Seattle based Start-up, Blab, is using a Conversation Graph to help brands predict the next moves of their online audiences.
Company: Blab, Inc.
Sector: Software Technology/Predictive Social Intelligence for Campaigns
Based in: Seattle, WA USA
Regions covered: Global
Founded by: Randy Browning, CEO
Is he a rocket scientist? Yes, but more like a rocket surgeon.
Who are you major backers? Blue Focus Communications Group, Horizon Media, Shoreline Venture Management, Operative Capital, Be eXceL Management
What’s the track record? Partnership agreements with WPP/Mindshare (North America), Publicis/Razorfish (Global), Horizon Media; 20+ Global Brand Customer Relationships; Finalist, 2014 Cannes Lion Technology Innovation
What do they say? Blab customers state that our system is an essential component in their agile, adaptive, real-time marketing to operate at the speed of today’s customer. As a part of their campaign planning and execution, Blab’s predictive capability is a must-have. Consumers today expect meaningful engagement with brands. A multitude of software solutions assist conversion at the bottom of the sales funnel. And at the top of the funnel, there are well-established companies that guide awareness advertising. To drive mid-funnel engagement you must predict so that you can engage the customer along their unique journey. Your messaging and content need to be at the right place at the right time to influence and drive action. Blab is unique in providing predictive social intelligence to drive campaign activities aimed at the middle of the sales funnel.
What does this mean? ”Blab provides us with ability to understand the real-time impact of campaigns on target audiences, pivot accordingly, and calculate ROI” – VP Digital, major brand
“Blab integrates an adaptive, agile capacity into our digital campaigning operation to learn, try and pivot at the speed of the customer” – Sr. Campaign Planner, Global Agency
“Blab places “in-the-moment” drivers, themes and keywords of conversations in the hands of campaign practitioners: content creators, media buyers, SEO specialists and brand reputation managers” – Media Planner, Global Media Agency
What makes your company different to its competitors? From an enabling technology perspective, Blab delivers two unique, foundational technology innovations into campaigning: Pattern-based Prediction and Associative Dynamic Discovery.
Pattern-based Prediction: The Blab Prediction Engine employs pattern-based prediction instead of linear projection or statistical models. This multidimensional prediction is based on a pattern recognition approach that is computationally inexpensive. It captures unexpected movement that a one-dimensional linear projection could not capture, and scales much more efficiently than typical statistical computation. Our machine learning algorithms drive prediction quality constantly higher and support multiple prediction schema that can be tailored to various outcomes.
Our engine evaluates a multidimensional timeseries of current “fact” against millions of existing historical “facts” – and determines the closest matches. At current scale we have clocked our engine at making upwards of 1 million predictions per minute.
Associative Dynamic Discovery: Through our Dynamic Discovery technology, Blab discovers the conversations taking place that are associated or contextually relevant to your categories and topics. Not just the conversations that mention your terms, but ALL related conversations. We constantly surface conversations that a strategist wouldn’t have known to look for. Once those conversations are identified Blab identifies the channels they will be taking place on, what terms are important (both from a frequency and relevancy perspective) and who will be driving that conversation.
Blab provides you the ability to understand the multi-dimensional aspects of conversations within a topic based on their interconnected relationships. Relevant conversations within the topic will be arranged by their affinity to those themes to allow you to understand in much greater detail the conversation taking place.
First clients: WPP/Mindshare, Horizon Media, Philips, Clorox
How could your company change the world? Blab has invented the Conversation Graph to discover the collective intelligence of online target audiences and predict their next move. Blab is a breakthrough for brands in powering real-time and adaptive content strategy, digital media buying, and SEO activities. Embedding predictive capacity into campaigns will fundamentally change the ROI associated with campaigns.
Similar to how Google indexes information via the Knowledge Graph and Facebook maps social connections via the Social Graph, with Blab’s Conversation Graph, brands can now discover the contextual landscape within which their audiences are participating, predict the dynamic path of conversations and know exactly when, where, and how to engage.
Blab goes beyond the social graph of any one single social network to capture the real-time zeitgeist across the entirety of the social web. Furthermore, whereas standard knowledge graphs consist of mostly static and slow-to-evolve information, Blab’s Conversation Graph changes with the pulse of social discourse and immediately surfaces the trends, topics and media in the limelight today that might not have even existed yesterday.
“What if a brand strategist could predict the key drivers of engagement and moments of opportunity? We’ve done that with Blab, and that is why we have quickly gained loyal traction with large agencies and marketers who understand the power of acting in the moment, before anybody else understands that ‘we are in a moment’. Blab fills the need for technology that bridges the gap between customer, journey and intent,” – Randy Browning, CEO Blab.
Who do they compete with? Given the nature of the Blab technical innovation, there are no direct competitors. The largest competitive obstacle for Blab is a marketing organisation that is not in a position to act based on the real-time and predicted interests of their customer or target audience.
Who should be worried? Marketing organisations that are not evolving into an agile, adaptive, real-time operation. Competitive advantage is flowing to those organisations that are enhancing and enabling the customer’s journey in real-time. Embedding prediction into digital strategy and campaigning is essential. If you’re not doing this as a brand, you’ll be left behind.
If you could choose any investor globally who would it be? Oracle/Bluekai
If you could poach any member of staff from any company in the world who would it be? Ray Kurzweil
BlabPredicts Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiHpc8eVeoI
