News

Clearspring Acquires XGraph to Create Largest Multi-Graph on the Open Web

McLean, VA and New York, NY – November 1, 2011 - Clearspring, provider of the largest social sharing and analytics platform, AddThis, announced today it has acquired XGraph, Inc., a leading data science company focused on modeling and monetizing the web-wide social graph. Clearspring’s massive reach and proprietary real-time data processing capability, coupled with XGraph’s audience technology, create the largest multi-graph platform on the open web—mapping 1.2 billion users' connections by brand affiliation, intent and social behavior.

The investment in XGraph’s data science capabilities marks another step on Clearspring’s rapid growth trajectory. XGraph’s team has deep data science expertise with applied backgrounds in advertising, sociology, mathematics and computer science. Their unique technology dynamically organizes users by shared connections and interests. XGraph’s team and platform will drive Clearspring’s existing efforts with publishers, advertisers and agencies forward while also setting the stage for new innovation.

“Clearspring is at the epicenter of two major shifts online—the web becoming social and personal, and advertising becoming data-driven and accountable. The common thread in both changes is data. To compete in this new world, companies will not only need the ability to access and process big data, but also have the ability to activate that data to create value for consumers, publishers and advertisers,” said Ramsey McGrory, Clearspring’s new Chief Executive. “The combined company has the people, technology and data to enable our clients to stay at the forefront of these changes. 2012 will be a breakout year for Clearspring.”

For advertisers, agencies and trading desks, Clearspring will immediately be able to provide the largest multi-graph audience targeting capabilities available on the open web. By using this technology to identify a brand’s core audiences and finding millions of other connected and like-minded people online, the company can now drive more efficient spending and increased campaign performance. Clearspring also plans to leverage this new capability to deliver publishers unique audience insights, monetization capabilities and actionable data products in the coming year.

“Most companies only capture one dimension of how we’re all connected, whether it be our friends or people we share with—a single graph approach. XGraph not only models these social connections, but also multiple other types of connections such as brand affiliations, intent and more—a multi-graph approach,” said Key Compton, XGraph’s CEO. “We’re truly excited to leverage our technology to unlock the value of Clearspring’s massive data set and help publishers and advertisers truly harness the power of the web-wide interest graph.”

XGraph is headquartered in New York with an office in Silicon Valley. All XGraph employees based in New York will join Clearspring’s office there. Clearspring plans to keep the office in Silicon Valley. The combined company will have 85 employees nationwide.

About Clearspring Technologies

Clearspring is the leader in connecting publishers, services and advertisers to audiences on the social web. Clearspring’s AddThis platform enables leading publishers to distribute and track digital content such as web pages, widgets and videos to social networks, bookmarking sites, blogs and more. AddThis is used by over 10 million unique domains reaching over 1.2 billion unique users monthly. Clearspring’s Audience Platform leverages aggregate data from AddThis to allow advertisers and publishers to target these socially-connected audiences via real-time bidding platforms. Visit www.clearspring.com to learn more.

XGraph Hires Warren Habib as Chief Technology Officer

New York, NY – June 13, 2011 – XGraph, the first social targeting platform to use multi-graph data analysis to target Connected Audiences™, today announced that Warren Habib has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Habib was, most recently, the Senior Vice President of Digital Platform Development at MTV Networks and prior to that, CTO of New York photo-sharing start-up Fotolog.com.

"We are very excited to have Warren join our team," said Key Compton, co-founder and CEO of XGraph. “Warren is a pioneer in the online advertising industry and is recognized as a technology leader among the New York start-up community. Warren brings to XGraph a wealth of experience in working with large-scale data analysis environments, scalable web infrastructures, and agile development teams.

"I am glad to be joining XGraph at a time when they are seeing so much growth and development," said Mr. Habib. "XGraph’s Connected Audience technology platform is a uniquely advanced system for delivering high-performance audience targeting. XGraph’s vision is perfectly aligned with the ad industry’s movement toward utilization of ‘big data’ and social network analysis for predictive targeting. I am looking forward to working with the XGraph team to create the gold standard in audience targeting."

For brand advertisers and direct marketers, the XGraph approach provides Life Targeting™, enabling the creation and delivery of high-value custom audiences who are connected to each other and share similar life-styles, life-stages, life-values, and life-interests. XGraph’s Life Targeting framework is a brand-new approach to online advertising, incorporating the best insights from social, behavioral, and intent data.

Mr. Habib has been active in the NY tech industry for over 20 years. Most recently, at MTV Networks, he managed a very talented team building centrally-supported products to support the hundreds of websites in MTV Networks' portfolio. Before that, he was the CTO of Fotolog.com, a pioneering socially-oriented photo sharing website that was one of the largest websites globally. It was acquired by the French internet company HiMedia in 2007 for over $90 million. Mr. Habib also served for six years as the CTO for the recently-acquired Solbright, Inc., which created the industry-standard technology platform for managing sales, inventory, trafficking and billing for online advertising workflows of leading online publishers such as CBS, Viacom, Discovery, National Geographic, USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, and many others.

About XGraph

XGraph is the first social targeting platform to use multi-graph data analysis to target Connected Audiences™. XGraph's innovative approach is based on the proven premise that people who share similar lifestyles, values, and purchasing habits with an advertiser's core customers are the optimal audience for targeting display advertising. Social network analysis applied to privacy-friendly data is the core of XGraph's unique multi-graph methodology, enabling high-value targeting at scale. By adding multiple dimensions on top of the social graph, XGraph has developed Life Targeting™, the industry’s leading platform to build custom audiences of connected users who share similar life-styles, life-stages, life-values, and life-interests. For more information, please visit www.xgraph.com.

XGraph Names FOX and Yahoo Veteran Mark Papia as Chief Revenue Officer

New York, NY – November 30, 2010 – XGraph, the next-generation advertising company that employs social graph analysis for more effective ad targeting, today announced that Mark Papia has joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer. Mr. Papia was, most recently, the Senior Vice President of Sales for the FOX Audience Network and Senior Vice President of Performance Marketing for FOX Interactive Media where he was responsible for revenue in excess of $130,000,000.

"We are thrilled to be welcoming Mark to the team," said Key Compton, co-founder and CEO of XGraph. "Mark is a trailblazer in audience-targeted advertising and was one of the first in our industry to utilize data-driven Real Time Bidding and DSP relationships. Mark was also one of the few responsible for building the FOX Audience Network based on the pioneering work he did with FOX Interactive Media and its flagship MySpace.com. Mark brings XGraph vast experience in brand and performance advertising across CPG, entertainment, sports, travel and consumer electronics markets."

"I started selling media against the social graph in 2006," said Mr. Papia. "Over the past five years, I have learned, first hand, that targeting and optimizing against the social graph is the single best advertising opportunity for today's digital marketer. What particularly attracted me to XGraph was the R&D that their experienced founding team had invested into their graph-based algorithms and infrastructure, creating a technology platform that is driving the next wave of audience targeting."

"XGraph's multi-graph approach is distinctive," said Mr. Papia, "and is, in all respects, the next generation of 'big data' targeting in comparison to what we had built inside of FOX Interactive. I look forward to working with the XGraph team to bring XGraph's solutions to Madison Avenue and beyond."

XGraph's innovative technology is based on the simple premise that people who share similar lifestyles, values and purchasing habits with an advertiser's core customers are the optimal audience for targeted display advertising. By partnering with top-tier Web publishers, social media providers and Web-wide infrastructure firms, XGraph is able to use proprietary social network analysis methods to identify high-value audiences for advertisers that want to reach their highest-quality prospects at scale.

Mr. Papia joined the team at Intermix Media, the company that incubated MySpace, in 2004 as head of sales. Prior to that, he spent five years at Yahoo!, driving sales and marketing for many high profile, revenue-generating brand initiatives. Mr. Papia is well known as the architect of the Yahoo/Pepsi Strategic Partnership that launched in 2001. Before joining Yahoo, Mr. Papia was a Magazine Publisher at Reed Elsevier and the Walt Disney Company.

About XGraph

XGraph provides buyers and sellers of online advertising with Connected Audience™ solutions that improve ad targeting. XGraph's innovative social targeting approach is based on the simple premise that people who share similar lifestyles, values and purchasing habits with an advertiser's core customers are an optimal audience for targeted display advertising. Social network analysis applied to privacy-friendly data sources is the core of XGraph's unique "multi-graph" methodology, enabling high-value targeting at scale. For more information, please visit www.xgraph.com.

XGraph Announces $3.75 Million in Funding

Social Targeting Innovator Gets Venture Backing from Rho Ventures

New York, NY and Palo Alto, CA – July 7, 2010 – XGraph, a next-generation advertising company that uses social network analysis for ad targeting, today announced that Rho Ventures has led a first round of institutional financing, completing funding of $3.75 million.

XGraph's innovative technology is based on the premise that people who share similar lifestyles, values and purchasing habits with an advertiser's core customers are an optimal audience for targeted display advertising. By partnering with top tier Web publishers, social media providers, and Web-wide infrastructure firms, XGraph is able to use proprietary social network analysis methods to identify high-value Connected Audiences™ for advertisers that want to reach their highest quality prospects at scale.

"This funding will help XGraph to expand our sales and marketing efforts," said Key Compton, co-founder and CEO of XGraph. "Our clients have seen 300 to 500 percent increases in customer conversion rates and demand for our Connected Audiences is increasing at a rapid pace. Our unique "multi-graph" approach is distinctive and provides XGraph with the ability to utilize multiple data sets, including social, communication, and behavioral graphs."

XGraph's targeting methods are effective because they can be scaled for audience expansion while retaining performance. Clients typically provide XGraph with a pixel on their Web site, and XGraph provides a free Connected Audience analysis to evaluate the potential reach and effectiveness of an XGraph campaign. Typical campaigns reach millions of custom targeted users, providing advertisers with significant improvements in media efficiency and campaign performance.

XGraph's Connected Audience Marketing™ is privacy friendly because no personally identifiable user data is ever collected or analyzed. Similar to many other leading targeting methods, XGraph employs browser cookies that anonymously recognize users on a web-wide basis. XGraph then applies its "multi-graph" algorithms to help its clients deliver advertising to highly receptive audiences.

XGraph's founding team includes two PhD researchers who pioneered socially targeted online ads in 2006 while working at Yahoo! These early efforts were based, in part, on insights from published academic work conducted by XGraph co-founder Paul Moore, while at Stanford University, on the social network mechanisms that make referral-based hiring effective.

David Carlick, a venture partner at Rho Ventures, will join XGraph's Board of Directors. Mr. Carlick has extensive experience in the field of digital media and marketing, with past and present board appointments including DoubleClick, Intermix Media (MySpace), Ask Jeeves, International Network Services, Grocery Shopping Network and ReachLocal.

"I am excited to be working with a team as innovative and capable as XGraph," said Mr. Carlick. "Online targeting has become very data-driven and audience-based, dramatically improving the ability for advertisers to reach their ideal audiences. XGraph's academic roots and deep experience with social network analysis is helping the firm pioneer the next generation of online targeting."

About XGraph

About Rho Ventures

For nearly 30 years, Rho Ventures has been investing in leading edge, high growth companies at multiple stages of growth spanning early, venture-stage investments to later stage, growth equity transactions. Rho has participated in the growth of some of today's most innovative and successful companies, including Ciena, Capstone Turbine, Compaq Computer, Gloucester Pharmaceuticals, Human Genome Sciences, iVillage, MedImmune, ReachLocal, Senomyx, Shire, Tacoda, Tripod, Waterfront Media and Yantra. Rho Ventures is currently investing from Rho Ventures VI, a $510 million fund. The firm has offices in New York City, Palo Alto and Montreal, with investments across the globe. For more information, please visitt www.rho.com.