Gannett buys social-media ad company Blinq Media

— -- Gannett, parent of USA TODAY, said Tuesday that it has acquired Blinq Media, a company that creates social-media advertising campaigns for ad agencies and corporate clients.

Terms were not disclosed.

Traditional media companies are acquiring technology and expertise to broaden online and mobile advertising offerings for clients demanding that their messages be distributed on influential social-media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

"With demand for social-media marketing solutions continuing to grow at a rapid pace, this acquisition is part of our ongoing transformation at Gannett and positions us to be a leader in both local and global social-media marketing," said Gannett CEO Gracia Martore in a statement. "Blinq will enhance Gannett Digital Marketing Services' ability to deliver a one-stop shop for all marketing needs, including social."

Social-network advertising revenue is estimated to grow 48.5% this year to $7.7 billion, according to eMarketer.

Facebook launched developer tools for creating ads for its pages in 2009. Blinq was one of the early companies to get access to them and develop Facebook ad campaigns for clients, earning "Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer" status.

And Blinq's "BAM 2.0" technology handles ad planning by analyzing clients' target audience members' social-media profile, including their friends, "likes" and "fan pages."

With such analytical data, Blinq and Gannett will be able to deliver relevant content, says Vikram Sharma, CEO of Gannett Digital Marketing Services, which will run Blinq as a separate unit under its umbrella. That may include simply ads that appear on the right side of a Facebook news feed page or could be content delivered in the form of "sponsored stories," which often contain videos or polls.

Some ad campaigns will leverage coupons, deals and other promotions that Gannett already has on its other traditional and digital marketing channels. While the ads and inserts in its newspapers are delivered to a large audience, social-media ads derived from them can be more local and targeted more directly at the audience that would be most interested, Sharma says.

"What we're looking to do as a company is to leverage our assets and capabilities built (over decades) and to build adjacent marketing services," he says.

"Gannett needs to sell these types of ads because media buyers are asking for (them)," says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at research firm Altimeter Group.

Beyond Facebook, Blinq is expanding its services to other social-media sites, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, as their developer tools are enhanced, says Dave Williams, CEO of Blinq, who will report to Sharma.