Dun & Bradstreet has announced that it has acquired Avention, the maker of OneSource, to expand its presence and offerings in B2B sales acceleration.
The data and analytics business purchased Avention – which generated $60 million in revenue in 2016 – for $150 million on 9 January 2017.
The combination of Dun & Bradstreet’s commercial database and Avention’s user-friendly platform will position the business as one of the leaders in the sales acceleration market.
Fragmented and underserved, the emerging industry has an estimated annual market opportunity of $10 billion, according to Outsell, Inc.
With the popularity of account-based marketing (ABM) continuing to change the industry, the acquisition marks the next step in the convergence of software-as-a-service and data-as-a-service platforms.
Following the transaction, Dun & Bradstreet’s sales acceleration product portfolio will include Hoover’s, Avention, NetProspex, and strategic alliances such as its partnership with salesforce.com.
Combined, these products generated revenue in excess of $200 million in 2016.
Bev Burgess, SVP Europe and ABM practice leader at ITSMA, commented on the development: “Its great to see two high quality providers of information join forces to become the go-to source for marketers building insight-led marketing programmes such as ABM.”
