Magnetic and MyBuys announced Wednesday they will merge, creating a company with a combined gross revenue of $100 million spanning ad tech and marketing tech.
With their dual capabilities, they will be able to leverage first-party and third-party data to inform their 700 clients’ advertising spend and marketing efforts throughout the customer life cycle.
At the same time, the merged company, which will be called Magnetic, raised a $25 million line of equity that it will use to create new products that take advantage of the two companies’ combined scale and data.
“The businesses are very complementary,” said Magnetic CEO James Green, who will also serve as CEO post-merger. Green said he and MyBuys CEO Rita Brogley shared a vision to connect marketing technology and advertising technology.
“There are many vendors out there that look at the world as there’s a line in the sand between advertising and marketing to your own customers, of CRM systems vs. advertising systems,” Green said. “Those two are rarely connected, but that’s what we’re connecting.”
Magnetic and MyBuys are roughly the same size in terms of clients, with Magnetic slightly larger in terms of revenue. Magnetic serves Fortune 1000 companies and agencies in five verticals: automotive, CPG, retail, finance and travel. It purchases third-party data, using it to inform clients’ media buys. Last March, it purchased dynamic creative company Cognitive Match.
MyBuys accesses retailers’ first-party data for advertising and marketing. Its three products use data to inform media buys, email marketing and site personalization.
With the two companies merging, Magnetic will have access to first-party data, until now a hole in its data offerings. “MyBuys had been dabbling in expanding data sets for customers and we were bemoaning that we didn’t have any first-party data,” Green said.
The companies say MyBuys’ advertising customers should expect better performance as Magnetic’s additional data sets are added to the buying algorithm.
The merger has been in the works for the past six months. MyBuys has raised close to $50 million, while Magnetic has raised $15 million.
“We think companies will need to have scale to be successful,” Green said. “We’re starting to get that scale with $100 million in revenue, but that’s on the small side. We’ve got to grow aggressively to continue to be relevant.”
That means creating a product that will take on the behemoths of the ad tech/marketing tech landscape, companies like Oracle, Salesforce and Adobe.
“We are absolutely trying to create that,” Green said. “I would say we have the beginnings of a platform.”
Green isn’t revealing what products it will build using the two companies’ combined data and scale yet, but that’s where a big chunk of the $25 million it’s raising will go.
MyBuys CEO Rita Brogley will stay on for six months day-to-day, and is a member of the board for the new company.
MyBuys has 120 employees, and Magnetic has 160. Three will be laid off due to redundancies, Green said.
