Dealer Venom, a Pittsburgh-based dealer website solution for the automotive industry, has acquired the technology from WebKite Inc. With this transaction, Dealer Venom further extends its reach in the digital automotive retail space and lays the foundation to expand its offerings to both dealer groups and single-rooftop dealerships.
WebKite, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, developed a digital advertising and search engine marketing technology, which leverages machine-learning algorithms. Specifically, it automates the creation and management of digital advertising and search engine marketing for Google and Facebook campaigns for ads to in-market, low-funnel shoppers and buyers.
The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Dealer Venom and WebKite. The specific terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.
As part of the acquisition, Dealer Venom will rebrand the WebKite technology as REACH and plans to run it under the Dealer Venom umbrella of products.
“Eric Silver and Grant Olson have built an insane product that we have been watching for a few years now and we are so excited to bring the technology in-house and fully integrate it with our current platform.” Dealer Venom CEO Joud Mansour said, in a statement. “We have been monitoring WebKite both as a technology provider and a product over the past few years and have always wanted to make it a part of Dealer Venom.”
WebKite founder and CEO Eric Silver stated, “Over the past several years, WebKite has been delivered as a part of several integrated technology platforms. Though several partners were interested in exclusively deploying our platform, we are very happy to see our hard work staying in Pittsburgh as a part of a nationwide platform headquartered locally.”
