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eCommerce - Wednesday, January 23, 2008

eCommerce: ATG Pays $9M For Cleverset

E-commerce platform provider Art Technology Group (ATG) (NASDAQ: ARTG) says it will acquire personalization technology startup CleverSet for about $9M.

CleverSet makes product recommendation to web site visitors by breaking down a customer’s current and past behavior, the behavior of other consumers, catalog information, a merchant’s merchandising strategy and such external factors as day of week and the weather. CleverSet says its customers see a 20+% increase in sales and conversion rates. Overstock.com and WineEnthusiast are among its users.

There are any number of personalization software packages on the market for eCommerce but CleverSet uses what it calls statistical relational learning which represents a new approach. The technology was developed by Oregon State University computer science professor Bruce D’Ambrosio.

leverSet had raised about $3M in angel financing and likely could have raised more funding rather than selling to ATG, however, the market for personalization software is a bit frothy and rivals like Aggregate Knowledge and ChoiceStream have raised more funding than CleverSet.

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