Skimlinks Acquires InvisibleHand, Adds Product Matching and Pricing Intelligence to its Suite of Monetization Tools

LONDON, Aug. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Skimlinks announced today that it has acquired InvisibleHand, the leader in real-time e-commerce product matching and pricing intelligence.

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InvisibleHand's powerful API and technology will allow Skimlinks to immediately enhance its core products, offer unique insights, and maximize earnings for its network of publishers. Skimlinks will be bringing on InvisibleHand's talented engineering and product teams, to work with Skimlinks to shape the future of the e-commerce and online monetization industries.

Forward Internet Group (Forward), the London-based media technology and consumer investment firm, has been a majority investor in InvisibleHand since the business was founded in 2009. Upon completion of the deal, Forward Investment Group will hold a minority equity stake in Skimlinks.

Alicia Navarro, CEO and founder of Skimlinks: "The InvisibleHand team have successfully tackled two of the toughest problems in e-commerce: algorithmically matching large product data sets across multiple retailers, and pairing that information with accurate price data. We have been partners and friends with InvisibleHand for many years so it is a great pleasure to have Robin and his team join Skimlinks."

Robin Landy, CEO and founder of InvisibleHand: "Skimlinks is the perfect partner for the next stage of InvisibleHand's development, with an amazing team, a great reputation and shared values and culture. I'm excited by the opportunity to turbo-charge Skimlinks' core products, but also to make InvisibleHand's unique dataset and services available across the broadest range of applications."

Paul Fisher, Director at Forward: "We are very proud to have helped Robin create InvisibleHand within Forward – and now Forward Labs is working hard to replicate this success with other brand-new businesses. Just like all the best start-ups, InvisibleHand has relentlessly disrupted its market over the past four years and has now emerged, very clearly, as the market-leading solution for any e-commerce business, app or service needing real-time price and product data."

The acquisition announcement comes on the heels of strong momentum for Skimlinks, which recently launched a real-time product comparison widget called Showcases and vertical specific Fashion Engine; unveiled its Japanese site; and released its hassle-free solution for Publishers affected by the closure of Google Affiliate Network.

About Skimlinks
Founded in 2007, Skimlinks is the leading content monetisation platform that rewards publishers for the role their content plays in creating purchase intent. Skimlinks processes 300 million clicks a month on over 140,000 sites around the web, including Condé Nast, Gawker, AOL Europe, WordPress, Hearst Digital, Haymarket Consumer Media, Telegraph Media Group, and many more. Skimlinks is a team of 55 with offices in London, San Francisco, and New York.

About InvisibleHand
Founded in 2009, InvisibleHand is a pioneer in product data technology and automated price comparison. The InvisibleHand API provides class-leading product-matching, real-time price data, link synonymy, product identifier lookup & reverse lookup, flexible text-string product search, MAP circumvention and URL normalisation. The InvisibleHand browser extension, powered by IH API, has found over $1 billion of savings for users in US, UK & DE, and enables consumers to automatically get the lowest prices when they shop online without using a price comparison website.

About Forward Internet Group
Forward Internet Group ("Forward") is a London-based investment group established and managed by entrepreneurs. Forward creates, acquires and invests into web and consumer businesses, nurturing ideas, enabling growth and optimising brands. Today Forward operates three investment divisions: Forward Private Equity enables transformative growth for companies with established management teams; Forward Investment Partners provides venture and growth capital for start-ups; Forward Labs supports entrepreneurs in residence with seed capital, advice and support. Since 2004, Forward has invested in over 40 companies, including uSwitch, Zopa, Unbound, Hailo, Hubbub and DropWines.