Internet entrepreneur and tech investor Mel Morris invests £3.8m in Audiense
Seed investor and former long-term chairman of King Digital (creators of Candy Crush) Mel Morris has invested £3.8m in Audiense, a software-as-a-service developer which delivers unique consumer insight and consumer engagement capabilities to many of the world’s biggest brands and agencies. The investment will support Audiense’s ambitious growth plans, which include scaling-up its sales and marketing functions, powerful new platform functionality, and expansion into North America.
Javier Burón, co-founder and CEO of Audiense, said: “Four thousand Audiense customers are already enjoying the benefits of our SaaS capabilities, but we’re only just scratching the surface of the market. Companies are beginning to understand how vital consumer insights are to their future success or even to their continued existence. Massively positive feedback from our rapidly growing customer base would suggest we have the right solution at exactly the right time.”
Mel Morris said: “An estimated $15bn will be spent on social marketing by businesses in the USA alone this year, and delivering more strategic and measurable value to those spending it is going to be key. I believe the Audiense team and tech, packed as it is with genuine and deep expertise in socially-acquired data and insight, is superbly poised to help businesses extract maximum value from their social marketing budgets.”
The company is one of only two Twitter Official Partners worldwide for both Data/Insights and Advertising. Audiense also leverages the IBM Watson cognitive computing platform to determine unique and powerful personality insights from audience data.
Audiense works with a wide range of enterprise clients, including sports brands and Premier League football clubs, major news publishers, top digital agencies, marketing leading clothing and music brands, and even the UK government.
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About Mel Morris
Mel Morris is a highly experienced and successful internet/tech investor, philanthropist, and owner of Derby County Football Club. His current investments include Audiense, Adthena (competitive intelligence for search marketers), BriefYourMarket (SaaS automated customer marketing and communication services) and Entotem (multimedia home entertainment technology). He was the seed investor in, and former chairman of, games developer King Digital Entertainment Plc (social games software), which floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and was bought by Activision Blizzard in 2016 for US$5.9bn. Other successful investments include uDate.com, Prometrics, Webroot (cyber-security and threat intelligence) and Prevx (malware removal and protection).
About Audiense
The Audiense platform delivers consumer insight and engagement through a combination of highly scaleable social data, cognitive science and traditional marketing. Its solutions enable brands and agencies to build unique insights, acquire more customers and deliver superior marketing results from automated messaging and advertising campaign execution. Headquartered in London, UK, Audiense was founded in Spain in 2012 (as SocialBro) by CEO Javier Burón and CTO Alfredo Artiles.
Contact
Tim Donnelly Smith, Audiense
+44 7801 755495
tim.donnellysmith@audiense.com