Advertising analysis company PubPlus has announced its sale to Canadian company ClearPier. The acquisition price is stated at $60 million in cash and shares, with no detail of the division between the two. Tel Aviv-based PubPlus was founded by its CEO Gil Bar-Tur and two unnamed partners who have never worked at the company. PubPlus has not raised external capital, and so the parties to the deal are only the founders and employees with options.
PubPlus was founded in 2014 under the name CrunchMind. At that time, its activity consisted of creating and operating content websites in various fields and different languages. Over time, however, the company developed an analytics tool, originally for its own use, for analyzing user acquisition activity via the various channels and its profitability. The company later started to sell the analytics tool to other content sites.
PubPlus's tool also buys advertising campaigns for customers on the basis of the analytics. Bar-Tur says that these purchases amount to $100 million annually. PubPlus's revenue derives from the saving that its model generates for the content site. "If a customer acquires a user on Google for $0.70 and produces a $1 profit from that user, we divide that profit," Bar-Tur explains. PubPlus currently employs 60 people. In 2019 it had 100 employees, but it downsized when the advertising industry hit a crisis at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, as advertising budgets were cut.
The acquiring company, ClearPier, employs 120 people and will now absorb PubPlus's employees. PubPlus will remain an independent sub-brand. ClearPier deals in making user acquisition more efficient, but does so for mobile apps and games, while PubPlus works more with websites. "This is the first of five planned acquisitions by ClearPier, the aim of which is to turn it into a public company in Canada. We and they are profitable companies, and so very much match what the market is looking for these days," Bar-Tur says.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 25, 2022.
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