Sprinklr just beefed up its social ads offering in a big way by acquiring one of Facebook’s largest ad buying clients.
The social media marketing platform announced today that it would acquire TBG Digital, a social media advertising platform that services brands and agencies. TBG Digital specializes in creative, media and measurement services for marketers looking to buy ads on Facebook and Twitter. Its major clients include Zynga, Dell, Heineken and Vodafone, which will all be welcome additions to Sprinklr’s revenue streams as the company plans its (rumored) IPO.
Sprinklr founder and CEO Ragy Thomas says the acquisition of TBG Digital makes Sprinklr the first completely integrated solution for paid, earned and owned social media marketing. In a blog post, he explained his vision for what the new platform would be able to achieve for marketers:
Imagine being able to plan your owned and paid on the same calendar.
Imagine being able to overlay earned impact on the same report as your owned and paid.
Imagine being able to amplify posts that are working well with one click.
Imagine being able to run multi-variate tests and auto allocate additional dollars to winning combinations.
Imagine executing in-feed and right rail messaging in tandem.
Imagine being able to understand true reach and conversion while tracking the true impact of paid.
Imagine being able to optimize paid by utilizing the learning from owned. Or vice versa, running a small paid test to figure out what to post to your millions of fans and followers.
Imagine budgets being dynamically allocated across teams based on performance.
“We’ve worked with some of the most innovative companies in the world when it comes to social,” said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital in a press release. “While many companies approached us about converged media, only Sprinklr had the proven ability to convert our domain knowledge into actionable software that can be deployed to thousands of brands globally.”
Although Sprinklr had already been offering a social media ads solution through its platform, the TBG Digital acquisition will give its customers a more comprehensive offering which shows brand marketers the performance of their paid, earned and owned social channels in one place.
Sprinklr’s VP of marketing Jeremey Epstein says the acquisition is less about integrating TBG Digital’s technology and more about the people who run it.
“With TBG Digital, we’re getting 10 years of expertise in social media advertising, they understand the mind of the paid media buyer,” said Sprinklr VP of marketing Jeremy Epstein. “We’re taking that brain power and incorporating that into our platform.”
The TBG Digital acquisition puts Sprinklr in a strong position, compared to its social media marketing competitors such as Spredfast, Lithium, Adobe Social, Radian6 and Buddy Media. The real test of Sprinklr’s platform will be how well it can provide a unified solution for paid and earned media across social. Right now, Adobe Social is the only one that enables social media listening, publishing and advertising capabilities. The other platforms do offer paid social media, but through integrations with other vendors.
Epstein says Sprinklr’s big advantage lies in how well it can integrate with the back-end systems of most marketing operations, allowing the different parts of the company to coordinate their efforts in a single unified platform. “There’s a growing need for an integrated, core social platform for brands,” says Epstein. “If you’re not aware of the customer’s experience across the rest of the company, whether it’s sales, marketing or customer service, then you can’t be a great marketer.”
