Reddit Acquires Tech Company Spiketrap to Boost Ads Business
Reddit’s acquisition spree is continuing this morning with news that the company is bringing the audience contextualization company Spiketrap’s technology in-house. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding.
The deal signals Reddit’s growing investment in its advertising business as it aims to make it easier for advertisers to target relevant audiences based on interests. This deal also arrives at a time when Apple’s consumer privacy tools, App Tracking Transparency or ATT, have been impacting the effectiveness of online ads across major tech platforms, like Facebook and Snap, as consumers opt out of ads personalization.
Founded in 2016 by Kieran Seán Fitzpatrick, Virgilio Pigliucci and Andrea Vattani, San Francisco-based Spiketrap counts over 20 employees, according to its website. The company touts its proprietary Clair AI technology, which is able to extract the “signal from the noise” of unstructured datasets. Combined with its knowledge graph, the company offers a range of solutions in contextual ad targeting, impact measurement, brand safety monitoring and other research and data-as-a-service solutions, it says.
