual decision based on the caliber of the company.”

Brandwatch’s first acquisition was PeerIndex, in December 2014.