Data is the MVP of the marketing game, but it’s also everywhere. The question is how to decipher it to make better decisions.
Brands are looking for “a very rapid way” to measure the results of their marketing investments, said Jeff Mason, president of Power Digital, which announced its acquisition of boutique marketing consultancy Sproutward on Thursday.
“Challenging times are in front of us, and brands need to do more with less,” Mason said.
That’s where data comes in.
Power Digital is betting on the confluence of data and analytics with strategy and creative.
Sproutward’s proprietary Polaric platform combines a client’s marketing spend with customer and product data, which together provide a “robust view on how you should run your business,” said Kevin Biondi, Sproutward’s co-founder.
Polaric provides clients with automated insights into their main KPIs, business health and the actions they can take to better understand their customers and scale their businesses. “We call it an operating system for our clients to run their ecommerce business,” Biondi said.
Power Digital will integrate Polaric with its own machine-learning-powered marketing analytics platform, called Nova, with the goal of giving customers and the Power Digital team a real-time window into marketing campaign performance, media spend and results.
More broadly, Nova helps clients score the efficiency of their individual marketing channels and recommends a road map for how to meet a given goal, such as revenue growth or brand lift. All of the data from Polaric will feed into Nova.
With a growing number of media channels and outlets, data becomes harder to interpret. Nova aims to provide more transparency into what’s going on under the hood, Mason said.
Power Digital declined to share the financial terms of the deal, but the purchase of Sproutward is its fifth acquisition in four years.
Starting in 2019, Power Digital acquired SEO and content company Factorial Digital, PR agency Covet PR, technology platform DataQ (to make ad spend more efficient) and, most recently, digital media buying and creative agency Social Method to bulk up its social media offerings.
Looking ahead, “we do anticipate more activity in the M&A environment,” Mason said. “We want to continue to help our brands grow, and we want to continue to grow ourselves.”
The addition of Sproutward’s 30 employees brings Power Digital’s total headcount to 580.
