Purchase price not disclosed, however, represented xx trailing twelve months revenue.
With explicit consumer permission, Gimbal gathers and analyzes location signals derived from over 125mm U.S.-based mobile phones as these consumers navigate their daily lives. Gimbal’s platform captures instances where the phone is in proximity to over 2 million locations in the U.S., using both geofences and Bluetooth beacons. These location-derived consumer insights are used by consumer brands, retailers, advertisers, app publishers, venues and out-of-home networks to inform and tailor their marketing interactions with consumers.
Gimbal’s SDK (software development kit) allows for the collection of the location signals and is used by over 250 mobile app publishers who publish 600 mobile apps. Their SDK is passive, highly phone battery efficient and always-on in the background, allowing continuous monitoring of phone location.
Customers and partners include Shazam, Ruckus Wireless, Touchtunes, RetailMeNot, Dunkin’ Donuts, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Accuweather. Competitors include Foursquare, PlaceIQ, NinthDecimal and xAd.
The San Diego-based company was conceived and incubated within Qualcomm before being spun out in May 2014. Post-spinout, the company received $26.25M in funding from investors including Qualcomm, i-Hatch Ventures, Ajax Partners and Jonathan Kraft.
According to BIA Kesley, location-targeted mobile ad sales are expected to rise from $9.8 billion in 2015 to $29.5 billion by the end of 2019, a 24.6% compound annual growth rate. Although mobile search is still expected to dominate most of that ad spend, we expect to see that dynamic change as advertisers have more diverse ways of delivering location-specific ad or marketing campaigns, such as triggered push notifications and in-app advertisements.
Gimbal’s physical world network and trove of location data can augment The Mobile Majority’s Audience Collective and AdSynergy platform with a better understanding of consumer behaviors, location history, demographics, etc.
The Mobile Majority will be able to charge a higher CPx due to its ability to now offer more highly targeted ad campaigns and better audience segmentation to its clients.
The Mobile Majority also gets the ability to offer location-triggered ads and measurable attribution.
Gimbal also offers a widely proliferated app SDK that will increase TMM’s mobile presence.
Gimbal brings a technical team deeply experienced in proximity marketing and data monetization.