InsideView acquires TrueAdvantage, to boost online market intelligence

November 26, 2007 | Ed Sutherland | Comments | |

updated
insideview2.jpgInsideView, a company that provides “inside view” of the hierarchies of large companies so that markerters can pinpoint which executives are important enough to pitch, has acquired TrueAdvantage, a company it hopes will help it in that endeavor.

InsideView’s rivals include Hoover’s, Reuters and other traditional providers of marketing intelligence, but InsideView says its advantage is in gathering Web 2.0 data that the providers don’t have.

InsideView synthesizes blogs, social networks, forums, Web 2.0 sites along with traditional corporate data sources to give sales and marketing people a more precise picture of a company’s internal structure. This is important because it allows a sales force to see who is in charge of a company, which allows for more relevant data for marketers, permitting more-targeted pitches and better-informed inquiries.

The deal gives InsideView two important resources: customers and technology TrueAdvantage acquired at a cost of $20 million.

TrueAdvantage combs the web for contact information to help people make better sales decisions. However, InsideView CEO Umberto Milletti tells us TrueAdvantage was “too early for the market.”

Although InsideView’s competitors may have better brand recognition, InsideView’s Miletti argues its inclusion of Web 2.0 data gives customers insight not only into the corporate seating chart, but employee’s online behavior and events.

Milletti won’t say how much money changed hands. TrueAdvange has been on the auction block since earlier this month. A couple weeks ago, founder Jeret Christopher acquired the technology and customers of TrueAdvantage. The technology becomes part of Christopher’s Mortgage CRM product.

InsideView, based in San Bruno, Calif., raised $7.4 million in a first round funding earlier this summer.

Formed in 2004, InsideView has 50 employees.

We covered the company in June.

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  • Nik
    Just curious, why you would consider Indeed (a job search engine) as thier competitor?
  • I've been watching InsideView for the past six months and believed it had a lot to offer if only it could cross pollinate data that would appeal to the Hoovers on line constituency. It looks like they are well on their way. I'd like to see them offer information on SMBs. Many large and small companies are targeting small companies with 25 -100 employees. No one really has an offering for that very large part of the market.
  • Nik,
    You are correct in saying that Indeed is not a competitor of InsideView. In fact, InsideView aggregates sales and marketing data like Indeed does for jobs. And InsideView actually partners with Hoovers and Reuters to mine their content for the most valuable information for sales and marketing professionals—data that will help them uncover prospects, qualify leads and close more deals. InsideView’s technology sits on top of the overwhelming amount of business information available and acts as a meta-aggregator, so our company is fundamentally different than Hoovers and Reuters.

    Umberto Milletti
    CEO
    InsideView
  • Courtney,
    Thank you for the kind words. We recently expanded our company coverage to companies with at least 25 employees and $1M in revenue, through a partnership with D&B.
    Traditionally SMB coverage has been a challenge, because the numbers are large and it's too expensive to editorially cover them. We are using technology to do what cannot be done by humans (at least not cost-effectively).
  • thanks Nik, for the catch. indeed was not supposed to be listed as a competitor. we've fixed.
  • Laurance Allen
    I think Generate Inc http://www.generateinc.com/
    has a good handle on the SMB market by partnering with American City Journals. Would you guys agree?
    Laurance
  • UnHappyHR
    I was working for TrueAdvantge India location as Project Manager. It was nightmare for employees like me who's company shutdown "In A DAY". Umberto need to think of 150 TA employees came on street for nothing (pink-slipped).