Groupon Buys Shopper Data Firm Adku

US daily deals site Groupon has acquired San Francisco-based personalized shopper data specialist Adku.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, online publication Techcrunch says the transaction is valued at around $10m.

e-commerce data start-up Adku has developed a prediction engine which enables it to analyse data about individual online shoppers, and then then deliver recommendations to these consumers from sites such as eBay and Amazon.

The firm was founded in 2010 by three former Google engineers, Ajit Varma, Carlos Whitt and Jesse Shieh, who will now relocate their team to Groupon's Palo Alto office to work on new projects in their specialist area of 'big data and personalization'.

Varma comments: 'We're looking forward to joining forces with Groupon to have an impact on millions of users and to share in the firm's vision of reshaping local commerce. We hope to accelerate and improve upon applications utilizing Groupon's vast amount of data and scale.'

Groupon is likely to use Adku's system to offer its subscribers a personalized e-commerce experience and more relevant deals. Spokesperson Julie Mossler says of Adku: 'Such strong product technologists and engineers add great value to the development team we are continuing to grow in our Palo Alto office.'

Web sites: www.groupon.com and www.adku.com .