Media intelligence provider Meltwater has announced it has acquired social analytics and engagement player Sysomos.

For the PR and communications teams who engage with influencers over social media, Meltwater’s existing media intelligence division will now offer integrated news monitoring and social engagement.

Under Meltwater, Sysomos will become the social analytics division with a focus on delivering timely and relevant insights to brands and marketing teams.

Jorn Lyseggen, founder and CEO of Meltwater, said: “All the social analytics companies look at social data in isolation, limiting the insights for brands and businesses.

“With our acquisition of Sysomos, we can bring together news and social media under one company, giving social data context while adding social engagement to our news and media monitoring offering.”

Peter Heffring, the former Sysomos CEO who will run Meltwater’s social analytics division, said: “By joining the Meltwater team, our clients benefit from the leadership and global scale of one of the world’s first SaaS companies.

“In order to enhance the search and analytics experience in the Sysomos Platform, we will leverage the AI models and information extracted from the unstructured web by Meltwater.

“This will give our clients the context needed to collect more meaningful insights across their earned and owned social channels.”

Niklas de Besche, executive director of product at Meltwater, said the Sysomos acquisition cements Meltwater as the market leader of both social analytics and media intelligence.

“It’s not enough to simply give clients raw data or shallow analytics – businesses need relevant insights,” he said.

“Between our combined data partnerships, Sysomos’ social analytics and Meltwater’s AI models, we can combine social and news data to extract game-changing insights for both of our clients.

“At the same time, with Sysomos under the Meltwater brand, we can offer our clients greater integration between social engagement and media monitoring.”

The Sysomos acquisition is Meltwater’s seventh in the last 18 months.