Syncapse

May 14, 2019

The social marketing landscape shrank just a bit more today, this time with a deal centered on Facebook. Syncapse , a company that helps other firms manage their brands on the giant social network, announced it has acquired Clickable , a smaller company which helps businesses to buy Facebook ads. The deal, for an undisclosed amount, is just the latest telescoping of the vast number of companies associated with Facebook. Unlike the reported $300 million Oracle paid for cloud-based Facebook marketing company Vitrue in May and the $689 million Salesforce paid for social marketing whale Buddy Media , the purchase of Clickable is seen as more of a guppy-sized acquisition. Although Syncapse isn’t talking actual numbers, the mostly stock deal is reportedly worth around $33 million. Syncapse, which started out in Toronto with backing from Canada’s BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, has gone big time, picking up marquee clients such as Coke and Anhauser-Busch. Today’s acquisition will add 70 employees to Syncapse’s staff, including “pretty much everybody” from Clickable, chief executive Michael Scissons told All Things Digital. Among the people coming from Clickable, co-founder and chief executive David Kidder will become a “strategic advisor” to Syncapse, while Clickable chief operating officer Dave Fall moves into the role of chief product officer. Fall, a former Google product manager, is seen by Scissons as one of the prizes in this acquisition. “This gives us a large technical base,” Scissons tells VentureBeat. The CEO calls the recent flurry of acquisitions a signal that legacy customer relation management companies “see the importance of managing social media.” Despite the shrinking number of companies in this space, Scissons says “it’s still early days” in the social marketing area. Is Syncapse available for some social marketing whale to acquire? Not any time soon. “We are the only large independent player available,” he said.