Data and consulting powerhouse IHS Inc. has purchased the assets of Dataium, a small company that can see shopping behavior on dealer and carmaker websites to direct and measure the performance of ad and marketing campaigns.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The asset purchase was completed March 26.
Dataium CEO Eric Brown, 55, confirmed Wednesday that he is staying on under the new ownership. He referred all other questions to IHS.
Dataium is able to anonymously track the shopping behavior of about 20 million auto shoppers per month to various carmaker, dealership and third-party shopping sites.
With the information, the company can determine how well certain advertising is working and suggest adjustments that might boost sales.
Brown co-founded the company in 2009.
IHS said in a statement Wednesday that its addition will meld with other company data-gathering tools and analysis housed inside its IHS Automotive unit. IHS bought R.L. Polk & Co. in 2013, a leading provider of vehicle purchase data.
In part because of Polk, IHS Automotive is a partner with Facebook, for example, in helping Facebook advertisers reach active car shoppers whose current vehicles are coming off lease or are of an age that the owner might be thinking of a replacement.
In a statement, IHS Vice President Steve Had said Dataium’s data combined with other IHS technology will assist IHS customers with “better decisions regarding audiences, campaign effectiveness and efficiency, cross-shopping and messaging.”
