On line customer intelligence and social media listening platform Brandwatch has been acquired by Cision, greatest recognised for its media monitoring and media make contact with database companies, for $450 million, in a put together funds and shares offer. TechCrunch understands Brandwatch’s crucial government team will be being on. The shift combines two big players to offer a broad vary of expert services, from PR to marketing and on line client engagement. The offer is predicted to close in the next quarter of 2021.
Cision has a media get hold of databases of roughly 1 million journalists and media stores and claims to have around 75,000 consumers. Brandwatch applies AI and equipment studying to the exercise known as “social listening”.
Together the way, Brandwatch lifted a full of all over $65 million. It was Series A-funded by Nauta Cash, followed by Highland Europe and then Partech.
In a statement, Giles Palmer, founder, and CEO of Brandwatch claimed: “We have usually created Brandwatch with ambition… Now is the time to take the subsequent step – signing up for a company of major scale to produce a business enterprise and a suite of merchandise that can have an essential world-wide effect.”
Abel Clark, CEO of Cision said: “The ongoing digital shift and widespread adoption of social media is promptly and fundamentally modifying how makes and corporations engage with their consumers. This is driving the very important that PR, marketing, social, and purchaser care teams totally integrate the unique insights now offered into shopper-led procedures. With each other, Cision and Brandwatch will enable our clientele to a lot more deeply recognize, connect and have interaction with their shoppers at scale throughout each and every channel.”
Brandwatch has been on an practically circumstance-study of a journey from fundraising to acquisition to a merger, but a lot less characteristically for a properly-funded tech organization, it did a great deal of it from its hometown of Brighton, on the southern coastline of England.
The financing journey started for Giles Palmer, with angel funding in 2006. In 2010 Brandwatch lifted $1.5 million from Durrants, a internet marketing and PR organization, and a Sequence A spherical from Nauta Capital. In 2014 it raised $22 million in funding in a Collection B round led by Highland Europe. That was followed by a $33 million Sequence C funding led by Partech Ventures in 2015.
With the war chest, it went on to receive BuzzSumo in 2017, a content material advertising and influencer identification platform, for an undisclosed sum. And in 2019 Brandwatch merged with a similar business enterprise, Crimson Hexagon, developing a organization with all-around $100 million in ARR. It also acquired the London-dependent SaaS research platform Qriously.
Brandwatch was not too long ago named a leader in Forrester’s guideline for buyers of social listening solutions.