Kenshoo closing on purchase of Signals Analytics in marketing sector merger

Automated marketing campaign management company Kenshoo Ltd. is in the process of acquiring Netanya-based Signals Analytics, another company in the advertising sector, a source told Calcalist under the condition of anonymity. The terms of the acquisition haven’t been announced, but according to estimates in the sector, once the deal is concluded it will include only a small cash element.

Kenshoo and Signals Analytics are both veteran companies in the Israeli ad-tech and marketing sector. Kenshoo was founded in 2006 and currently employs around 600 people. It has raised $65 million in five rounds to date, the last of which was in 2014. Signals Analytics was founded in 2009.

The system developed by Kenshoo assists executives and marketing and sales managers to allocate overall advertising budgets and advertising campaigns online, while predicting the return on the investment. Marketing managers can, among other things, calculate where to invest their advertising budgets and what return they will receive, broken down to quarters, geography, and sectors even before they have launched their campaign.

Signals Analytics extracts context from uncorrelated external data sources to uncover trends and predictive insights, mainly in the pharma, life sciences, food, beverage and commodities sectors. The company's platform collects, analyzes and produces its insights from a wide range of public and proprietary sources like patent databases, scientific research, social media, clinical trials, e-commerce websites, reports by research companies and more. According to the company, users of the platform include brand managers and business leaders, chief data officers, consumer and market insights professionals, IT and analytics experts, who experience faster time to market, lower cost to insight and fewer product modifications post-launch when incorporating Signals Analytics’ market intelligence into their planning processes.

Signals Analytics has raised $52 million to date, with its last round in 2017 being led by Pitango Growth. Other investors include Qumra Capital, Sequoia and TPY Capital. The company was founded by Gil Sadeh and Kobi Gershoni. The two were employed by the company until 2009, but purchased it following the financial crisis at the time. Between 2009 and 2012 the company was mainly active in the business intelligence sector, but after developing its technological abilities it decided in 2012 to make those the backbone of the business and raised funds in order to develop automated advisory tools.

Neither company responded to requests for comment.