RichRelevance, which offers personalized product recommendations and sells advertising around them on websites for such retailers as Walmart Stores and Target, plans to acquire Searchandise Commerce, which sells the equivalent of search ads and creates virtual end-cap displays on e-commerce sites. The deal is intended to create a more comprehensive offering for online-shopper marketing.
Neither the terms of the deal, expected to close this month, nor the companies' sales were disclosed. But RichRelevance said the combined companies will serve 10 of the 25 biggest retailers on the web, also including Sears. The company also said its Shopping Media platform serves personalized recommendations and advertising with more than 1.4 billion page views monthly and has delivered more than $3 billion in attributable sales for retail clients since its launch a year ago.
The deal combines companies in two of the fastest-growing segments of media and marketing in recent years: digital and shopper marketing.
Drawing offline dollars
RichRelevance isn't just going after digital media or measuring impact by looking at e-commerce sales, according to CEO David Selinger. He also expects to increasingly draw dollars from offline shopper-marketing budgets and to invest money in consumer panels to measure effects on offline sales, he said. Packaged-goods clients in particular expect advertising around product research at retailer websites to generate offline sales, he added.
Triad Retail Media, the biggest player selling online display ads at such sites as Walmart .com and CVS.com, expects $120 million in revenue this year and projects that the market will expand to $500 million within a few years.
