Truffle Capital announced that its portfolio company LeadMedia acquired MediaFactory, a leading online performance marketing company based in Sao Paulo (Brazil). Truffle Capital is a major European private equity firm.

Truffle’s portfolio firm, LeadMedia, is a leading European online performance marketing company with headquarters in Paris, France. The firm was founded by Stephane Darracq (a French serial technology entrepreneur) and backed by Truffle Capital.

LeadMedia provides its business clients with a number of internet marketing solutions, including qualified traffic generation, lead and traffic retargeting, online customer relationship management (CRM), lead generation and the sale of tailor-made technology solutions for behavioral and semantic targeting.

Following its merger with MediaFactory, LeadMedia group intends to achieve a turnover in excess of 25 million USD in 2011 with its team of 100 specialists based in Paris, Sao Paulo and Los Angeles.

Stéphane Darracq, Chairman, LeadMedia commented that the firm’s presence in the Brazilian market since 2009 has enabled it to confirm the economic vigor of this sector, with its triple-digit annual growth rates! He further noted that the acquisition of Media Factory means that LeadMedia attains a solid foundation on which to build its business, thanks to a high-quality local management team and 70 staff.

However, commenting on the investment, Bernard Louis Roques, Truffle Capital’s co-founder in charge of the IT portfolio, said that the relevance of LeadMedia’s business model (as evidenced by strong growth in its home market in France) has been emphasized by the company’s entry onto the Brazilian market – a market with a sharp focus on performance marketing and social media. Thanks to this major acquisition, LeadMedia has created its second home market, he added.

Truffle Capital invests in and builds technology leaders in the IT, life science and energy sectors. With €400 million under management, Truffle Capital is managed by a team of four partners. The firm seeks to achieve superior financial returns by leveraging its industry knowledge, extensive network and focus on spin-offs to identify business ventures that match latent market needs.

Media Factory is the digital performance company of BrANDS, a digital communication holding company from Ideiasnet. It was founded in 2002 under the brand name Ivoxcorp – one of the pioneers in offering solutions to generate efficient e-mail marketing actions in Brazil. In 2008, the company expanded its range of services on offer, with a focus on digital performance.