Contact: Scott Denne
Coupon distributor Valassis Communications has taken another step in its transition to digital with the $95m acquisition of location-based ad-tech vendor MaxPoint Interactive. In addition to getting Valassis another marketing product to sell to consumer goods providers, the target’s technology could plug a substantial weakness in RetailMeNot, a digital coupon firm that Valassis’ parent company, Harland Clarke Holdings, bought in April.
The sale ends a turbulent and short run as a public company for MaxPoint, which debuted in April 2016 with a stock price that’s more than 3x what it’s getting in today’s deal, which values it at a paltry 0.6x trailing revenue.
MaxPoint enables advertisers to run national campaigns for consumer goods that target prospects at the local level, based on a mix of proximity to retail locations and digital demand signals from particular neighborhoods. As one of the world’s largest distributors of coupons, Valassis hands MaxPoint’s media services business a new avenue for growth. But the larger opportunity is in integrating the underlying technology with its recently acquired online coupon business.
RetailMeNot built a business by distributing digital coupons for retail locations. The problem it’s always had is proving to its retailers that those coupons work – did the coupons drive people to the store or did the store just give discounts to people who planned to come anyway? To operate its media business, MaxPoint developed technology that predicts demand for products within the market area for a physical retail location. RetailMeNot could deploy such demand analysis to optimize when and where it launches campaigns and use it to measure the impact.
Moreover, a partnership between the two companies could enable MaxPoint to deliver coupons to RetailMeNot that are tied to a retail location but funded by product vendors and in doing so provide both retailers and consumer products companies a way to navigate a market that’s rapidly shifting to digital with a shared marketing strategy that they’ve employed for decades.
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