Adthena acquires Kantar's AdGooroo to build up search market intelligence

Intelligence platform for paid search advertising Adthena has acquired Kantar’s paid search offering AdGooroo. The move is said to bolster Adthena’s standing as the leader in search market intelligence for both brands and agencies. Through this acquisition, Kantar's clients will be able to tap into Adthena’s AI-powered search intelligence product suite.

Ian O’Rourke, CEO and founder of Adthena, said the acquisition will enable Adthena to break new ground for brands and agencies while also helping it to continues its growth trajectory. He added: "As search continues to become the barometer by which all advertising efforts are measured, the importance of having access to the best intelligence possible cannot be overstated." MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Adthena and Kantar for additional information.

The acquisition comes shortly after Adthena was named Kantar’s search intelligence partner earlier this month. The partnership sees an integration of Adthena's data into Kantar’s ad intelligence offering in the United States, Brazil, Denmark and France, and this includes Kantar's advertising insights tool. 

Founded in 2012, Adthena claims to have a product suite that delivers "unmatched search market visibility" for advertisers and marketers. Centered on a whole market view AI-driven intelligence platform, Adthena said its offerings allow advertisers and marketers to not only monitor their own performance, but to track competitor actions and results as well. It also claims to provide users with next-level search defense, enabling them to autonomously monitor for threats and defend themselves from “brand bidders". According to the company, it has a client base of over 250 leading brands and agencies, including L’Oreal, Volvo, Progressive Insurance, Qantas, dentsu, and GroupM.

Meanwhile, AdGooroo is a Kantar's search marketing intelligence platform that was founded in 2004, and claims to work with search marketing professionals to uncover top competitors’ paid and organic search strategies and improve their own campaign performance. The platform boasts to allow clients to view current and historical data, including spend estimates, performance statistics, keywords and ad creative, for virtually any advertiser’s text ad and product listing ad campaigns across desktop, tablet, mobile search in more than 50 countries.

Manish Bhatia, chief global product officer for the media division of Kantar, said: “Adthena has already become a key partner in growing the search capabilities within our multimedia platforms, and we know that users of our dedicated paid search tools will immediately see the value of Adthena’s platform as well.” Bhatia also said this comes as brands and agencies know how important search advertising is to measuring the overall efficacy of their advertising and marketing efforts.

Earlier in October 2020, Kantar appointed Bata CEO Alexis Nasard as its CEO. Nasard takes over the duties ofEric Salama, who stepped down in December 2019 and joined the board as a non-executive director. As a non-executive director, Salama continues to advise clients, work with Kantar management and aid with the development of key employees. Nasard previously said that throughout his career, Kantar's data, insights and advice informed many of the strategies, as well as communication and commercial plans his teams and him led. 

(Photo courtesy: 123RF)

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