AD TECH AND MARTECH
Cavai | August 23, 2021
Cavai, the global leader in conversational ad tech, has raised £6.5m from a range of prominent investors including Norway’s 2 largest venture players, Investinor and Idekapital, and ad tech industry specialist FirstPartyCapital. It will use the funds to bolster its offering in existing markets, develop its product portfolio, and expand in the US as it gets IPO-ready
Alex Rahaman, London based partner at Idekapital, has relevant international ad tech experience and will join the board, commenting:
“Conversational, digital advertising is the new, future-facing way for global advertisers to reach and very effectively engage with audiences. Ahead of huge changes in the industry, Cavai has been recognised as the leader in this space, with the most intuitive self-serve technology already adopted by major holding groups. We at Idekapital were very impressed with the speed and effectiveness with which Steffen and the Cavai team have built an international business and are delighted to be leading this round together with Investinor and other reputable international investors”.
Rich Ashton, managing partner, FirstPartyCapital comments:
“Historically, creativity has been hard to automate and scale, which is perhaps why the ad industry has placed so much emphasis on hyper-targeting consumers through data, at the expense of the user experience. However, Cavai’s solution is a complete game-changer, enabling marketers to easily create highly-engaging online experiences that people actually want to interact with. The metrics speak for themselves: clients are seeing 10-20x ROAS, resulting in a 3x YoY revenue increase for the company. This opportunity was an absolute no-brainer for us. Steffen and the team have built the foundations of an iconic company, and we are extremely excited to help them achieve their goal of becoming one of the most successful ad tech companies of the decade”.
Cavai was founded in Oslo in 2018 and now has over 60 employees globally, with offices in Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munich, London, Singapore, Barcelona, Toronto, and New York. As the company continues its global expansion, it is developing next-generation, user-centric marketing solutions which enable one-to-one dialogue with consumers across a variety of formats, including video. Cavai will also be launching conversational e-commerce solutions which will integrate with local payment solutions providers and enable in-ad purchases. As marketers move away from interruptive formats and seek privacy-by-design solutions to personalise communications and generate insights, conversational formats have helped Cavai’s clients to stand out from the competition, drive ROI whilst enabling true interactivity, and bringing humanity to brand communications.
Steffen Svartberg, founder and CEO of Cavai, comments:
“We are delighted to have found industry-focused investors that understand the huge changes that are happening within the marketplace, whilst having also found investment funds that can take us through multiple series of funding as we scale, compete on a truly global level and build up towards an IPO”.
“We have built a platform that is sustainable, with user experience baked into the core. Non-interruptive formats deliver insights whilst also guiding consumers, with brands such as Amazon, Nivea, and BMW leveraging our platform to great effect. Our client list includes 6 of the biggest media agencies in the world. With an exceptionally strong appetite for conversational advertising, Cavai has seen 3X revenue growth from H1 2020 to H1 2021”.
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TargetBay | October 01, 2020
TargetBay, an Ecommerce Marketing Cloud, used by thousands of online stores across the globe, has partnered with Google to share high-quality product reviews from TargetBay's clients on Google Product Search and Google Shopping Ads. Ecommerce store owners and managers can use product reviews to drive more qualified shoppers to their website and gain more visibility across Google. TargetBay is excited to announce that it is now a Google-approved product reviews aggregator. Why is TargetBay and Google Partnership Significant? If you are a client of TargetBay, then you will be able to send your product reviews to Google, and these reviews will now show up in Google Shopping Ads. This partnership provides higher visibility across Google - both Google Ads and Google Shopping Ads. The increased exposure drives more qualified shoppers to your product pages. Product reviews offer better product research and purchase decisions for shoppers.
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ADVERTISER PLATFORMS
Twitter | May 17, 2022
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has put a halt on his acquisition of Twitter due to recent announcements from the company about the prevalence of spam and bot accounts on the platform. Nearly two weeks ago, Twitter released a report which stated that fake accounts on the platform made up less than 5 percent of daily users. The information lacked rigidity to support the claims, and it seemed flexible in its assessment, which became a turn-off for Musk.On this premise, Musk tweeted,
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users"
Twitter also hinted at taking this report with a pinch of salt, as it stated,
"The actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated. We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts"
Musk claims himself as a "free speech absolutist and offered $44billion to takeover twitter on April 25th. Musk's purchase was expected to lead to a renewed focus on personal verification and a crackdown on bot accounts. To verify a user's identity on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants them to go through a more rigorous process than simply providing an email or phone number. This would prevent the prevalence of spambots on the platform, and the authorities will be able to act on the violators of the speech laws.
Twitter's stock was initially down more than 20% in pre-market trade following the announcement, but the stock regained slightly. In his second tweet, Musk stated that he is "still committed to acquisition" two hours after his first one.
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