Mobile advertising company JiWire is announcing today that it has acquired location-based mobile shopping platform NearbyNow. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
NearbyNow allows brands to show products within in app or an ad and confirm availability of the product in the actual store. Users can also reserve the product in the store for pickup. For example, a Seventeen Magazine mobile app user sees an ad for boots online and can click through to check local inventory. If they are in-stock, the shopper reserves the boots and they are ready at the counter when she arrives. The company says that ad click-though rates are more than 20 percent and conversion-to-purchase average rates of 5.8 percent.
The advertising and shopping platform will be complementary to JiWire’s own advertising network. JiWire says that it plans to combine its existing location-based advertising platform that runs across Wi-Fi and mobile for devices such as iPads, smartphones and laptops with NearbyNow’s platform to increase ways in which advertisers can reach new local customers at scale and drive in-store conversions.
NearbyNow has raised nearly $20 million in venture funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and others.
