ShopAdvisor Acquires Retailigence

Concord, MA (PRWEB) April 18, 2016

ShopAdvisor, the leader in retail proximity marketing, analytics and mobile shopping, has acquired Retailigence, a provider of in-store product data and location services for facilitating a shopper's path-to-purchase in brick-and-mortar stores. By combining ShopAdvisor's ability to provide a personalized, data-driven content experience and access to more than 210 million online and local inventory products with Retailigence's real-time intelligence on the availability of those products across 200,000 brick-and-mortar stores, consumers will have an unprecedented, end-to-end mobile-enabled shopping experience that can take them from product discovery to hyper-localized in-store purchases. Through this acquisition, ShopAdvisor has more than doubled in size and boasts a significant number of brand name customers spanning the media, brand manufacturers and retailers, including: Hearst, Time Inc., Conde Nast, Vince Camuto, Levi's, GUESS, Kmart, Pepsico, P&G and Walgreens, among many more.

According to eMarketer's "Digital Ad Spending Benchmarks by Industry" report, U.S. online ad spending in 2015 reached $58B, with $12B of that spent by retailers. Increasingly, this advertising is targeting consumers who use their smartphones as they shop, seeking to provide a more personalized, interactive and mobile-aware experience. Publishers including Conde Nast, Time Inc., and Hearst have already turned to ShopAdvisor to help them enhance their digital content and tailor it for mobile shoppers. These organizations and their brand and retail partners will benefit from the combination of ShopAdvisor and Retailigence as it provides them with the industry's most powerful platform for presenting shoppers -- through their smartphones -- with the right product offers at precisely the right time, using the right contact methodology that will drive them into stores and spur purchases.

"As traditional online advertising becomes increasingly ineffective, publishers, brands and retailers know they must shift their ad strategy so that it aligns with how consumers want to be engaged. We see the need for a completely integrated path to purchase, through the media, where consumers are influenced, staying connected through the transaction – online or at a local retailer. It's the right time to integrate these things as brands focus their spending on the mobile consumer, yet still recognizing the critical importance of brick-and-mortar commerce," said Jeff Papows, CEO of ShopAdvisor. "By providing a platform that encompasses real-time product intelligence, content intelligence, shopper analytics, and hyperlocal proximity awareness, we can intelligently engage with shoppers via their smartphones and aid them in every step of the process of discovering, evaluating, locating and purchasing products. This strategic acquisition positions ShopAdvisor as the only company providing an end-to-end solution that does this."

To hear Jeff Papows explain more about the importance of this acquisition, click here.

"Combining the ShopAdvisor Intelligence Suite with Retailigence's real-time product inventory and pricing information and deep connections with retailers is a game changer for all participants in the mobile shopping value chain," said Dekkers Davidson, Executive Chairman of ShopAdvisor and former CEO of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX). "ShopAdvisor capitalized on the opportunity to automate the top of the sales funnel while Retailigence focused on brick-and-mortar retail, the final step. There is a natural and powerful synergy between our offerings that will dramatically improve a shopper's path-to-purchase and address retailers' objectives of increasing in-store product purchases."

Smartphones Increasingly Providing the Path to Purchase in Physical Stores - from Clicks to Bricks

According to research conducted by Ipsos MediaCT using Google data, shopping-related searches on phones have grown by more than 120% year-over-year (1). Consumers now use their smartphones across the entire shopping process―starting with inspiration, and continuing all the way through to in-store purchase. This research also found that 82% of smartphone users consult their phone while in a store (2), and people are searching 37% more inside department stores than they were last year (3).

For publishers, brands, advertisers and retailers, this means that intelligently engaging with shoppers on their smartphones is a strategic imperative. With 92% of purchases still occurring in brick-and-mortar stores, these organizations know that they must provide a mobile path to purchase that gets the shopper into the store. Once in the store, research has shown that shopping cart size is significantly higher than online shopping alone, which also has a very high cart abandon rate average of 68%
.
Unmatched Platform for Delivering Mobile Shopping Experiences that Drive Consumer's Path to Purchase

ShopAdvisor's acquisition of Retailigence brings together leaders in the areas of mobile proximity marketing, shopper analytics, intelligent content, location services and real-time, in-store product availability. Prior to the acquisition, the companies had already partnered in integrating their offerings. As a result of the acquisition, ShopAdvisor will further enhance its Intelligence Suite with Retailigence's technology, and product and store information, which is collected continuously, giving shoppers the most up-to-date information as possible.

ShopAdvisor will integrate Retailigence's technology into the three modular services that comprise its Intelligence Suite: Product Intelligence, Content Intelligence, and Location Intelligence. ShopAdvisor will add Retailigence's 12 million location-specific products across 200,000 brick-and-mortar stores to its Product Intelligence capabilities, allowing for more comprehensive consumer insight and shopper profiles. ShopAdvisor will also integrate Retailigence's technology into its Content Intelligence, enabling further customization of content and deepening its drive-to-store capabilities. Retailigence's technology will add another layer to ShopAdvisor's Location Intelligence through more effective targeted messaging. The combined forces will also strengthen and build upon Retailigence's relationships with demand-side providers (DSPs) by providing more complete targeting data.

1 Google Global search data, November 2014–October 2015, as defined by searches that trigger shopping ads.
2 Google / Ipsos MediaCT, Consumer Holiday Intentions Study 2015
3 Aggregated anonymized internal Google data from a sample of U.S. users that have turned on location history. Queries were considered as being "from" a location if they occurred within one hour of a user visit to the department store. September 2015 vs. September 2014.

Press Contacts:
ShopAdvisor, Bill McLaughlin, 617-515-8004, bill(at)shopadvisor(dot)com
ShopAdvisor, Angela Milinazzo, 781-640-6863, angela(at)shopadvisor(dot)com

About ShopAdvisor, Inc.

ShopAdvisor, Inc. bridges the gap between web commerce, proximity, and retail. ShopAdvisor's mobile proximity platform, data sciences and easy-to-use app deliver a personal shopping experience for consumers that advises on when, where, and what to shop. Shoppers can save items they love and be alerted when the time to buy is right, saving time and money. ShopAdvisor's Intelligence Suite enables publisher, brands and retailers to deliver mobile shopping experiences that drive consumer's path to purchase in brick-and-mortar locations. ShopAdvisor works with dozens of media publishers, including Cosmopolitan, People StyleWatch, Marie Claire, Men's Health, Cooking Light, Real Simple, and many more to allow shoppers to shop directly from the publishers' omni-channel content. Consumers can download the free ShopAdvisor mobile app for their iOS or Android device, or go to ShopAdvisor.com.

About Retailigence

Retailigence is an online-to-offline data platform, embeddable in any ad campaign or media, that improves in-store product sales, attribution-related metrics and ROI. The Company's unique SKU-level data insights target consumers with the highest propensity to buy local and guide shoppers along the path to purchase to any specific product or brand, in more than 200,000 brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. Major brands, retailers, agencies, and ad technology providers use Retailigence to ensure their marketing investments (often starting in mobile) not only generate consumer awareness, but convert shopper interest into measurable action and in-store sales. To learn more, visit http://www.retailigence.com. Follow us on Twitter @Retailigence and on LinkedIn.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/04/prweb13339273.htm

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