PlaceIQ for those unfamiliar is a longstanding player in location intelligence, competing with firms like Foursquare, InMarket, and Groundtruth. Frequent Localogy readers know that the name of the game in this sector is to assemble data points to track human movement data relative to business locations.
The intelligence derived from such data can help businesses in a range of operational areas. The primary endpoint was once marketing and targeted advertising (think: geofenced ads), but location intelligence has broadened to several other use cases like logistics and franchise development.
Driving Factors
As you may guess from the above dynamics, location intelligence has been impacted in the privacy and data collection crackdowns of late. That plus industry maturation has led to ample consolidation (as we predicted) including landmark mergers like Factual/Foursquare and several smaller deals.
It’s unclear if these macro factors definitively compelled PlaceIQ’s acquisition, but there are also product-based synergies evident. For example, Precisely’s data integrity software can benefit from PlaceIQ’s location data in having a deeper understanding of signals that impact customer operations.
For example, PlaceIQ has a unique view into consumer movement relative to business locations. This can be valuable to everyone from retailers to franchised QSRs that want to understand their customers’ behavioral patterns. Such data attributes can inform a range of strategic decisions.
In the other direction, there are likely ways that Precisely’s software adds value to PlaceIQ’s data. Quantity doesn’t always mean quality in data collection and analysis, but more data points and sources from Precisely could certainly add dimension to PlaceIQ’s outputs. That will be seen more clearly in time.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for PlaceIQ to further connect location intelligence to the marketing ecosystem through our ubiquitous industry partnerships and proven integrations,” Place IQ CEO and Co-founder Duncan McCall said in a release. “Precisely’s demographic and mapping data, coupled with its passion for tackling the most difficult data integrity problems, is a great fit for PlaceIQ and our clients. We believe our industry-leading offerings will be taken to the next level with Precisely’s investment and enterprise guidance.”
P.E. Playbook
Back to the investors driving this deal, PlaceIQ marks the fifth add-on acquisition after they bought Precisely less than a year ago. This triangulates a bit of a power play, and a roll-up that presumably finds economies of scale and other operational efficiencies. This is common in the private-equity playbook.
Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that Clearlake Capital led a similar roll-up play that we’ve been tracking. In 2020, it acquired Endurance and Web.com for website powerhouse Newfold Digital. Its has hit most of its intended marks and continues to develop. More can be seen in our M&A roundtable.
Meanwhile, we congratulate PlaceIQ on its exit after 10+ years in business. We at Localogy (and previous analyst stints) have been covering the company for that entire run, which has been an eventful era. We’ll close with a comment that McCall made to us today on his outlook for PlaceIQ’s next era:
“We’re thrilled that after a decade plus of innovating and evolution in the space, and building a business we’re just really proud of – we get the opportunity to take this to the next level with the team at Precisely and operate on an even bigger playing field with more resources and support.”