ADTHINK IV – What’s Trending in Tech & Advertising #adthink

It was standing-room only at yesterday’s ADTHINK IV – What’s Trending in Tech & Advertising! From data and real time display targeting to viral marketing and location-based ad tech, the discussion spanned all of today’s hottest topics in tech and advertising.

Nihal Mehta, Founder/Chairman of LocalResponse and General Partner of Eniac Ventures (@nihalmehta), led the audience and panel of experts through a rapid-fire round of pitches from tech and media start-ups, who made a big splash with their ideas and business solutions, showing great promise for the industry. These showstoppers included:

• ListenFirst Media (@listenfist) – Leveraging aggregated internal and external data for brands to make sense of it, predict outcomes and optimize performance.
• RockerBox (@getRockerBox) – Hyper display targeting. In real time. Determines users’ intent/action based on immediate browsing history.
• ViralGains (@ViralGains) – Agencies and brands use the viral marketing platform to build audiences and maximize social engagement for online video content.
• Vistar Media (@vistarmedia) – Location-based ad technology company that is changing how the world buys and sells mobile and digital out-of-home media.

After the pitches, our expert panel (“the critics”) observed and weighed in on each start-up’s approach and strategy:

• Janet Balis, Partner/CRO, Betaworks (@digitalstrategy)
• Jon Bond, Chief Tomorrist, Tomorro\\\LLC (@JonBond57)
• Alex Morrison, SVP/Head of Digital Marketing, Grey Group (@alexgmorrison)
• Javier Farfan, Senior Director of Cultural Branding, PepsiCo (@jfarfan)

While the judges all acknowledged that each start-up was amazing in their own right, they agreed that ListenFirst presented a unique value proposition. As emerging technology and start-up innovation show no sign of slowing down in the ad industry, ADTHINK will continue to highlight these important conversations between start-ups and advertising experts throughout 2014.

Sending out a big ‘thank you’ to our friends at Advertising REDBOOKS and sponsors Davis & Gilbert, LLP and EY, who helped make ADTHINK a big success!

Check out photos of the event below.