Oracle is acquiring web tracking company "AddThis"

Oracle is acquiring web tracking company "AddThis"

Oracle announced on Tuesday it is to acquire web tracking company AddThis for an undisclosed sum.

Virginia-based AddThis began life as a social bookmarking startup that allowed website owners to add social media sharing widgets, with users bookmarking their content using third-party services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

It expanded its services to provide publishers with information about the types of interest their readers had demonstrated on the other sites they visit.

AddThis tracks around 1.9 billion unique users across the web every single month with the aim of helping publishers increase social sharing of their content and to help marketers improve engagement with their ads.

In a letter to customers and partners, Oracle Data Cloud senior vice president and general manager Omar Tawakol explained AddThis will be folded into the Oracle Data Cloud.

Tawakol wrote: "With the addition of AddThis, Oracle Data Cloud’s offering is expected to deliver unprecedented levels of audience insight, measurement and reach. The AddThis team brings significant knowledge and capabilities to Oracle and will further extend the value Oracle Data Cloud brings to market."

The Oracle Data Cloud also hopes two other recent acquisitions: data broker company Datalogix, which it bought for more than $1 billion in December 2014, and data management platform BlueKai, which it acquired in February 2014.

AddThis provides Oracle with yet more clout for the "data as a service" offering it sells to its marketing clients.

Welcome @AddThis to the @OracleDataCloud - 15 million publishers and global footprint strengthens the #DataAsAService offering!

— Omar Tawakol (@otawakol) January 5, 2016

Distributed content is king: @Oracle's acquisition of @addthis bolsters #data as a service https://t.co/xOBNgHSYZk @OracleDataCloud #DaaS

— Seth Ulinski (@Seth_TBR) January 5, 2016

Oracle acquires @addthis. MyPOV: This could provide information about people's habits and interests. #socbiz #cmo pic.twitter.com/c9CVElOtOc

— Alan Lepofsky (@alanlepo) January 5, 2016

AddThis was founded in 2004  by Hooman Radfar, Austin Fath, and Dom Vonarburg. All are no longer involved with the day-to-day running of the company — Radfar is a partner at startup studio Expa, Fafh works at Soft Tech Consulting, while Vonarburg is now the CTO at a startup called Sweeten that matches homeowners with renovation needs with contractors. 

AddThis received $73 million in funding from 15 investors — including Institutional Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, and Rho Ventures — according to CrunchBase. It has 110 employees.