Spotzot, The Startup Powering Deal Targeting For Apps Like Shopkick & ShopSavvy, Raises $2.2 Million

Spotzot, the platform that powers deal targeting for shopping applications and web sites, today announced that it has closed $2.2 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Cervin Ventures, Inventus Capital Partners and TiE-Silicon Valley Angels.

So what is Spotzot? Simply put, the startup enables brands and retailers to reach new customers by way of promotions and coupons that are displayed across a growing network of shopping apps and sites, which include ShopSavvy, Shopkick, CardStar, and Geodelic — to name a few.

The startup searches thousands of sources each day for both in-store and online promotions that are valid at over 400,000 merchant locations; it then organizes and categorizes those deals and delivers them through free publisher APIs to power things like loyalty programs, comparison shopping, and local checkins.

Put another way, Spotzot Founders Bobby Jadhav and Sanjay Mittal told us that, each time a publisher makes an API call to access Spotzot offers, the startup anonymously captures the consumer’s unique ID, along with the location and intent based on product category, merchant, keyword, mall, and brand. By tracking the ongoing buying behavior of each visitor on publishers’ mobile apps and websites, Spotzot is able to present consumers with a personalized experience that should present with deals from their favorite brands, items, and merchants nearby — wherever they go.

And, for advertisers, this enables them to engage customers with contextually relevant content, i.e. promotions, ads, or offers. The Spotzot founders believe that their technology can be disruptive because it offers a depth of deal content that ties together in-store and online deals and delivers them in ways that are personally relevant to consumers — which, in turn, should result in higher CTRs and conversions.

In early testing, the team said, 45 percent of shoppers who clicked on a merchant page demonstrated so-called “purchase intent” by clicking on the same deal at least twice from different locations — once while researching and again when visiting the store.

If Spotzot can maintain this high consumer intent and engagement at scale, this could prove to be an effective way for brands and merchants to better target their customers and improve campaign performance — something that every ad and deal solution strives to accomplish.

As for its series A, Spotzot said that it will use its new infusion of capital to accelerate the growth of its targeting platform and to fill out its sales and engineering teams. For more, check out the company at home here.