French unicorn Mirakl is announcing its third acquisition in three years with the acquisition of Adspert, a German adtech startup focused on e-commerce advertising. Mirakl isn’t disclosing the terms of the acquisition, but the entire Adspert team of 30 employees will join Mirakl.
As a reminder, Mirakl originally started as a software solution to add a marketplace of third-party resellers on top of your e-commerce website. Amazon’s marketplace has greatly contributed to Amazon’s growth over the past ten years. Mirakl lets other e-commerce companies adopt the same strategy without having to redevelop everything in house.
Since 2012, Mirakl’s strategy has worked well as the company managed to sign big retailers, such as Best Buy, Carrefour, and Leroy Merlin. It expanded to B2B clients, such as car manufacturers working with different suppliers.
In 2021, Mirakl managed to secure $555 million at a $3.5 billion valuation in a Series E funding round. External factors contributed to this round, with online sales reaching records during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also a period of record activity when it comes to venture investments.
More recently, the company has been expanding to retail media — think sponsored results on e-commerce websites or featured products in e-commerce apps. Mirakl clients can leverage Mirakl Ads to create a new revenue source. 20 clients are using the company’s retail media platform already.
And with the acquisition of Adspert, Mirakl also wants to target brands and sellers that wish to spend money on e-commerce ads. In advertising lingo, it’s a demand-side offering.
On popular e-commerce platforms, ad pricing is dynamic. Some keywords are pricier than others if you would like to surface your products near the top of the search results.
That’s why Adspert optimizes ad bidding on various e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. It’s a central dashboard to see your spendings, set targets and run ad campaigns with some automatic bidding happening behind the scenes.
“By integrating Adspert’s AI-driven Ads Optimization software into Mirakl, we are reinforcing our leadership in being the only solution on the market that consolidates the critical technology that global brands and sellers need to be successful,” Mirakl co-founder and co-CEO Adrien Nussenbaum said in a statement.
In addition to non-Mirakl marketplaces, Adspert will also help its clients spend money on Mirakl-powered marketplaces that run Mirakl Ads. And that’s how Mirakl plans to complete the circle of retail media with a demand-side platform and an in-house retail media solution.
