Accenture to Acquire Maxamine and Memetrics, Expanding Digital Marketing Sciences Services

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has acquired Memetrics Holdings Pty Limited and has agreed to acquire the business of Maxamine Inc., expanding its digital marketing sciences services capabilities. Memetrics and Maxamine are privately held companies that provide testing and optimization services to help companies improve the marketing effectiveness and financial returns from their websites and other digital marketing investments. Terms of the agreements were not disclosed.

Maxamine, founded in 1997, scans websites to identify implementation problems which undermine online marketing performance. Its services provide guidance to help clients improve website optimization, enhance customer experience, and decrease privacy-related and other risks.

Memetrics, founded in 1999, helps companies improve the impact of their online marketing campaigns through dynamic optimization of content presented to customers. Memetrics’ proprietary testing technology analyzes thousands of variations of Web pages to determine what page format and context will deliver the best performance to each targeted customer set, allowing marketers to present more-targeted messaging to high-value customers on their websites.

Both companies have headquarters in California and operations in Australia and the United Kingdom.

“These acquisitions uniquely position Accenture as a world leader in supplying digital optimization services for clients as they continue to increase their investments in online marketing and websites,” said Jeffrey Merrihue, CEO of Accenture Marketing Sciences. “We will now be able to help marketers measure and optimize their overall marketing investments across traditional and digital channels in a way that profitably enhances the overall customer experience.”

Maxamine and Memetrics employees will be offered positions with Accenture’s Marketing Sciences practice. Additionally, top executives of Memetrics and Maxamine will be offered positions as senior executives within Accenture’s Marketing Sciences practice.

The Memetrics acquisition closed Dec. 31, 2007. The Maxamine acquisition is subject to customary approvals and closing conditions and is expected to close within 30 days.

“Memetrics and Accenture share a vision to deliver more strategic marketing based on data-driven decision-making,” said Hikaru Phillips, Memetrics founder. “Working together, we will now have the scale, technology and people to truly transform the marketing function.”

Stephen Kirkby, Ph.D., a founder of Maxamine, said, “The solutions that Maxamine developed will be advantageous to Accenture Marketing Sciences clients as they seek to strengthen their online marketing efforts. We look forward to seamlessly integrating our capabilities with Accenture.”

Accenture Marketing Sciences, a specialized practice within Accenture, provides marketing measurement and optimization services for media, marketing, retail and digital channels to increase the return on their marketing and media investments. Accenture Marketing Sciences has more than 400 clients across Europe, the United States, Latin America and the Asia Pacific region, including more than half of the top 100 global advertisers.
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