AUSTIN, TX — (Marketwire) — 05/16/12 — Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation and integration, today announced that it has closed $3.3 million in venture capital funding. The Series A round is led by Austin Ventures and includes new investor Battery Ventures as well as existing investors Floodgate Fund, Allegro Venture Partners and Metamorphic Ventures. Mass Relevance will use the new financing to accelerate growth for the company-s platform among media, entertainment, consumer brands and retailers.
The financing comes as leading brands, ranging from Madonna and MTV through Target and Purina, turn to Mass Relevance to use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile. Fifteen months after its launch with two customers, the company now serves 120 clients and more than doubled revenue expectations in fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. Mass Relevance clients include the “Big Four” television networks, 7 of the top 10 2011 cable networks, as well as top brands like Target, Cisco, Ford, Samsung, New York Giants, Pepsi, Purell and Victoria-s Secret.
“People around the world are actively participating in social conversations about brands, media and entertainment, and this content is passing us by faster than ever before,” said Sam Decker, founder and CEO of Mass Relevance. “Brands are realizing the opportunity to capture these conversations and integrate them across their marketing efforts in order to engage and activate their audiences — ultimately driving social buzz and sales for their brand. With the Mass Relevance platform brands can aggregate and filter the world-s social conversations to build safe and controlled social experiences that integrate anywhere the brand lives.”
In the past 9 months alone, Mass Relevance has delivered more than 3 billion pieces of social content to multiple digital surfaces (curated from over 9 billion pieces flowing through the Mass Relevance platform) to support iconic events like the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, launches such as The Avengers and Madonna MDNA, and television phenoms American Idol, X-Factor, 80 Plates and The Voice. Mass Relevance has also seen significant traction with innovative global brands, such as Pepsi who is currently using the Mass Relevance platform to bring fresh #livefornow content across the Pepsi.com homepage.
“Mass Relevance is a strategic partner who can meet the technology and creative challenges of bringing the voices of millions into our brand,” said Shiv Singh, head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages. “As a platform, they offer the scalability, functionality and reliability that we need to be successful — and the strong design sensibility to make these engagement really stand out.”
Mass Relevance-s growth is driven by its technology innovation, strong partner ecosystem and proven client success. The company continually innovates new products and approaches, and has achieved significant milestones since launch, including:
Industry-s first partnership with Twitter in November 2011 to help media and brands generate new revenue from real-time content. Twitter selected Mass Relevance as its first curation partner licensed to re-syndicate public Tweets for display, allowing Mass Relevance clients to directly monetize social content through sponsorships or direct response.
A growing partner roster that includes Chyron, Ross Video and most recently Resource Interactive, to create new revenue streams around integrated experiences on TV, web, mobile and large-screen displays.
Ongoing product introductions such as the March 2012 release of Companion, a flexible, HTML5 responsive UI second-screen product for brands and media. Companion provides a rich, interactive second screen experience that encourages participation, amplification and social following.
Powering traditional media-s Twitter integrations for some of the biggest events in the world in the past year, including the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Grammy-s and Super Bowl. The company managed the global Twitter Q&A for Madonna-s first-ever Twitter appearance and her MDNA album launch, which garnered more than 1400 tweet per minute at its peak and nearly 180,000 total approved Tweets during the event.
“Mass Relevance is pioneering this space and is experiencing phenomenal growth in a short amount of time for their platform in media and entertainment. It-s great to be behind another rising Austin social software company built by Austin entrepreneurs. We-re very excited about the company and our continued investment,” said Mike Dodd, Partner at Austin Ventures.
“One thing we know very clearly from investing in the space: brands are fighting to manage and engage a massive fire hose of social media content, and they need help,” said Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner, Battery Ventures. “Mass Relevance is the only solution for real-time curation and distribution of social media content at scale — across any device, site or channel. The team is proven, the technology is ahead of the pack by far, and they are already making an impact with some of the biggest brands and media companies in the world. The opportunity here is huge.”
Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance enables entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands to drive real-time engagement through social curation and integration. The company provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate audience and consumer interactions in a relevant, moderated way that is proven to deliver measurable results. Brands using Mass Relevance include NBC Sports, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera MTV Networks, Cisco, Samsung, Target, Victoria-s Secret, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.
The company is privately held with venture capital funding. For more information, please visit the company-s website at .
Erica Cenci
Brady PR for Mass Relevance
Phone: 402-889-2674
Email:
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