Rakuten Marketing Goes Deep into Mobile

NEW YORK, March 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Rakuten Marketing, the global leader in omni-channel marketing and a division of Rakuten, Inc., today announced its acquisition of Deep Forest Media, a programmatic mobile marketing company and demand-side platform (DSP). The acquisition enables Rakuten Marketing to introduce a superior mobile advertising platform that excels in both reach and accuracy through the combination of Deep Forest's cross-device algorithm and Rakuten Inc.'s rich consumer data.

Palo-Alto-based Deep Forest caught the attention of Rakuten Marketing with its ability to improve mobile performance with its quality and breadth of proprietary tracking and optimization technology. In addition to cross-device targeting, Deep Forest's technology empowers advertisers to personalize mobile campaigns with hyper-local targeting, user segmentation across devices, and dynamic creative optimization with a broad reach across leading networks and exchanges, including MoPub, Rubicon Project and TapSense.  Bringing these mobile capabilities in-house empowers Rakuten Marketing to better engage consumers across all its channels, particularly display, where Deep Forest's technology will strengthen the reach and performance of Rakuten Marketing's dynamic mobile ad platform. 

"Rakuten Marketing has a bold, customer-centric vision for the future of omni-channel marketing and we could not have found a better home for our team and technology," said Deep Forest Founder and CEO, Naghi Prasad. "With the synergies between our technologies and Rakuten data, we are poised to have the kind of impact on the market that will change the way we think about the consumer journey and how to optimize it."

The motivation behind the acquisition aligns with Rakuten Marketing's commitment to drive the omni-experience, which is about improving cross-channel performance with marketing built around the consumer experience. Integral to this vision is data that accurately reflects consumers' cross-device interactions across all marketing channels. By integrating Rakuten's deterministic consumer data with Deep Forest's probabilistic cross-device algorithm, Rakuten Marketing will offer a new level of precision for performance and optimization across the marketing funnel, leveraging a unique understanding of the consumer path to purchase, across channels and devices.

"With mobile commerce projected to reach $298 billion in 2015 we wanted to invest in a company and team that bring strong mobile capabilities to align with our vision," says Tony Zito, CEO, Rakuten Marketing. "A critical part of that is integrating cross-device engagement and conversion data into our proprietary attribution solutions to reinforce and expand our commitment to performance and transparency."

This acquisition comes on the heels of Rakuten Marketing's announcement of its proprietary omni-experience attribution tool, Cadence Essential. The Deep Forest acquisition further reinforces Rakuten Marketing's commitment to innovation that brings deeper, actionable insights that are data-driven and accurate, to ensure its clients are armed with the resources to strengthen their marketing communications and, ultimately, their relationship with their customers.

Learn more about Rakuten Marketing at www.rakutenmarketing.com. 

About Rakuten Marketing
Rakuten Marketing is the global leader in omnichannel marketing, delivering its vision of driving the omni experience - marketing designed for a streamlined consumer experience. Offering an integrated strategy that combines consumer centric insights with e-commerce expertise, Rakuten Marketing aims to inspire better marketing. Rakuten Marketing's omnichannel services include Rakuten Affiliate Network (formerly LinkShare), Rakuten Display (formerly MediaForge), Rakuten Attribution (formerly DC Storm), and Rakuten Search.

Operating as a division of Rakuten, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world's leading Internet service companies, Rakuten Marketing is headquartered in New York City, with additional offices in Australia, Brazil, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the United States. Follow us on Twitter or learn more at http://www.rakutenmarketing.com.

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. 

About Deep Forest Media
Founded by online and mobile advertising veterans from Yahoo, Netflix, Apple, Turn and Tapjoy, Deep Forest Media created and deployed the world's first self-learning DSP built specifically for mobile. The company provides a comprehensive full-stack mobile platform, bringing together advanced data science and optimization solutions to brands, agencies and mobile marketers around the world. Based in Palo Alto, CA, Deep Forest raised Seed and Series A rounds led by The Hive and March Capital, respectively.

Jessica Joines
CMO, Rakuten Marketing
646-581-3202
[email protected]

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SOURCE Rakuten Marketing

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