Terakeet Sells Influencer Marketing Platform to Publicis Groupe

The strategic sale strengthens Terakeet’s category leadership and drives future growth and innovation

Syracuse, NY — February 13, 2023 – Terakeet, the preferred marketing technology partner for Fortune 500 brands, announced the sale of its influencer marketing technology platform Perlu to CJ, a global leader in performance marketing and division of Publicis Groupe. The sale positions Terakeet for continued global growth as the company evolves and refines its business model to serve its customers best.

Founded in 2017 by Terakeet, Perlu is a professional online community for brands and influencers to connect, collaborate, organize, and manage partnership campaigns. Perlu’s unique platform and service enable companies to activate, network, and collaborate with a dynamic community of influencers providing brands with the fastest, most effective means to find and engage with trusted, active influencers in every category, choosing their qualification criteria to target their needs, and attracting the right influencers for the brand.

“At Terakeet, we’ve built our company with the goal of helping enterprise organizations connect with their customers, drive new revenue, and increase brand value,” said Mac Cummings, Terakeet CEO. “The proprietary technology behind Perlu helped foster thousands of influencer partnerships under the Terakeet umbrella, and we are thrilled that Publicis will build upon its success and bring its technology to its global customer base.”

The strategic sale is rooted in Terakeet’s desire to focus on its core business and bring innovations to market that will help its customers increase market share, reduce risk, and drive long-term revenue growth. Publicis focuses on influencer relationships, and its portfolio includes more than 300,000 influencers and collaborations with the world’s largest brands.

“Affiliate and influencer are a natural fit,” said Mayur Kshetramade, CJ CEO. “We have worked with content creators and publishers for years and developed a dedicated influencer specialization about 10 years ago. Perlu’s approach resonates with our ecosystem and ethos – we work hard to find the win-win-win – a win for brand advertisers, a win for publishers, and by that, a win for their consumers. Perlu does the same for influencers, brands, and their audiences. We are thrilled to bring Perlu into CJ to continue to elevate our content creators’ performance within our CJ Influence offering.”

Cummings and Chief Technology Officer Patrick Danial co-founded Terakeet in 2001 and remain active executives in the business’s day-to-day operations. The pair began developing Perlu as a technology platform that complements Terakeet’s primary organic search technologies business.

About Terakeet: Terakeet is the preferred enterprise partner for Fortune 500 brands seeking meaningful customer connection and online business growth. Through a unique approach to leveraging owned assets, Terakeet helps brands better understand their customers’ needs and delight them throughout the digital journey.

Terakeet’s combination of custom, data-informed strategies, proprietary technology, and expert execution tap into real-time consumer behavior insights which helps global brands dominate markets, drive new revenue, and increase brand value.

About CJ:

Founded in Santa Barbara, California in 1998, CJ (formerly Commission Junction) continues to lead the industry as the largest, most trusted name in global performance marketing, specializing in affiliate marketing technology and services. As the platform of choice for driving profitable growth for over 3,800 global brands around the world across all verticals, including retail, travel, finance, and network & home services—CJ technology powers a partnership ecosystem where over 167K publishers and brands engage billions of consumers worldwide. Part of Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40], aligned with Publicis Media, CJ leverages unparalleled data, technology, and strategic expertise to bring a truly customer-centric approach to performance marketing. Our people dare to think big and drive even bigger results.