Microsoft acquires PromoteIQ

Microsoft scooped up New York-based PromoteIQ, a startup that helps retailers build digital advertising and e-commerce offerings for an undisclosed amount.

PromoteIQ brings with it a roster of big-name customers, including Kroger, Kohl’s and Overstock.com. The start-up will continue to operate under its name and will become a division of Microsoft Advertising.

PromoteIQ noted that the retail landscape is changing, and Microsoft brings “a humble, thoughtful approach to building out the defining operating system to power the future of commerce. PromoteIQ has pioneered the private marketplace approach to digital vendor marketing. PromoteIQ technology strategically complements Microsoft’s current retail advertising offerings.

Microsoft earlier this year separated its advertising division from the search engine Bing, to signify that the organization has ambitions beyond search. The change came almost a year after the debut of Microsoft Audience Network, a program that uses artificial intelligence and data from Microsoft services including Bing, MSN, Outlook, Skype and LinkedIn to help advertisers target native ads to specific audiences based on their online activities.

Simplilearn acquired Market Motive

Bangalore based Simplilearn solutions Pvt. Ltd., the company behind online education and training destination for professional certification courses Simplilearn.com has acquired Silicon Valley based Digital Marketing Training firm Market Motive for $10 Million (Rs 62 crore). It will also help the company make further inroads in the US market.

The deal augments Simplilearn offerings in the booming digital marketing field with courses in social media marketing, digital advertising, web analytics, and marketing automation. Simplilearn, which raised $15 Million in its third round of funding in April to expand its reach in the US, trained more than 400,000 people and offers 250 courses from advanced cloud computing to Six Sigma and Big Data on its site.

With this acquisition, its offerings will include training and certification in digital marketing with courses web analytics and mobile marketing. California based Market Motive will continue to operate as an independent part of Simplilearn. Market Motive specializes in SEO, web analytics, social media marketing, conversion optimization, mobile marketing, PPC advertising, and content marketing.

In April, Simplilearn had secured $15 Million in series C funding by early stage investor Mayfield, with participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital and Helion Venture Partners. It had also secured $10 Million in a series B round of funding in September 2013 from Helion Venture partners and Kalaari Capital. In August 2012, it had bagged around $2 Million in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital.

Pinterest acquires Kosei

Facebook knows who you were. Google knows what you want now. Now, Pinterest yearns to know what you want next, which is exactly why it acquired recommendation engine startup Kosei. For an undisclosed figure, Pinterest gets Kosei tech that understands 400 Million relationships between 30 Million products, and the majority of its 10-person team including its co-founders.

Kosei team will spend their first 90 days figuring out where to apply them across black ops spam deterrence, product discovery and recommendations, visual object recognition, ad click prediction for monetization, growth analytics, and building a machine learning system on spark for Pinterest data team. It can supercharge Pinterest existing graph to help brands reach people at the right moments and improve content for pinners.

Kosei products allowed customers to make better product recommendations on their sites, apps, and in ads. By looking at what user had browsed or purchased previously, Kosei machine-learning engine could compare that against commerce data sets, and predict what someone was most likely to want to buy next.

From improving the accuracy of its ad targeting to recommending better pins to appear on user’s home pages, machine learning is crucial to Pinterest future. While companies like Google get easy cues like search queries to determine what people want to see, Pinterest has to bet based on what it knows about people from their past behaviour. However, with the right machine learning algorithms, user next favorite recipe, watch, or, quote could be waiting on the Pinterest home page.