Brighton based Brandwatch, uses AI and machine learning to bring structure and meaning to the voices of social media users. It has helped over 2,000 global brands and agencies to make data-driven decisions. Giles Palmer, founder and CEO of Brandwatch says, "Now is the time to take the next step – joining a company of significant scale to create a business and a suite of products that can have an important global impact. We are excited to join Abel and the Cision team to supercharge our work and bring even more value to our customers."

For Cision, the acquisition will bring valuable analytics products to their database of approximately 1 million journalists and media outlets. The $450m acquisition will enable brands and organisations with consumer and media intelligence, to create more effective customer engagement strategies in PR.

From connecting with journalists and running social media campaigns to developing brand messaging or conducting consumer research, the technology will enable real-time insights and long-term analysis of trends to guide decision-making. Abel Clark, CEO of Cision, says, “Together, Cision and Brandwatch will help our clients to more deeply understand, connect and engage with their customers at scale across every channel."

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021.