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Advertising giant Publicis Groupe announced Tuesday the acquisition of Profitero, a global e-commerce software platform that allows brands to increase their sales and profitability on e-commerce sites.
Profitero’s work involves digital commerce software and services for brands, such as offerings helping out with comparing prices with competitors, monitoring product availability and tracking customer ratings and reviews.
"Profitero’s products, technology, and 300 employees will further scale and supercharge Publicis Groupe’s existing commerce capabilities around the world," the company said in a statement.
The company helps brands show up on a retailer’s digital shelf when customers search for terms that can sometimes be even simple things like “chocolate bar,” according to Profitero President Sarah Hofstetter.
The software examines public data from retailers, synthesizing it to provide insights and predictions.
“Search results are going to vary both by retailer and the levers that brands can pull to ensure that they get to the top …” Hofstetter said. “There’s anything from ratings and reviews, to price adjustments, to promotional activity to supply-chain fulfillment, to which pictures and videos and text you use, how many bullets — there are hundreds of levers that you can pull, just to make sure that you show up more for the term ‘chocolate bar.’”
According to Publicis Chief Executive Arthur Sadoun, the deal would add to Publicis’ clients’ ability to grow their online sales and add market share. He said marketers have to look at things like competitors prices, product availability, opportunities to improve unpaid searches, or they’ll risk losing business.
The deal was worth 200 million euros ($210.58 million), the company told Reuters, confirming a media report.
Profitero will remain an individual company within the Publicis group, it added.
This is the largest acquisition made by Publicis since that of Epsilon (estimated at 4.4 billion dollars) in 2019, or that of Sapient (3.7 billion dollars) in 2014. Last summer , Publicis also paid nearly 100 million euros to buy CitrusAd, an Australian technology platform that also specializes in advertising on e-commerce sites, a booming segment.
