Social ad startup 33Across buys Tynt, taps into the power of copy and paste

Like a match made in social data heaven, social ad targeting startup 33Across announced today that it has snapped up Tynt Multimedia, a company that helps publishers track reader engagement through the age old technique of copy and paste.

Combined with its own extensive data on brands, 33Across says that the acquisition gives it “the largest social and brand graph in the world,” thanks to the 500,000 publishers using Tynt’s technology. Tynt alone reaches 1.25 billion people worldwide — or about three-quarters of the global online audience — more than Google or Facebook’s reach. (If you’ve ever copied text from a website and found a URL with your pasted result, that’s all Tynt.)

“The reason why we bought Tynt is that we think publishers are struggling, and we think we can help,” 33Across CEO Eric Wheeler told VentureBeat in an interview. “Social is transforming the world, publishers need to understand the data, actions, and graph around their readers… to understand how all of the data is being shared,” he later added.

Tynt’s publishers will now be able to take advantage of 33Across’s Brand Graph, letting them track their social influence across the web, while 33Across will be able to use Tynt’s reach in future ad solutions.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Wheeler mentioned that the deal was a private stock transaction. 33Across will be acquiring all of Tynt’s assets, patents, and employees. Tynt will continue to function independently as a 33Across company.

“The overwhelming majority of this is an offensive move,” Wheeler said. “We think the future is about big data and big social , real-time all around a brand.”