Markco Media has been acquired by Monitise for a sum which could rise to £55 million as the purchasing company continues to broaden its offering through deals.

Founded by Mark Pearson, Markco Media is comprised of voucher website MyVoucherCodes.co.uk and ticket retailer Last Second Tickets. MyVoucherCodes.co.uk partners with the likes of John Lewis, Sky and Amazon to provide discount deals.

The acquisition has been made, Monitise says, to ‘augment’ its Buy Anything mobile commerce products by connecting it to a network of 60,000 brands and retails.

Pearson says, ‘Brands are realising just how important it is to adopt a mobile-first approach to getting in front of the growing Mobile Money ecosystem that Monitise is building across financial services, payment processors, mobile network operators and retailers.’

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The terms of the deal will see Alternative Investment Market (AIM) listed business Monitise pay an initial consideration of £24.5 million, based on the issuing of 43 million new shares. A further 2.5 million is held back for two years, and an earn-out of up to £28 million could be earned dependent on retention and hitting of ‘aggressive’ earn-out targets over two years.

Lee Cameron, chief commercial officer at Monitise, comments, ‘Markco Media has established itself as a leading player in creating digital solutions that link consumers to retailers via innovation, marketing and technology.

‘Buying rather than building these assets brings Monitise a marketing content delivery platform that has been developed over almost eight years, an instant network of marketing content partners, and a platform scalable across geographies.’

Going forward, Monitise plans to deliver marketing content including offers, discounts and tickets on a ‘targeted’ basis – leveraging the content network and offer-redemption capabilities of the Markco Media platform.