• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 17, 2012

Navigation services provider TeleNav on Tuesday announced acquiring Los Angeles-based mobile advertising firm Local Merchant Services, d.b.a. ThinkNear, for $22.5 million, including $18.5 million in cash. TeleNav said it would combine ThinkNear’s targeting technology with its existing Drive-To-Advertising platform to create a new solution called Scout Advertising.

TeleNav says its Drive-to-Advertising system reaches 34 million customers and offers advertisers with the only platform that captures the "drive-to" rat--the number of users who viewed an ad and then clicked on it to drive to the advertiser's business location. The addition of the ThinkNear technology will help businesses better reach the right customers to drive more business. 

"Real-time location is a nuanced and difficult problem and we have spent almost two years working on the technology to do it right," stated Eli Portnoy, CEO and co-founder of ThinkNear who will be joining the Scout Advertising team. "We have built technology to target mobile consumers based on true location and real-time context across billions of monthly impressions."

"We are extremely excited to combine ThinkNear's technology and expertise with our own to provide an even more comprehensive solution for advertisers to reach and drive more customers," said Dariusz Paczuski, vice president of products, marketing, and monetization at Telenav in a statement. Read more here.