MentAd

MentAd was a predictive marketing platform provider focused on the e-commerce and online retail industry, founded in 2011 by Yuval Baror and Daniel Romano. The company was headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with additional offices in New York and Palo Alto. The founders brought complementary expertise to the venture; Baror had over a decade of experience in development and management at companies like IBM and Checkpoint, as well as experience in the Israeli Army's elite 8200 intelligence unit. Romano offered extensive startup experience and expertise in Facebook advertising, having been the first employee at online advertising agency Marimedia and video monetization platform Sparkeo.com.

The firm's core business was to help B2C companies effectively acquire new customers and increase conversions through predictive analytics. MentAd's platform analyzed its clients' first- and third-party customer data using sophisticated machine learning techniques. This analysis identified the unique characteristics of a client's existing customer base to find similar, high-potential new customers across various marketing channels. The service operated on a model that replaced guesswork with data-driven decisions, allowing for the launch of highly targeted and profitable campaigns that acquired the right customers through the optimal channels and at the best price. The platform would analyze metrics like top-selling hours and customer lifetime value, along with customer psychographic, demographic, and geographic data to build a 'DNA' profile of the business and its customers.

The primary offering was a platform that recalibrated marketing campaigns and targeting efforts in real-time, a task more agile than human marketers could perform. A key feature was its ability to uncover long-tail conversion opportunities in niche audiences that might otherwise be missed. Clients reportedly saw significant improvements in their key performance indicators, with cost per acquisition (CPA) improving by up to 9 times and return on investment (ROI) reaching as high as 15 times. After raising $4.7 million from investors including Blumberg Capital and OurCrowd, MentAd was acquired by the US-based adtech company SocialCode, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company, on January 3, 2017. Following the acquisition, the entire MentAd team joined SocialCode to integrate their technology and enhance capabilities for optimizing large-scale campaigns, particularly for Facebook direct-response advertising.

Keywords: predictive marketing, customer acquisition, e-commerce marketing, machine learning, adtech, marketing analytics, conversion optimization, customer targeting, lead generation, behavioral analytics, Facebook advertising, data-driven marketing, online retail, ROI optimization, CPA improvement, SocialCode, Yuval Baror, Daniel Romano, Blumberg Capital, OurCrowd