General Information
Q: Why did The Mobile Majority acquire Gimbal?
The Mobile Majority acquired Gimbal to add a best-in-class location and proximity technology. It also adds a significant cache of consumer location data to its suite of advertising solutions.
Q: When does the acquisition close?
The acquisition was finalized and closed on November 29, 2016.
Q: What is the monetary value of the deal?
The financial terms are confidential and will not be publicly disclosed.
Q: What does Gimbal do?
Gimbal is the leading location-based engagement and data platform. They use a mix of hardware (beacons) and software to ingest and analyze consumer location data, as well as create proximity and location-based customer experience programs for global brands.
Q: What does The Mobile Majority do?
The Mobile Majority is a data monetization and mobile media execution solution that leverages its vertically-integrated tech stack built atop sophisticated data infrastructure to serve relevant advertising for advertisers and publishers.
Company Operations
Q: How will the two companies operate?
The two companies will begin working as a combined entity immediately but will continue servicing the products, platforms, and contracts that exist for their existing client bases.
Q: What will happen to Gimbal and TMM’s current clients?
Both of the company’s clients will continue to be served as normal for the foreseeable future. No major changes are anticipated for either company’s offering.
Q: Where will the new entity be located?
Gimbal’s headquarters are located at 11010 Roselle Street, Suite 150, San Diego, CA 92121 and will remain operational. The Mobile Majority will continue to operate its headquarters from 2041 Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, CA. All other satellite offices will remain operational.
Q: Who will be leading the new entity?
The new entity will be headed by Rob Emrich, current CEO of The Mobile Majority.
Q: What will be the new entity’s formal name?
The two companies will retain their individual corporate names for the time being.
Q: Will Gimbal’s leadership be joining The Mobile Majority’s?
Yes, Gimbal’s leadership team will be integrating with The Mobile Majority’s team to lead the new entity. There was a natural fit between Gimbal’s leadership positions and those positions which The Mobile Majority had yet to create or was looking to fill.
Q: What will be the new employee count?
103 employees will be distributed across seven offices internationally.
Q: Will there be a reduction in total employees?
In preparation for the acquisition, Gimbal reduced its headcount by letting go of most of its contractors as well as several employees that were not expected to be part of the combined company. Additionally, there was some final reductions when the transaction closed. It is expected just under 40 Gimbal employees will join The Mobile Majority. Most Gimbal employees will remain focused on existing Gimbal products while a handful will fill open positions on The Mobile Majority side.
Q: What types of personnel are being affected?
A mix of employees across different departments in areas which are not a focus going forward or where there are some redundancies with The Mobile Majority’s existing organization.
Product Integration
Q: How will the technologies/products be integrated?
The main technology integrations will center on combining Gimbal’s sophisticated location data and infrastructure with The Mobile Majority’s DMP and targeting solutions. There will a significant number of new opportunities available for existing brand and channel customers of The Mobile Majority and Gimbal’s Enterprise solution.
Q: What kind of customer use cases will result from product integrations?
For advertisers, The Mobile Majority will now add best-in-market location data and targeting capabilities to improve the accuracy of their mobile ad campaigns. The new data set also enables custom location-based audience segments. For publishers, The Mobile Majority can add detailed location-oriented intent data to its already sophisticated data cache to build the most accurate audience network solution available to publishers. Resellers and channel partners can now offer additional scale and accuracy for local advertisers to increase their reach and frequency.
Q: Are there any plans to discontinue any products?
Not for the foreseeable future.
Gimbal Platform
Q: What is the significance of having other location signals?
While beacons are valuable in providing micro-location data, bundling them with macro-geofences and a suite of tools to manage and analyze performance creates a much more robust and comprehensive solution. This allows customers to gain a deeper understanding of their location and engagement strategies as well as create different kinds of engagements suited for macro and micro situations.
Q: Why are geofences an important piece of a location strategy?
Geofences are a leading macro-location engagement tool to complement micro-location proximity beacons. While beacons are ideal from inches to 50 meters, geofences can encompass any area (radial or polygonal) beyond that with no hardware costs or physical maintenance.
Privacy/Security
Q: What kind of user data is being collected?
Gimbal only receives anonymized data about end users’ devices. The type of data that Gimbal generates include geofence, entry, exit and dwell times, beacon sightings and dwell times, location history from most frequented places, and metadata such as type of device, OS, and mobile app.
Gimbal requires its customers to provide opt-in and opt-out options to end users and implements best practices for privacy standards.
Q: How does Gimbal provide a higher level of security than other beacons?
Gimbal beacons transmit a rolling, encrypted ID, giving it an anti-mapping security layer. This means that 3rd-parties will be unable to map where you have installed particular Gimbal beacons. Because Gimbal beacons transmit this type of packet, beacon owners have control of who can access their proximity network and when they can access it. This means a beacon owner could temporarily digitally lease access to particular beacons to partner brands and mobile apps of their choosing. This creates additional monetization opportunities both from an engagement and attribution standpoint.
This FAQ contains forward-looking statements that are subject to change.