BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Sep 2, 2015) - Brand Networks, the leading provider of relevance-driven native advertising and content marketing software, today announced record first half 2015 growth with a nearly 30% increase in media spend on its platform vs. the same period last year. As part of this continuous growth, the company has recently expanded in several key areas, including new executives, additional platform capabilities and partnerships, and a wider geographic footprint to capture rising global social media ad spending, expected to hit $23.68 billion this year alone.
"The power and reach of native advertising and content marketing continues to expand exponentially," said Jamie Tedford, CEO and Founder of Brand Networks. "Established social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are growing users organically and extending their native advertising reach through rapidly expanding publisher networks. Newer platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are just beginning to unlock the value of their audiences through native advertising and innovative commerce offerings. With these seismic shifts in the digital landscape, CMOs are investing a greater share of their marketing budgets in content marketing and native advertising with leading social platforms. Brand Networks remains singularly focused on delivering hyper-relevant native content to highly tailored audiences, at just the right moment, every time. This approach has driven measurable return on spend for our customers, resulting in eight straight years of sequential revenue growth for the company, with 2015 shaping up to be one of our best."
Expanding Executive Team
Brand Networks has continued to expand its worldwide team. In the first half of 2015, the company grew to nearly 250 employees in 12 offices around the world. Part of this expansion has been among the executive ranks, with several recent additions to the management team, including:
- Joyce Bell - Chief Financial Officer. Previously, Joyce was CFO of Nexage, a mobile advertising technology company recently acquired by Millennial Media, and has also held CFO roles at ClickSquared and Compete.
- Stephanie Lawrence - Senior Vice President of Customer Success. Previously, Stephanie was East Coast Director of Ad Solutions for Microsoft, with prior Digital Lead roles at Starcom MediaVest, MEC and Optimedia.
- Wayne St. Amand - Vice President of Global Marketing. Previously, Wayne was VP of Marketing at Nasuni, a cloud data services company, and EVP of Marketing at Crimson Hexagon, a social media marketing analytics platform provider.
"Our culture and opportunities for career growth have attracted incredible talent with boundless energy in all areas of organization," added Tedford. "I'm excited to welcome Joyce, Stephanie and Wayne to the executive team to help accelerate growth and ensure our customers continue to have a disproportionately high return on their social marketing investments."
Most Capable Platform for Relevance-Driven Native Advertising and Content Marketing
This year, Brand Networks has made significant investment in enhancing its platform and integrating the best relevance-driven features and capabilities for today's digital advertisers. In May, the company acquired Los Angeles-based SHIFT, the award-winning platform for cross-network social advertising and collaboration. The deal, valued at $50 million in cash and stock, made Brand Networks the world's leading social marketing platform, which now powers over $500 million in social advertising spend for more than 650 of the world's best known brands and agencies, such as Interpublic Group, WPP, American Express, AT&T, ABInBev, Discover, Yahoo! and Unilever.
Within the combined platform Brand Networks also released RelevanceRank, a proprietary technology that gives social media marketers a definitive way to measure and predict the ongoing performance of their paid and organic content across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. RelevanceRank automatically surfaces the most relevant content for marketers to promote on each platform, allowing them to immediately take action and rapidly increase revenue-generating opportunities. This is one of many advanced optimization technologies now available in the Brand Networks Platform that use algorithmically-derived results to automatically increase the relevance and effectiveness of marketers' campaigns.
Broadest Platform Partnerships
With its industry leading technology, Brand Networks continued to strengthen ties with the top social media platforms, announcing new partnerships with both Pinterest and Instagram in Q2 and Q3 of 2015. Brand Networks is among the first group of companies selected to partner with both of these platforms, and tasked with helping top brands weave native, relevant advertising content into the Pinterest and Instagram user experience. The company has already started rolling out ads on Instagram with companies like Chick-fil-A, who are using Brand Networks to deliver hyper-relevant content to over 300 million users around the world. Brand Networks is one of the few companies in the world recognized as a Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner, Pinterest Marketing Developer Partner, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates and Custom Apps partner and one of the first Twitter Ads API developers.
Growing Global Footprint
Brand Networks continues to grow internationally along with its global customer base. To service demand in Latin America, Brand Networks recently opened a Mexico City office. This new office joins the company's other international offices in London and Sydney serving the EMEA and APAC regions.
About Brand Networks
Founded in 2006, Brand Networks delivers relevance-driven native advertising and content marketing to 650 enterprise customers, including half of the Fortune 100 and 17 of AdAge's 25 Most Advertised Brands. The Brand Networks Platform is the world's first social marketing software with a relevance engine at its core, designed to help marketers achieve the highest possible levels of effectiveness and efficiency across paid, earned and owned channels, at every stage of the social marketing process. Brand Networks is headquartered in Boston with offices in San Francisco, New York City, Rochester, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Sydney and Mexico City. For more information, please visit bn.co.