Marketing services company Connexity Inc. said it has acquired price-comparison shopping site PriceGrabber for an undisclosed amount to form one of world’s largest sources of “high-intent” shopping leads.
Connexity said the combination of the two Los Angeles-based companies will form the second-largest product listing lead generation channel for retailers after Google and more than twice as large as similar channels or networks in other companies such as Amazon and eBay. PriceGrabber’s shopping-focused publisher network offers more than 2,000 retailers marketing access to “tens of millions” of shoppers each month from leading online shopping destinations such as Yahoo!, Ask.com and PriceGrabber.com.
Founded in 1999, PriceGrabber is a unit of CPL Holdings LLC and has operations in North America and the United Kingdom. It had been acquired for $485 million in 2005 by Experian, which sold it in 2012 along with two other online assets for $175 million, according to VentureBeat.
Connexity, formerly Shopzilla Inc., also owns Bizrate Insights, an online review platform for retail Web sites. Founded in 1996, Shopzilla was acquired by Scripps in 2005 for $525 million. Scripps then sold it to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $165 million in 2011. Connexity operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy.
Connexity said retailers can benefit from having to manage only a single channel which will both simplify their performance marketing efforts and increase sales.
Source: Bizjournals.com
