Brandwatch is a digital consumer intelligence company headquartered in Brighton, England. Brandwatch sells six different products: Consumer Research, Audiences, Vizia, Qriously, Reviews and BuzzSumo. Brandwatch Consumer Research is a "self-serve application" or software as a service, which archives social media data in order to provide companies with information and the means to track specific segments to analyse their brands' online presence. The tool's coverage includes blogs, news sites, forums, videos, reviews, images, and social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. Users can search data by using text and image Search, and use charting, categorisation, sentiment analysis and other features to provide further information and analysis. Brandwatch has access to over 80 million sources.
History
In 1999, Runtime Collective Ltd, a web-engineering company, was incorporated by CEO Giles Palmer. In 2005, the company launched Magpie Search and Alert, a search engine for finding documents such as financial statements and patents. In 2007, this was relaunched as Brandwatch, which instead focused on tracking social media mentions and social advertising impact.
Investment
The company received $6 million in venture capital from Nauta Capital in March 2012. In March 2014, Brandwatch partnered with Gnip, a social media API company, to release a new application that would allow users to access more social data and analytics. By May 2014, Brandwatch had gained $22 million from a new round of funding led by Highland Capital. In September 2015, Brandwatch launched a French website., On October 29, 2015, Brandwatch raised $33 million in Series C funding, led by Partech Investors, to invest further growth in the US.
PeerIndex acquisition
PeerIndex was a London-based company, founded by Azeem Azhar, providing social media analytics based on footprints from use of major social media services. Part of an emerging group of social media analytics providers, PeerIndex helped social media contributors assess and score their influence and benefit from the social capital they have built up. PeerIndex tracked approximately 45 million Twitter profiles, making the company one of the leaders in its sector. Brandwatch acquired PeerIndex in December 2014. With the use of PeerIndex technology, Brandwatch created their Audiences product, which they released in July 2016.
BuzzSumo acquisition
BuzzSumo is a content marketing research and analysis tool, with its first Pro version released in September 2014. Brandwatch acquired BuzzSumo in October 2017.
was a social intelligence company that was a competitor of Brandwatch. The two companies merged in October 2018, combining their technology and customer base into a $100m business.
Following the Brandwatch-Crimson Hexagon merger, the two companies technology was combined to create Brandwatch Consumer Research. This product would replace Brandwatch Analytics and Crimson Hexagon's Forsight.
Overview
Brandwatch is a subscription-based service with over 2,200 clients. Over the years, the company has opened additional offices outside of the UK in Stuttgart, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Paris, and Sydney. With the merger of Brandwatch and Crimson Hexagon, their offices in London and Boston became part of Brandwatch as well.
