[Belgium] Brussels-based Attentio, a startup that markets a robust software suite for brand monitoring and analysis of conversations that are happening in social media, has raised €525,000 (or $786,000) in financing from the city’s regional investment firm SRIB/GIMB.
The financing consisted of an equity investment of €400,000 and a loan of €125,000.
This brings the total of capital raised by the company to about €3 million, according to co-founder and CCO Simon McDermott, although this is the startup’s first round of institutional funding since its inception in 2004.
Attentio offers a number of online market intelligence products that are designed to give marketers, PR people and business owners a way to track what’s being said about their company, brand, product or competitors across blogs, social networks and web-based message boards. This is a great way for these people to measure marketing campaign effectiveness, enhance existing competitive research initiatives and guard over the online reputation of the companies they work for or the brands they represent.
To showcase some of the technology behind these solutions, Attentio launched Trendpedia, a tool that enables users to discover trends in social media.
Brand monitoring and realtime online market intelligence is a field that’s quickly becoming saturated with companies battling for a piece of the pie (to name just a few: Radian6, Collective Intellect, BuzzLogic, Techrigy, Visible Technologies), although it’s worth noting that most of those making waves in this space are based in and focused on the U.S., while Attentio is going to use the extra capital primarily to strengthen its foothold in Europe.
McDermott tells me things are moving fast for Attentio, and that its 20 employees had brought Attentio close to profitability prior to the funding. He says the additional financing was needed to accelerate its current growth, and that he sees a big consolidation wave coming in the next few years when it comes to the social media monitoring space.
Attentio’s focus on Europe should then come in handy because virtually none of the other players in the field have crossed the Atlantic properly, McDermott hopes.
Time will tell.
Hello Robin,
You are right on that the number of social media monitoring companies in North America seem to multiply every day, but English is not the only language on the web, and it should not be assumed that monitoring only in English is sufficient for a brand or agency.
Though a majority of Internet users in Europe are spectators, there is still a large number of Internet users participating on blogs, forums, wikis, etc that can provide valuable insights not to be missed, no matter what the language, and the number of Internet users continues to grow in Europe and abroad.
Best,
Michelle
@Synthesio
Michelle,
I’m glad for the article – now I got to know that you exist. And I totally agree with about the European complexity – I have cracked that difficulty you are much better off. Traditional commercial expansion by us operators usually go through the UK and then hit a wall.
Unfortunately for many companies only searching US-based solutions, but fortunately for European-based ones. Another complexity is different alphabets such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, etc. that we have figured out because some companies and organizations need to know what is being said worldwide. Even if a brand is not present in another country, it can be beneficial to monitor in other languages/countries to see how you could be present in that country and benefit from having an entirely new market available to you. As we always say, listening first is the key to any successful strategy. And glad we could let you know we were here
Best,
Michelle
@Synthesio
I always find it strange to feel underwhelmed by the web site design of a company who’s focus is branding/marketing/social media. Frontpage template? Really?
Cool to hear about the greater world of tech and the companies making stuff happen. Even if they’re only raising $736K. Thanks!
Robin,
Another player in the market is Sysomos. Although we’re based in Toronto, we’re attracting a growing number of clients in Europe.
cheers, Mark
@RexKramerDangerSeeker fair point on the web site, new one is coming
@voxrationis does $786K sound better
Check out this mashup: http://bit.ly/2mZ8is – lets you easily restore dialogues from Twitter
Hey Michelle.
You should check out Spinn3r. Most of the US companies are using us now and we’re always turning on International content.
There are a LOT of users coming online in US and in Europe so it’s a good time for all the players in this space.
Hi Kevin,
Spinn3r looks interesting. We have our own in-house crawlers and index that we use, but if you would be interested in talking with our CIO, Thibault, his e-mail is thibault(.)hanin(@)synthesio(.)fr. Thanks for your comment.
Michelle
@Synthesio
Hey Michelle…
Thanks for the reply. One of the big wins of using Spinn3r is the HUGE amount of cash you can save by using us instead of building your own.
The build vs buy decision almost always falls in our favor which is why most of the players in the space are using us at this point
Well done to all at team Attentio
Good to see that the hard work is paying off –
Best