SAS Acquires aiMatch

SAS, a provider of business analytics and integrated marketing management solutions, has acquired aiMatch, a provider of cloud-based ad server technology to help publishers sell and manage online ad inventory.

SAS' advanced analytics, combined with aiMatch's technology, will provide publishers with an end-to-end solution to help manage, forecast, optimize, and measure ad inventory to maximize ad revenue. Current aiMatch customers include APN Digital, Photobucket, Pinger, and Popcornflix.

"Digital advertising has huge potential to benefit from the application of advanced analytics," said Jim Davis, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at SAS, in a statement. "Publishers lack a solution to help them efficiently manage ad inventory. Advanced analytics will help determine optimal ad pricing, audience, and inventory to yield maximum ad revenue."

"Due to an explosion of data, the online advertising industry is in desperate need of better solutions to analyze and make use of all of the new information available to them," said Jeff Wood, former CEO of aiMatch. "Publishers are actively seeking a technology partner that does not compete with them in the media space. Combining aiMatch's intelligent decision and delivery engine with SAS' analytics and optimization capabilities provides a highly desirable solution to both of these problems."

SAS also plans to extend its capabilities to advertisers and agencies to help them make more informed decisions on where to advertise and how to optimize budgets for maximum impact. The aiMatch acquisition provides SAS with a fully integrated multichannel marketing platform with ad intelligence and management capabilities. These newly acquired capabilities will complement existing solutions in the SAS Customer Intelligence suite that focus on solving critical challenges across marketing.

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