September 22, 2011
London – Sept 22, 2011 – A new enterprise technology platform specifically designed to leverage the latest features from Facebook has been announced today.
Techlightenment, a part of Experian, announced new functionality in its ground-breaking SMART platform to enable publishers to take full advantage of the new wave of features released by Facebook.
The first product built on the SMART platform is the Guardian’s Facebook app – a first for the news organisation – which was announced today.
The Guardian Facebook app enables people to read and feature Guardian and Observer content from Facebook, increasing engagement levels. People who use Facebook will now be able to enjoy a more enriched social reading experience: they will be able to discover what their friends are reading through the Guardian app and also what articles are popular.
People can also control how their activity on the app is shared with friends. Activity will not be shared unless a person authorizes the app to begin sharing their activity with friends. They can turn this functionality off at any time in multiple places on Facebook and within the app.
Ankur Shah, CEO of Techlightenment said, “We’re very proud to have engineered such a strong and enterprise grade social solution for the Guardian with this, their first Facebook app. This app combines the brilliance of the Guardian’s content and their open platform with the brilliance of our SMART platform, which plugs into Facebook. The app has been built in partnership with the Guardian development team and makes it easy for people to connect with their friends and share the content they are passionate about.”
Meg Pickard, head of Digital Engagement, Guardian News & Media, said: “The app draws on the social functionality people on Facebook are already familiar with and makes peoples’ reading experiences more personal and relevant.”
Techlightenment’s SMART platform is a highly scalable environment to deploy social capabilities on the world’s leading sites. Techlightenment has created a comprehensive set of components that contain Facebook’s new functionality, amongst others.
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.
Read Techlightenment’s white paper about the technology being deployed in this app.
September 22, 2011
Like, Read, Watch, Listen: The new social semantics
Facebook is re-writing the dictionary: “Like” is now synonymous with the social media platform. What other action words can brands take advantage of to bring users closer to their products? With the launch of Custom Actions doing words like “Read”, “Watch”, “Listen” are now part of Facebook’s lexicon, but they have left it up to brands to build followings around their own words – “to zoom zoom”, “to be worth it”.
In this white paper, Gi Fernando, co-founder of Techlightenment, brings to life the new social semantics and what they can mean for your brand.
Read now: Like, Read, Watch, Listen: The new social semantics
June 27, 2011
London – June 27, 2011 – Techlightenment, an Experian company that develops social media technology to help brands understand, acquire and keep customers, today announced the launch of its Social Attribution System. Signalling the first tool to enable brands to attribute social interactions properly to actual revenue, Techlightenment’s Social Attribution System gives brands the ability to make better informed decisions about how to efficiently spend marketing budgets.
By analysing how both anonymous users and those logged-in through a social platform share, convert and acquire products on socially-enhanced sites, Social Attribution System tracks their actions (e.g. purchases, Facebook ‘Likes’). Through a single integrated dashboard, the Social Attribution System identifies not only the viral nature of those actions and the resulting conversions, but also the key influencers responsible for driving purchasing decisions among friends. Collectively this gives marketers the ability to calculate the true monetary return on investment of their social campaigns.
“With more and more brands and agencies continuing to invest in social media, our Social Attribution System promises to provide unprecedented and in-depth analysis on how content travels through various social networks and the monetary value of those social interactions,” said Ankur Shah, Co-founder and CEO of Techlightenment, an Experian company. “By understanding the viral impact of campaigns on revenue and conversion, brands can adapt and adjust campaign strategies in real-time, making those campaigns more efficient and more cost-effective.”
By capturing the way content is shared through a network, the Social Attribution System can identify the overall revenue generated no matter when the conversion takes place or by whom and attribute this to the initial user and the original ad. This not only identifies the true lifetime value of social mechanics such as Facebook’s ‘like’ button, but also the real value of social advertising.
Other key benefits for marketers include the ability to:
- Demonstrate the exact value of different social campaigns
- Determine the monetary value of viral interactions and how they can create an uplift in revenue and visits
- Understand actual influencers and the way in which they impact conversions
- Calculate the true average revenue per user
- Calculate a much more accurate cost per acquisition
Today’s announcement marks the continuation and evolution of social technology innovation offered by Techlightenment. In April this year, the company released the Social Research Platform for brands, giving them a fast and more efficient way in gathering insight from Facebook’s 500+ million users around the world.
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Contact:
Sparkpr
Laura Lynne / Paula Santos
Tel : 0207 377 2915
laura@sparkpr.com / paula@sparkpr.com
About Techlightenment
Techlightenment, an Experian company, was founded in 2007 by Arjuna Gihan Fernando and Ankur Shah. Techlightenment develops technology to power social media campaigns for multinational businesses and global advertising agencies. Techlightenment’s products and consulting services help brands understand current customers, attract new ones and keep them longer. Clients have included GlaxoSmithKline, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Royal Bank of Scotland and Dr. Martens. Techlightenment is one of the only Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants and Advertising API Beta participants, it is also a Twitter Ads Partner and MySpace’s only European Development partner. For more information, visit www.techlightenment.com.
About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 80 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score, and protect against identity theft.
Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended 31 March 2011 was US$4.2 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 41 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; California, US; and São Paulo, Brazil.
For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.
April 5, 2011
Marketers can reach more than 10,000 Facebook users in 24 hours – gathering valuable insight to help them better understand their target customers
London – 5 April 2011 – Techlightenment, an Experian company that develops social media technology, has partnered with Adknowledge, the leading long-tail advertiser marketplace, to launch a social research platform for Facebook, giving brands a fast, cost effective way to gather market intelligence from Facebook’s 500+ million users around the world. The Social Research Platform (SRP) which is available now can layer opt-in social data of a consumer’s interests and demographics on top of survey responses. Armed with this knowledge, brands can make more informed decisions about advertising campaigns, marketing strategies, product development roadmaps, and competitive positioning.
“In the same way that Hollywood studios screen movies to gauge consumer reaction prior to general release, companies can use the Social Research Platform to test and refine brand messaging or get feedback on products,” said Ankur Shah, co-founder of Techlightenment. “And with the social research platform, we can reach more than 10,000 people, online, in a day.”
Peter Read, former president of Nielsen Entertainment, said, “Unrivalled depth and insight, massive scale and a tenth of the traditional cost – Techlightenment’s social research platform is leading the way in real-time market research on social networks.”
Adknowledge will reward consumers for taking part in surveys by offering virtual currency and in-game points that can be used on a variety of Facebook games. Brands can also promote surveys on their Facebook pages and websites. Companies using the SRP have immediate access to survey results and analysis, rather than waiting weeks or months to see any significant data. This can be used to quickly adjust and optimise campaign strategies. The SRP is not meant to replace traditional market research, but will provide a new level of consumer insight at cost points and in timeframes that were not previously possible. The Social Research Platform is fully compliant with Facebook’s privacy and social game playing guidelines
“Adknowledge connects advertisers with consumers where they spend their time. With the Social Research Platform, we offer virtual currency in exchange for completing surveys,” said John Cole, Managing Director of Adknowledge Europe. “There are hundreds of millions of social gamers in Facebook, 80% of which play at least once a day, and we’ve seen that they are happy to trade their time and attention for rewards in the games they play. This gives us enormous reach to gather opt-in data for brands, resulting in immediate, customised information on any topic. We’re very excited about partnering with Techlightenment on this project.”
Dr. Martens recently tested the product and the company’s CEO, David Suddens, said, “Techlightenment’s social research platform gives us more insight about our customers than we have ever had access to before.”
The SRP represents the increasingly data-driven approach to online and offline advertising giving brands detailed consumer insight on personal preferences. This increases the conversion rate of advertising campaigns and can help a business make more informed decisions about where and how to spend ad budgets.
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For more information, contact:
Stephan Pechdimaldji, Sparkpr (US)
+1-415-321-1870
@spechdimaldji
stephan@sparkpr.com
Paula Santos, Sparkpr (UK)
+44 (0)207 377 2915
@paulasantos
paula@sparkpr.com
About Techlightenment
Techlightenment, an Experian Company, was founded in 2007 by Arjuna Gihan Fernando and Ankur Shah. Techlightenment develops technology to power social media advertising campaigns for multinational businesses and global advertising agencies. The company uses a data-driven approach to create, implement and track highly-targeted online campaigns that effectively identify and reach key audiences. Customers include GlaxoSmithKline, Universal Pictures, Paramount, Nissan and Vodafone. Techlightenment is a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant and Advertising API Beta participant, and a MySpace Only European Development partner. For more information, visit www.techlightenment.com.
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About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 90 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft.
Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended March 31, 2010, was $3.9 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 40 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; Costa Mesa, California; and São Paulo, Brazil. For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.
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About Adknowledge
Adknowledge operates the 4th largest marketplace for advertisers to connect with their target audiences in hard-to-reach places on the Web with similar ROI as search. Since its founding in 2004, Adknowledge has grown organically and through acquisitions (including Miva, Super Rewards and Hydra) to become the largest privately-owned Internet advertising network. The company connects advertisers with consumers across the long tail Web via multiple channels, including mobile, email, search, domains and social networks. For more information on Adknowledge, visit www.adknowledge.com.
January 17, 2011
Announced on 17 January 2011, Experian acquired a majority share in Techlightenment. Experian, the leading global information services company, plans to build a powerful social media marketing proposition for its existing and future clients, leveraging Techlightenment’s talented team to help power the expertise needed to operate in this fast-growing market space.
It is business as usual for Techlightenment and we will continue to deliver the best products and service to our clients. Our new relationship with Experian opens up great new opportunities for our organisation and our clients and will foster geographic and product expansion. Together, we will provide unrivalled delivery of new products and services to our current and future clients, built out of the synergy between Experian and Techlightenment.
Experian provides data and analytical tools to clients in more than 90 countries. It helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian is a FTSE 50 company with revenues of $3,859m[1] and 15,000 employees in 40 locations serving clients in 90 countries. Already a brand leader in the marketing space with email marketing services from Cheetahmail, online competitive intelligence from Hitwise, data management from QAS and powerful marketing tools such as Mosaic and Digital Advertising Services; the addition of Techlightenment further extends Experian’s multi-channel marketing capabilities to support clients.
[1] Global revenue year ended 31 March 2010
