Poaching talent through the “acqhire” model isn’t just for giant consumer-facing web services. BLiNQ Media, provider of social ads tech to agencies including Havas and Starcom, tells us that yesterday it acqhired the founders of social media data and analytics firm Looxii. Daniel Upton and Adam Rice’s company provided search, monitoring, and sentiment analysis of big social media data sources, while BLiNQ licenses white-labeled tools to ad agencies for buying ads through the Facebook Ads API and other social services. As advertising on social services incorporates more social context and brand mentions, the ability to pick out and amplify positive mentions will become crucial to BLiNQ, and Upton and Rice will help. Looxi will continue to operate.
A few years ago, successful social advertising meant developing high quality targeting and creative combinations, then A/B testing them. But Facebook is now moving more towards Sponsored Stories that amplify word of mouth, and Twitter’s ad products are centering around trending topics. Knowing what ad targets are saying is becoming just as important as who they are. BLiNQ needs talent that can make sense of the conversational firehoses, and these new hires have a background that will allow them to deliver.
On the specific role of the new hires, BLiNQ Media co-founder and CEO Dave Williams says Daniel and Adam will be “developing simple-to-use user interfaces and rich data visualizations that filter social media KPI’s (key performance indicators), such as demographic information, interests information, online influence, and sentiment. These measurements will help the brands we work with gain better intelligence, so they can more effectively measure what is working in their social campaigns — and what needs adjusting.”
[Image Credit: Samdobrow Photography via Examiner]
Looxii is a simple social media analytics platform that enables users to search sources like Twitter and Facebook, aggregate the search results and receive easy to interpret, top-level insights into what’s being said throughout social media. It’s a small startup that provides big social media support – multiple logins and dashboards, custom branded client reports and white-glove customer service – for brands and agencies. Looxii was founded in the Spring of 2009 as part of the inaugural class of Shotput...
BLiNQ Media is a leading global innovator of Social Engagement Advertising (SM) solutions for agencies and big brands. BLiNQ’s technology and managed services deliver quality brand engagement at scale by driving rapid, measurable results with unparalleled audience insights. The BLiNQ Ad Management (BAM) platform fully automates complex campaign planning, setup, management, optimization and insights. Since 2008, BLiNQ has managed campaigns for more than 600 of the world’s largest advertisers. BLiNQ is a Preferred Facebook Marketing Developer with Ads and...
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