Brand tracking startup Tracksuit has acquired Sydney-based startup, Hall, which measures how brands appear in responses from AI assistants.
Terms of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed, however the deal is set to add AI-monitoring capability to Tracksuit’s existing business of surveying consumer sentiment for brands including Unilever and Pfizer.
Founded in 2021, Tracksuit sells a subscription dashboard that tracks brand awareness and purchase intent across nearly 20,000 brands in 25 markets.
Hall, founded in 2023, built tools to measure how brands surface across AI assistants–part of a wave of startups, including Profound and Bluefish, pitching so-called answer-engine optimisation tools to marketers as search traffic shifts from Google to AI assistants.
Hall’s full team, including founder Kai Forsyth, has joined Tracksuit. Forsyth will be in charge of leading the product direction for AI visibility.
Forsyth said building Hall had shown that short-term tactics could spike a brand’s AI visibility, but what actually moved the needle was brand-building work that made people already know and trust the brand.
“Doing that inside a platform that already has human data on tens of thousands of brands gives marketers a more accurate read on where their brand actually stands and where it’s headed,” he said.
Connor Archbold, CEO and co-founder of Tracksuit, said brand had always lived in people’s minds and increasingly also lived inside AI.
“Acquiring Hall allows us to combine human perception with AI visibility, giving marketers a more complete understanding of their brand,” he said.
The completed executive leadership team includes Tom Mansfield as CMO, Dan Fleming as COO, Anne Dröge as chief product officer, Cara Fonseca-Ensor as CTO, Hamish Mathieson as chief revenue officer and Samantha Gadd as chief people officer.
AI visibility will begin rolling out to Tracksuit customers later this year.
