Ad-tech player Rocket Fuel buys programmatic marketing company [x+1]

Publicly traded advertising-technology company Rocket Fuel is paying $230 million in cash and stock for [x+1], which has tools for doing programmatic marketing across multiple sites and devices.

Rocket Fuel stock was down more than 23 percent after markets closed today. In addition to announcing the acquisition, Rocket Fuel also posted its earnings statement for the second quarter of this year. Net loss was $9.7 million, compared with a net loss of $3.8 million in the second quarter of 2013.

Rocket Fuel issued a statement on the news today after markets closed. The deal should close in the fourth quarter of this year, the company said.

Rocket Fuel already offers programatic media-buying tools, but [x+1] offers a data management platform (DMP) that can take data from third-party sources into consideration alongside customers’ own data sources, in order to deliver ads to just the right audience. That area has proven interesting to enterprise software giant Oracle, which bought DMP provider BlueKai in February, reportedly for around $400 million. And Neustar bought Aggregate Knowledge for $119 million.

Advertisers have lately been keen to use new data-driven methods to deliver ads to the right people across more devices, in order to increase revenues. This deal should help Rocket Fuel get smarter in that regard.

New York-based [x+1] started in 1999 and announced a $17 million credit facility last year.