The move also points to how mobile is increasingly being used by marketers to influence their traditional media buys, with the deal helping Coty quickly experiment with digital content so it can use the results to inform its traditional media buy. Coty, which markets brands such as philosophy, Rimmel and Sally Hansen, will lean on Beamly to help it accelerate the growth of its ecommerce business and support its goal of becoming a pure-play leader and challenger in beauty. 

?These best practices allow Coty to rapidly experiment with different video assets to determine which one is driving the highest clicks,? said Jason Forbes, CEO of Beamly. ?They can use this to inform the overall media mix. 

?The strategy provides insights in terms of which version is likely to resonate the most for a specific audience,? he said. 

?[Optimizing the media buy] is the ambition ? based on this real-time information, we are able to say, here are insights around your audiences you were not able to glean as quickly or deeply as before.?

Beamly has a proprietary content platform that targets millennial consumers on mobile and social, where they are spending a significant amount of time. 

Coty?s deal to buy Beamly reflects a step forward in the beauty company?s digital marketing capabilities, specifically social media, which is where Beamly?s core expertise is. 

The deal also reflects the growing convergence of content and commerce as consumers spend more time on mobile and social. 

Coty already has a number of efforts in market through its work with Beamly, with the beauty marketer leveraging the agency?s social data benchmarking, content creation, content optimization and consumer engagement tools. The beauty company?s in-house marketing organization is working with the Beamly team on digital marketing campaigns across consumer segments. 

Beamly focuses on taking brand content and making it more shareable across mobile and social. The platform can take existing brand content such as video or copy and repackage in a number of different ways. 

For example, put a two-minute brand video in Beamly?s hands and it promises to create dozens of versions of the video in a couple of hours. The videos will be different lengths and target different consumers, with Beamly focused on quickly ascertaining which version is resonating the most with consumers. 

In its work with Coty so far, Beamly has been able to outperform a number of benchmarks with content that boasts nine times the level of reach and engagement for the same amount of spend. 

Beamly also develops one-click brand engagement opportunities on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, where a significant percentage of users are looking for snippets of content. 

The agency, which is based in New York and London, will continue to expand campaigns across non-Coty clients and will continue to be led by Mr. Forbes. 

?The simpler you make the user journey, the more likely they are to engage,? Mr. Forbes said. ?Ninety five percent of users on Twitter don?t tweet and 85 percent on Facebook don?t post, but they will click on the like button. 

?We build one-click engagement experiences to drive engagement around their brands, which greatly lifts the likelihood that they will share their email or purchase a product,? he said.