Press
Behavioral Focus: Hanging On the Telephone [pdf]
Can Social Networks Predict What You'll Buy?
AdAge (November 17, 2008)
New York Times Company’s Andrew Pancer Joins Media6° as Chief Operating Officer
Company Prepares for Full Commercial Launch
NEW YORK, NY (September 8, 2008) Andrew Pancer, Vice President, Digital Development at The New York Times Company and the former Chief Operating Officer of About.com, has joined Media6° (Media6Degrees, Inc.) as its Chief Operating Officer. Media6° provides major brand marketers with customized audiences using the power of social graph data. The familiar phrase “birds of a feather flock together” best describes the firm’s audience creation technology.
“Andrew brings executive operational talent and experience to an already all-star team as we prepare for full commercial launch this fall,” says Joe Doran, Founding CEO of Media6°. “That we are able to attract significant experienced industry talent like Andrew, is an affirmation from the industry of the Media6° solution.”
“I am very excited to be joining the Media6° team. The technology they have developed is unlike anything I have seen to date. The potential to reach affinity groups at scale is a very compelling proposition,” says Mr. Pancer.
In January, Mr. Pancer had moved from About.com to The New York Times Company where he helped assist with digital development initiatives including setting digital strategy, M&A activities for digital operations and integrating new acquisitions. Mr. Pancer was the COO of About.com from 2005 to 2007 where he helped drive significant growth for the company. Revenues and profits tripled, with revenues exceeding $100 million in 2007. Prior to his role as COO, Andrew was About.com’s Chief Financial Officer from 2002 to 2004.
A resident of Tenafly, NJ, Mr. Pancer holds a BS in Business Administration from Washington University (St. Louis) and an MBA from New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business.
Media6° recently announced that it has closed a $9 million series A round of funding.
Media6° (media6degrees.com) provides major brand marketers scalable, bespoke audiences using the power of social graph data. The firm is based in New York and funded by U.S. Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures and several prominent angel investors.
Media6° Closes $9 Million Series A Round of Funding With U.S. Venture Partners
New Technology Applies Social Network Theory to Lift Ad Response Across the Web
NEW YORK (August 13, 2008) Media6° (Media6Degrees, Inc.), a New York-based start-up today announced that it has closed a $9 million series A round of funding led by U.S. Venture Partners. The company received early stage funding from Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures and several prominent angel investors.
Media6° provides major brand marketers with targeted audiences using the power of social graph data. The familiar phrase “birds of a feather flock together” best describes the firm’s audience creation technology.
“Media6° creates fully customized audiences for advertisers based on currently available advertiser data,” says Joe Doran, Founding CEO of Media6°. Mr. Doran joined Media6° in April and has led the team through its commercial alpha and into its current beta programs. Mr. Doran previously served as Microsoft Ad Center’s General Manager, responsible for guiding strategy, product development and M&A across all of Microsoft’s advertising businesses.
Media6°’s patent pending algorithms and methods connect a brand’s existing customers with user segments composed entirely of consumers who are interconnected via the social graph. These Media6° segments are both completely customized for each advertiser and are enormously scalable. They reflect high degrees of homophily, the tendency of like-minded individuals to cluster with other people who strongly resemble them.
Media6° audiences, sharing powerful demographic and psychographic traits, have been proven to respond to advertising messages at rates dramatically higher than other targeting alternatives. The firm’s offering has appeal for brand marketers seeking large audiences displaying the highest levels of response, engagement, word of mouth and collective behavior.
Media6°, committed to consumer privacy and the rights of publishers and advertisers, does not collect any personally identifiable consumer information nor does it crawl or otherwise seek to categorize content from publisher’s sites. The company became a signatory to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) principles concerning consumer privacy prior to its commercial launch. The underlying data used by Media6° in the execution of its strategy has long been present in ad serving logs and has always been used by advertisers to monitor and audit their campaigns.
“Media6° is revolutionary. It is the first company we have seen to tap the potential of social data for advertisers,” says Tim Connors, General Partner, of U.S. Venture Partners. “The early work with 30 alpha and beta customers since April points to the enormous promise of Media6° and the work that Joe and the team have undertaken.”
As part of the USVP investment, Mr. Connors and Ted Maidenberg of USVP will join the Board of Media6°.
“U.S. Venture Partners has a proven history of early stage investments in winning advertising and media companies such as Ask.com, AvenueA and most recently Adify. They bring to the table a very strong track record of successfully growing small technology companies and building large scale advertising and data systems” said Mr. Doran.” Bob Greene, General Partner of Contour Venture Partners added: “With the addition of Joe Doran as CEO in April and now US Venture Partners as investors, we are well positioned to bring our unique audience creation solution to market.”
U.S. Venture Partners (www.usvp.com) is a leading Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs build world-class companies that are leaders in their industry. Since 1981, when it was founded, USVP has raised a total of more than $2.9 billion in nine venture capital funds and invested in more than 390 early stage companies, 74 of which to date have become public companies by IPO with an aggregate current market value in excess of $90 billion. USVP focuses on early stage opportunities in sectors where the Partners have the domain expertise, operating experience and network of relationships to provide meaningful contribution to the success of the enterprise. These sectors include digital communications and networking systems, Internet and eCommerce infrastructure, semiconductors and optical components, enterprise and technical software, and medical devices and biopharmaceuticals.
Contour Venture Partners (www.contourventures.com) is a New York based early stage venture capital firm focused on working with companies that provide leading-edge technology enhanced products and services in the financial services, Internet and business services sectors.
Media6° (media6degrees.com) provides major brand marketers scalable, bespoke audiences using the power of social graph data. The firm is based in New York and funded by U.S. Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures and several prominent angel investors.
