BrandTotal Raises $2M Seed Round

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

BrandTotal recently secured funding of $2M in their seed round through two prominent Israeli investment groups. The round included KDC Media Fund, the investment arm of Keshet, Israel's leading television broadcaster, and Dick Clark Productions, the world's largest producer and proprietor of live televised entertainment events. It was led by Glilot Capital Partners, a venture capital fund specializing in enterprise software that was recently ranked as the third best performing VC fund in the world (according to Preqin).

BrandTotal's solution helps marketers and brands gain valuable insight into their competitors' dark marketing campaigns. Using cyber and machine learning methodologies in the form of a proprietary algorithm that accurately models all online consumer activity and identifies competitive plans, BrandTotal's platform is able to deliver actionable opportunities in real-time. This allows brands to reverse engineer their competition's marketing strategy and finally go agile - adjusting their marketing strategy on the fly.

BrandTotal was founded early in 2016 by Alon Leibovich, Amir Leshman, and Omer Ramote, with Oren Dor joining the executive team shortly thereafter. Prior to founding BrandTotal, Mr. Leibovich served as a Lead Strategic Planner in McCANN Tel Aviv, where he tackled complex consumer psychology and business strategy problems for some of the biggest brands in the world. Mr. Leshman, CTO, previously led the collection efforts for the most promising business verticals as the Data Collection Team Leader for Aternity and before that at Checkpoint. Mr. Ramote, now the CAO (Chief Architecture Officer) at BrandTotal, started his career at Microsoft and went on to serve as the Lead Backend Engineer for Yeloha, a cleantech (solar) startup. Mr. Dor, CPO, previously served as a Research Team Leader at Fortscale and a Data Architect at Upsolver.

Dark marketing is a major trend among brands, as PWC's Digital Services group reports that 94% of company executives believe in reaching customers through targeted, personalized marketing experiences. "With most present-day marketing campaigns being targeted to very specific consumers, as well as fragmented across a multitude of digital channels, brands are unable to easily monitor the marketing efforts of their competitors, and are in fact - in the dark. We are bringing the new era of marketing BI to match the developments in this era of dark marketing, and enhance marketers' capabilities to employ agile marketing methods," explained Alon Leibovich, BrandTotal CEO.

Agile marketing has been around for quite some time now, but the lack of proper technological infrastructure has prevented marketers from acting on this coveted practice. According to HBR, going agile could make a marketing team up to 60% more effective. Agile marketing refers to marketers being able to adjust their marketing efforts in real-time, as opposed to waiting for hindsight and only adjusting in the future.

"As consumers and B2B clients have shifted their media consumption to social media, with personal screens and online profiles, the days of 'one-marketing-message-fits-all' are numbered. Brands are now focused on targeting customers with surgical precision," said Benjamin Karsch, former CMO of Revlon and Cigna, and BrandTotal's Advisor. "Now, marketers can turn to BrandTotal, who have the BI technology to match these advancements, and are bringing brands a competitive advantage in the age of dark marketing."

A recent Forbes article reported that the marketing technology (martech) field is booming, with 70% of U.S. marketers planning to increase their usage of martech products in 2017. "We are excited to start the journey with the great BrandTotal founding team. The company provides unmatchable insight into hidden social campaigns," said Arik Kleinstein, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Glilot Capital. "Such information is critical for a vast amount of organizations; BrandTotal will help them navigate their path in this digital marketing era."

With their headquarters in Tel Aviv, BrandTotal currently employs a team of 10 and is looking to expand its team in the areas of data science and business development. The company is also a graduate of the Microsoft Accelerator program.

About BrandTotal 

BrandTotal enables marketing managers to go agile and win over their KPI's by providing them with unique and actionable business insights that uncover their competitors' dark marketing efforts.

The advancement of social media has given rise to 'dark marketing,' a term that refers to the complex marketing methods of fragmentation, segmentation, and targeting. Such personalized marketing has made it almost impossible for brands to monitor and understand, let alone act upon, their competitors' movements. For example, 84% of sponsored ads on Facebook are classified as 'dark posts,' and only appear on specific users' feeds - leaving them completely absent from the brand's public page.

BrandTotal's technology is able to collect data on 'dark marketing' from all digital channels, and alleviate marketers' frustrations by providing them with insight and real-time action items to help them finally go agile and compete more effectively.

About Glilot Capital Partners 

Glilot Capital Partners is a seed and early stage venture fund that invests in Israel's most extraordinary entrepreneurs. They back teams that develop sophisticated technology, particularly in the areas of enterprise software.

The fund creates an environment that makes it possible to generate real, lasting value for both sides of the investment equation. Among the companies Glilot has invested in thus far, five of the first six have been acquired by Microsoft, CA Technologies, Marketo, Palo-Alto Networks and Intuit.

Glilot Capital Partners was founded in 2011 by Kobi Samboursky and Arik Kleinstein, former entrepreneurs and veterans of the IDF's most elite intelligence unit, and currently manages $125M across its funds.

Glilot Capital Partners is one of the most successful funds in the world of the vintage years 2010-2013, according to the recently published 2016 Preqin Alternative Assets Performance Monitor report. Glilot Capital Partners, with a 92.2% Net IRR, was ranked twice in the report in two categories: 3rd performing Venture Capital Funds of vintage 2010-2013 and in 5th Performing Private Equity Funds of vintage 2010-2013.

About KDC Media Fund 

KDC Media Fund is a JV between Keshet, Israel's leading Broadcaster and an award-winning global content producer & Dick Clark Productions, US biggest production company for non-scripted TV shows.

The fund focuses on early stage innovative startups in the various fields of media including video technologies, advertising VR & AR and other immersive technologies. The fund assists startups it has invested in to grow their business and become global players in the media market. The fund is managed by Danny Peled, a seasoned entrepreneur with a proven track record at all scales - from startups to publicly traded companies.


For further information please contact:  

+1-917-595-2026
+972-50-4804680
[email protected]

+972-54-6833983
[email protected] 

SOURCE KDC Media Fund , Glilot Capital Partners and BrandTotal