Augme Technologies announced that it has signed a
definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets and the
business of JAGTAG, a privately held mobile marketing pioneer based in
Princeton, New Jersey.
The purchase price for the acquisition is $5.25 million,
subject to certain adjustments, payable in Augme common stock, and additional
consideration of up to $250,000 in cash.
Concurrently with the closing of the acquisition, Augme
will hire all of JAGTAG’s employees and the current JAGTAG team will continue
to service JAGTAG’s business.
Since 2007, JAGTAG has enabled brands, agencies and media
companies to interactively communicate better with their customers, drive
loyalty and increase sales by utilizing 2D barcodes, including JAGTAG’s own
proprietary codes as well as traditional QR codes, powered by JAGTAG.
JAGTAG’s ability to read QR codes without the consumer
having to have a smartphone or scanning application has made it the only 2D
barcode solution that reaches 90 percent+ of consumers in the U.S.
JAGTAG’s proven strategic and mobile marketing
capabilities have allowed JAGTAG to develop and implement successful campaigns
for clients such as Sports Illustrated, Bacardi, 20th Century Fox,
Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline, Pepsi, Gatorade, Tropicana, MTV/Viacom, Estee
Lauder, IBM, Sony, Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather,
Universal McCann and NBC Universal.
Augme expects that its combined resources
with JAGTAG will create a premier mobile marketing provider for brands,
agencies, pharmaceutical/health and media companies. Following the acquisition,
Augme’s current and recent client list is expected to include over three dozen Fortune
500 and Global Fortune 500 companies.
Following its acquisition of the business of JAGTAG,
Augme expects that its complete account list will include over 150 brands that
are either currently running active mobile marketing campaigns or have recently
purchased such services.
JAGTAG also invented and owns a patent on
a system that provides ad serving to a mobile device via MMS. Patent
#7,958,081, entitled “Apparatus, Methods and Systems for Information
Querying and Serving on Mobile Devices Based on Ambient Conditions,”
was issued June 7, 2011.
When targeting is possible, the system allows an ad to be
served intelligently based on existing information, and the ad can correspond
to existing knowledge of the user, probable location, or wording in the MMS
message.
“We believe great opportunity exists by combining
superior and patented technology with robust mobile marketing capabilities and
best-of-breed strategic client services,” said Paul Arena, Chief Executive
Officer of Augme.
It is still very early in the game, with industry wide
mobile advertising-related revenues expected to more than double in 2011 over
last year’s levels, according to a new Gartner forecast. For all of 2011,
industry wide mobile ad revenue is expected to reach $3.3 billion, compared
with $1.6 billion in 2010, according to Gartner, and Gartner forecasts that by
2015, global mobile revenues should exceed $20.5 billion.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
