Merkle buys Divisadero

The company will retain the Divisadero brand and offices in Madrid, Barcelona, and Gijon, and will be a part of Merkle’s European operation, led by Tim Berry, president of Merkle Europe.

Divisadero’s leadership team led by Manuel Blanco, will remain in place and its 90 plus staff of mathematicians, engineers and marketers will join the Merkle team. This will bring Merkle’s European staff to more than 750.

However founding partner, Sergio Maldonado, will leave the company.

Divisadero was founded in 2005 and Merkle said the purchase would increases its global scale –especially in Spanish-speaking countries – as well as boosting its data and analytics offering. The Spanish business has a number of data and analytic capabilities, including digital maturity assessments, strategic road mapping, technology bench-marking, data collection, analytics and data activation.

David Williams (pictured), president and CEO, Merkle, said: “The acquisition of Divisadero adds significant scale and critical capabilities to Merkle’s data and analytics offering in the market, as well as that of Dentsu Aegis Network.”

This Merkle’s second acquisition since joining the Dentsu Aegis Network in August 2016 and Merkle’s fourth European acquisition in two years.