LinkedIn announced that it is acquiring B2B brand marketing platform Bizo. The price is about $175 million (subject to adjustment) in a combination of about 10% stock and 90% cash.
Bizo offers products to help brands with their display and social advertising programs. It specifically caters to B2B customers.
“B2B marketers use Bizo to target prospects within professional segments, and nurture them at every stage of their sales and marketing funnel,” said LinkedIn. “Fueled by proprietary data management and targeting technology, their platform enables precise and measurable multi-channel marketing programs. Since 2008, the company has been helping brands meet their marketing objectives by getting the right message in front of the right audiences on the web.”
“It’s exciting for us to bring Bizo’s expertise and technology into our ecosystem,” said Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of Product and User Experience. “Our ability to integrate their B2B solutions with our content marketing products will enable us to become the most effective platform for B2B marketers to engage professionals.”
Bizo co-founder and CEO Russell Glass said in a blog post:
We have been a LinkedIn partner for a while now, and when we started to develop that relationship a few years ago, it became readily apparent that we shared very strong and positive employee cultures, and that we both had a similar way of thinking about building out our respective businesses, with core customer-first and member-first mindsets.
LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, while Bizo’s is to help B2B marketers get to the right people. We realized that our respective missions are incredibly well aligned, and we believe that combining forces will accelerate our ability to execute against the huge opportunities ahead. The combination of LinkedIn and Bizo greatly increases our ability to be the most effective platform for B2B marketers to reach their audiences, nurture prospects and acquire customers.
The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter. “Many” members of Bizo’s team are expected to join LinkedIn.
Image via Bizo
