Uberall acquired MomentFeed, a location marketing company based out of Los Angeles, to continue scaling its business. Uberall works with retailers and other operators to help them update and provide more accurate information about themselves across other location marketing platforms. It announced $115 million in funding alongside acquiring MomentFeed.
Since we rely on location-specific information when we are on search engines. When we are using maps or weather apps when we are taking and posting photos, and more. It has become a salient category of hot apps and innovative technology leveraging the arrival of smartphones.
Investors in the funding round
The funding is being led by London-based investor Bregal Milestone, with Level Equity, United Internet, and Uberall management also participating. The funding values Uberall at around $500 million. The deal for MomentFeed was made between $50 million and $60 million. Uberall said that together they will manage the online presence for 1.35 million business locations. This made the company the biggest in the field. Its’ customers including the gas station operator BP, KFC, clothes, and food chain Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut.
Florian Hübner, the CEO and co-founder of Uberall said in an interview that the companies have quite a lot of overlap. In fact, the companies worked together closely in the U.S. market before Uberall acquired MomentFeed. But all the same, MomentFeed has built some specific techniques that will enrich the wider platform. For example, a particularly strong tool for measuring sentiment analysis.
Sometimes, you need a partner to tie the loose ends
Managing the online presence may be a company’s most common digital touchpoints when it comes to actually engage with consumers online. It includes how those companies appear on local listings services like Yelp or TripAdvisor or on Google maps. Altogether, considering a company has multiple locations and multiple touchpoints, it ends up being a complicated mess of places.
“We are the catalyst for this huge ecosystem where we enable the brands to use everything that the other tech platforms are offering in the best possible way,” Hübner said.
It also provides services to update information about the vaccine and COVID-19 testing clinics. As well as other essential services that also have to contend with the same variations in location, opening hours, and customer feedback as any other business on a site like Google Maps.
Uberall acquiring MomentFeed made a one-stop platform for location-based marketing
Altogether, Uberall has built out a platform that essentially connects up all of those endpoints. Hence, an Uberall customer can use a dashboard to provide updates that populate automatically everywhere. Users can also read and respond to reviews.
Conversely, Uberall looks online for instances where a company is being misrepresented and locks those down. Alongside those, it has built a location-based marketing service that also serves ads for its customers. It is somewhat akin to social media management tools, which let you manage social media accounts and social media marketing campaigns. Except that it’s covering a much more fragmented and disparate set of places where a company might appear online.
Why Uberall acquired MomentFeed?
“As we saw the market trending towards consolidation, we considered several potential companies to merge with. Uberall was by far our most preferred,” said MomentFeed CEO Nick Hedges. “This combination makes enormous strategic sense for our customers, who represent the who’s-who of leading U.S. omnichannel brands. It helps accelerate our already rapid pace of innovation, giving customers an even greater edge in the hyper-competitive world of ’Near Me’ Marketing.” After the deal closes, Hedges will become Uberall’s chief strategy officer and EVP for North America.
“We are thrilled to partner with the Uberall team for this next phase of growth. Our strategic investment will significantly accelerate Uberall’s ambition to become the leading ‘Near Me’ Customer Experience platform worldwide. We look forward to supporting Florian, Nick, and their talented team to deliver on their exciting innovation and expansion roadmap,” said Cyrus Shey, managing partner of Bregal Milestone, in a statement.
