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HOT COMPANY PROFILE: Sentiment analysis startup Amplicate
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Social media marketing is becoming increasingly important to brands as the time consumers spend on social networks continues to increase. However, many companies remain wary of social media, unsure of how to market themselves on social networks or measure the response to their campaigns. Amplicate is aiming to provide some insight. It currently tracks consumer sentiment on Facebook , Twitter and its own website and sells industry-specific reports to brands based on what consumers are saying. Launched in 2009, the firm is still operating in beta, with CEO Juan Alvarez saying it has no timeline for a full launch. Nevertheless, the site has already collected more than 140m opinions from almost 30m users across 330,000 topics ranging from views on the current conflict in Libya to the wonders of chocolate milk.
¤ What differentiates Amplicate from other analysis services?
We have accurate data on a vast range of topics that people discuss on social media – cars, bands, airlines, celebrities, even insects. We can also offer accurate data more quickly and efficiently than other social media research companies. If you are the brand manager for Sony, for example, we can tell you what is happening with other companies in your industry and how opinions have changed over time.
Unlike other services, we have two sides: a consumer-facing side, which is kind of an advocacy service, so if you like or hate Ryanair there is a page on Amplicate where you can go and share your opinion. We also have the corporate, company profile side, where we offer in-depth social media analytics to companies, or anyone who is interested in a particular industry.
¤ What is your business model?
Basically data analytics, which is at this point in the form of reports that we sell to people interested in a specific industry. We’re selling ad-hoc reports in volume, mostly to companies with a strong consumer-facing side. At the moment our focus is on industries, so for example the UK supermarkets space, but we will increase our offer in terms of reports as we grow.
We aren’t profitable. But we’re a very lean, small company, so it’s going to be very soon that we’re profitable, the goal is by the end of this year.
¤ Who are your main competitors?
There is no one doing exactly what we do. There are plenty of social media analytics companies with vast amounts of data, but we believe that none of them offers data in a very summarised and short way in detailed reports at the prices that we currently offer. Rival companies are more oriented towards subscription services that are quite expensive and a big commitment.
¤ What is the biggest challenge you currently face?
Spreading the word about our service. We have quite a lot of traffic, but we started the social media analytics part of the business quite recently. It’s new, and we know there’s huge demand for accurate data about social media, so we just need to let more people know we are out there.
Internally we’re trying to make the report service really efficient – we want to be able to turn over reports in a matter of hours.
¤ What is the hottest trend in digital media right now?
Social media is really important, and it’s part of most companies’ marketing plans now. But businesses need to know how effective social media marketing is. There is a lot of learning happening at this point, and a lot of companies aren’t sure where to go – it takes a bit of a learning curve to actually understand where they have to focus and why they have to use social media – some people just do it because they have to, not because they understand. That’s what we’re trying to do here – to allow people to understand easily why social media is important through the reports.
VERDICT
Although Amplicate was founded two years, the money-making side of the startup is relatively new, with it only starting to generate reports for sale using its data in the last few months. Building up a large content base on which to make these reports is certainly important, but the firm now needs to move quickly to begin generating some serious revenues. That includes not only creating industry-specific reports, but enabling firms to generate their own data so that they can see the consumer response to particular services or campaigns.
Amplicate originally focused on Facebook and Twitter, two of the social media sites with the biggest audiences, but Alvarez says it has plans to expand not only to other social networks, such as Google +, but also into content such as blog posts. This should help to widen the appeal of Amplicate, enabling it to garner a better view of what is going on across the web rather than on just three sites.
Brands have the budgets in place to put towards social media, but Amplicate must convince them to spend that money on its service if is to reach profitability. It may be a tall order with the wealth of ad agencies and sites vying for brands’ online dollars. But if Amplicate can prove the value of its data, it could be a prime acquisition target for an ad agency wishing to build out its social credentials. Lithium’s purchase of Scout Labs last year is a precedent in this sense.
Competitors
Scout Labs
