Contact: Scott Denne
Nielsen becomes the latest company to pay a striking multiple to acquire an audience data manager with the purchase of eXelate. Though lower in price, the transaction values the company on par with BlueKai, an eXelate rival that Oracle bought last year.
Like eXelate, several other data management platforms have landed significant premiums. BlueKai, eXelate, Aggregate Knowledge and RUN were all valued above 5x trailing revenue, multiples that were driven by a wide pool of potential acquirers from ad agencies, enterprise software vendors and marketing data services firms – all categories of businesses that are eager for software that can manage audience-targeting data across multiple marketing and advertising channels.
With eXelate, Nielsen adds a service that amalgamates data from a variety of marketing data services providers, publishers and other sources to better target digital advertising. The target also offers software for advertisers to mix in their own customer data to inform advertising and marketing decisions. Bringing that in-house provides Nielsen with an opportunity to better leverage its audience segmentation, offline media measurement and consumer purchase data into the digital realm.
GCA Savvian advised eXelate on its sale.
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