Tucker-based YP, a mobile advertising company and the company behind the Real Yellow Pages brand, said it is acquiring Sense Networks Inc., YP’s first acquisition since being sold by AT&T two years ago.
New York City-based Sense Networks Inc. is known for its research on consumers’ mobile behavior. The company helps advertising clients target mobile ads by developing profiles that are created in real time from location data taken from mobile phones, carrier networks, and even taxicabs.
Sense Networks’ technology will YP to expand its search capabilities with the addition of audience and location-targeted display ads. YP said more than a third of its annual $1 billion-plus in digital ad revenue comes for mobile ads.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sense Networks has about a dozen employees, and YP has more than 6,000.
“With Sense’s technology, YP will be better positioned to improve and grow our mobile advertising leadership through enhanced targeting to consumers,” Chief Executive Officer David Krantz said in announcing the deal Monday. “We expect to continue to make technology acquisitions and plan to aggressively maintain and build on our mobile advertising leadership.”
YP is majority owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management L.P. In 2012, AT&T sold AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive to Cerberus for $950 million in cash and debt. AT&T Advertising Solutions produced more than 1,200 Yellow Pages print directories in 22 states, and Glendale, Calif.-based AT&T Interactive operated Yellowpages.com and produced mobile applications.
Those former AT&T units, along with several others, now make up YP Holdings, headed by Krantz, the former president and CEO at AT&T Interactive. As part of its deal with YP, AT&T maintains a 47 percent equity stake in the new company.
Sense Networks was founded by computer scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University and was backed by Intel Capital, Javelin Venture Partners and investors from the hedge fund community.
Cerberus’ other holdings include bus manufacturer Blue Bird Corp., based in Fort Valley, Ga., Boise, Idaho-based food and drug retailer Albertson’s and Hollywood movie producer Spyglass.
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