Snap acquires Placed to measure how ads perform in real life

Snapchat parent company Snap has acquired marketing campaign tracking company Placed, which tracks things like store visits and offline purchases. A Placed study of the habits of two million Snapchat users last August, for example, breaks down most popular stores for Snapchat users by age, gender, and ethnicity.

Placed will help improve Snapchat offerings like Snap to Store, an initiative begun earlier this year to measure foot traffic and Snapchat chatter during in-store ad campaigns.

“Over the past 12 months, Placed has measured more than $500 million in media spend to store visits, across thousands of campaigns and hundreds of partners, cementing Placed as the leader in location-based attribution,” CEO David Shim said in a brief blog post about the acquisition today.

Placed and its more than 100 employees will continue to operate independently at offices in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York.

A Snapchat company spokesperson declined to share financial terms of the deal. GeekWire, which broke the news earlier today, reports the company was acquired for more than $200 million. If true, the deal would make Placed one of Snap’s largest acquisitions to date.

Leading up to its IPO in March, the company doubled its acquisitions in 2016, picking up augmented reality startup Cigamine Media last December for $40 million and mobile discovery app Vurb for $110 million last August.

Last week, Snap reportedly acquired Ctrl Me Robotics for less than $1 million.