Swedish-headquartered affiliate marketing network Tradedoubler has acquired Metapic, an influencer startup offering bloggers a service to monetise their content.
Founded by Filip Askviken and Erik Axelsson, Metapic is a product recommendation platform for bloggers and claims over 20,000 users and 2 million unique views per week across Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The price of the acquisition is unknown.
The announcement was made in Tradedoubler’s latest quarterly report for Q2, released August 30, which revealed reduced net sales from SEK 322 million for the second quarter last year to SEK 285 million this year, although saw a year-on-year cut back in operational losses from SEK 2 million to 1 million.
Despite the gloomy financials, the acquisition suggests the affiliate network is looking to turn things around, bolstering its overlap between affiliate and influencer marketing and becoming less dependent on its existing publisher network. It’s also a move clearly reminiscent of the recent investment in Tailify by Awin in July, another Scandi-based influencer marketing platform that offers brands a self-service platform to run their own campaigns.
“We are very pleased that we strategically strengthen our already strong position in influencing publishing through the acquisition of Metapic,” commented Tradedoubler’s Nordics regional director, Kristoffer Klockare, “We see increased interest among advertisers to reach out via influencers. The acquisition makes it possible to better meet that need together.”
While Metapic is only operational in Scandinavia at present, the two companies have plans to expand services to European markets in due course, with the acquired company set to bed in and grow as a separate entity within Tradedoubler.
“We see great benefits in the acquisition,” said Metapic CEO, Filip Askviken, “Tradedoubler gives us extensive experience, scalability and local expertise to help us deliver a better service to existing partners and increase local presence across large parts of Europe.”