Walmart (WMT 1.56%) is attempting to sharpen its competitive edge in advertising with a new asset purchase. Various media are reporting the the giant retailer is acquiring the technology and assets of Paper G, a privately held ad tech company that does business as Thunder Industries.
Neither the price nor the terms of the deal have been disclosed. The arrangement does not include Thunder's customer contracts, which apparently are to be wound down. It does include the bulk of the company's workforce.
Image source: Walmart.
Walmart is buying a company that harnesses data to deliver personalized digital advertising to individuals. The company will utilize this technology to offer advertisers the ability to create their own ads to target different customer demographics. Monitoring features will allow those advertisers to gauge the effectiveness of this targeting.
"As we continue to grow our media business we need to find ways that we can easily serve all suppliers -- be it companies who have been Walmart suppliers for years or brand new marketplace suppliers," chief customer officer Janey Whiteside said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Like some of its big retail peers, Walmart has a considerable digital advertising business that leverages the mountains of data it harvests from its shoppers. According to the Journal, while Walmart does not break out the financials for its advertising business, the company has said it doubled revenue from such activity in the past year.
The Thunder deal appears to be a bolt-on acquisition that should bolster that end of the company's operations.
On Thursday, Walmart shares lagged slightly behind the performance of the S&P 500 index, closing 0.9% higher on the day.
