Content monetisation business Skimlinks, has acquired browser extension firm – the InvisibleHand.
London-based Forward Internet Group (Forward), the media technology and consumer investment firm, has been a majority investor in InvisibleHand since the business was founded in 2009. Upon completion of the deal, Forward will hold a minority equity stake in Skimlinks.
Chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Skimlinks, Alicia Navarro, said InvisibleHand’s powerful API and technology will allow Skimlinks to immediately enhance its core products, offer unique insights, and maximise earnings for its network of publishers.
InvisibleHand is a browser extension which discreetly notifies the user if the product or flights they are shopping for is available more cheaply from another retailer or travel site. If the user buys a product after clicking on the button in an InvisibleHand notification, the retailer or seller pays the company a ‘small commission’. The price the user pays is not affected by the commission.
Online Monetisation
Skimlinks, which has offices in London and San Francisco, will be bringing on InvisibleHand’s engineering and product teams, to work with it on shaping the future of the e-commerce and online monetisation industries.
“The InvisibleHand team have successfully tackled two of the toughest problems in e-commerce: algorithmically matching large product data sets across multiple retailers, and pairing that information with accurate price data,” Navarro said.
“We have been partners and friends with InvisibleHand for many years so it is a great pleasure to have Robin and his team join Skimlinks.”
CEO and founder of InvisibleHand, Robin Landy, said Skimlinks was the ‘perfect partner’ for the next stage of InvisibleHand’s development.
“I’m excited by the opportunity to turbo-charge Skimlinks’ core products, but also to make InvisibleHand’s unique dataset and services available across the broadest range of applications,” Landy said.