Rakuten

DC Storm acquired by Rakuten Marketing to strengthen marketing analytics and attribution

Rakuten acquires marketing attribution specialist

Following acquisition of Adometry by Google and of Convertro by AOL

On May 28, 2014, Rakuten Marketing announced the acquisition of the Brighton (UK) based marketing attribution specialist DC Storm.

Although terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, Google on May 6, 2014 acquired Adometry for about US$ 150 million, and AOL on the same day acquired Convertro for US$ 101 million. Therefore we assume that Rakuten Marketing probably also paid on the order of US$ 100 million for DC Storm.

Marketing attribution: measuring return (ROI) on marketing investment

Marketing attribution has its origin in the work of Austrian psychologist Fritz Heider‘s work on Attribution Theory, and his seminal work “The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations” of 1958.

Attribution is the process by which people explain the causes for actions, and models for these processes (source: Wikipedia).

Marketing attribution develops understanding of which combination of events leads individuals to take particular actions, e.g. to conclude a purchase for example (source: Wikipedia Attribution (marketing))

Marketing attribution specialist companies have recently been very popular acquisition targets:

  • Convertro (about 60 employees) acquired by AOL for US$ 101 million, announced on May 6, 2014
  • Adometry (about 130 employees) acquired by Google for an estimated US$ 150 million, announced on May 6, 2014
  • DC Storm acquired by Rakuten Marketing, announced on May 28, 2014
  • Visual IQ ? (about 190 employees)
  • C3 Metrics
  • DataSong
  • Encore Metrics

DC Storm

DC Storm is headquartered at Brighton, UK, with offices in US and in Germany. DC Storm was founded in 2004 by current CEO, Seth Richardson, who designed and coded the initial versions of DC Storm’s digital marketing analysis platform.

DC Storm offers digital marketing companies attribution tools, analysis and consulting services, and tag management.

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