33Across acquires publishing tool tracker Tynt

As social ad targeting evolves, 33Across looks at publishing tools for the advantage

Social data is rapidly finding its way into all types of websites and several social media companies are snapping up tech companies that can help them adapt their relevance to even more businesses.

The social ad targeting company, 33Across, announced Wednesday the it acquired the online publishing tool company Tynt.

Tynt is responsible for the embedded text and links that appear when you copy and paste portions of an article into a word document (Often appearing with an added: Read more - and a long hyperlink behind it.)

Based out Calgary, Canada, Tynt has a neat product called Tracer.  Tracer enables users to track what is being copied and pasted from their sites.  If a user’s content is copied, Tracer automatically adds an attribution link so that the user can claim it as their own.  

Tracer offers an analytics feature giving the exact number of words copied during the selected period of time.  It incorporates engaging features like word clouds to emphasize the top copied words.

33Across now reaches more than 1.25 billion users, versus Google’s one billion and Facebook’s 800 million users.

Because social targeting is such a broad blanket, 33Across serves clients across many different sectors, like travel, telecommunications, consumer electronics, fashion and more.  

33Across' CEO Eric Wheeler wants to use this tool to help its advertisers better under its readership and reach. As of the acquisition 33Across will continue to offer publisher tools under the Tynt name. 

At the same time, the 500,000 publishers who work with Tynt will now have access to 33Across’ “Brand Graph“, which identifies people who are likely to become loyal to a specific brand, based on their social connections and interests.

“Copy/paste is still the largest form of social sharing on the web,” said David Mandelbrot, chief executive officer of Tynt, in a statement. “Since 2008, Tynt has provided many of the world’s top publishers with powerful tools to generate value and recognition for the content their users share.”

Tynt was founded in 2007 and has pulled in nearly $12 million in funding since the start of 2009 from investment groups such as iNovia Capital, Panorama Capital and Greycroft Partners.

The acquisition price was not disclosed, but Wheeler says the entire Tynt team will be joining 33Across. 

33Across acquired all of Tynt’s assets including technology, patents and filings, analytics, and toolsets. 

 As social continues to evolve in our world, publishers are forces to adapt and go further to create actionable value from the big data graph that surrounds their brands and 33Across believes that the data collected by Tynt will help improve that insight on social ads.

“The objects we read, watch, recommend, and purchase are being accelerated through personal networks via explicit and implicit social influence. As a result, the world of marketing and publishing is forever transformed,” said Eric Wheeler, chief executive officer of 33Across, in a statement. “This acquisition is about the technology, tools, and real-time predictive systems that enable the biggest publishing and marketing brands in the world to connect their content and products into the social graph.”

Over the summer, we saw reports released that, despite the boom in social media, social advertising was experiencing a tapering off that might force some marketers to get creative.

The social media user slowdown appeared to be supported both by third-party reports that Facebook’s membership growth has slowed as well as by Mark Zuckerberg’s own admission that our focus should turn from tracking pure user count to tracking user sharing.

There is, however, one area where social media continues to dominate growth in 2011: advertising spending. More than lead generation, more than search and even more than video, social network will see the fastest growing advertising spending online.

Acorrding to eMarketer, the future looks even curiouser than the past. In 2012, for example, social media will see another tapering off, with ad spending growing just 27.7 percent to $3.93 billion. Video, on the other hand, should continue blazing ahead, growing 43.1 percent to $3.09 billion.

33Across' customers include VISA, British Airways, and Jones New York and has gained at least $11 million in funding from investors such as First Round Capital and Flybridge Capital Partners. 

The company, founded in 2007, has offices in New York, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington DC.