Retail SalesTech Company Connexity Acquires Content Monetization Startup ‘Skimlinks’

Latest Acquisition Aims at Expanding the Retail Content Network Reach and Improving Omnichannel Commerce Opportunities for Both Retailers and Publishers

Today, retail marketing and sales technology company Connexity announced that it has acquired Skimlinks, the leading monetization solution for commerce-oriented publishers. The acquisition is a significant development in the retail tech industry following many funding rounds and investments witnessed in the last 8-10 months. With COVID-19-induced pandemic pushing the boundaries of digital commerce further away from the physical stores, it’s the right time to take your business online with the right tools and solutions. Connexity is one of the leading independent sources of new customers and sales for online retailers.

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The companies’ combined reach will drive nearly $2.5 Billion in commerce annually. With its powerful Retail Marketing Performance platform, Connexity is expected to grow this business with automated engagement for customer acquisition and revenue growth for retailers.

Much before the pandemic took its current disruptive form since February 2020, the online retail was already facing major challenges, ranging from customer attrition to loss of revenue to mal-Advertising and so on. However, e-Commerce sales tech platforms like Connexity could enable online retailers to take advantage of increased demand in commerce-oriented channels to diversify outside of traditional walled gardens like paid search.

At the time of this announcement, Bill Glass, CEO of Connexity said —

“Connexity and Skimlinks share a similar mission as architects of online shopping markets. Our solutions help retailers acquire new customers and sales while enabling eCommerce-oriented publishers to monetize engaged shopping audiences. Combining the companies creates more scale on both sides of the marketplace.”

Connexity’s acquisition of Skimlinks creates the largest independent customer acquisition channel for eCommerce, adding thousands of new retail-oriented publishers, including many desirable and respected consumer-facing media brands.

Online publishers are increasingly turning to lead generation commerce revenue as a way to increase the monetization of their loyal shopping audiences. Publishers are looking to expand and diversify those monetization sources to include cost-per-click budgets in addition to traditional CPA budgets.

Merchants advertising on Connexity will benefit from easy access to new, high-quality traffic sources on Skimlinks like marquee publishers such as Condé Nast, DotDash, Hearst, Vox Media and over half of the top 100 publishers globally. With Skimlinks, Connexity would be able to “track over $2.5 million affiliated sales every day, and have the expertise and the tools to power all commerce strategies on every channel (web, mobile, social, mail…).”

Skimlinks operates globally, with a significant footprint in the US and UK, as well as fast-growing operations in Europe and APAC. Skimlinks was founded by Alicia Navarro and Joe Stepniewski in 2007.

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Bringing Connexity’s longstanding direct retailer advertising relationships to Skimlinks’ impressive network of publishers will be a big step forward in providing easy access to those cost-per-click budgets and enabling both improved monetization yield and diversification.

Connexity’s enterprise publishers and ShopYourLikes social influencer partners will also benefit from access to CPA affiliate advertising budgets from over 48,500 retail advertisers live on the Skimlinks platform.

Skimlinks publishers will benefit from access to incremental cost-per-click monetization in budgets of premium Connexity merchants including brands like Dell, Wayfair, Chewy, Kohl’s, Skechers and more. Skimlinks advertising partners will also obtain easy access to Connexity’s premium publisher and social influence marketing network without any incremental work.

Sebastien Blanc, CEO of Skimlinks said —

“Our combined scale will fortify Connexity as a critical customer acquisition channel for retailers and will strengthen publisher monetization solutions. By marrying Connexity’s CPC search budgets with the broad CPA affiliate monetization coverage of Skimlinks, we provide best-in-class monetization for publishers.”

Skimlinks connects 60,000 publishers to 48,500 merchants around the world, generating $2.5m of sales every day. With over ten years in the industry, Skimlinks is ideally placed to become the publisher’s trusted long-term partner. Clients include half of the top content publishers in the world such as Conde Nast, Hearst, Yahoo!, Huffington Post, Trinity Mirror, MailOnline, Pedestrian Group, and South China Morning Post.