GSI Acquires ClearSaleing Ad Analytics Services

GSI Commerce Inc. has announced its Global Marketing Services division has acquired ClearSaleing, a Columbus, Ohio-based provider of advanced advertising analytics and attribution management. The acquisition of ClearSaleing broadens and deepens the division’s portfolio of marketing services offerings and overall market position. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ClearSaleing will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, which provides a comprehensive set of interactive marketing solutions to help clients drive customer acquisition, conversion and loyalty across multiple channels. With the addition of ClearSaleing, the division now includes eight marketing services companies: e-Dialog, FetchBack, M3 Mobile, MBS Insight, Pepperjam, Silverlign and TrueAction. The company plans to integrate ClearSaleing into these other marketing services platforms.  For more information, visit http://gsicommerce.com/marketing_services.

“ClearSaleing’s innovative advertising analytics platform provides today’s marketers and digital agencies with an accurate way to measure, compare and optimize profit and ROI of their online advertising campaigns,” said Chris Saridakis, chief executive officer of GSI’s Global Marketing Services division. “The U.S. digital advertising market is $25.8 billion. ClearSaleing gives marketers the ability to understand the entire customer purchase path and how each online channel works to move a customer from acquisition to conversion, which helps deliver stronger performing marketing programs. We’re very pleased to welcome ClearSaleing to GSI.”

“ClearSaleing’s advertising analytics and attribution platform is the solution for the limited last-click measurement model online marketers and advertisers have been stuck with for far too long.  ClearSaleing gives marketers the tools and intelligence to manage their overall media mix and fine tune the message of their campaigns,” said Randy Smith, chief executive officer of ClearSaleing. “GSI’s multichannel approach to marketing services and entrepreneurial culture makes this a strong fit for ClearSaleing and our clients.  We’ll be able to continue to develop our technology while taking advantage of GSI’s broader resources and market position.”

Attribution Management

Three fundamental attribution management issues must be addressed to properly assign value across an entire group of ads:

1. Accurately “valuation” of the conversion event using a metric that measures the performance of each ad in the group.
2. Comprehensively tracking and sequentially assembly all of the marketing initiatives and advertisements that contribute to the conversion event.
3. Proper attribution of the overall conversion value to each of the participating ads on a relative contribution basis.

This "big picture" analysis is where ClearSaleing adds value. Overall, this is should be a very valuable asset for GSI.

ClearSaleing’s Attribution Management product was named a Leader in the independent October 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. report, The Forrester Wave™: Interactive Attribution Q4 2009, for its ease of use, custom analytics and appeal to a wide array of marketers.  For the past year, TrueAction, a full-service digital agency within GSI’s Global Marketing Services division, has been using ClearSaleing’s attribution marketing platform to help 60 of its clients improve efficiency in decision making and increase productivity from automation and reporting by providing more accurate attribution analysis.  Other ClearSaleing clients include companies such as American Greetings, Rosetta, Range Online Media and Nationwide Insurance.  The investment banking firm Petsky Prunier represented ClearSaleing in this transaction.