Social Native, a platform for branded content on demand, has closed a USD8 million seed round.
Social Native received extensive interest from investors in the wake of the company’s early success creating content for brands like Polaroid, Walgreens and General Motors.
In an oversubscribed round, Social Native attracted funds from a number of leading venture capital firms including SoftBank Capital.
The funding will enable Social Native to double down on its investment into the Content Optimisation Engine and further the company’s mission of using technology to reimagine the creative industry while investing in sales and marketing to continue claiming market share.
“We’re pleased to see continued and growing interest in our technology across the globe,” says Social Native CEO David Shadpour. “Brands are faced with the challenge of creating high volumes of personalised content to deliver relevant customer experiences, and prior to Social Native, this was a seemingly impossible task. It’s exciting to see the impact Social Native is having on the digital marketing landscape and the interest not just from brands, but also the investor community.”
“Brands are trying to keep up with the demand to create relevant customer experiences for all marketing channels,” says Jordan Levy, general partner at SoftBank Capital NY. “This demand for personalised content has created a huge market opportunity for Social Native. They have the team, technology and vision needed to transform the industry. And now, the results. The company is producing astounding metrics for brands by automating the traditionally manual process of content creation.
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology has become core to Social Native’s ability to predict which creators and content will reap the highest performance for each unique branded content initiative. We’re able to improve and optimise content being created on our platform in real-time based on historic performance, while ensuring that only the most relevant and highest calibre of creators are invited to participate in our campaigns.”
Two industry veterans invested in Social Native and later joined the executive team full time: Jeff Ragovin, chief growth officer at Social Native, who co-founded Buddy Media, which sold for USD745 million to Salesforce; and Eytan Elbaz, chief strategy officer at Social Native, famed for co-creating AdSense that was bought by Google for USD102 million.
“Social Native’s technology is unparalleled in content marketing,” says Ragovin. “Not only have we completely automated the creative development process, but we’re building technology that will create a fundamental shift in how brands think about content creation.”
