• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 21, 2011

Looking to support search engine marketing services through data and tracking, Acquisio said Wednesday it acquired ClickEquations for an undisclosed sum from Channel Intelligence, which bought the company in June. 

Channel Intelligence might have sold off the business, but retains the rights to license the ClickEquations technology from Acquisio, the company's CMO Marc Poirier told MediaPost. It allows Acquisio to close out the 2011 calendar year with intellectual property and employees that support agencies through research and development and sales.

Adding automation, alerts and bid management technology to the product suite, Poirier said the acquisition provides tools that bring agencies intelligence to identify problems and solutions.

Acquisio will not shut down ClickEquations in the near term, but will slowly integrate some of the "unique" technology in the company's platform such as the bid management platform. These acquired features range from an Excel plug-in connecting to the ClickEquation account to monitor campaigns and identify problem areas.

Two other features that Poirier reference as reasons for the acquisition are two tools: Keyword Zoom, which allows marketers to see how search queries line up with keywords in AdWords, and Text Ad Zoom, which identifies terms that trigger search queries. Another important feature supports tracking.

Acquisio also gets a tracking tool; previously, it relied on tracking offered by Google, Bing and Yahoo. It also relied on building a third-party tool with The Trade Desk.

The 10 largest Internet advertisers, including General Motors and Experian, invested more than $1.8 billion in paid-search and display campaigns for the first nine months in 2011, up 11.1% versus a year ago, according to Kantar Media. It's not clear what percentage agencies vs. in-house teams manage.

While Acquisio plans to maintain support for API connections and to complete some of the work remaining in limbo, Poirier said the company will create ecommerce and product feed management services to support agencies that want to offer these services to brands, but don't have the technology internally.    

Poirier said his team approached Channel Intelligence, rivals to Kenshoo and Marin Software, to acquire ClickEquations' technology with the intent of creating an ecommerce platform for agencies.  

Earlier this month, Acquisio appointed Laurent Boninfante to EMEA managing director as part of its continuing plans for international growth.