AdMaster's Institutional Investor Allen Zhu Ranked as One of the Top 100 VCs Worldwide

BEIJING, April 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the newly published 2016 Forbes Midas List, nicknamed the "Oscars for Tech Investors," Allen Zhu (#65), the Shanghai-based Managing Director of GSR Ventures, was named one of 11 Chinese venture capitalists among the top 100 VCs around the world.

Well-known for his preference for internet-related and data technology companies, Allen and his GSR team have invested in quite a few household names including Chinese Uber rival Didi Kuaidi. In the toB market, Allen has been investing in leading marketing data technology company, AdMaster, since 2010, which is regarded as one of the successful picks in GSR's basket of companies.

"We are very happy to see AdMaster's robust and profitable growth over the past five years. As we put emphasis of our investment on the internet advertising industry, we believe that AdMaster's unique positioning of offering third-party measurement of advertisers' digital investment with big data technology is very valuable in today's market. This is especially evident when you consider how the rapid development of the Internet has totally reshaped consumers' media habits and purchasing behaviors; an ordinary consumer's path-to-purchase involves multiple touch points across different devices," said Zhu.

AdMaster stands atop global Big Data trends with continuous innovation in big data technology

As one of the world's smartest tech investors, Zhu puts a lot of emphasis on big data technology, which, in his eyes, will have far-reaching impact on how we do business in the future. Recently, the implementation of a national big data strategy has been written into China's 13th Five-Year-Plan.

According to the China Big Data Development Research Report (2015), the big data market in China was valued at RMB11.59 billion in 2015, with a year-on-year growth rate of 38%. "Big Data has become a reality in China, and actually is entering a golden growth period in the years ahead," said Zhu. 

Meanwhile, the rapidly increasing volume of big data also brings daunting challenges to companies to make it a usable, valuable asset. Given that a big portion of today's big data are cookies and other digital fingerprints over an internet user's life-cycle, Zhu emphasized that the value of big data could only be fully capitalized when it can be integrated into a single view through data technologies.

"It's good to see that AdMaster has always been on top of the global big data trend by building China's largest internet user behavior database, while at the same time collaborating with other partners with rich user-profile information, all of which are vitally important to help advertisers maximize their digital spending on every unique consumer," said Zhu.

Based on its SaaS business model, AdMaster aims to build a data hub in the digital world

In the past, the use of big data was mostly limited to painting user profiles so as to help enterprises and brands make justifiable decisions in their marketing campaigns. Today, the application of big data can be found everywhere, ranging from the insight-digging for internet user behaviors, to precision marketing, from CRM to E-Commerce optimization and more.

"By turning our business focus to SaaS, AdMaster is aimed at becoming a 'data hub' by connecting the dots in enterprises' data ecosystem through our own product development and the integration of available resources in the market," said 35-year-old founder and CEO of AdMaster, Vincent Yan.

Though the huge potential of a SaaS business model has been widely proved in the US market, where a few billion-dollar-scale SaaS companies had attracted a lot attention from the VC world, Zhu says that in China SaaS remains at a very early stage. "It's very important for Chinese companies to venture into the SaaS territory with a smart perspective, and it won't stand firm if it cannot bring direct and obvious effects to them. In this regard, we are very happy to see that AdMaster, as one of China's most influential SaaS firms, based on its scalable internet users' database, has been doing pretty well, and is likely to grow at a decent pace in the future," Zhu added.

It's still hard to estimate the value of China's SaaS market, but what has been agreed within the industry is that with the continuous development of a SaaS ecosystem in China, there will be increasing need for big data integration in the years to come.

As a recent survey indicates, the DMP, precision marketing through targeting/re-targeting techniques and programmatic buying, will become hot digital marketing technologies in the coming year.

"For us, Big Data has gone far beyond being a concept, but very concrete SaaS solutions that could help our clients reach their consumers, offer them the right content, at the right time, before a deal can happen, most of the time simply through a click on their cellphone or PC," said Vincent.

This is the 16th consecutive year that Forbes has released its Midas List to recognize the top venture capitalists who are making the biggest, earliest bets in the best tech startups of tomorrow worldwide. Over the past few years Chinese and China-based VCs have gained increasing prominence in the annual ranking. This year, almost half of the top 10 companies on the list come from China.

Contact:

Sue Feng
Email: [email protected]

About AdMaster:

AdMaster is the leading data solution provider specialized in data collection, analysis and management. By using cutting-edge proprietary technology, we create value for businesses by turning big data into smart data and delivering it to them through our software-as-a-service platform, enabling them to make more informed decisions and gain a competitive edge.

Our core services include third party digital advertising verification, social media and e-commerce measurement, and data management – including data obtained from personal computers and mobile devices. http://www.admaster.com.cn/en

SOURCE AdMaster

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