Thismoment raises $22M for social content management

Start-up helps big brands manage their social campaigns on YouTube, Facebook and mobile

If you're a big brand, like GM or Procter & Gamble, and want to manage a campaign on social sites, like YouTube, Facebook and mobile, you might check out Thismoment.

Since launching its social content management platform in 2009, the company has been on a roll attracting 100 name brands, like GM, Dell, Audi, and Lexus, to help them manage their campaigns, like new product announcements, across the Web on social sites. 

The company announced Wednesday that it's raised $22 million to expand its management platform, led by Trident Capital. This new round brings the total amount raised to $34.8 million.

So what does Thismoment actually offer?

"Effectively, you can call the platform a next-generation content management system," said Vince Broady, co-founder and CEO of Thismoment, in an interview with me. "Brands have to manage user-generated content and deliver their message to multiple platforms and devices." Thismoment helps them create those campaigns (though it does not provide the creatives, but rather just the tools), manage them and analyze the interaction from users and the traffic, etc. Additionally, since campaigns can often spike traffic to the campaigns, Thismoment has a relationship with Amazon Web Services to help suppor the spike in traffic.

The Amazon services is important as many of the campaigns run on Thismoment's platform are significant. To wit, at the Super Bowl, there were 20 ads that pointed to the URLs that run on the Thismoment system, said Broady.

As an example of what Thismoment can do for a brand, check out this YouTube page for Reebok vs the Nike page below.

Reebok page using Thismoment above. Nike page using generic YouTube tools.

You'll notice that the Reebok page is more personalized. It also brings in Facebook and Twitter feeds, something you can't do if you simply create a YouTube channel.

Customers typically pay Thismoment an average of $40,000 for a campaign that runs from three months to six months, said Broady. But there are many cases when campaigns or service use is about $1500 a month, he added.

Commitment to succeed

Thismoment has had a fascinating journey. The company started in 2008 as a consumer play. Essentially, Broady, who worked with his co-founders since he co-founded GameSpot in the '90s, which was sold to ZDNet, raised $3.5 million from friends and family so that Thismoment could be the next, well, social networking phenom, like Facebook. That didn't happen.

By 2009, and with 60 days of cash left, Broady and his team decided to pivot and focus on tapping into their social networking and mobile experience and help other companies with their social marketing campaigns. Thismoment raised $1 million from its existing investors and by spring of 2010 landed its first deal with Lions Gate Entertainment. Eventually, the business got some traction and it went on to raise an additional $8 million.