Dive Brief:

• Oracle acquired publisher audience platform AddThis in a deal that will give its Data Cloud additional consumer behavior data.
• The acquisition gets Oracle off to a quick start this year after leading all martech investors last year with 16 deals.
• The deal was a logical extension of its recent acquisitions of AddThis partners BlueKai and Datalogix.

Dive Insight:

In an announcement letter, Omar Tawakol, svp and gm of the Oracle Data Cloud, wrote, "Oracle Data Cloud is the fastest growing global Data as a Service (DaaS) business, operating the most accurate data ID Graph to enable understanding of consumer behavior across all media channels."

Tawakol added that AddThis will allow Oracle’s Data Cloud to "deliver unprecedented levels of audience insight, measurement and reach."

Through its social sharing tool AddThis is part of over 15 million global websites and collects behavioral data through its social share buttons, processing 280 billion interactions per month in 70 languages from 1.8 billion unique users, according to AddThis.

AddThis CEO Rich Harris explained its technology to Ad Exchanger, saying, "A lot of folks are talking about the content marketing stack and the traditional ad stack merging in many ways. I see ourselves playing right into that piece. We're seeing ... the distinctions blurring between publishers, advertisers and marketers. Marketers are publishers and they're also advertisers and they're promoting their own content out there using sponsored content, trying to drive clicks back to their site."