Waterland portfolio company mrge expands North American footprint

Leading international commerce advertising platform mrge has expanded its product and customer portfolio by acquiring Canadian performance advertising platform SourceKnowledge. mrge was supported in this deal by its majority investor Waterland Private Equity. The acquisition marks an important milestone in the company’s history – following digidip, shopping24 and Yieldkit, SourceKnowledge is the first non-European firm to join the group, strengthening the company’s competitive position in North America.

Founded in 2009 in Montreal, Canada, SourceKnowledge offers performance marketing opportunities to online shops, agencies and advertising networks on the open web, outside the “walled gardens” of Google, Facebook and Amazon. The company concentrates on cost-per-click (CPC)-based advertising formats in the deal/coupon, content, social and search environment. Online publishers can use SourceKnowledge’s SmartBidder™ technology to automatically monetise its inventory in real time as optimally as possible via the SourceKnowledge marketplace or through third channels.

In 2022, SourceKnowledge delivered more than 1,000 advertising campaigns a day, primarily in the US, generating more than 6 million conversions. SourceKnowledge has therefore expanded the capacity of the mrge Group, which generated e-commerce sales for its customers of more than EUR 2 billion in 2022 alone.

Michael von Stern, CFO at mrge, notes: “The SourceKnowledge platform is complementing our product portfolio and will strengthen our footprint in North America. Jointly, we are able to provide increased monetization offerings to our publishing clients while our advertising partners profit from a larger pool of premium traffic in the open web. We are welcoming the team of SourceKnowledge to our group and are looking forward deepen our existing cooperation.”

“mrge has extensive expertise in the performance marketing area, which is why we are delighted to become part of the mrge family”, says Hector Pantazopoulos, SourceKnowledge cofounder and CRO. “Together we have substantial monetization opportunities for publishers through relationships with advertisers in the highest revenue-generating verticals, which will drive our customers’ growth. As part of mrge Group, we’re delighted to provide our knowledge, experience, and strong relationships from over a decade of highly successful work in ad tech. Together, we are stronger and can enhance our competitive position in the North American advertising market.”

“For mrge, SourceKnowledge is an optimal strategic fit that will allow us to leverage common synergies and significantly develop our presence in the US and Canada”, says Dr. Carsten Rahlfs, Managing Partner at Waterland. “As a leading international platform for commerce advertising, mrge already brings together more than 55,000 advertisers, 5,500 publishers and 100 advertising networks in over 160 countries – a competitive position that we intend to strengthen even further in the future.”