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WibiData Raises $5M From NEA And Eric Schmidt

Posted at Techchrunch, Exclusive: WibiData, the big data management startup co-founded by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia [pictured, left] and Aaron Kimball [pictured, right], is announcing $5 million in new funding from NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Past investors in the company include Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and SV Angel.

Bisciglia tells us that WibiData (which was formerly Odiago) is focused on creating a unified framework for engineers and data scientists who collaborate around tools and applications. The product is still in beta, but has already doubled its customer base. “We’re helping deliver personalized products and services in a way that can scale to large volumes of data and be flexible as data evolves,” he says.

The new funding will be used to grow WibiData’s engineering team, open an office and more. More...

In APAC, Media Monitors Group Has A New Name - Sentia Media

The 8th of February 2012 marks the launch of Sentia Media, the new corporate parent for the group of companies previously operating as part of the Media Monitors Group.

Sentia Media CEO John Croll [pictured] said: "Ours is a company with a long and proud history in media monitoring, with a record of industry leadership, providing ever faster and more accurate media information to our clients.

Sentia Media now owns: Media Monitors, the leading media information supplier in the Asia-Pacific with 12 offices across Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore; MediaBanc, South East Asia's largest monitoring company with offices in six countries; Brandtology, one of the world's leading online business intelligence companies, headquartered in Singapore and experiencing exponential growth; 360m, our advisory and analysis company providing research-based insight and unrivalled experience; China Clippings, the leading provider of monitoring services to communications agencies across China; and Slice Media, Australasia's most effective and comprehensive budget monitoring solution.  More...

Measuring Conversion Rate: Are you making an Impact?

Tricia Aanderud [pictured], President at And Data writes: Once you start looking at your Google Analytics, it is thrilling to see that visitors are coming to your humble Web site and some even return. Your first inclination is to create fancy charts to show the traffic patterns, compare the patterns by day of week, segment into New and Returning visitors, soon your charts may even be trending on #StuffDataGeeksDo. More…

Enter the Dragon – the Marketing Exodus From the U.K. and U.S.?

Jake Langwith [pictured] Head of Digital Marketing at Firebrand Talent writes at ClickZ.asia: One trend that increased throughout 2011 and I predict will increase in the coming year is the move of experienced digital marketers overseas. I’m not talking about relatively short distance moves as in London to Paris, but of people jetting off to long-haul destinations to take up new jobs. So where are some of the best U.K. and U.S. talent heading to? More…

In Germany, MEC Lands New Analytics and Insight Leader

Expands team with the arrival of Karin Rothstock 

2 February, 2012 - DÜSSELDORF — MEC, www.mecglobal.com, today announced the appointment of Karin Rothstock [pictured] as Managing Partner, Head of Analytics and Insight. 

Matthias Brüll, MEC’s CEO said, “Analytics and Insight is of great importance to our business and for the optimization of communication and data-management ROI for our clients. With the arrival of Karin, we are delighted to have a very experienced leader join us with such a fantastic digital background. " Download full report

In US, eXelate Moves To Support CPGs With ZIP+4 Ad Targeting

Laurie Sullivan, writer and editor at Media Post writes: ZIP+4 ad targeting gives advertisers the ability to pull in offline data based on ZIP codes plus the four-digit number that follows, narrowing down a user's geographic location.

For those wondering how it works: companies that match data to their ZIP+4 data, which identifies multiple households in a specific neighborhood like a city block or a group of apartments, can match offline purchase activity in grocery stores, for example, to online browsing to more closely target ads.  That's about as close as brands can get today, said eXelate CEO Mark Zagorski [pictured].  More...

Big Data: Will Open Source Software Challenge BI & Analytics Software Vendors

Dr. Harish Kotadia [pictured], Social Media CRM and Analytics Consultant, posted on Smart Data Collective:  Predictive Analytics has been billed as the next big thing for almost fifteen years, but hasn’t gained mass acceptance so far the way ERP and CRM solutions have. One of the main reason for this is the high upfront investment required in Software, Hardware and Talent for implementing a Predictive Analytics solution.

Well, this is about to change – thanks to technologies such as Apache Hadoop (which supports Big Data distributed applications under a free license), HBase (an open source, non-relational/distributed database) and the freely available R programming language (which is part of the GNU project).  More...

Designing An Accurate Global A/B Test To Improve Campaign Optimization

Robert L. Marsa, Ph.D. [pictured], VP of Technology at Adometry, Inc. writes for Mediapost's Metrics Insider: For online marketers, the practice of global optimization involves making small changes to the volumes of impressions served on all, or almost all, ad placements with the goal of maximizing a target metric, such as gross profit or number of conversions.

While advertisers have been performing more simple A/B tests for years, many now realize that they need to improve their tests in order to effectively optimize global campaign spends and remain competitive. While global optimization tests require a bit more effort, the results can significantly improve return on ad spend (ROAS).  More...

The Death of Google's Urchin Analytics -- And Why We All Should Care

Ryan DeShazer, Vice President, Global Practice Leader – Search at GyroHSR writes at MediaPost: Last week Google officially announced it would be retiring its Urchin Software web analytics technology -- a move that was a long time coming.  Since Google acquired Urchin Software in 2005, it has made significant enhancements to the application’s core functionality.  Focusing primarily on the JavaScript-based version of Urchin, and rebranding it “Google Analytics,” Google evolved the simple on-demand application into the world’s most widely use analytics platform.  More...

In UK, MPG Media Contacts Hires Former Zenith Strategist

mrweb.com reports: In the UK, MPG Media Contacts - which is part of ad and communications services group Havas - has appointed former Zenithoptimedia Head of Strategy Hamid Habib [pictured] to lead its Catalyst division, which combines research, analysis and ‘idea facilitation’.

CEO Marc Mendoza comments: ‘Hamid’s appointment shows how serious we are about investing in our products and services, to become the sort of modern media business our clients need to steer them through the complex media landscape in the coming decade. We loved Hamid’s energy and creativity and see him as a key lynchpin to drive this agenda forward.’ More…