4th November 2021
One of the very first campaigns listed on our Crowd2Fund platform was a business called Rezonence, a highly innovative Ad Tech company founded by Rowly Bourne and Prash Naidu in 2013. Crowd2Fund investors backed the seed equity round where £500,000 EIS capital was raised via the platform. The company was also part of the BBC Worldwide incubator programme where they also secured a pre-seed round of £50k.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQhqh_A5p5M
Their unique idea, called ‘FreeWall’, serves premium content to users in exchange for answering a question about a brand or product - to aid research and data acquisition. This simple advertising format ultimately led to much higher engagement than display adverts online and therefore much higher cost effectiveness for advertisers.
The business was built up over 8 years and has now been purchased by the market research, survey, and polling company YouGov for an undisclosed amount.
Stephan Shakespeare, chief executive, and co-founder, YouGov said:
“Bringing Rezonence into the YouGov fold is a major step forward in our development from being an audience insights platform to also being an audience activation platform. The ability to engage consumers as they go about their lives online not only means clients can reach them en masse but they can do so ethically and efficiently.”
Prash Naidu, Chief Executive and founder of Rezonence, added:
“By creating and deploying data in a zero-part frame, Rezonance’s technology creates an explicit deal with the individual to share opinions in return for a benefit and control over their data.”
This is a fantastic moment for Crowd2Fund equity investors who took the risk back in 2015 to invest in the fledgling idea and we are thrilled for the team at Rezonance to see their success. We look forward to tracking the progress and further development of the new YouGov capability as they venture into this new research and advertising hybrid approach.
