• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, August 11, 2014

Ad management platform Sizmek on Monday announced it has acquired Aerify Media, a mobile tracking and retargeting firm.

Sizmek paid $6.25 million in cash for Aerify.

Sizmek will retain all Aerify employees and plans to fully integrate Aerify’s tech into Sizmek’s ad platform, MDX.

“Sizmek acquired Aerify Media to strengthen our technology platform, adding mobile expertise and talent to the company,” stated Neil Nguyen, CEO and president of Sizmek. “Through Aerify, Sizmek acquires new capabilities in the exploding mobile app market.”

Andrew Bloom, SVP of Sizmek, explained to Real-Time Daily that Sizmek is acquiring Aerify to round out its mobile tech stack.

“We’ve been delivering ads into mobile environments for a while, so the actual delivery component of our mobile tech stack is strong,” Bloom said. “What this is about is the attribution and tracking capabilities. It’s challenging in mobile -- particularly in-app -- to attribute what’s actually happening within the app.”

Aerify has an SDK and APIs that help advertisers understanding what consumers are doing inside apps. “That’s their core technology,” said Bloom. Once integrated to Sizmek’s platform, Aerify’s tech will connect the delivery of Sizmek-delivered ads to app installs.

The retargeting component of the company, explained Bloom, comes from collecting consumer information based on in-app behavior. Retargeting on mobile has been difficult to achieve because mobile devices don’t collect cookies, so Sizmek is working around the cookie conundrum by using Aerify’s tech to build in-app audience profiles, based on what consumers have done inside of apps. Advertisers can then retarget against those profiles.

Bloom also highlighted Aerify’s “deep linking” technology, which is connected to the retargeting component of the company. Essentially, the deep linking tech remembers where a consumer was on the path to purchase before dropping out.

For example, if a consumer was on Step 4 of buying shoes in an app before leaving, the retargeted ads would link the consumer straight back to Step 4. Bloom claimed mobile retargeting typically puts consumers back to the home page.

Both companies are headquartered in New York.