Foursquare buys Placed from Snap to cement its attribution offering

Although Foursquare did not disclose financial terms of the deal, the acquisition coincides with a $150m investment, led by The Raine Group, that will fund the deal along with future expansion and research and development plans.

Snap bought Placed in June 2017 for a reported $135m.

Foursquare will roll Placed into its measurement product. Now branded as 'Placed powered by Foursquare,' it can tap into Foursquare's data set of over 100m monthly US devices.

Both Foursquare and Placed use opt-in location data to track if a user was exposed to an ad and attribute that to an in-store visit.

As part of the acquisition, a Foursquare spokesperson said the company let some roles go unfilled and addressed a small set of redundancies. In all, about 80 Placed employees will join Foursquare, which now sits at about 350 employees.

Placed founder and chief exectuve officer David Shim has been named president of Foursquare.

As for Snap, the company said it believes Placed has more value as a third-party partner with increased scale through the merger with Foursquare.

Placed will still be Snap's preferred attribution partner, though the company is now focused on scaling up its own maps product and building out its self-serve ad platform, which launched a month after it bought Placed.

"We are big fans of Foursquare and Placed," said Jeremi Gorman, Snap's chief business officer. "Together, they’re a powerhouse in location technology and measurement, and we are excited to see how they invent the future of location. We look forward to continuing to work with them in many capacities, including measurement and location data, as we focus on building on the growing momentum in our advertising business."

Foursquare has partnerships with companies such as Twitter, Uber, Samsung, Apple, Hilton and Tencent.