Peter Hamilton, CEO of TUNE and Alex Austin, CEO of Branch.
It is our mission to invent the future of marketing technology.
From the days of our founders Lucas and Lee Brown bootstrapping our performance marketing product, to the first app download we tied to advertising, to the present of working with the top digital companies in the world, this has been the most exciting ride I could imagine. What began as a small industry of performance tracking, became an industry of attribution and measurement that is now vital to nearly every marketing team and the businesses they support.
At TUNE, we were fortunate to take part in inventing that industry as the first to bring measurement to mobile app marketing, and it has been our great pleasure to serve the needs of marketers as they discovered new paths to growth through the birth of mobile marketing. Today marks the beginning of a new era for marketers. One where the consumer experience, privacy, measurement, and advertising are all coming together, representing a major step forward for our industry.
Which is why I am excited to announce that Branch is acquiring TUNE’s Attribution Analytics, in what I believe to be a monumental move for both our customers and our company.
It is no secret that our team building and supporting attribution has fought with one hand tied behind their back for years. Our lack of Facebook partner status made it incredibly difficult to win the total market. In spite of it, what our teams at TUNE were able to accomplish these last seven years in mobile measurement is nothing short of amazing. I am beyond proud of our teams’ Herculean efforts, with a die-hard focus on customer success, privacy, and unmatched flexibility.
Today, we begin the road to combining the grit and expertise of our team with a company that I have come to genuinely admire. As I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Alex, the CEO of Branch, I began to see a vision that is the most logical next step for TUNE attribution, and a partner that shares our values of innovation, transparency, and excellence to each other.
Branch has an incredible path forward. Not only are they capitalized beyond belief, but they are laser-focused on solving the problem of consumer experience across apps and how those environments connect to web and across devices. We fundamentally agree with Branch that the consumer experience must be the foundation of measurement, not a bolt-on addition as we and other attribution providers have attempted in the past. Branch deep links have already been adopted by thousands of companies across the Internet, which means Branch is able to connect users to content across platforms at a scale that no new player can hope to match.
Yet, Branch was still missing one key component of this future — the deep connections and expertise in the advertising and attribution space that we built over the past seven years. Though Branch took a clear plunge into attribution and measurement over a year ago, on their own it would simply take too long to build the nuanced technology marketers need, and the team DNA it takes to fully support those needs.
That is where TUNE comes in. Our Attribution Analytics product and team are like a booster shot of martech/adtech advantage, a combined approach that I believe will be absolutely unstoppable.
I expect this news to be frightening to competition in the space, with sellers trying to spread uncertainty and panic (apologies in advance for marketers’ inboxes). The reality is that the combined engineering efforts of Branch and TUNE over this next year will exceed the market’s expectations, while maintaining every current use of both products. We take our commitments to customers extremely seriously.
Over time we will build our capabilities together on one central stack, with the Branch platform as the foundation, but in a matter of weeks, TUNE customers will gain access to more features, products, opportunities, and human resources than they have ever had before. Both teams spent the time working through every scenario to make sure customer experiences are seamless and access to new capabilities are expedient.
What does this mean for TUNE going forward?
This acquisition means that TUNE has two successful futures. One where our team and tech join forces with Branch to create the future of measurement and consumer experience and one where we take our vision for our flagship product, HasOffers, to the next level. We will continue to operate HasOffers as a separate entity, directing even more time and resources toward its success.
With the major cash infusion from this acquisition, we will pursue the performance marketing industry in a new way, evolving how marketing relationships are managed. As we pursue that vision, we plan to partner heavily with measurement providers such as Branch to connect performance marketing to outcomes, across platforms and devices.
Marketing partnerships are evolving faster than ever before. Marketing teams build their own unique partnerships today in order to find scale beyond typical ad platforms and networks. The same is true for networks themselves as they search the corners of the earth for new publishers and traffic sources. Everyone managing a large number of marketing partners needs a better, more automated platform to manage everything. What’s more enticing is the category of partner management itself growing beyond traditional affiliate and referral relationships to incorporate influencers, resellers, BD partners and more. It is a space we have the perfect experience and technology foundation through HasOffers to win.
Through this acquisition by Branch and our future partnership together, our teams now have the ability to achieve both visions, something we could not easily do before. For all those at TUNE who are joining Branch and for all those staying on to pursue HasOffers partner management, you can expect us to keep that original mission to invent the future of marketing technology.
I commit to you that the people of TUNE will stay grounded and thoughtful throughout this time. We will listen to your real needs and invest in your success. We will be your biggest cheerleaders and your most trusted partners regardless of the T-shirt we wear.
Thank you! Thank you to our customers who made all of this history and future possible. Your support has meant more than you will probably ever know.
Onward,
Peter Hamilton
CEO, TUNE
Author
A digital marketer by background, Peter is the former CEO of TUNE, the enterprise platform for partner marketing. In 2018, he sold TUNE’s mobile measurement product to Branch, unifying measurement and user experience. He led TUNE’s efforts to bring better management technology and automation to marketing partnerships, across affiliates, influencers, networks, and business development relationships. Follow @peterhamilton
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