Following its spring acquisition of recommendations engine Avail, ecommerce personalization and shopping media company RichRelevance has acquired the assets of data analytics startup Precog, for an undisclosed sum.
Founded by former Amazon exec David Selinger in 2006, San Francisco-based RichRelevance currently has close to 200 customers including Walmart, Target and Marks & Spencer. Precog CEO John De Goes, along with members of that company’s senior engineering team, have joined RichRelevance.
Darren Vengroff, chief scientist & VP of product at RichRelevance, also a former Amazon engineer, spoke to AdExchanger about the acquisition.
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RichRelevance, a company that powers personalized shopping experiences for online retailers, acquired Precog, an analytics technology startup (formerly known as ReportGrid). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Backed with $50 million in venture funding, RichRelevance aims to take consumer shopping data and help retailers leverage this information into a more personalized experience. As e-commerce continues to grow, and big data strategies enter the market, more retailers are providing customized online shopping for consumers to drive sales. In aggregate, RichRelevance’s clients represent more than 30 percent of online retail and include Target, Walmart, Sears, Overstock, The Disney Store and others.
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Competitor or partner?
That’s the question brands face in dealing with the behemoth of Amazon, whose vast operations compete with fashion brands and department stores in e-commerce. But these same brands and stores also are paying Amazon to advertise on its pages, which represent prime real estate in the ever-competitive e-commerce world.
In other words, Amazon is not only taking on retailers — it’s also battling Google.
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Does elegant code have a gender? Are mega data-sets XX or XY? Of course not. Maths is pure abstraction, and engineering skills can be learned… so why aren’t more women and girls getting into tech?
The issue of gender diversity is rightly front-and-centre, not least because of the efforts of leading executives including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. With Sandberg’s Lean In as a backdrop, here’s how one Silicon Valley shop–RichRelevance, where I’m chief marketing officer–meets the challenge of gender parity. Our executives are committed to the conversation–but, like many tech companies, we have a way to go. Our company’s leadership is 20 per cent female and our total employee statistics skew more male than female (79 women, 170 men). We plan to double in size this year and we want to attract the best and brightest irrespective of gender, but right now, male applicants far outnumber female applicants, leading me to ask the obvious question, how do we attract more women?
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Machine Learning as Management Strategy
Innovators like Google and Amazon have been data-centric since their inception, with a repeatable formula that drives business value through exploration, innovation, disruption, and agility. Rather than decision-making by HIPPO (the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), ideas are tested and judged on efficacy — and everyone is encouraged to test early and often. This focus on metrics enables meritocracy: a virtuous circle that empowers continual innovation throughout the organization.
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Today, retail is all about engagement: learning what the consumer wants, while promoting products and messages — often without a selling mentality. And it is making everyone more social.
McKinsey’s Nora Aufreiter, senior partner in marketing and sales, and retail practices, says social media remains largely about discovery and advocacy versus transaction.
“Almost three quarters of consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions, and photo-based interfaces like Pinterest, Tumblr, etc., have really driven engagement,” Aufreiter says, saying reports show significant increases in traffic and conversion when products are posted on these sites. “Social will continue to play a role in commerce, just not how it was first imagined.”
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With Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In as a welcome backdrop, here’s how one Silicon Valley shop—RichRelevance, the one that pays me to be its chief marketing officer—fares in the challenge of gender parity. Right now, like most tech companies, we’re not even close to gender parity.
Our company’s leadership is 20 percent female. Our total employee statistics skew more male than female (79 women, 170 men). Those numbers are important because we plan to double in size this year, and we want to recruit a brilliant—and, ideally, diverse/balanced team—to launch our latest products, but right now male applicants far outnumber female applicants. According to our most recent Jobvite statistics, female candidates make up 25 percent of engineering and sales applicants; 30 percent of ad ops, client services, and science applicants; and a scant 3 percent of applicants in the IT department.
I’m laying out all our numbers to spark discussion about what we should be trying to do to encourage more young women to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers in the first place. After all, if they don’t want to get into these fields in the first place, there won’t be much leaning in actually going on.
As a tech firm, there are some things we can do to help fix the imbalance. But there are also things we just cannot do.
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