Thismoment launches DEC4, for dynamic brand experiences

Brands increasingly seeking dynamic experiences to increase engagement

If you're like me, most every movie or show is taped. That means those commercials that brands spend lavishly on aren't even watched. In fact, even during these baseball playoffs, we're taping the event and watching it a few minutes to 10 minutes behind. And, what do we do? You guessed it: We forward through those commercials.

This is not lost on brands, and companies, like Thismoment, that are trying to help them find new ways to engage these commercial-skipping consumers like myself. Thismoment released Tuesday a service called DEC 4, which helps brands deliver dynamic experiences to their audience.

For instance, Coca Cola is working with Thismoment for its "Coca-Cola TV" campaign in which it held a Paul McCartney concert. Coca Cola wanted to make sure that anyone accessing the concert, whether it was on YouTube or Facebook or a mobile device received a more tailored and personalized experience. 

So, rather than slapping its video on YouTube and its Facebook page, Coca Cola used Thismoment to create a cohesive and comprehensive experience across multiple platforms and to deliver different experiences to different people. 

"We provide is the technology platform that allows them to execute this grand vision," said Vince Broady, founder and CEO of Thismoment. "We help them make it targeted to a specific user."

The targeting isn't so granular that Coca Cola knows the socio-economic or psychographic profile of a person, but the experiences can be targeted to multiple different points such as where a person is coming from (whether it's Facebook, YouTube, a mobile device, brand's website) to which language a person is accessing the site, to which country. Thismoment can target three languages and 20 countries. It also can delivering different experiences for people accessing these multiple touch points before an event, during and after an event.

This kind of dynamic branding is helping brands stay in front of fans, said John Bara, chief marketing officer of Thismoment, in an interview. In fact, for the Paul McCartney concert, Coca Cola saw 500,000 streams from across the different touch points and an average of 42 minutes per session. This kind of engagement would probably not have occured had Coca Cola not had a comprehensive and cohesive experience and tailored experiences that Thismoment gave the audience, Bara said.  

Bara nor Broady wouldn't disclose how much Coca Cola paid Thismoment to help them attract 500,000 users for that long of a session. They did say, however, it's definitely a lot cheaper than buying a 30 second commercial spot, which isn't hard to believe.

Thismoment's service is paid for on a campaign-by-campaign basis, with starting points at $17,500 for three months. Right now, the company is working with some 200 clients, mostly big brands. About 60% of them are running multiple campaigns on the platform.

As for the companies that help re-sell Thismoment? They include Facebook and Google. 

Thismoment is clearly in a hot space. Just this past summer, Thismoment raised a round bringing its total amount to $34 million. Another similar company, Wildfire was purchased by Google. 

Salesforce.com snatched Buddy Media, also a company that helps brands deliver their message on Facebook, for $689 million in early June and Oracle bought Vitrue in May for $300 million.