(Nasdaq: CAUD), a leading innovator of audience-based performance advertising and media, has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire BeOp, an award-winning, Europe-based MarTech and AdTech industry-leading innovator.
BeOp brings to Collective Audience a cloud based modular platform. The industry’s first SaaS-, services- and marketplace-based, AI-powered, performance advertising and data platform for media and brands.
BeOp is revolutionizing the advertising landscape with its innovative technology tailored for the new digital media and advertising market KPIs such as attention measurement, engagement rate, attribution and time spent. The platform offers a self-serve interface as well as APIs that enable it to be integrated into any environment.
Retail Media
BeOp’s conversational ad units, powered by AI and dynamic ad creatives, captivate users attention. This approach ensures unmatched conversion rates in the retail media domain. With BeOp, every interaction becomes a sales opportunity.
Data
BeOp is already integrated with the leading DMPs (data management platforms) in the market. This integration positions Collective Audience at the forefront, offering the unique ability to create exclusive zero and first party segments for media. Empowering publishers for the first time with their data, these functionalities will soon be extended to advertisers, opening up new targeting and customization possibilities.
End of Third-party Cookies
With the disappearance of third-party cookies that have been the industry’s primary targeting mechanism, BeOp is positioned as an independent, cookieless solution. Its comprehensive suite of tools for audiences, data, and monetization offers the open web market a powerful solution to address current and future challenges. The combination of Collective Audience and BeOp represents the future of digital advertising.
BeOp’s conversational approach opens up new communication possibilities for brands and media to engage and convert consumers based on their interests. See examples of such conversational ad experiences BeOp created for leading brands, including Range Rover, Tommy Hilfiger and Samsung, here.
BeOp’s expert teams, based in France (Paris and Montpellier) and New York City, work with more than 80% of the top French advertisers and 90% of the country’s premium publishers. Customers also include more than 200 premium global publishers across the UK, North America and Australia, with BeOp helping to generate more than 50 million unique visitors per month.
Since its founding in 2017, the power and effectiveness of BeOp’s unique approach is reflected in its rapid revenue growth, reportedly climbing 35% to US$3.7 million in 2023.
Given the anticipated operational synergies with the existing Collective Audience digital ecosystem, the acquisition is expected to be operationally EBITDA positive upon completion. The additional benefits of scale and cross pollination are also expected to enhance Collective Audience’s overall revenue growth and profitability profile as a part of its rising tide growth model.
BeOp has won numerous awards, including the Innovation Competition by BPI France in 2018, a finalist in the Start & Pulse by Sofinco competition in 2021, and winner of the Cas d’Or du Conversationnel competition in 2022. BeOp was officially certified by the HappyIndex® AtWork in 2022, reflecting employee satisfaction in the company’s work environment.
To advance the relationship and integration process during the closing process, Collective Audience signed an exclusive interim license and joint venture agreement with BeOp for using its conversational advertising technology in North America pending completion of the acquisition.
The companies plan to integrate BeOp’s platform into Collective Audience’s product offering to scale the BeOp’s U.S. market share, with this expected to facilitate an immediate ramp up in revenue generation for Collective Audience.
“Building on our success in Europe, BeOp is now set to conquer the North American market as an integral part of the Collective Audience platform,” stated BeOp co-founder and CEO, Louis Prunel. “Our new strategic partnership and the expected eventual merging of our companies opens up endless opportunities for propelling our technology to new dimensions. We see our combination creating an unprecedented growth opportunity.”
According to Collective Audience CEO, Peter Bordes: “BeOp technology is the most advanced, modern AI plus data-driven AdTech stack we have seen. It solves many of the issues the industry faces with its cookieless targeting and next generation high speed ad serving that empowers publishers with an audience data DMP, along with attention-based ad units that are the highest performing in the industry.”
“We see BeOp as two to three acquisitions rolled into one. Their exclusive integration with our platform positions us at the forefront, giving us the unique ability to create zero and first party audience segments for our supply and demand partners,” Bordes continued. “With this strategic partnership between Collective Audience and BeOp, the future of digital advertising knows no bounds.”
“As our first acquisition as Collective Audience, BeOp is reflective of the numerous highly valuable and successful potential acquisitions and JV partnerships we’re currently pursuing on a fast-track basis,” added Bordes. “We expect to make additional related major announcements over the coming weeks.”
The initial strategic partnership and anticipated acquisition is expected to help Collective Audience and BeOp to tap the vast opportunities in the rapidly expanding and evolving global AdTech market that is projected to grow at a 14.7% CAGR to reach $2.9 trillion by 2031.
Prunel and BeOp co-founder and COO, Nicolas Sadki, have been appointed to Collective Audience’s Advisor Collective, a recently announced strategic advisory community designed to advance the company’s mission of transforming the AdTech, MarTech and digital media industry.
The acquisition is structured as an all-stock transaction with assumption of certain BeOp liabilities and earn-out provisions. It is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024.
The acquisition would be consummated pursuant to a definitive acquisition agreement between Collective Audience and BeOp. While Collective Audience expects the transaction to be completed as agreed, it is dependent on certain closing terms and no assurances can be provided that the transaction will be completed as described.
Additional details and terms related to the planned transaction will be made available in a Form 8-K filed by Collective Audience and available at www.sec.gov.
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