Following the investment, big data firm NHN owns a 60% stake in Audiens parent company Bango Deep.
Customer data and audience management platform Audiens has bagged a US$8 million (GBP 6.5 million) strategic cash investment from South Korea-based big data business NHN Corp, the company announced in a statement yesterday.
The investment is a part of a deal between NHN Corp and Bango, the mobile commerce platform that owns Audiens through subsidiary Bango Deep. With this investment, NHN Corp holds a 60% stake in Bango Deep (Bango will hold on to the remaining 40%), in addition to a 4.7% stake in Bango for US$3.95 million (GBP 3.2 million), an earlier release said.
Audiens is also structuring management level changes within the company. Former Chief Commercial Officer at Audiens Jonathan Brech will move up the ladder to the role of CEO, and Founder Marko Maras will head product strategy and innovation, the statement said.
It added that this is big data company NHN’s first investment in a European technology company.
JS Lee, Director of NHN, said in the statement, “Audiens has a unique vision to automate audience identification and optimization using data science and machine learning techniques. By supporting them with our data science, technology and advertising leadership, plus our extensive customer insight data, we can deliver an exciting marketing game-changer.”
Audiens is a marketing tool that uses customer data insights for digital marketing, helping to optimize advertising spends. Brech pointed out in the statement that Audiens helps marketers get “instant visibility” on their target audience behaviour.
The statement said that Audiens will also bank on NHN’s consumer behaviour database to deliver “unique competitive audience insight.”
The company plans to direct the investment toward developing its automatic audience identification and prioritization technologies, using NHN’s cloud data and machine learning capabilities to process data. Additionally, they will look at enhancing their data science capabilities and bolstering their global sales and marketing program, Brech said in the statement.
“CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) are a critical technology to any marketer who needs to turbocharge their first-party data and build and manage audiences for engaging marketing campaigns,” Brech added in the statement.
He also said that CDPs such as Audiens are “the new must-have model for high-impact marketing.”
“Adding NHN’s technology and data science muscle to the simplicity and easy deployment of Audiens CDP platform, gives our global customers the ability to create marketing campaigns that create value faster for their brand,” he noted.
Audiens’ customers include substantial global names such as Dutch multinational financial services provider ING, Italian consumer electronics retailer Unieuro, and consumer credit reporting agency Experian.
