Verve Group Acquires Beemray, Spearheading Contextual Targeting Globally

Verve Group strategically strengthens its operations by acquiring essentially all assets of Beemray Qy, a leading data platform headquartered in Helsinki, Finland.

Verve Group, a privacy-first omnichannel ad platform, is part of Media and Games Invest, and consolidates MGI's media activities. The acquisition of Beemray adds a powerful data management platform to Verve Group’s full-stack suite of programmatic solutions for advertisers and publishers, enabling strong focused contextual targeting. Beemray uses real-time signals and AI to identify and target audiences with contextual relevance, in perfect moments. As experts in the anonymous internet, Beemray combines real-world consumer context with active deep learning algorithms for better, faster, more efficient data management and media buying solutions underpinned by first-party data.

The acquisition adds a powerful data platform to Verve Group’s full-stack suite of programmatic solutions for advertisers and publishers, expanding the ability to improve marketing outcomes through better audience segmentation, and complement Verve Group’s robust location and behavioural audience segments that are now expanded globally.

The addition of Beemray comes at a time when the industry is fast adapting to privacy-focused initiatives such as Apple’s deprecation of its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and Google’s proposed deprecation of third-party cookies. Contextual targeting is witnessing a resurgence, propelled by advances in machine learning that allow for better audience modelling, making it possible to see the full context of a prospective consumer without the use of any identifiers.

Beemray is a pioneer in using contextual signals for multi-dimensional analytics, targeting, optimisation, and measurement. Beemray developed an industry-first real-time data infrastructure that delivers customised machine learning algorithms to 100% of programmatic traffic, refreshing segments and deal IDs on an individual bid level, within milliseconds. This allows Verve Group’s advertisers to target audiences across web, mobile web, CTV, and mobile in-app based on interest, sentiment, keywords, brand relevance, demographics, and real-time moments. This is in addition to understanding changing consumer behaviour through smart analytics and insights. Additionally, Beemray’s solution comes built-in with some of the most advanced brand safety tools available in the market. For publishers, the acquisition presents an opportunity to enrich and activate audience segments for monetisation and in-app personalisation, while having better control and transparency over the data ingested.

The Beemray SaaS platform will be integrated into Verve Group’s platform with plans to further develop the technology and to expand the Verve Group offering. With well over 10 synergetic acquisitions as well as organic extensions and growth in the media sector, MGI and Verve Group have established a strong fast and profitably growing position in this segment, also leveraging the experience and expertise of MGI's games segment gamigo Group as a publisher and advertiser. While already having acquired the integral platform components of the entire digital advertising process, Verve Group is further looking for logical extensions of its SaaS platform, to tap additional potential that generates added value for customers.

“The Beemray team spent the past half decade developing solutions for a privacy-first world and is trusted by some of the largest brands and agencies — as well as top publishers — globally. We are incredibly excited to integrate the Beemray SaaS platform into the Verve Group platform and we look forward to scaling the data platform and targeting solutions to our global demand partners,” said Ionut Ciobotaru, Verve Group’s chief product officer. “Beemray’s ability to maximise targeting outcomes without the use of cookies, IDs, or any other personally identifiable information (PII) will play a key role in scaling Verve Group globally as a privacy-first omnichannel ad platform for buyers and publishers.”

“Joining MGI’s media segment Verve Group is a natural fit for Beemray’s long-term vision to offer brand-safe targeting and optimisation at a global scale. Verve Group’s presence in every major region, coupled with its success in bringing together unique products to address the needs of different audiences in the advertising ecosystem, makes this a momentous opportunity for the Beemray platform.” says Rami Alanko, Beemray’s founder and CEO.