Brandwatch acquires PeerIndex to extend social data insights
Brandwatch, the social technology company, has acquired PeerIndex, which focuses on influencer analytics and mapping, for an undisclosed sum.
While Brandwatch, which finds and analyses content, has cited its reasons for the purchase as needing to bolster its capabilities so it can answer why certain content works and why messages spread quickly.
“Adding the PeerIndex data and technology into the heart of Brandwatch will help to answer these questions. We’ll know that a message spread because a particular person talked about it. And her audience acted as a link to a different – identified – network of people within which it was shared quickly and then five people in one of those networks shared it and it jumped to another group and so on and so forth,” said Giles Palmer, chief executive at Brandwatch.
“Understanding more about the actual people behind the conversations happening online is crucial to marketers, and this is about creating technologies that will allow them to target audience segments at scale with astonishing accuracy. ”
Palmer approached PeerIndex chief executive Azeem Azhar to see if he would be interested in joining forces, with the deal signed six weeks later.
Explaining why he agreed to the deal, Azhar said: "There were three reasons why Brandwatch was the best partner for PeerIndex and its team. First, they have a fantastic culture of openness, trust and reciprocity. Often those words are just written down, but we discovered at Brandwatch that these values were lived. And great culture is the bedrock of great companies.
“Secondly, the people were fantastic. Giles Palmer, the CEO, and his leadership team are rock solid entrepreneurs and executives and people we can believe in for the long-run.
“Finally, Brandwatch has built a real, vibrant business with more than 1,000 happy enterprise customers and industry-beating retention rates. We were consistently impressed with the discipline of their execution and how this provided a launch pad for growing new products into new markets.”
Through the deal, the companies hope to increase the depth of market research available to users.