Audience data company Claritas hired investment bank Jefferies to pursue a sale, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Claritas is a customer segmentation business that lets marketers buy audiences according to different demographics and attributes. It has been operating since 1961, segmenting audiences into categories like “Country Squires” and “Upper Crust.” The company offers similar services to data firms like Experian, Epsilon, Acxiom and Merkle, the last three of which were acquired by holding companies, according to an adtech source familiar with the business.
Claritas had not responded to comments by press time.
Claritas was spun out from measurement giant Nielsen in 2017, with an undisclosed investment from private equity group Carlyle Group.
Neither Carlyle nor Jefferies returned a request for comment.
Claritas is the latest adtech business to come to the market as merger and acquisition activity resurges. There have been several deals announced this month: Madhive acquired Frequence in the local TV space; supply-side platform Equativ acquired fellow SSP Sharethrough; contextual advertising platform Seedtag acquired Beachfront; and Verve acquired Jun Group in mobile adtech. Also, ADWEEK reported last week that SSPs Sonobi and 33Across were up for sale.
Nielsen partnered with the leadership team of Nielsen Catalina Solutions, another Nielsen business, on the Claritas acquisition, and appointed that team to be the new leaders of Claritas once it was under Carlyle’s ownership.
Originally, NCS manufactured machines that printed receipts, and it was also a source for in-store sales data. Over time, it brought this data into the programmatic era.
The goal was for the NCS leadership team, including CEO Mike Nazzaro, to run the same modernizing playbook at Claritas, AdExchanger reported.
In 2019, Claritas made several acquisitions—like identity graph AcquireWeb, multicultural audience company Geoscape and media measurement company Barometric—to help it revamp its traditional audience segment business for data-driven media.
In September 2023, the company acquired ArtsAI, which uses artificial intelligence to customize creative for specific users. Later that year, Claritas appointed a chief AI officer.