• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 12, 2013

Amid a flood of excitement over Big Data, retargeting platform AdRoll late Wednesday announced the acquisition of data analytics startup Bitdeli.

Launched just last year, San Francisco-based Bitdeli specializes in helping clients pull data from various sources to create customized dashboards. The company claims to currently process hundreds of millions of events in real-time.

While the term Big Data is relatively new, AdRoll CEO Aaron Bell said data overload is nothing new for the company. “AdRoll processes around 10 terabytes of data [per day] -- double the amount that exists on Wikipedia,” according to Bell.

With the acquisition, Bell added: “Our goal is to make that data easily accessible to our customers.”

Along with Big Data, ad targeting and retargeting is a particularly hot sector among investors and ad agencies. Late last year, AOL’s Advertising.com unit scooped up ad targeting and retargeting specialist Buysight for an undisclosed sum, while in September, Criteo -- a New York-based retargeting startup -- raised $40 million on an $800 million valuation.

AdRoll, for its part, recently said it surpassed a $50 million run rate in 2012, which allowed the company to triple revenue -- and staff -- since 2011. AdRoll also said it added more than 600 new customers a month on average in 2012, while maintaining a 97% customer retention rate.

By AdRoll’s count, its services are currently used by roughly 7,000 advertisers worldwide.