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Posts Tagged ‘Major Brands’

Placecast lands $5M more for location-triggered mobile advertisements

San Francisco’s 1020 Placecast, a company working on new mobile advertising technology, said today it raised $5 million in more funding to continue developing its opt-in location-triggered ad service.

Placecast, which previously raised $2 million, pushes advertisements from major brands to the consumer’s phone depending on their physical location, but allows users to opt-in to the system. Here’s a scenario: You’re shopping and have opted in to receive advertisement alerts from your favorite store, say GAP (you can do this by visiting the retailers store, website, or even Facebook page). You’ve parked your car and happen to be walking just a few blocks from a GAP — bang — your phone goes off and there’s a “30 percent-off” message from GAP on t-shirts.  While some might think this would be annoying, remember you did opt in.

For retailers, the service gives them an opportunity to combat dropping foot traffic at stores and energize regional specific marketing campaigns. Focusing on Fortune 500 retailers and brands, Placecast has several well recognized partners, including: Yellowbook, FedEx Office, Avis and Budget Rental Cars and Hyatt Hotels.

Placecast recently comissioned a survey by Harris Interactive that determined that 27 percent of consumers would be somewhat interested in receiving cell phone alerts about sales, assuming it was an opt-in system. As for what alerts they would be interested in receiving, the majority noted either restaurants, events or weather.

Similar companies like Useful Networks and Creativity Software are also providing global brands  – Burger King, BP, Samsung, Pearson and Walt Disney  – with location-based systems.

Round two funding included Quatrex Capital and current investors Onset Ventures and Voyager Capital.

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GSI Commerce Enters The Private Sale Space With Acquisition Of Retail Convergence

GSI Commerce, a company that powers e-commerce platforms for major brands, has acquired Retail Convergence, which operates RueLaLa.com, a private sale site and SmartBargains.com, an off-price e-commerce marketplace, in a deal valued as high as $350 million.

Launched in April 2008, RueLaLa is a members-only online sample sale that sells luxury brands at discount prices during two-day private sale events in the fashion, accessories, footwear, home, jewelry and other categories. SmartBargains.com, which launched in 1999, is a online marketplace for the sale of off-price merchandise across a wide cross-section of categories.

It’s not surprising that GSI wants to enter the online private sale space considering the growth of the other players in the same arena, such as Gilt Groupe, Vente Privee, HauteLook and Ideeli.

RueLaLa’s membership has already grown to more than 1.2 million members in 18 months and is seeing strong revenue growth. In the third quarter of 2009, RueLaLa’s net revenues increased by nearly five times from the previous year, to $28 million.

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Allied Red: An agency glide your brand across different media

As we noted in today’s story on Massiverse, transmedia storytelling, or telling stories across different media, is catching on. Entertainment properties that succeed in one medium are being translated into other media, such as a film being made into a game.

Sandi Isaacs, a former Paramount Digital Entertainment executive (and a judge during our MobileBeat 2008 conference), is starting a new company today to help major brands and entertainment companies manage their properties across media. The three-person New York company is called Allied Red and it has received funding from integrated marketing firm Allied Integrating Marketing, a big company with lots of clients across 22 offices nationwide.

Allied Red calls itself a strategic brand licensing and representation company. Its first client is Paramount Digital Entertainment. Allied Red will work with Paramount to make sure the company can fully exploit its movie properties across new platforms such as video games, Facebook, MySpace or the iPhone.

It’s one more entertainment agency among many. But it shows that the thinking about creating cross-media properties from the start is happening in a number of places in the entertainment industry. The future of media is about transmedia, where the point is to have more “touch points” with consumers where they can interact with a brand, Isaacs says. One consumer may have no use for a Star Trek-branded video game on a console, but that consumer might like to play a Star Trek app on the iPhone.

Some entertainment companies have been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Isaacs says her job is to make the right connections between people so that high-quality projects come together. Isaacs has been joined at Allied Red by Laurie Windrow, a veteran licensing expert, and Marc Berman, who will oversee finance and operations. Isaacs worked for Paramount for nine years and before that was in the video game industry at Activision and Disney Interactive. Beyond Paramount, Allied Red also has some undisclosed clients. At the very least, it will be interesting to see Paramount get more involved in games and digital media.

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Yahoo Veterans Launch Rocket Fuel, A “Hybrid” Ad Network

A team of Yahoo veterans who built its behavioral targeting advertising technology are publicly launching a hybrid ad network today called Rocket Fuel, which they’ve tested over the past year with major brands including Nike, Dell, Microsoft, and American Express. Despite keeping quiet, Rocket Fuel’s ad network reaches 40 million people and shows them about 100 million ads per month.

CEO George John calls Rocket Fuel a “hybrid ad network” because it combines all sorts of targeting data (social, behavioral, contextual, geographical, search) to figure out what works best at any particular moment. “We saw how important it was to let the data tell you which ad to show,” says John, who came from Yahoo along with president Richard Frankel and CTO Abhinav Gupta.

Rocket Fuel’s algorithm considers everything from a consumer’s online behavior and location to the time of day and what particular ad was shown. If people who listen to electronica music are more likely to click on an ad than those who listen to jazz, or people who log in from work respond better than people from home, Rocket Fuel tries to ferret out those details and feed them back into the mechanics of the ad campaign. John explains:

We let the date tell us what works and what is important. Instead of inflicting on customers thousands of targeting options, we figure out which options are working well and move inventory in that way.

Sounds simple enough, but apparently this is not the way most ad targeting is done. Instead, advertisers and ad agencies typically are given a confusing array of targeting options and are left to their own devices to sort through them all. Rocket Fuel is automating that testing process and speeding up the feedback loop so that advertisers can hone in on whatever combination of targeting is working at that second.

But does the world really need another advertising network, hybrid or otherwise? If Rocket Fuel can deliver better advertising campaign ROIs, advertisers will give it a shot. That’s all that matters. If it can’t, it won’t make it off the launchpad.

The companyl raised $6.8 million in a series A round a year ago from Mohr Davidow, Labrador Ventures, and individual angel investors.

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Touch Revolution’s household Android devices coming this year — it’s Hammer time!

When a former Apple product engineer mixes up some Google-juice with MC Hammer you’d be surprised at what you get. If you guessed a range of household Android devices sporting 4.3- to 10-inch touchscreens, WiFi, and Ethernet connectivity well, that would be weird… but you’d be right. Mark Hamblin, the founder and CEO of Touch Revolution who claims to have worked on the iPhone and iPod touch, breaks down the Touch Revolution product family into three major categories: 1) home control to manage lights, security, heating and ventilation, 2) media control for the TV, stereo, and DVR programming, and 3) home-based smartphones like the NIMble we played with at CES. The first Touch Revolution modules will launch later this year inside a range of devices that can be hand-held, placed on a tabletop, or even embedded in a wall. While not naming names, Hamblin says that the hardware and software will customized and sold by “companies with major brands” before the end of the year in the “US and elsewhere.” As for Hammer, that’s hard to say — but we’d buy pretty much anything he’d like to officially endorse.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Household

Touch Revolution’s household Android devices coming this year — it’s Hammer time! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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