• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 4, 2016

Programmatic performance marketing platform Criteo this morning announced the acquisition of HookLogic, a privately held company that operates an audience exchange enabling brand marketers to target and reach audiences on retailer sites.

The move is the latest in a string of M&A deals beginning to consolidate a highly diffused programmatic ad technology marketplace around a smaller cluster of dominant platforms.

On Monday, for example, marketing cloud giant Salesforce.com announced the acquisition of Krux, a highly regarded independent data management platform, matching similar deals made by chief rivals Oracle, Adobe and others in recent years.

While publicly traded Criteo’s acquisition of HookLogic is not likely to substantially alter the playing field, it signals that the industry -- or at least the ad-tech sector’s investors -- want to concentrate the marketplace in a smaller handful of players.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed at presstime, but Criteo said it will integrate its predictive bidding and product recommendations technology into HookLogic’s audience exchange platform.