CampusLive was founded in 2008, primarily to provide brands with a way to engage with notoriously fickle college students. To do so, it offers up a platform to create and distribute challenges, which users compete to rack up points and win prizes. Those challenges can take place on any brand website, Facebook page, or its own site, and have proven pretty popular with the college crowd, with its users completing 20 challenges a month on average.
But the company found that it wasn’t just the college audience which was taking a part in those games — it was also getting interest from adults and students outside of college, and seeing return visits from users after they graduated. With that in mind, it is going live with a new website and brand at Dailybreak.com, hoping to expand its challenges to a broader set of demographics. In addition to the college audience it already serves, Dailybreak will also go after moms, young professionals, and even high-school students. It’s also expanded its addressable audience with a whole new set of publishing partners, which give it access to more than 10 million unique users a month.
Dailybreak has also raised a new round of funding to support its expansion. Dailybreak has raised $5 million in a round led by GSV Capital, which also included participation from existing investors Highland Capital and Charles River Ventures. Altogether, it’s raised a total of $8.1 million, including a round raised last spring. The new funding will allow Boston-based Dailybreak to expand its sales team to grow with the new set of audiences its targeting.
To lead its expansion, Dailybreak has appointed John Federman as its new CEO. Federman’s helped build and sell a number of companies in his 25 years in media and marketing. Most recently he served as CEO of Searchandise Commerce, which was acquired by RichRelevance late last year. Before that he was the CEO of eStara, which was acquired by Art Technology Group (ATG) in 2006. He was also co-founder and CEO of addressable ad firm Dotomi. CampusLive founder Boris Revsin will remain at the company, and will serve as EVP of Business Development and Strategy.
After tackling the college demographic, which Federman said is usually the most cynical audience out there, the company decided, why not target other users? That’s especially true, given he believes that the company will be able to expand to other demographics in part because it’s serving up challenges to users not in college already.
Dailybreak (formerly CampusLIVE) delivers a new form of content that entertains, educates, and challenges consumers while creating value and driving digital social action for brand advertisers. Dailybreak offers a unique pay-for-performance model for clients, focusing on the growing Cost-Per-Engagement fee structure. Instead of purchasing banner advertisements that result in paid clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM), Dailybreak only charges for successful “engagements” with a sponsoring brand. Clients include McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, Microsoft, Budweiser, Ernst & Young, and Converse.
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