Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten is stepping up its U.S. advertising play.
The company's Rakuten Marketing division has acquired Deep Forest Media, an automated ad-buying platform which will make use of Rakuten's e-commerce data. The data will be used to tie user identity across devices, helping marketers apply the same targeting on mobile and desktop, which is difficult today due to the poor functionality of cookies on mobile devices.
"For our advertisers, it means that we can start to put together a more strategic marketing plan that allows us to reach consumers on different devices at different times with different messages," said Rakuten Marketing CEO Tony Zito in an interview with Ad Age.