Coty has acquired U.K. digital marketing firm Beamly for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is a significant step for the beauty giant to enhance its digital engagement.
Beamly is known as a cutting-edge digital marketing firm that is active across all digital media including online video and social media. Beamly will continue to work with non-Coty accounts, but will provide the beauty firm with better online marketing campaigns.
The company is based in London, but the New York team will be located in Coty’s New York office. Beamly’s chief executive officer Jason Forbes will remain in place and will report to Camillo Pane, executive vice president, category development at Coty.
“The acquisition of Beamly will address the accelerating consumer shift in time spent from traditional media to real-time digital and social media channels,” said Pane. “Jason and his team have proven capabilities and a proprietary platform that successfully targets and engages Millennial consumers. Further, Beamly will help us to accelerate the growth of our e-commerce business, and be a positive contributor as Coty advances toward becoming a highly focused, pure-play leader and challenger in Beauty.”
“We have seen our platform disrupt vertical CPC/CPV benchmarks by nine times,” said Forbes. “With Coty, we will enjoy the scale to accelerate product innovation, expanding across clients in a ‘mobile first’ marketplace.”
Coty has had a busy year of acquisitions. In July, the firm acquired Procter & Gamble’s beauty brands, which is expected to double the size of the company. That deal was valued at roughly $15 billion.
Coty’s stock has had a strong year, gaining 73 percent in value over the past 12 months. The company will report its first quarter fiscal 2016 results on November 5. The average earnings estimate is for 28 cents a share and revenue is estimated to be $1.13 billion, a drop of 4.1 percent from last year.