Wicket Labs, a startup that is run by execs who are late of thePlatform, has raised a $2 million round of seed financing and has introduced a data-driven “Scorecard” product that can help OTT providers and other direct-to-consumer digital media companies keep tabs on key areas such as engagement, churn and customer-acquisition costs.
Wicket Labs said Madrona Venture Group, Divergent Ventures and undisclosed angel investors joined the $2 million round. It also announced the appointment of new members to its advisory board -- Krishan Bhatia, EVP of business operations and strategy for NBCUniversal’s ad sales unit; Dustin Hillard, CTO of Versive, a machine learning company based in Seattle; and Mike Berkley, previously SVP of product management for Viacom.
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In tandem with its partners, Wicket Labs’s new Scorecard product is designed to obtain data from various sources that are traditionally housed in separate silos and aggregate, analyze and normalize that information into a form that can help to drive decisions that can aid with engagement, customer acquisition, conversion rates, and churn.
That combined and analyzed data can provide key predictive information about customers and audiences, Marty Roberts, CEO of Wicket Labs, explained.
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Roberts co-founded WicketLabs with chief strategy officer Ian Blaine, who also started thePlatform, the online video publishing company that Comcast acquired in 2006. Roberts joined thePlatform that year and eventually rose to co-CEO before departing in 2015.
Roberts said the data is particularly helpful to publishers who are transitioning from print to digital as well as a growing array of OTT video services, including authenticated TV Everywhere offerings from MVPDs and programmers, that continue to chip away at viewership of traditional TV.
Rather than relying on their gut feelings, data will help them make decisions and get a better fix on their audience, and how customers are coming through the door (i.e. through social media, digital ads, search, email) and get a better sense of their company’s value, Roberts said.
“They are all learning a new vocabulary,” he added.
