Tinuiti

Canaccord Genuity Advises Leading Independent Performance Marketing Agency Tinuiti on its Acquisition of Digital Streaming Media-Focused Bliss Point Media

Acquisition will Expand Full-Service Advertising Capabilities to TV (Streaming + Linear), Bringing Managed Media Spend for Clients to Nearly $3 billion

Canaccord Genuity is pleased to announce that it has advised Tinuiti, the largest independent performance marketing agency in the US, on its acquisition of Bliss Point Media, and its subsidiary, Prospect Point Media, a leading purchaser of streaming OTT media with more than $500 million in media under management.

Santa Monica-based Bliss Point uses its patented machine-learning technology and algorithmic media buying to establish, optimize, and scale TV and streaming video campaigns for the most innovative direct-to-consumer companies, including Fabletics, Instacart, Square, Thumbtack, and Tonal, among others. The company’s proprietary technology leads the market by intelligently applying modern statistical and computational techniques to drive superior growth marketing outcomes. Launched in 2014 with chief executive officer Sean Odlum, chief technology officer Justin Manus, and UCLA marketing professor Dr. Anand V. Bodapati as principals, Bliss Point has tripled in talent size since March 2020.

Tinuiti, which offers industry-leading expertise in search, social, Amazon and marketplaces, addressable TV and mobile apps, CRM, email marketing, and more, understands that success requires both strategy and channel expertise. Each solution is delivered through Tinuiti's performance planning framework, GAMMA, and is enabled by Mobius, a proprietary suite of marketing intelligence and media activation technology.

Tinuiti is a portfolio company of New Mountain Capital. The acquisition of Bliss Point is the second transaction Tinuiti has completed since entering into its partnership with New Mountain in December 2020.

The deal will allow Tinuiti to accelerate its offering in OTT / cTV and reintroduce Tinuiti's OTT division as Streaming+. This performance-first, full-service offering will offer scalable, targetable, data-driven optimization across OTT, Linear, TV, Streaming TV, and Digital Audio to its clients and the industry at large. Streaming+ combines the strengths of both Tinuiti and Bliss Point to deliver the most value from media spend across partners such as Discover, Disney, NBCU, and ViacomCBS. This offering will be enabled by a technology platform that gives control and transparency back to marketers. Tinuiti’s and Bliss Point's combined capabilities and technologies will give brands a truly differentiated full-service offering rooted in proprietary and patented machine-learning technology, attribution, and econometrics. Marketers will be able to scale this service from the small screens of Google, Facebook, and Amazon to the big screens of TV - OTT, cTV, and linear.

Bliss Point's proprietary and patented machine learning technology will be integrated into Mobius, Tinuiti's suite of AI-enabled marketing intelligence and media activation technology. These technologies will expand Mobius' OTT/cTV capabilities to make non-click-based media trackable, attributable, and optimizable, delivering accelerated growth for client brands and marketers. Bliss Point CEO Sean Odlum will join Tinuiti's executive team and board of directors to play a key role in strategic product development.

Both Tinuiti and Bliss Point are experiencing rapid growth disrupting the traditional holding company and other current agency models, with Tinuiti growing five times in size since 2017 and Bliss Point growing more than 200% year-over-year. Across division teams, Tinuiti and Bliss Point have approximately 100 current active job openings. Since March 2020, Tinuiti's workforce grew by 25% to more than 860 employees. During the same time period, Bliss Point has tripled in size to nearly 100 employees.

Canaccord Genuity, with a team led by Sanjay Chadda and Lexia Schwartz, served as the exclusive financial advisor to Tinuiti.