Online ad buying, tracking and optimization platform Acquisio today announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Tandem Expansion and Fonds de solidarité FTQ, which will help the company drive growth. Alongside the funding, the Montreal-based company also announced the acquisition of ScienceOps, a company that’s developed algorithms for optimizing deployment of Google Display Network ad campaigns.
For Acquisio, the acquisition is another step in its larger goal of expanding its focus. Originally, the company targeted customers who bought Google search marketing, but they’s since expanded to appeal to people looking for all types of online advertising. As part of that expansion, Acquisio CMO and co-founder Marc Poirier told BetaKit that the company intends to look far and wide for choice partnership and acquisition targets in order to meet the growing and changing needs of its customer base.
“We feel that we cannot develop everything, but we are a platform that clients log into in the morning and log out of at night, so it’s a significant part of their livelihood, they are in Acquisio to optimize their campaigns,” he explained in an interview. “They’ve already chosen a variety of solutions, but sometimes they have not; there are needs that are unfulfilled. All that’s to say that there’s a lot of different kinds of technology that applies to most or all of our clients, and there’s opportunities for us to bring integrated solutions to our customers, without taking two years to develop them ourselves.”
What ScienceOps specifically brings to the table is a strong technical background, and a unique approach that Poirier says he’s never seen anything similar to in the online ad space. Founded by Dr. Bryan M. Minor, who holds a Ph.D. in Computational Physics, as well as an M.S. in Nuclear Science, the company has done work for DARPA and NASA.
“Bryan has been working in media for some time now, consulting for some of the ad exchanges to help them optimize their own bid functionalities,” Poirier explained about what Minor and his company bring to the team. “And he developed solutions shortly after that to help advertisers do a better job. He has several different algorithms that apply to Google AdWords environments, something for search marketing campaigns, and something for the Google Display Network, which represents a huge opportunity for all of our customers to start generating more conversions at a better rate.”
For Acquisio, which already has 4,000 users and 10,000 brands as clients, the eventual goal is to create a one-stop hub for advertisers and agencies, and this new round of investment will help it realize that goal, through acquisitions, but also through partnerships with mature, established players that it wouldn’t make sense or be possible for the company to try and buy outright. Ultimately, Acquisio wants to do for advertising tools what Apple’s done for apps, and this ScienceOps purchase is just one step closer to that goal.
Update: the Acquisio team originally stated that the funding total was $5 million for this round, but updated to say that the amount is no longer $5 million, and they aren’t disclosing the new amount.
