MUMBAI : Mobile marketing firm Augme Technologies is purchasing competitor Hipcricket for $44.5 million in cash and common stock. With a potential earn-out of $27.5 million, the deal could hit $72 million.

Recently, Augme acquired quick-response (QR) code company Jagtag for $5.5 million, signaling its intentions to consolidate mobile advertising, an industry flooded with small startups.

Augme‘s existing technology, known as Ad Life, sends out videos, text messages, coupons et al for brands or agencies and then brings all the reporting and measurement together.
 
With Hipcricket, Augme gets a lot of similar technologies as well as stronger text message services and means to better link to big brands‘ customer-response management tools or publishers‘ content systems.

Augme believes that it will be the preeminent end-to-end mobile marketing solution provider for consumer brands, agencies, pharmaceutical/health, and media companies. The combined companies‘ client roster is expected to include over 300 customers.