Advertising/Conversion Platform Ve Interactive Scoops Up Display Retargeting From eBay Enterprise

Last month, customer data management service Zeta Interactive announced it had purchased the customer relationship marketing division of eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions.

Today, advertising and conversion platform Ve Interactive said it has purchased the Display Retargeting business from the same eBay Enterprise. Stephen Polinsky, Ve Interactive North America COO, told me that Ve’s deal was “agreed upon about the same time as Zeta’s.”

eBay, which is focusing on its online marketplace, sold eBay Enterprise to a consortium of private equity firms in July. Also in July, eBay sold off PayPal.

At the time of its announcement, Zeta had said that its acquisition added a “more robust” database management capability for customer management, an assortment of large clients and an integration with a variety of new data sources.

For Ve Interactive, Polinsky said, the acquisition adds an “increased competency” in display ad retargeting, as well as an enlarged customer base.

Now, he said, Ve’s total customer base is more than 10,000, although he declined to quantify the number of customers before the purchase. Founded in 2009, the company boasts a valuation north of a billion dollars.

Ve specializes in getting customers to a site through display ads and then figuratively taking each one by the arm — before they walk out the door without making a purchase — and urging them to buy something.

The company’s platform detects when a site visitor might be ready to go somewhere else, through such signals as hovering your cursor over the close “x” box or spending time on a page without clicking. It will issue an ad, overlay or other messaging asking if the visitor really wants to leave, sometimes throwing in the enticement of a discount coupon. Such as:

Now, in addition to pushing traffic to a site via ads and enticing reluctant visitors once they’re there, Ve has boosted its ability to retarget them once they’ve left the site, so that it can coax them to come back.

Deal terms were not made public. The Display Targeting staff, based in San Francisco and Tempe, Arizona, will remain in those offices, bringing Ve’s worldwide personnel count to more than 850. Ve’s global headquarters is in London, although this acquisition was handled out of its North American headquarters in Boston.

eBay Enterprise had been built on technology acquired when eBay bought GSI Commerce in 2011, as well as other acquisitions. The idea was to create an ecommerce and marketing platform — with warehouses — that could service retailers. The newly sold and reduced eBay Enterprise said it will focus on its affiliate network, display ads, search and social marketing and agency services.