Gravy just got a nice boost of confidence per its $7.6M Series A round led by new investors Gannett, MetTel and several optimistic existing investors. Gravy is a local-mobile data analytics firms that develops consumer behavioral signals for segmentation and targeting based on participation and interest in local events and activities. The theory Gravy pursues is that this type of profiling provides a new level of accuracy in targeting consumers with behavioral and location signals.
Founded in 2011, Gravy will use its funding round to build out its Gravy GOLD data platform that is driven by verified customer attendance at local events and places. Gravy told us that their clients have developed actionable data gathered from customers motivated to invest their free time to physically attend events and activities provides a strong set of intent signals useful to marketers.
Gravy says its GOLD platform, enables brand marketers to quickly uncover the interests and affinities of individual mobile customers as they live their daily lives and use that knowledge to predict buying intent, deliver personalized engagement, gain granular competitive insights and execute pinpoint, in-the-moment targeting.
The rise of data science, data platforms and marketing analytics is disruptive by changing how marketers and publishers are now transacting on audience inventory rather than media inventory. Gravy makes for an interesting opportunity as it brings a new type of data to the game. Consumer behaviors around events and activities on face value would appear to be useful signals for targeting specific creative messaging and appeals as well as developing a new segmentation strategy.
As programmatic, location and mobile converge around data management platforms and consumer signaling, Gravy could be upping its game at a very relevant point in the industry’s evolution.
Rick Ducey is the managing director for BIA/Kelsey. He is an expert in digital media innovations, competitive strategies, new product development and new business models, including digital ecosystem collaboration strategies.
Ducey oversees the firm's consulting, research and advisory services areas. He is also the program director for BIA/Kelsey's Video Local Media advisory service. This program provides coverage and analysis of how online, mobile and broadcast video technologies, competition, shifting consumer demographics and media usage trends are driving changes in the media ecosystem and SMBs and other advertisers can be successful in the new environment. Ducey assists clients with their business planning and revenue models, strategic research, market assessment, and designing and implementing digital strategies. He is also a cofounder of SpectraRep, one of BIA�s companies, which sells a patent-pending IP-based alerting system that he co-invented.
Prior to joining BIA in 2000, Ducey was senior vice president of NAB's Research and Information Group. In this position, he was in charge of the association�s new technology assessment, audience and policy research, strategic planning and information systems, including all Internet operations, and he also developed publications and seminars.
Before joining NAB in 1983, Ducey was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University where he taught and did research in the areas of emerging telecommunication technologies and strategic market research. He also served on the graduate management faculties of George Mason University and George Washington University in telecommunications management and the University of Maryland, where he taught strategic market management and research methodologies. Ducey was selected as the Spring 2011 Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University where he teaches entrepreneurship in new media. He has published a number of research articles and papers in these areas and serves on editorial boards of leading scholarly journals in the communications field. He has also worked at radio stations WSOQ-AM/WEZG-FM and Upstate Cablevision in North Syracuse, New York.
Ducey received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, M.S. from Syracuse University and B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
