Snapchat maker Snap Inc. has acquired Placed, a six-year-old company that helps advertisers track real-world purchases and store visits.
The acquisition comes as Snap has been ramping up its ad tracking capabilities with products that can measure foot traffic tied to in-app campaigns.
Placed’s more than 100 employees will continue to report to founder and CEO David Shim, who will report to Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan.
Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but GeekWire reported that the purchase price was for over $200 million. Snap faces mounting pressure from Wall Street to grow its ad business and user base in the face of fierce competition from larger companies like Facebook.
Placed called itself the leader in "location-based attribution" in a blog post announcing the acquisition on Monday, and noted that to date it has measured $500 million in advertising spend related to store visits.
"By partnering with Snap, we will do even more," Shim wrote. "Still working independently, Placed's goal continues to be the adoption of a common yardstick that can measure the offline effectiveness of advertising across multiple platforms and publishers."
Snap has made a few acquisitions in the ad tech space to date, and it recently bought a small drone startup based in Los Angeles. In its most recent quarterly filing with the SEC, Snap disclosed that it paid $20 million in March for an unnamed "cloud-hosted platform for building content online." A spokesperson declined to reveal the company.