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SponsorHub , a NYC-based online marketplace for the event sponsorship industry, has raised its first round of funding. The amount of the funding remained undisclosed. Investors include Randy Altschuler, Archibald Cox, Jr., Caleb DesRosiers, James Dudenhoefer, Joanne Katsch, Jason Krantz, Sean Power, Quotidian Ventures, Mark Semonian, Barry Silbert and Vision Ventures. Led by founder and CEO Robert Johnston, SponsorHub combines event discovery and sponsorship buying, at scale, as well as audience measurement and targeting, with the aim to enable marketers to reach the right audience at the right time. The company is currently hiring ( http://www.sponsorhub.com/careers ). FinSMEs
08/12/2011

SponsorHub Raises First Funding Round - FinSMEs

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When Variety wanted an expert to explain why the much-ballyhooed flick “Steve Jobs” bombed, the reporter went to an analyst at the firm Rentrak Corp. (Nasdaq: RENT ). I wasn’t surprised. Rentrak, you see, is a firm I know well. It’s also an intriguing profit opportunity. We recommended the Portland, Ore.-based Rentrak back in June as a Big Data play with a hefty long-term upside. For investors, Big Data represents a Big Opportunity. According to a brand-new study by 451 Research, the Big Data market is expected to double in size between now and 2019, when it will be worth $115 billion. And market researcher IDC says the Big Data market is growing at a rate that’s six times faster than the general information-technology business. To find the best profit plays, however, you have to be willing to turn over a few rocks. That’s how we found Rentrak, which is putting Big Data to a unique use…
Rentrak Corp. (Nasdaq: RENT): A Background Story
With Big Data, Hollywood consultants are trying to use social-media “buzz” – your Twitter Inc. (NYSE:  TWTR ) “tweets” and Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq:  FB ) posts – to predict whether a soon-to-debut flick will be a hit… or a bust. As a recent MarketWatch report tells us, “for the most part, they get it right… and the studios are listening.”
What Rentrak has done is create a proprietary software package known as PreAct, which uses social media to measure audience interest in a flick as much as a year before the film debuts. PreAct combines the moviemaker’s box-office data with social-media analysis from two other firms, Reactor Research and Crimson Hexagon. Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Rentrak (and the analyst whom Variety sought out for an explanation of the “Jobs” disaster), says the Big Data software gives studios “actionable intelligence” – enabling them to shape their ad campaign in a way that either bolsters existing interest or addresses the lack of it. “Studios can course-correct as they go along rather than brace for impact,” Dergarabedian told MarketWatch. “Traditionally, marketing decisions are made in a vacuum. Now, they can actually know if those decisions are resonating with the audience.”
We’re talking about a legitimate – and accurate – tool. Take “Inside Out,” a Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:  DIS )-Pixar Animation Studios movie that came out over the summer. The movie was made on a $175 million budget. Ahead of the weekend debut, analysts at MKM Partners predicted opening weekend sales of $66 million. Those analysts based their projection, in part, on the fact that Pixar films tend to average $66 million on opening weekends and $253 million during their domestic runs. That wasn’t a rosy forecast: Indeed, there was even some peripheral scuttlebutt that the movie’s opening might be delayed. But Rentrak’s Dergarabedian wasn’t buying. Indeed, using Big Data insights, he predicted a bigger than expected opening. He said the social-media buzz on the movie was so strong that first-weekend receipts could easily top $70 million. In fact, Dergarabedian said that “the pre-release indicators on it have been resoundingly positive… it could end up being one of their biggest performers ever.”
Talk about making a great call. “Inside Out” actually took in $91 million during its opening weekend – crushing estimates and setting the mark as the second-best opening ever for a Pixar flick. Having that kind of “market intelligence” is incredibly valuable for a studio. And that’s just one of the ways Rentrak’s technology can put Big Data to Big Use. Here’s another. What Are You Watching? All of us have heard of the Nielsen ratings, the “audience-measurement systems” owned and run by  Nielsen Holdings Plc . The ratings are a way for broadcasters and advertisers to see what radio and TV audiences are paying attention to. They help determine which programs will succeed or fail and factor into advertising rates, among other things. With the advent of the web, smartphones, tablets, and streaming media, the market has shifted in a way that’s making it tougher to size up precisely what consumers are watching. Rentrak’s core competency is its use of set-top box data to assess TV viewing practices. In this era of changed viewing practices, that too has great value. So broadcasters and content providers are seeking out Rentrak. One example: Just last month, Rentrak and AMC Networks Inc. (Nasdaq:  AMCX ) announced plans to collaborate in developing a system that will measure the viewership of AMC programs. It’s a coup for Rentrak because AMC is an up-and-coming programmer – with such hits as “The Walking Dead.”
Rentrak isn’t standing pat, either. The company just announced its acquisition of SponsorHub, an analytics firm that looks at audience responses in the sports-entertainment realm. SponsorHub CEO Bob Johnston said his company “work[s] with advertisers to measure their largest engagements around sports entertainment. “Within sports, we help large advertisers track and measure endorsements of athletes, sponsorships of leagues, teams – and on the entertainment side, product placements within TV and film. “Therein lies the synergy with Rentrak, because it is the preeminent measurement platform for the film industry. However, it doesn’t have an automated social-media-measurement platform. Rentrak brought us in to be its social-listening layer across all the other measurements it is already doing.”
Clearly there’s a big opportunity here – for Rentrak and for investors who see the growth potential this new area offers. For investors, however, there’s also a challenge. Let me tell you about it. Dishing on a Merger Deal
In June, when we first recommended Rentrak, we weren’t the only ones who saw its huge potential. The respected stock-market forecaster Zacks Equity Research issued a research report just as we recommended the stock. Zacks noted that “investors haven’t quite embraced the rising estimate story yet, but [that tells us] that the potential for a big move higher is definitely there.”
Zacks had given Rentrak its top rating – a No. 1 (“Strong Buy”) ranking. That made Rentrak a potential “Zacks Effect” stock. Since 1986, stocks with a Zacks “Strong Buy” ranking have generated an average annual gain of 26%. That’s nearly triple the return of the  Standard & Poor’s 500 Index . According to Zacks, one of the best ways to find these underappreciated stocks is by looking at companies that are experiencing rising analyst estimates but haven’t seen a commensurate increase in their share prices. Zacks saw that exact situation with Rentrak. This signals “that investors haven’t quite embraced the rising estimate story yet, but [tells us] that the potential for a big move higher is definitely there,” Zacks analysts wrote in their recommendation report. “One such company that looks well positioned for a solid gain, but has been overlooked by investors lately, is Rentrak. This business-services stock has actually seen estimates rise over the past month for the current fiscal year by about 181.3%. But that is not yet reflected in its price, as the stock gained only 1.9% over the same time frame.”
Despite all this, after we made our recommendation, Rentrak shares sold off. The sell-off was way overdone. Indeed, we knew – and continued to tell you – that this was a great company with a hefty long-term upside for investors. Subsequent events proved us right. In late September, comScore Inc. (Nasdaq:  SCOR ) and Rentrak struck a $2.4 billion stock-for-stock merger deal that valued Rentrak at between $47.69 and $51.75 a share. As structured, the completed deal would give Rentrak shareholders 33.5% of the combined venture. ComScore shareholders would control the remaining 66.5%. Shareholders are feeling a bit burned by the deal: In fact, several law firms specializing in securities litigation have already jumped in – questioning whether this deal was fair to Rentrak shareholders. Tripp Levy Pllc. – one of the firms looking to line up potential shareholders/litigants – articulated the key points pretty well. “Our investigation seeks to determine whether Rentrak management engaged in a full and fair auction and process to insure that its shareholders obtained the maximum price possible for their shares,” the law firm said in a statement. “Indeed, an analyst has projected that the true going forward inherent value of Rentrak stock is… at least $100 per share (with a median target of analysts of over $73 per share).”
For comScore and Rentrak, though, this merger is a shot across Nielsen’s bow – a strategic move that’s designed to shuffle the industry pecking order. “We are at an inflection point right now,” comScore CEO Serge Matta told The New York Times last month. “Look at how viewers are interacting with television,” he added. “It is no longer just on the television set in the living room. It is on mobile. It is on VOD. They consume content wherever they want it, whenever they want it.”
ComScore is known for its Internet traffic-measurement capabilities – something that would mesh extremely well with Rentrak’s ability to gather and analyze data from cable TV boxes, says Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich. In fact, by linking up this way, the two firms become instantly more competitive in trying to figure out how to measure ad-campaign effectiveness and media content across TV and digital devices – something known as “cross-platform currency” in media parlance. Said Harrigan: “The deal addresses an imperative need for a flexible and trusted metric for cross-platform media buying and selling, with siloed TV and digital analytics no longer adequate.”
Nielsen measures media “consumption” (viewing and reactions to programs and advertising) through a panel of more than 25,000 U.S. households. ComScore uses a consumer panel of about 2 million folks through whom it tracks and analyzes online behavior, while Rentrak has emerged as a TV-ratings player by assessing viewership from data captured from millions of TV-feeding cable boxes. Nielsen remains king – the “gold-standard currency for counting the number of individuals exposed to a piece of content,” Todd Juenger, a senior analyst at Bernstein, wrote in in a June investment report. But the still independent Rentrak – and comScore – have made inroads. If this looks like it’s shaping up as a catfight, it’s because the opportunity is so big. Advertising executives dump about $70 billion a year into TV ad buys – and desperately want to know if they’re allocating those dollars in the right places. Independent measuring firms like Nielsen and Rentrak are one of the few ways to gain that understanding. And the combined Rentrak-comScore will provide meaningful competition to Nielsen for the first time ever. Bob Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, says the deal has “strategic merit.”
ComScore will bring its “leading” online data assets and combine it with Rentrak’s “leading” TV/video on demand/movie data assets to create a “near-real-time, de-duplicated, cross-media solution to better measure advertising and content consumption,” Peck wrote in a research report. He’s not the only observer with a bullish view of the deal. There’s also a respected industry insider who loves the proposed combination so much that it’s already put its money where its mouth is. Targeting Gains
We always counsel you to “buy with the smart money” – watching and following the moves made by both corporate insiders and “knowledgeable outsiders.”
And there’s a very significant “knowledgeable outsider” who’s made a move here. Over the past year, WPP Plc. (Nasdaq ADR:  WPPGY ) – the world’s No. 1 advertising firm by revenue – grabbed stakes in both comScore and Rentrak. That includes a 6.1-million-share comScore purchase in late September. And there was clearly some expectation that a merger might happen: In August, for instance, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said he would “welcome them coming together.”
Once the deal is finalized, WPP will have a 16% stake in the combined company – with an option to go as high as 20%. As a leading advertiser, WPP is the “ultimate insider” in this industry – one of the best examples of “smart money” you’ll find. So if an industry “insider” like WPP sees this as a great investment – meaning it intends to keep holding it after the merger is finalized – you should feel the same way. That underscores there are two ways to profit from this. The first obviously is Rentrak. In situations where there’s a buyout, we rarely tell folks to hold the stock through the deal. But this is an exception. The combined venture is going to grab big slices of this business over the next few years, making it a true Big Data growth play. So if you already own Rentrak and are willing to take a three- to five-year ride, we believe you’ll be well rewarded for taking the trip. The deal won’t be completed until next year. Analysts have a $60 target price on the shares – with a high-water estimate of $72, which would represent a 36% gain from here. Rentrak’s next earnings report is scheduled for Nov. 4. A near-term disappointment could give you a shot to buy in at a cheaper price. If you don’t own Rentrak and want a different way to play this, you can also buy comScore. ComScore expects the transaction to be “mildly dilutive” to its internally reported (nonstandard accounting) per-share earnings after it closes next year. But the combination will be “accretive” – meaning it boosts profits – the year after. The merger will also bring cost savings – big ones: $20 million in 2016 and $35 million the year after. Peck has a “Buy” rating on comScore and a $65 price target – about 44% more than the current trading price of about $43. But analyst “target” prices tend to be 12-month numbers. We believe the gains beyond that will be much, much greater. This is one story we’ll want to keep following. Unless otherwise directed, we recommend investors employ a 25% “trailing stop” on all holdings. Have You Seen What’s in Trump’s Portfolio? Donald Trump is not alone in his desire to “make America great.” There’s a little-known Silicon Valley company that’s on the same page as him. We know for a fact Trump has already scooped up shares worth as much as $1.55 million. We have the whole story here . Related Reports:

How That Steve Jobs Box-Office Bomb Spotlighted This 44% Profit Play

The acquisition of Sponsorhub by Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ: RENT ) creates synergy between the two companies. Sponsorhub provides advertisers and sponsors with unique insight into sports and entertainment related chatter on social media. One of Sponsorhub’s specialties is tracking fan emotion during sporting and other events. The recently announced acquisition of sports and entertainment industry big data platform Sponsorhub by Rentrak Corporation creates a synergy between the two companies, according to Sponsorhub founder and CEO Bob Johnston. Benzinga spoke with Johnston about what this merger means moving forward. Related Link: Bob Peck: comScore-Rentrak Merger Has 'Strategic Merit,' Notes Combined Company 'Creates Stronger Competitor'
Benzinga: Could you start by explaining what Sponsorhub is and what it does? Bob Johnston: Sponsorhub is an analytics platform for the enterprise space. We work with advertisers to measure their largest engagements around sports entertainment. Within sports, we help large advertisers track and measure endorsements of athletes, sponsorships of leagues, teams – and on the entertainment side, product placements within TV and film. Therein lies the synergy with Rentrak since it is the pre-eminent measurement platform for the film industry. However, it doesn’t have an automated social media measurement platform. Rentrak brought us in to be its social listening layer across all the other measurements it is already doing. BZ: What sorts of events and entities does Sponsorhub track on behalf of advertisers? BJ: I can give you a couple of examples. We've checked over the years things like the World Cup, the Olympics, as you know, the U.S. Open. We've tracked the Americas Cup. We did a special project over there for those guys. We have a number of advertisers that are sponsors of the NFL, for example. They spend millions of dollars on different teams in specific markets and they want to make sure they're getting the right pay back on their investments. We work with advertisers to track engagement across major league sports down to the team level as well as the level of individual players. If you have a specific athlete and you're McDonald's or Reebok, you may want to see how that athlete is trending with a specific market such as St. Louis or Cincinnati. BZ: So, Sponsorhub’s tracking can be quite specific? BJ: We can go right down to the granular level, minute per minute within a game or a TV show. We can track all social listening activity around that. That’s our secret sauce. Sports and entertainment are the two sectors we have targeted most, but they're not exclusive. We've done a number of other engagements, but the go-to market play for us has been those two. BZ: Clearly, there’s a need. How have analytics been done before Sponsorhub? BJ: If you look at the sports industry alone, it's $250 billion worldwide. It's a massive amount of dollars spent. Yet, the tracking and analytics is mostly done with spreadsheets. It's very old school, there's not a lot of technology. There are various other "listening platforms" out there, but they're not retrofitted specifically to the sports entertainment genre. We've created a platform specifically for that and it's purely a social listening platform. BZ: What do you think is driving the synergy between social media and sports events or other large events? BJ: That’s a great question. What’s really driving it is fan engagement. Fans are passionate about a sports team or specific athlete, much more than a product, maybe with the exception of Apple products. We looked at that and realized if we could help a brand track the level of emotion a fan (consumer) has for a specific athlete or team in the context of the brand that's a partner of that team, then it becomes really interesting and useful. We spend a lot of time tracking and measuring the emotions of fans. We can look at happiness, anger, surprise and delight. We have all these emotions within our dashboard and we can roll them up to a brand and say, “We are going to tell you how the fans at tonight’s Red Sox/Yankees game were trending as it relates to your brand.”
BZ: How will this acquisition add value to Rentrak, and similarly, what does it mean for Sponsorhub? BJ: We're exploring what new products we can bring to market for this sort of sports and entertainment genre based on what Rentrak already has. We each have existing stuff that's worked well, and has been running across many brands. Now, I think we want to figure out when you push these two things together what can we create that's very novel and different from what's already out there? Related Link: Benzinga's Top Downgrades
BZ: Is there any part of that that has to do with targeting consumers more efficiently? BJ: That's the other side of the coin. We don't just want to help you optimize your spending. Within the context of an engagement, let's say you're involved with the Olympics, which is multi week. You should be able to look at the data we're providing and that Rentrak is providing, and within a day's notice change your marketing if it is trending the wrong way. In fact, we did that for a client for the Olympics a while back. In Sochi, some TV ads trended the wrong way based on (feedback on) Google, Facebook, Twitter and so forth. We optimized their creative on the fly, which is super cool. At the time of this writing, Jim Probasco had no position in any mentioned securities.

Sponsorhub’s Acquisition By Rentrak Corporation Creates Synergy, Says CEO

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Новостной редактор oleg@rusbase.com
28 сентября 2015
Фонд Maxfield Capital вышел из американского стартапа SponsorHub , разрабатывающего аналитическую платформу для измерения эффективности спонсорских и маркетинговых кампаний в социальных сетях. Это первый экзит для фонда. Facebook
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Детали сделки не раскрываются, однако известно, что стартап был приобретен компанией Rentrak , которая занимается аналитикой и измерением аудитории видеоконтента – в частности, фильмов и сериалов. Технологии проекта будут использованы для того, чтобы предложить клиентам Rentrak продукты для измерения влияния аудитории социальных сетей на телевидение, рекламу, кино и интеграцию брендированного контента, сообщает  Firrma. Facebook

Maxfield Capital совершил свой первый выход

By FinSMEs
Rentrak (NASDAQ: RENT), a Portland, Oregon-based provider of a platform for measuring movies and TV everywhere, acquired SponsorHub , a New York, NY-based Big Data platform for the sports and entertainment industry. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Through the acquisition of SponsorHub, Rentrak will offer products that measure the effect of social media on television, dynamic ad insertion, online video advertising, movies and branded content integration. Led by Chief Executive Officer Robert Johnston, SponsorHub provides a a Big Data platform for the sports and entertainment industry offering proprietary social media measurement for sports, political and advertising brands. Its tools measure and track brand engagement in sports and branded entertainment initiatives, ranging from the Olympics and World Cup, to TV and movies. FinSMEs

Rentrak Acquires SponsorHub

Eventbrite provides event discovery and ticketing services in the technology sector. It has a platform for individuals and organizations to create and attend events such as concerts, workshops, and festivals. The company serves the events industry, offering tools for event marketing, management, and ticket sales. It was formerly known as Mollyguard. It was founded in 2006 and is based in San Francisco, California. In March 2026, Eventbrite was acquired by Bending Spoons at a valuation of $500M.

Eventbrite

With the new partnership , Johnston says organizers can move event listings from Eventbrite to SponsorHub and vice versa with just the click of a button .

Eventbrite And SponsorHub Team Up For Easy Event Sponsorship Integration.

Companies offering tech-enabled marketing and advertising services.

Ad Tech

Acquired

Seed VC

SponsorHub is an online marketplace for the sponsorship industry, providing greater access, easier execution and audience measurement for marketers. The platform combines event discovery and sponsorship buying, at scale, as well as audience measurement and targeting, enabling marketers to reach the right audience at the right time. The end result is access to targeted customers and higher ROI for event sponsors and better monetization for event producers.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
9/25/2015	Acquired		Rentrak Corporation	$XXM	0 FY undefined	1
12/8/2011	Seed VC		Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	10

Date	9/25/2015	12/8/2011
Round	Acquired	Seed VC
Amount
Investors	Rentrak Corporation	Subscribe to see more
Valuation	$XXM	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	1	10

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Type	Location
9/25/2015	9/25/2015	Rentrak Corporation	1 Acquired	Corporation	Oregon
12/8/2011	12/8/2011	Jason Krantz	1 Seed VC	Angel Investor (Individual)	Massachusetts
12/8/2011	12/8/2011	Sean Power	1 Seed VC	Angel Investor (Individual)	Ireland
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Barry Silbert	Subscribe to see more	Angel Investor (Individual)	New York
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Joanne Katsch	Subscribe to see more	Angel Investor (Individual)	California

First funding	9/25/2015	12/8/2011	12/8/2011	00/00/0000	00/00/0000
Last Funding	9/25/2015	12/8/2011	12/8/2011	00/00/0000	00/00/0000
Investor	Rentrak Corporation	Jason Krantz	Sean Power	Barry Silbert	Joanne Katsch
Rounds	1 Acquired	1 Seed VC	1 Seed VC	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Corporation	Angel Investor (Individual)	Angel Investor (Individual)	Angel Investor (Individual)	Angel Investor (Individual)
Location	Oregon	Massachusetts	Ireland	New York	California

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SponsorHub Investors