Connexity sold to Shopzilla
Ventura-based digital advertising firm Connexity has been purchased by Shopzilla, an online comparison shopping website out of Los Angeles, for an undisclosed sum.
The deal marks the first exit for a business that had operated out of the Ventura Ventures Technology Center, the city of Ventura’s startup incubator.
In a statement, Shopzilla said it has been partnering with Connexity for a year. It expects to fully integrate Connexity’s platform into its own technology. The entire Ventura company’s team, including CEO Dave Gross, will join the Los Angeles firm.
“Shopzilla is in the business of connecting millions of consumers with retailers and brands, whether it’s on our owned and operated sites, our publisher network, or through Aisle A, our fast-growing audience activation division,” Shopzilla CEO Bill Glass said in a statement. “We have been investing substantially in data science to build out a compelling set of audience segments for advertisers of all types — retailers, brands, and manufacturers. This capacity, combined with Connexity’s programmatic media buying platform, will give Aisle A unprecedented reach to deliver targeted audiences in scale for its marketing partners.”
Connexity, founded in 2010, uses social networking and recommendation engine database concepts to make digital ads more relevant to the users they’re served up to. “We will have the technological ability to target not just the individual, but under the right circumstances, their spouse, someone else in their household or someone they work with,” Gross told the Business Times in October 2010.
Connexity’s investors included Rincon Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, and Persistence Partners. In August 2012, Gross told the Business Times that the firm was capping its venture funding at the $3 million it had raised to date, and hoped to become profitable based on that.
Gross had previously started Internet advertising firm Fastclick, which went public and was bought Westlake Village-based Conversant (previously named ValueClick) in 2005 for $214 million.
Shopzilla is owned by Symphony Technology Group and operates websites in the U.S., United Kingdom, France and Germany.
