Collective Media Acquires Targeting Company

Ad network Collective Media has acquired Personifi, a company that provides targeting solutions to ad networks and publishers.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the sale price was estimated to be in the low eight-figures, which Collective paid with a combination of cash and stock. Texas-based Personifi will remain a stand-alone unit, with its headquarters in Forth Worth, Texas. Frost Prioleau, CEO of Personifi, will retain his position.

The two companies began working together in October 2007, and Collective Media now runs about 50 percent of its targeted campaigns with Personifi. Collective CEO Joe Apprendi said the deal made sense for his company because of the increasing emphasis placed on behavioral targeting online. He also commended Personifi for having a more accurate approach to targeting — one that involves analyzing all the content on a Web page rather than just keywords.

“This is a situation in which the acquirer is already a customer of the company,” he said. “We are already strategically integrated because we’ve been working together so long.”

Earlier this spring, Collective Media joined the vertical ad network craze, introducing platform to help individual publishers manage sales and ad serving on a distributed group of like-minded sites.