Online shopping site Gilt Groupe has social on the mind, searching for ways to grab prospects off Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
That’s why it’s bought into social marketing tech firm Brand Networks’ newlyenhanced Brand Networks Platform (unveiled Monday). The updates promise to make it easier for marketers to ensure the relevancy of their native advertising, and more easily coordinate, publish and analyze the performance of these ads.
Gilt, which has used Brand Networks since late 2012, is most interested in the enhanced ways they can create more relevant content through the platform update.
Jessica Mann, senior marketing manager for Gilt, said the company is focused on diversifying its ad portfolio as paid advertising opportunities have proliferated, adding that she has found Brand Networks works well between these various partners to help further Gilt’s relationships.
“A few years ago it was really just Facebook, then Twitter, but now there is Instagram, Pinterest and more,” Mann said. “Having a single point of service for us, especially as we migrate more service offerings in-house, is a really appealing offering for us – it makes our process much more efficient.”
Brand Networks’ platform update offers new workflow features, allowing individual members of a team to manage each step of content creation and posting, organized into five “modules”: plan, publish, advertise, automate and analyze.
Additionally, the platform has Facebook analytic and reporting capabilities that go beyond what’s nominally available through the social network. While Mann said Facebook is “making a lot of improvements on their platform,”especially in reporting, there are still limits to what marketers can do directly. For example, a lot of insights in Facebook’s ad API can’t be gathered directly through the Facebook dashboard.
Another benefit to using Brand Networks’ platform is a consolidated view. On Twitter, Gilt has a number of different ad accounts it works across, and Brand Networks’ platforms allows it to collapse them all into one report.
“Instead of having to open up a report six different times, it’s a one-stop shop,” said Mann. “What they are able to service through the ad API is much more nimble and a more automated way for us to do reporting.”
Brand Networks’ announcement comes during a time of heavy expansion for the company, through both product development and acquisitions. Two years ago, the company acquired Optimal, growing its data-driven ad-buying abilities. Earlier this year, it bought rival SHIFT, another Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer that had expanded to other social networks, winnowing the crowded social platform space further.
