As part of an acquisition, Pressboard is being integrated into a company with which it was once a customer. Pressboard will join Trackonomics, an Impact.com company, to create a solution to power and scale sponsored and commerce content programs for publishers.
Impact.com, which owns Trackonomics, is acquiring Pressboard for an undisclosed amount. Pressboard offers an analytics and reporting platform for branded content, while impact.com is a partnership management company.
“When we saw our original vision come to fruition by combining with [Impact] it made a ton of sense.”
Pressboard provides a suite of tools to measure sponsored content, e-commerce, and social media programs. With its integration capabilities, Pressboard claims its platform provides content creators with granular insights in a single dashboard that includes reporting automation to campaign execution and analysis.
Trackonomics helps publishers manage their affiliate analytics, while Pressboard looks after branded content analytics and reporting. “It’s like two sides of the coin on the supply side,” Pressboard co-founder Jerrid Grimm told BetaKit. “We’ll all be brought together for this holistic supply side toolset for supply side publishers and influencers.”
According to Grimm, when he and his co-founder Tiam Korki began Pressboard in 2014, they originally envisioned a demand and supply side marketplace to help brands work with publishers and influencers. But Grimm said they were never able to scale Pressboard to both sides of the marketplace.
“A two-sided marketplace is too hard, so we ended up on the publisher side. Impact meanwhile has been building up the demand side, so when we saw our original vision come to fruition by combining with them it made a ton of sense,” Grimm said.
Pressboard had been using Trackonomics’ software previously. Grimm recalled that the two startups began talking about what it might look like if they were to work together. “It wasn’t even acquisition talks at that time,” Grimm said. “It was just, ‘hey, this would be really cool.’”
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All seven of Pressboard’s staff are joining impact.com and its global team of 900 employees. Pressboard will continue to operate out of Vancouver and Toronto.
Pressboard raised an angel round of $500,000 in 2015, and then followed that with a $2 million seed round in 2019. With the acquisition, all the investors exited. Investors included Conconi Growth Partners; the Vancouver Founder Fund, now known as Rhino Ventures; and Highline.vc, the former venture fund of what became Highline Beta. “It was a positive outcome for investors, the team, and the product,” Grimm said.
Marcus Daniels, founding partner and CEO of Highline Beta, told BetaKit: “I’m excited for Jerrid and Tiam for driving a great outcome which gives their product the best opportunity to not only achieve, but also scale their vision.”
Impact contends that the acquisition empowers publishers to jumpstart and scale their content partnership opportunities, and enables more robust partnership opportunities between publishers and brands to drive efficiency, revenue, and further accelerate the growth of the partnership economy.
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“Impact.com’s acquisition of Pressboard aligns with our mission to revolutionize and power the partnership economy,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO of Impact.com. “To succeed in this highly competitive landscape, publishers, brands, and agencies must be equipped with best-in-class technology to drive profitable revenue.”
“The future of commerce is content-driven, and this acquisition allows for more publishers to meet the demands of today’s digital consumers with authentic experiences that deliver real results,” Yovanno added.
Grimm noted that Impact.com and Trackonomics are focused on the Canadian market. “So we’re going to be looking to grow the overall presence in Canada, Toronto and Vancouver,” he said.
Feature image courtesy Pressboard.
