Driven Data, which is an advanced software marketing provider and digital marketing agency for the retail auto industry, announced the closure of a $4.5 million Series B fundraising round led by Dealer.com co-founder and private investor Rick Gibbs along with JHCapital, LLC.
Gibbs is the chairman of Driven Data.
“To say Driven Data’s platform is ‘impressive’ would be a huge understatement — it is visionary in the truest sense,” Gibbs said in a news release. “As Google, Apple and Facebook re-write the rules around how advertisers handle privacy, targeting and measurement, companies are getting shut out of access to third-party data, leaving them spinning in circles sorting out how to integrate and leverage first-party data from multiple sources. Luckily, Jon has done the work already so dealers can pivot and dramatically improve their marketing performance.”
The company has been developing a “hyper-personalized” open integration marketing platform designed to integrate first-party data from multiple sources for the past three years, with an eye on helping dealers avoid using cookies for consumer targeting and tracking.
“Automotive dealers heavily rely on third-party data to target and track consumers and drive revenue, but with surging privacy concerns and dissolving support for third-party cookies, they are going to have to find another way to market, and fast,” the company said in a news release.
That’s where Driven Data said its platform is designed to come into play.
“In 2017, I imagined this day would come, where users were not going to accept being tracked through a trail of cookies all over the internet, and advertisers were going to be behind the 8 ball, not having an innovative solution that could talk to multiple data sources and scale and adapt to changing environments,” Driven Data founder and chief executive officer Jon Berna said in a news release. “Our team has been building a platform to solve this exact issue and go well beyond what current marketing software solutions can do.”
Berna said the Series B funding gives Driven Data a way to “support our competitive edge, continue scaling our platform” and retain and attract employee talent.
As part of that, Driven Data has hired Liz Kelley as vice president of sales and media, and promoted Zach Hendrix to the role of chief customer officer.
Kelley’s most recent post was with Comcast’s Effectv and previously served as president of Kelley and Kelley Marketing.
Hendrix joined the company last year as vice president of strategy.
The company’s team has expanded from 12 employees to 50 in the last year-and-a-half, and it is looking to add more. Further details can be found at driven-data.com/careers.
“These additions to our team allow us to take the work we’ve been doing with first-party data and marketing attribution to the next level,” chief technology officer Ryan Moore said in a news release. “Zach’s leadership in engaging new partners and Liz’s experience in sales and media have brought a new dynamic to our team, and we’re excited to deliver our software and strategies to a wider audience with Rick’s guidance.”
Source : AutoFinanceNews
