September sees a new acquisition in the Nordics, funding for a French start-up, and a couple of smart partnerships. Meanwhile, influencer measurement gets a push by Traackr and the launch of the Influencer Marketing Association.
Infomedia acquires parts of M Brain
Danish media intelligence leader, Infomedia, has acquired M Brain’s Norwegian, Swedish and Estonian operations for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition includes 100 employees, as well as the company’s customers, digital platforms and solutions. The two companies have been working together for the past seven years, supporting shared customers across the region. M Brain will continue to operate in the Finnish market. The acquisition is expected to close on 1 October.
Agorapulse picks up €16.6 million
French social media management platform, Agorapulse, has picked up €16.6 million in funding from three investors – Hi Inov Dentressangle, Cipio Partners and Entrepreneur Venture. The company been largely bootstrapped since its launch in 2011 (though it picked up €300,000 in seed funding back in 2012, according to Crunchbase). Agorapulse is now generating €10 million ARR, with year-on-year growth exceeding 65%. With the new funding, Agorapulse plans to invest in its expansion across the UK and Europe.
Business Wire partners with Onclusive
Business Wire and Onclusive have entered into a strategic partnership. The deal provides Business Wire clients with the ability to derive meaningful earned and social media insights related to distribution of a press release. The analytics capability will measure syndicated, earned and social media and will provide insights that include the most critical metrics such as volume, social and influencer engagement, advanced sentiment analysis and geolocation.
Dow Jones partners with Ripjar
Dow Jones brought us a partnership with Ripjar, the strategic data intelligence provider. Dow Jones Risk & Compliance has launched an advanced solution for adverse media screening, which will enable financial institutions to conduct real-time, automated risk-screening and monitoring. The tool continuously monitors premium content from Dow Jones, including news articles from over 17,000 licensed sources available within Dow Jones Factiva.
Meltwater in trouble in Australia
Let’s be honest, it’s rare for media intelligence contracts to be covered outside the PR and martech press. Gaps in content, however, have placed Meltwater’s contract with the New South Wales Government in the firing line of the national newspaper, the Australian Financial Review. The paper points to “grumbling” among government ministerial advisers about the $AUD 9 million three-year deal with Meltwater. Previous supplier, iSentia, was monitoring regional outlets for the government, which Meltwater is now “scaling up” to support.
Traackr partners with HypeAuditor
Regular readers know that I’m a little obsessed by the impact of automation in social media on PR and comms. So, I was excited to see that Traackr had launched the Audience Quality tool for Instagram, built in partnership with HypeAuditor. The solution predicts how likely an influencer’s content is to actually reach a relevant audience – as opposed to automated, or bought, followers. Last year, Zignal Labs, New Knowledge and others started to authenticate data, but the Traackr tool looks specifically at Instagram. If you’re a PR or marketing pro and aren’t verifying levels of automation in social media content I’d suggest that you get started.
Influencer Marketing Association launch
Data veracity and automation might be something for the newly launched Influencer Marketing Association to investigate. The US-based organisation has been set-up, and is being run, by a board from a range of companies including Weber Shandwick, 360PR+, Best Buy and Unilever. The group’s vision is to “emphasise the value of integrating the human element and leading-edge technology while operating under a set of ethical standards to achieve marketing objectives and deliver ROI”.
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