Madison Logic buys BBN Solutions, marrying ‘intent data’ marketing with a B2B ad platform

B2B marketing solution provider Madison Logic announced today it has acquired BBN Solutions.

The New York City-based Madison Logic uses “purchase intent data” to guide its marketing campaigns toward more than 125 million B2B decision makers monthly, in such industries as financial services, tech, health care, and marketing services. Intent data is a trail of indications showing that someone is interested in making a purchase of a particular type, such as a click on a page about server software or downloading a white paper on the subject.

The company generates leads from this and other data, and then conducts integrated campaigns that employ email, display ads, native ads, content marketing, and other techniques.

Linthicum, Maryland-based BBN Solutions has an extensive ad platform with about 1,600 B2B publishers. The acquisition, essentially, marries Madison Logic’s data-driven campaigns with BBN’s ad inventory.

Instead of Madison Logic having to sign up publishers’ ad inventory, the company’s CEO Tom O’Regan told VentureBeat via email, “BBN had the audience and sites frequented most often.”

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He added that Madison Logic’s intent data, with BBN’s network, will “provide a huge, powerful combination to satisfy our current clients and, more importantly, bring on new customers.” BBN’s publishers also now have access to Madison Logic’s cloud-based system, called Lead Focus, for managing the registration and delivery of white papers.

Each company will keep its own brand, O’Regan said, and the separate technology infrastructures will remain independent “for the immediate future.” However, the combined offering will now be sold as an end-to-end solution. BBN employees will be relocating to Madison Logic offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and London.

O’Regan noted that competitors — including Demandbase, TechTarget, and LinkedIn, with its Bizo acquisition — similarly target and deliver marketing to B2B buyers.

But, he said, “we differ [because] our company is driven by intent [data] as opposed to demographic data,” which he described as a “more effective marketing strategy.”

Deal terms were not made public. Madison Logic is reporting boffo recent quarters, with new customer acquisition last year twice that of 2013, a year-over-year 75 percent revenue growth in Q4, and Q1 revenue projected to be up 70 percent year-over-year. In November, Madison Logic spun off its data unit as Madison Logic Data, and the remaining company focuses on ads and media targeting.