In a move that could improve the way marketers find leads and interact with clients, Dow Jones & Company has acquired business information company Generate Inc. Terms of the deal, which was completed April 17, were not disclosed.
Generate forms the new Business & Relationship Intelligence unit of Dow Jones’ Enterprise Media Group. The new unit will leverage Generate’s technology to track and aggregate company and executive information online. Such information will provide sales and marketing professionals with new insight into trends, competitive moves, new prospects and business relationships.
“Generate brings content and capabilities that are really at the center of what’s next in business information management,” said Clare Hart, EVP of Dow Jones & Company and president of Enterprise Media Group. “When you take this content and technology and the people from Generate and bring them into Dow Jones, it’s an incredible support of our overall strategy of powering intelligent enterprise; it’s being able to bring the right content and information to individuals when and where they need it.”
Generate also adds business relationship mapping and event trigger capabilities to Dow Jones’ services.
“Event triggers really have to do with the pace of business today and the drive for competitiveness,” Hart explained. “Marketing people are always looking for how to drive more revenue, and the trigger concept is like the concept of alerts on steroids. They allow you to say you’re interested whenever there’s an executive change or whenever a company leases new property because that’s a prospect. You can just say broadly that this type of event drives revenues in my business and therefore, as a marketing executive, I need to know about it.”
Tom and Darr Aley, co-founders of Generate, will both take on principal roles at Dow Jones. Tom Aley will serve as SVP and managing director of Dow Jones Business & Relationship Intelligence, and Darr Aley will serve as VP, marketing and business development for that unit. All Generate employees are expected to join Dow Jones.
The acquisition may also affect Dow Jones’ Consumer Media Group, which includes the Wall Street Journal. Aley said that Generate had already worked closely with the Consumer group and hopes to add new capabilities such as relationship mapping and generating ad pages with tool bars to that arm of the company.
