Centro Acquires Facebook Ad Startup GraphScience

Ad tech company Centro is announcing that it has acquired social ad startup GraphScience.

Founded in 2001, Centro has built a platform for digital marketers to manage their campaigns — in fact, it says it will manage $400 million in ad spend this year. GraphScience, meanwhile, allows advertisers to create and optimize personalized Facebook ads. With the acquisition, Centro can significantly expand its social media capabilities.

“The race is on for who can actually provide that single sign-on, media automation platform across all the different channels and vendors out there,” said Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker (pictured above).

He added that the company already allowed its customers to use the ad-buying interfaces of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, but by integrating GraphScience technology, Centro can bring social ad-buying directly to its platform.

“GraphScience, in contrast to some of the other vendors that are out there, has specifically targeted direct marketers,” Riegsecker added. Pointing to GraphScience’s “backend intelligence and analytics,” he also said, “We felt they had some of the leading software from a return-on-investment perspective.”

The acquisition comes a couple of months after Centro raised a $30 million Series B. Riegsecker said the company is profitable, so the additional funding will go primarily toward software development and acquisitions. On the acquisition side, Riegsecker said his next big targets are data management platforms and programmatic TV.

All 10 of GraphScience’s full-time employees will be joining the team, and they’ll be working out of Centro’s San Francisco offices. (Centro is headquartered in Chicago.)

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. GraphScience had raised $3.2 million in funding from investors, including Grace Beauty Capital.