LITTLE ROCK — Acxiom Corp. will add about 160 jobs in the next six months as the company expands in digital media.
Most of the jobs will be at Acxiom’s offices in Little Rock and Conway, said Tim McKenna, director of staffing for the Little Rock-based interactive marketing services provider. Other jobs will be in Fayetteville, New York City and California.
Acxiom has 2,700 employees in Arkansas and 6,300 worldwide.
Positions will include software developers, software testers, product managers and “lots of digital media expertise,” McKenna said Monday.
The company will be looking for seasoned experts as well as entry-level candidates, many of whom will come from the company’s internship program, McKenna said.
The expansion is designed to help fulfill Acxiom’s strategy to expand into digital media by looking at data collected by different digital platforms, spokesman Jonathan Portis said.
McKenna said, “Digital media comprises a lot of different things, including social media, Internet, TV,mobile technology and data generated by rewards programs ... like Groupon,” referring to the coupon website. “Acxiom is putting together a good platform to help companies harness data for marketing purposes in an anonymous fashion.”
Portis could not say what the salary range is for the new hires because of competitive reasons. Those wanting to apply can go to acxiom.com, where there are about 170 job openings listed.
After the first phase of hiring, Portis said, the company expects to add an additional 240 to 340 jobs throughout all its offices, though he could not offer a time frame for that.
The new strategy was announced last week by Acxiom’s chief executive officer, Scott Howe, in the company’s fiscal third quarter earnings report. The third quarter ended Dec. 31.
Howe said Acxiom will invest about $30 million in the next year to begin implementing its new strategy.
Carter Malloy, an analyst with Stephens Inc., said the strategy appears to be the right one.
“I think that building what your customers want and helping enable them further in the growing online channel is the right strategy,” Malloy said. “Scott Howe and his team are the right people to lead those efforts.”
But, Malloy did note there are always concerns when spending that amount of money on a new strategy.
“Execution is always a concern,” he said. “Are you hiring and building the right products efficiently? And can you do it successfully or does it end up costing a bunch more money?”
Malloy added that investing in infrastructure and moving further into the online realm has generally proven a successful strategy for other companies.
He explained that Acxiom assists companies such as Citibank, GM and Gap in understanding their data and who their customers are and how best to reach them.
“Acxiom is the guy who helps [its] customers learn how to act,” Malloy said.
Business, Pages 23 on 02/07/2012