Dive Brief:
- Pinterest has acquired URX, a mobile ad firm that specializes in retargeting and deep-linking. The social media company made the deal, however, in order to grab its tech talent, rather than its business and intellectual property.
- The online photo curating site is expected to immediately shut down URX's assets and technology while retaining half of its staff. Ex-URX employees will be tasked with search and discovery at Pinterest, understanding the data behind pins on the platform.
- According to reporting by Dow Jones, the deal was mostly stock, although terms were not disclosed by Pinterest.
Dive Insight:
Pinterest has been at a revenue and identity crossroads for some time now. As it looks to pivot from being merely a social content-sharing platform, Pinterest has made moves, such as the talent grab in the URX deal, to attract advertisers.
Last month Digiday got hold of a pitch deck Pinterest used for selling advertising where the company positioned itself as somewhere between social media and search. By purchasing a mobile ad tech firm purely for its talent, and then tasking that talent with search, Pinterest is indicating where it sees itself heading.
John Milinovich, URX’s co-founder and now-former CEO, wrote in a post on the firm’s website, “Today, I’m excited to announce that the URX team is joining Pinterest. As we learned more about Pinterest's mission of helping people discover and do the things they love, it was clear that we share a similar view of the future. Discovery is one of the largest problems and opportunities on the web, and Pinterest is well positioned to solve it at an unprecedented scale.”
About the deal, Pinterest’s head of product Jack Chou said in a statement, “We’re focused on building useful and relevant experiences to help people discover ideas and bring those ideas to life. We can now accelerate our efforts with the URX team, who are leaders in mobile content understanding, recommendations, monetization and discovery.”
Pinterest has been actively building out its advertising business, most recently teaming up with Millward Brown to help brands measure ad impact. The URX acquisition might help position Pinterest to help improve app discovery and Pinterest's shoppable ads -- both of which would be of value to marketers.
