Oracle to Acquire Digital Measurement Firm Moat

Oracle has inked a deal to acquire Moat, a digital measurement company known for its role as an independent third party hired to measure ads across platforms like Facebook, Google's YouTube and Snapchat.

The move comes as advertisers and publishers rely more heavily on marketing technology companies like Oracle to help them make sense of their customer data, and hire firms such as Moat in an effort to add greater visibility and transparency to their digital advertising efforts.

Moat works with some of the world's largest brands to help measure and track their online ads, including Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

"With the Moat acquisition, Oracle Data Cloud now offers brands and publishers a full suite of targeting and measurement solutions to improve the outcome of virtually every type of digital advertising campaign," said Eric Roza, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Data Cloud, in a statement.

Moat will remain an independent platform within the Oracle Data Cloud, and Moat founder and CEO Jonah Goodhart will continue to run the division within Oracle, the companies said.

The move adds to recent marketing technology-related acquisitions the tech giant has made in recent years, including the purchase of ad-targeting data firm DataLogix and data management software company BlueKai in 2014.

Meanwhile, Oracle competitors including Salesforce and Adobe continue to push into the marketing software, data and ad-targeting arena with marketing "clouds" of their own. Salesforce agreed to purchase Krux in October, for example, and Adobe acquired Tubemogul in November.

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com and Jack Marshall at Jack.Marshall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 18, 2017 18:55 ET (22:55 GMT)