Factua Acquires Performance Agency Intelsio to Pair Human Expertise With AI Infrastructure
Factua has acquired Intelsio, a performance marketing agency with over a decade of customer acquisition work for major consumer brands. The deal combines Intelsio's client relationships and on-the-ground expertise with Factua's AI-powered platform for media buying, creative optimization, and campaign scaling.
Deal terms were not disclosed. Intelsio's leadership and team remain in place and will continue serving existing clients.
What's Changing in Performance Marketing
Performance marketing-affiliate programs, pay-per-call, lead generation, cost-per-sale-has always required experienced operators who understand partner negotiations, funnel dynamics, and customer acquisition costs. What's new is which decisions machines now make better: which creative to test, which audience to bid on, which publisher to add, where to route calls.
The acquisition reflects a specific thesis: the winning model isn't human expertise alone or AI infrastructure alone, but both integrated tightly together.
What Each Brings to the Deal
Intelsio operates as an extension of client growth teams, scaling brands through strategic partnerships and performance-based pricing-the agency only gets paid when customers arrive. The firm has supported multiple brands on paths to billion-dollar acquisitions.
Factua's platform unifies first- and third-party data, activates across email, SMS, paid media, SEO, and outbound channels, and runs AI agents and automation including self-improving creative loops and AI-powered media buying. The company also operates owned-and-operated properties like CleanPlates.com, giving clients access to premium inventory.
The combined organization offers boutique-level attention on every account backed by a platform that tests, optimizes, and scales faster than traditional agencies. Intelsio clients get infrastructure without losing their service model. Factua gains enterprise relationships and a team whose performance-based DNA aligns with how the platform measures success.
Why Now
Gary Salmirs, Chairman and Chief M&A Officer at Factua, said the company builds through acquisition with a clear filter: "teams with real results, real clients, and real partners whose capabilities compound when they plug into our platform."
Jesse Beal, Co-Founder and President at Intelsio, said the rate at which campaigns can be tested and optimized inside Factua's platform represents "a different category of velocity than anything we could assemble on our own."
Anna Jefferis-Lewis, Co-Founder and CEO at Intelsio, added: "The work of analyzing the true value of each partnership has become something AI enables at a rate previously thought impossible. Combining our relationships and judgment with Factua's agentic tooling means we can meaningfully expand what we deliver to every brand on our roster."
This is Factua's latest acquisition in a focused M&A strategy aimed at building what the company calls "the modern performance-marketing stack."
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