I-COM worldmeasurementnews

In US, Clearspring Taps Internet Veteran Ramsey McGrory as CEO

Former Yahoo! Exec Joins Inc. 500 Web Company to Accelerate Growth

McLean, Va. - September 26, 2011 — Clearspring, provider of the largest platform for sharing online content, AddThis, announced today it has named former Yahoo! executive Ramsey McGrory [pictured] as the company's new Chief Executive Officer. McGrory joins Clearspring from Yahoo! where he led the Yahoo! US data business and Right Media, pioneer of the digital advertising exchange.

"In our industry, data and social are where incredible innovation is happening. I'm thrilled to be joining Clearspring. Clearspring has a fantastic team and a differentiated ability to understand online consumer behavior through its massive reach and realtime data processing capability," said McGrory. "This is exciting because Clearspring's premier digital services platform has not only proven to be powerful in the advertising market, but also it has the potential to disrupt others as well." More…

In US, iCrossing Appoints Former Amazon.com Executive to Lead Analytics Practice

NEW YORK – September 27, 2011 – iCrossing, a global digital marketing agency, announced the appointment of Doug Bryan [pictured] as vice president, analytics. He will lead the agency's analytics team, which uses a variety of marketing intelligence techniques to help iCrossing clients build connected brands.

Based out of the agency’s Chicago office, he will report to Adam Lavelle, chief strategy officer, iCrossing. "Analytics rests at the heart of iCrossing’s real-time marketing offering. It is part of our DNA," said Lavelle. "Doug’s industrial-strength analytics background equips iCrossing and its clients with the needed skills to address the increasingly complex digital marketing landscape. Doug’s leadership will help guide our already market-leading analytics team to what’s next." More...

In UK, New Analytics Technology Company iJento Secures $8M in Funding and Launches into North America

iJento analytics technology unlocks the value of visitor level data for improved multichannel customer intelligence, enabling richer analytics for campaign attribution, segmentation and personalization

Oxfordshire, UK and Norwalk, CT – Sept. 28, 2011 – iJento, a leading provider in multichannel customer intelligence, today announced that it has secured $8M in funding led by Nauta Capital and Oxford Capital Partners, with financing from Silicon Valley Bank. The funds will be used to fuel iJento’s expansion into North America where the company is launching its portfolio of solutions and consulting services to enable organizations to extend current analytics capabilities to perform multichannel customer intelligence.

“At iJento, we offer solutions that transform online and multichannel customer intelligence,” said Peter Ryan [pictured], Chief Executive at iJento. “We extended our technology to optimize the silos of rich customer behavior data locked away in other web analytics systems. We believe we are the only open platform that enables organizations to integrate both online and offline data sources to facilitate a single customer view. When combined, these solutions address the predictive challenges that marketers face when answering critical questions about campaign attribution, segmentation and personalization.” More...

In US, Mindshare Technologies Achieves 100 Consecutive Months of Revenue Growth

SALT LAKE CITY (September 26, 2011) - Mindshare Technologies today announced that it has achieved the incredible milestone of 100 consecutive months of recurring revenue growth. The company's impressive sales performance has been not only consistent, but aggressive: in May 2003, Mindshare registered revenues of approximately $3,600; in August 2011, the company recorded revenues of more than $1.6 million.

Mindshare's automated technology and deep expertise provide customer feedback tailored to the situations of specific stores and customers, saving clients tens of thousands of hours each year, while increasing accuracy. Using custom, industry-specific text analytics, the company is able to achieve levels of specificity in three to five questions that competitors are unable to duplicate with surveys that take dozens of questions. For example, the company helped one of the world's leading fast-food brands accurately link a pattern of concern among customers to a detail as small as the placement of pickles on its burgers and sandwiches.

"This growth milestone we are celebrating is a tribute to so many of the extraordinary clients and employees that stuck with us through our lean, rocky beginnings," said John Sperry [pictured], co-founder and CEO of Mindshare Technologies. "We have worked diligently to develop and validate an entirely new approach to building customer-driven feedback systems that build trust between our clients and the people they serve." More…

In Australia, Online Audience Measurement Moves Closer to Market Readiness

29^th September 2011: IAB Australia and Nielsen have today released a comprehensive set of reference materials regarding the new hybrid online audience measurement solution, Nielsen Online Ratings (NOR), addressing both technical and more general industry queries.   They have also announced that they will be jointly hosting a series of seminars around Australia from November onwards for marketers, agencies and publishers to introduce NOR and discuss the implications for the industry.  Details of both can be found at www.iabaustralia.com.au.  

Scott McLellan [pictured], CEO of Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) said: “AANA looks forward to the rollout of the educational seminars and the results from the independent audit of Nielsen’s online audience measurement panel, which will allow advertisers to better understand the online audience and how to invest their media budget.” More...

In US, New Study Shows Incentivized Brand Ad Captures 91% of Audience

Latest study from KN Dimestore reveals that giving consumers something of value in exchange for their attention creates significant impact on consumer perception and purchase behavior

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- A new study issued today by KN Dimestore and SocialVibe shows that incentivized advertising works to drive active attention to a brand message and significantly increases brand perception and purchase intent. According to the study, more than 90 percent of people pay active attention to the brand message when interacting with incentivized engagements, and brand perception rises an average of 38 percent after completing the engagement.

“There’s been a debate around value-exchange advertising that stems from an unfounded assumption that consumers looking for the incentive will merely ‘sit through’ an ad simply in exchange for the benefit,” said Jay Samit [pictured], CEO for SocialVibe. “The KN Dimestore study shows without a doubt that not only does incentivized advertising work, it works better than any other form of brand advertising out there. People go online with a purpose, and most forms of advertising, such as display and pre-roll, are disruptive and not additive to that experience. The way to capture a consumer’s real attention is to respect their time commitment through the value-exchange approach.” More…

Porter Novelli Launches TrendingTarget

Sep 26, 2011. Many companies and brands today monitor conversations in social media to hear what is being said about them.  But until now, it has been difficult to listen to and analyze what else their target may be talking about.  These opinions, trends and ideas may not relate specifically to a brand or product, but knowing what else is important to a target audience can help engage and influence them more effectively.

Enter TrendingTarget, launched today by global communications leader Porter Novelli. TrendingTarget is the first social media analytics tool to reveal the full breadth of topics that a target audience is discussing online in real time.  “Porter Novelli is creating tools that get to the heart of what clients need today – immediate and actionable information,” said Gary Stockman [pictured], CEO, Porter Novelli. “With TrendingTarget we can quickly analyze the wide range of interests of an audience and learn what’s meaningful to them right now, so we can create programs that will influence them to take action on behalf of a brand or organization. Rapid response - from data analysis to insight to action – is what clients need in a world where news, trends and crises travel faster than ever before.” More...

In UK, TNS and Movirtu release findings that will shape mobile innovation in India, Senegal & Tanzania

New research unlocks power of mobile to transform lives

London, 21st September, 2011: World-leading research company TNS has completed an in-depth study, commissioned by Movirtu, to build an understanding of the needs and attitudes of the rural poor in Tanzania, India and Senegal. These regions have the highest concentration of ‘bottom-of-the-pyramid’ consumers, living on less than $2 per day, and this research was conducted to identify the real potential of mobile technology in empowering these farmers, women entrepreneurs and young people to improve their quality of life in these areas.

Ramona Liberoff [pictured], Executive Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Planning at Movirtu, said, "We recognise the importance of listening to users tell us their needs and daily realities in our focus markets of Africa and South Asia. TNS’s extensive footprint across Africa and India and their combination of sector excellence and on the ground cultural understanding meant that they knew the right approach to take to build insights about the complex and evolving needs of our end-users, whose mobile needs are very different from more affluent or urban consumers. This research was critical to inform our product development – ensuring that we really will deliver benefits to these communities and can be a valuable partner to our mobile operator and NGO clients.” More…

Effective Drivers: Media Mix Modeling vs. Attribution Management

Anto Chittilappilly [pictured], Co-Founder, President & CTO of Visual IQ writes at MediaPost:  Media mix modeling is typically delivered as a distinct "snapshot in time" project, and not an ongoing, iterative process.

But the advantage that attribution management has is that once your initial set of insights are produced and you optimize your efforts based on those insights, a set of results get generated that flow back into your attribution solution. So with each iteration of your marketing results data that is fed into the model, the more and more accurate the model becomes at predicting the results of future changes to your campaigns, resulting in ever-more-accurate insights and ever-more-accurate and effective optimization. More...

In US, DataXu Boosts Social Campaign Results with the Launch of DX Social

Leading DSP creates cross-channel insights to drive superior consumer engagement across social channels

BOSTON – September 26, 2011 – DataXu (www.dataxu.com) – the leading multi-channel demand-side platform (DSP) for digital marketing effectiveness – today unveiled DX Social.

DX Social enables brands to drive social engagement across multiple media channels. As part of an integrated, cross-channel platform, DX Social creates and uses consumer insights to maximize digital marketing effectiveness. By employing DataXu’s core impression-level decisioning capability for online display, mobile, and video campaigns, DX Social uncovers unique consumer insights that are used to target and optimize ad spend in social media platforms like Facebook.

“True to our overarching vision of delivering a unified view of the consumer, DX Social harnesses the full power of the social Web in a new, powerful way,” stated Mike Baker [pictured], CEO of DataXu.  “Even with the granular targeting offered by platforms like Facebook, adding behavioral audience insights moves the needle big time.  It’s clear that marketers with a superior understanding of their audience will gain more social mindshare.” More…