Adobe Accelerates Digital Marketing Push With Efficient Frontier Acquisition

the company's evolution into a supplier of digital media and digital marketing software

Adobe did not disclose terms of the acquisition of privately held Efficient Frontier. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions and Adobe expects to complete the acquisition in its first fiscal quarter, which ends in early March.

The acquisition will allow Adobe to add multi-channel ad campaign forecasting, execution and optimization capabilities to its Digital Marketing Suite software. The Efficient Frontier applications, according to Adobe, will help customers gain insight into how their spending for social, search and display advertising impact one another and optimize cross-channel campaigns.

"With the explosion in global Internet advertising, our customers need to know where, when and how to spend their digital marketing dollars to get the greatest return," said Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager of Adobe's Digital Marketing Business, in a statement. "The addition of Efficient Frontier will give our Digital Marketing Suite customers a leading platform for turning ad spend into business impact."

Efficient Frontier's social marketing advertisement-buying application, for example, brings to Adobe new ad-buying capabilities for Facebook, helping marketers better predict results for advertising on that social network. Adobe plans to integrate that capability with its Adobe SearchCenter+ software.

The purchase of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Efficient Frontier comes just a month after Adobe's Nov. 1 acquisition of Auditude, a developer of video ad management and monetization applications.

Adobe has been restructuring its operations and reorganizing its product lines to focus on digital media and digital marketing software. Earlier this month the company said it would lay off some 750 employees as part of the restructuring.