Press Release

DC StormNEW YORK CITY and BRIGHTON, UK – May 29, 2014 – Rakuten Marketing today announced it has acquired DC STORM. An award winning UK-based technology company, DC Storm provides digital marketers with an omni-channel attribution, measurement and reporting platform, analytics tools, and consulting services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

DC Storm differentiates its offerings by providing an independent, comprehensive and transparent view of campaign performance across all marketing channels. Additionally, DC Storm’s expert services team ensures clients have the option of creating a customized solution that reflects their specific business needs. This unbiased and sophisticated analysis of individual, multi-channel and omni-channel performance is delivered through its centralized, simple-to-use platform.

“As one of the pioneers in attribution, analytics and tag management, DC Storm directly addresses the number one issue facing today’s digital marketers – transparency and independent analysis of campaign performance,” said Yaz Iida, chief executive officer, Rakuten Marketing. “DC STORM’s technology and expertise provide the clarity needed by CMOs to make the most effective and most profitable decisions. This acquisition fulfills our promise to bring empowerment to the digital marketing environment through increased transparency.”

Given the seemingly unlimited number of combinations of marketing channels that make up the customer journey, measuring performance and attributing value has become increasingly more complex. Without a clear understanding of how much each marketing channel influences sales and which combination of channels have the most impact, marketers may be over- or under-valuing channels. Rakuten Marketing’s acquisition of DC Storm directly addresses this challenge by providing a comprehensive platform for digital marketers to measure and analyze performance across all channels and devices.

Additionally, DC Storm has built a strong reputation for its tag management capabilities. For digital marketers, this means they can easily add new channels to the Rakuten DC Storm attribution platform without having to rely on development teams to write code each time they want to add or subtract a marketing channel.

“We started DC Storm in 2004 with a vision of providing an accurate way to measure marketing activity and utilize the insights to optimize performance. Instead of relying on black box algorithms or machine learning, we combined deep analytics and expertise to present data in meaningful ways that clients can easily understand,” said Seth Richardson, chief executive officer,DC Storm. “This approach has enabled us to realize tremendous growth and align with innovative partners including Rakuten. Today we not only celebrate joining the Rakuten Marketing family, and the exciting opportunities this brings for our clients, but also the fact that it reaffirms Brighton’s status as a world-class hub for digital marketing.”

All DC Storm employees in the UK, US and Germany will stay with the company and its headquarters will remain in Brighton. The company will also continue with its key objective of providing independent marketing performance measurement across all channels.

About Rakuten Marketing

Rakuten Marketing provides advertisers and marketers with expert technology and services for affiliate marketing, retargeting, display, mobile, search marketing, lead generation, and automated product feeds. The company is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Australia, Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. As part of Rakuten, one of the world’s leading Internet service companies, Rakuten Marketing includes Rakuten LinkShare, the #1 ranked performance marketing network, Rakuten MediaForge, a leader in retargeting and display recognized for its pay-for-performance consumer engagement business model, Rakuten Search a full service search engine marketing company, and Rakuten PopShops, a data analytics engine and product feed and deals content aggregator.

Contacts:

U.S.
Kathy Keating
Blanc & Otus
617-460-2702
kkeating@blancandotus.com

U.K.
Beth Sissons
Hotwire PR
020 7608 4670
beth.sissons@hotwirepr.com