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Mobile shopping firm Bee Media adds Adcentricity location-based DOOH to hive

April 27, 2012

Mobile shopping platform company Bee Media Inc. recently announced the acquisition of the business of location-based digital media technology company Adcentricity Inc. Also, the newly formed Adcentricity announced the availability of two new products aimed at making it easier for advertisers to develop hyper-local campaigns.

Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Bee Media acquired the Adcentricity name and going forward will operate as Adcentricity, with Bee Media CEO Doug Woolridge remaining at the helm as the CEO. Adcentricity will continue to provide clients with location-based marketing solutions, including new platforms, technologies and services that drive shopper marketing and consumer engagement based on a person's physical location. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed; ICM-Caldwell and Telesystem are behind the transaction.

"The combination of local, shopper marketing, mobile, in-store radio and video networks has created a fractured landscape of thousands of smart, effective companies and media channels with limited ways to get the attention of, and adoption by, brands," said Rob Gorrie, the former CEO of Adcentricity, who will stay on with the company as a Senior Strategic Advisor, in the announcement. "Together with Bee Media, we can now offer an even more powerful platform with the ability to target and distribute addressable content across every digital channel with a location attached to it — including mobile shopping applications, which Bee Media has been quietly building over the past year."

Location-based marketing, including the data and activity that surrounds it, is quickly becoming identified as key to consumer influence, CRM and shopper marketing initiatives. The new Adcentricity will allow brands to execute and respond to localized events and activities, and scale from one location to tens of thousands via a series of new and existing products. With several key products, platforms and tools with enhanced functionality, Adcentricity said it has created a newly formed location-based hub of product, data and capabilities.

The company announced two new products:

• ADMobile: A platform for location-based mobile shopping, including mobile interfaces, shopping tools, location services, mobile payment, content management, analytics and reporting
• ADFormat: An automated content generation tool that allows advertisers to execute completely customizable campaigns of video, copy, images and graphics to fit any digital screen, DOOH, OOH or mobile that can be uniquely messaged to any specific market or location

In addition, the company will continue to offer ADCentral, a product core to the Adcentricity service, as well as supporting components, ADVenue, ADTarget and ADFormat, designed to place messaging in front of the most potential consumers.

"When you couple Bee Media's expertise on the consumer mobile applications side with that of Adcentricity on the location-based delivery side, it creates a platform that makes hyper-local mobile campaigns easy and executable for advertisers, brands and retailers," Woolridge said. "Our location-based digital technology hub demystifies the complexities in this new media landscape enabling connections with on the go consumers in active retail environments. Our mission is to connect the digital world with the physical world with a few clicks and have the ability to measure and report on results in a timely fashion."

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