• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 12, 2022

Stagwell Marketing Cloud has acquired Maru Group a “research as a service” platform. Terms weren’t disclosed.

Maru’s main offering is called Hub, a scalable survey platform that allows marketers to analyze behavioral, transactional, and attitudinal data in the same interface. It processes tens of millions of completed respondent survey forms annually.

The deal expands SMC’s global reach given that Maru operate in more than 40 countries with a client roster that includes Mercedes, Johnson & Johnson, Disney, Microsoft and Expedia, among others. 

"Maru will be a great addition to our Stagwell Marketing Cloud and round out our research offering from full-service analytical to do it yourself,” said Stagwell CEO Mark Penn. “Maru is research built for enterprise scale but in simple, convenient and affordable ways." 

It’s SMC’s second acquisition of the year. In July it acquired Apollo Program, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that gathers data on consumer behavior.

Stagwell formed the Marketing Cloud unit late last year to develop a suite of SaaS and DaaS products to support transformation for in-house marketers. 

In late September Stagwell hired Mansoor Basha as Chief Technology Officer for SMC.