Optimise, the privately-held global performance advertising network headquartered in Norwich, UK, today (January 15) announced the acquisition of Shoogloo Media, an affiliate network launched in 2015 to “bring performance marketing to the Middle East & Africa” according to its CEO.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The 185-strong Optimise currently has over 1,400 global advertisers on its books across 30 countries – including the likes of Tesco Bank, HSBC, Santander, Itaú, Expedia, Agoda, Neckermann, Peugeot, Lazada, Jabong and Flipkart – which it oversees from offices in New Delhi, Jakarta, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Warsaw.
Optimise has high hopes that brands and publishers in the MEA region will benefit from its new performance advertising tech pinned around deep data and predictive analytics, which it unveiled at PI LIVE in October last year.
‘Untapped region’
According to the network’s group CEO, Stephen Rumbelow, MEA represents fertile ground for expansion with ad spend in the region forecasted to grow from $3.8 billion in 2017 to over $6.5 billion by 2020.
“For us, MEA represents a fast-growing and relatively untapped region for us to extend our global reach further and accelerate growth,” commented Rumbelow.
“Having launched operations in multiple countries across the APAC and LATAM regions, we’ve made it easy for our global clients to run performance advertising campaigns across multiple countries, with personalised payment methods, flexible time zone localisation for tracking and reporting, a multilingual technology platform and experienced local account teams.”
Rumbelow hopes that the acquisition of Shoogloo Media will now enable the network to help its clients reach “wider and deeper” into key MEA markets.
Shoogloo’s own CEO LD Sharma is confident that acquisition by Optimise will allow the company to continue expanding at a “rapid pace”.
“Our MEA clients will also benefit significantly from Optimise’s market-leading performance advertising technology and wider product range. We’re hugely excited about working with the team at Optimise to accelerate growth of the MEA business,” said Sharma.