Telenav Buys 'Hyper-Local' Mobile Ad Firm

US-based ad personalization firm TeleNav has acquired ThinkNear - a mobile targeting firm which helps advertisers reach consumers within 100 meters of any location - for $22.5m in cash and stock.

ThinkNear's 'Situational Targeting' solution takes into account where consumers are, what they are doing, and what is happening around them. The firm says this has been designed to provide consumers with ads that are more relevant to their real-time needs and interests, as they go about their day.

As part of the acquisition, TeleNav will combine ThinkNear's targeting technology with its existing 'Drive-To Advertising' measurement platform, which reaches 34 million consumers, and provides details about the number of users who viewed an ad and then clicked on it. The combined solutions will form a new mobile local ad platform called Scout Advertising, which TeleNav says will deliver billions of hyper-local impressions per month.

Following the merger, ThinkNear co-founder and CEO Eli Portnoy (pictured) will join the new Scout Advertising team. Before setting up the company last year, Portnoy served as Senior Product Manager for Digital Video at Amazon, where he conducted market research, financial modeling, and customer data analysis. He also founded recruitment platform Emerging Demographics, and served as a Business Analyst at Deloitte Consulting.

Dariusz Paczuski, TeleNav's VP of Products, Marketing, and Monetization, comments: 'Most mobile ad networks struggle with targeting because they are trying to apply online technologies in the mobile space. We now solve that problem by driving more customers at scale with hyper-local targeting and measurable results.'

Web sites: www.telenav.com , www.thinknear.com and www.scout.me .