Digital marketing company Datran Media and digital media services firm ContextWeb have merged into PulsePoint, the companies said on Sept. 22.
The merger creates a platform that marketers can use for ad targeting, real-time bidding and cross-channel analytics, according to a company statement.
Datran Media’s chairman and CEO Patrick Vogt will serve as executive chairman of PulsePoint and oversee product and technology development. ContextWeb’s CEO Timothy Murray will become the company’s CEO and manage daily operations.
PulsePoint will be based in New York, where both Datran Media and ContextWeb are headquartered.
“This merger is born out of our very successful partnership and fueled by demand in the market from our customers. This customer- and market-driven move creates a holistic platform which allows our customers to engage, target and measure audience across all digital channels,” said Vogt.
Vogt and Murray said the companies chose to rebrand as PulsePoint because it provided an opportunity to better represent the combined company’s capabilities.
PulsePoint will lay off “a modest percentage” of employees as a result of “redundancies” created by the merger, said Murray. He said the company will also be consolidating offices in cities in which there is more than one office, such as New York and San Francisco.
Vogt said that PulsePoint will expand the sales and marketing team in ContextWeb’s U.K. office. The company will also look to expand its overall European presence, said Murray.
Asked if PulsePoint plans to make any acquisitions over the next 12 months, Vogt said, “I wouldn’t be surprised maybe if we might be talking again towards the end of the year.”
Datran Media acquired social news site Allvoices.com in April to enable clients to use the site’s proprietary crowd-sourcing technology. Datran clients include Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp. of America, NBC and digital agency Razorfish.
