If someone can translate Salesforce's $700m cool Krux plan into English, we'd be really grateful

Data slurper slurped is the best we can tell

Salesforce is buying data aggregator and analytics outfit Krux for US$700m in cash and shares.

Exactly what Krux, based in San Francisco, does is hidden in wonderfully esoteric babble speak. It allegedly "provides a holistic system for consumer engagement and data governance, helping marketers, media companies, and agencies orchestrate breakthrough media, content, and commerce experiences."

God help us.

The takeover target also boasts it can “capture, control, and connect consumer data across screens and sources.” It does so by collecting data signatures for desktop, mobile, tablet and set-top users on “display, social, search and video” channels in real time.

This is beautiful marketing prattle for collecting and funneling people's personal information into the hands of advertisers – a pipeline for targeted ads and special offers. All this info is slurped from more than "two billion browsers and devices worldwide" serving "over 20 billion page views per month" and processing "more than 1.5 billion CRM records per month."

That – along with a customer list that includes ConAgra, Kellogg, and JetBlue Airways – is worth $340m in cash to Salesforce, with the rest coming in the form of 3.4 million to six million Salesforce shares.

The acquisition means Salesforce gets a prefab data management platform to give its Salesforce Marketing Cloud better audience segmentation and management.

Krux and Salesforce were already close: in June 2015, Krux was one of five companies feeding information into Salesforce's Active Audiences platform. Ad Exchanger writes, however, that Salesforce had trouble ingesting big streams of data from its partners' systems, so it makes sense to bring Krux formally in house.

The acquisition also means Salesforce will no longer need the help of Oracle or Adobe for its data management platform. ®