TapClicks buys AdStage to expand marketing intelligence, predictive campaign optimization capabilities

In its latest acquisition, San Jose, CA-based TapClicks has bought AdStage, a San Francisco-based cross-channel paid media analytics and optimization platform, the company announced Wednesday.

TapClicks offers a unified marketing data and operations platform for agencies, media companies, brands, franchises and HIPAA-covered entities. It powers data aggregation, warehousing and distribution with connectors to more than 4,600 sources. Once marketers have consolidated their data via TapClicks connectors, the platform offers holistic analytics and reporting solutions as well as workflow and order management and competitive intelligence capabilities.

“The problem we are trying to solve is there are about 7,000 point solutions that marketers have to use to get their job done, which is really confusing,” said Babak Hedayati, CEO and founder of TapClicks, by phone Tuesday. “Our marketing data platform is the foundation of what we do. Then the app layer is totally integrated and super scalable.”

Campaign intelligence, cross-channel budget optimization. The addition of AdStage will augment TapClicks’ campaign intelligence and reporting solutions and add automated and predictive campaign optimization capabilities to help marketers allocate their marketing budgets for maximum growth.

Since launching in 2012, AdStage has developed a set of solutions to give marketers normalized insights across their digital advertising channels and automate campaign optimizations. It has data integrations with search and social ad platforms from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. Marketers can also pull in goal and conversion data from Google Analytics and Salesforce.

AdStage’s AI-based campaign recommendation engine that is currently in development was a missing piece that would have taken years to build on our own, Heydayti said by phone Tuesday.

“It’s not enough to show a reporting dashboard,” said AdStage founder Sahil Jain, who will lead marketing intelligence solutions for TapClicks, “but [you need to show] where you need to spend. [We are] answering questions for marketers through technology.”

“These capabilities from AdStage will be instrumental in achieving the TapClicks vision to offer a full spectrum of integrated solutions that use advanced AI and predictive capabilities to provide an actionable pathway to success,” said Hedayati in a statement.

Most of the AdStage team is joining TapClicks. Jain said TapClicks is a natural fit for AdStage. “Both companies have the muscle memory around conversations we’ve both been having for years,” Jain said, noting the shared vision to create a holistic, unified marketing platform.

5th Acquisition. TapClicks has built out its offering in large part through acquisitions. The company bought SEO reporting and tool platform Raven Tools in 2017; data visualization solution StatX last May, competitive SEO and SEM intelligence solution iSpionage in July and client reporting platform Megalytic in October.

With the addition of AdStage, TapClicks says it now has 225 employees and more than 5000 customers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. AdStage had raised more than $15 million in funding.

Why we care. TapClicks is not the only company focused on unifying marketing data and insights, but it is steadily building towards building a comprehensive marketing platform through development and acquisitions.

TapClicks says it will support the expansion of the AdStage product suite by building technology around insights, recommendations, forecasting, and the ability to take action on marketing data.