AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Tealium.
When, at age 18, Anda Gansca left her home in Transylvania, Romania, to study at Stanford, she had two passions: data science and political philosophy. Data science won out, and she went on to launch Knotch, a company focused on helping brand CMOs measure their content marketing initiatives.
That challenge has become more urgent this year with major algorithmic changes to Facebook. This week on “AdExchanger Talks,” Gansca talks about her journey as a founder and how CMOs work with her to implement meaningful content analytics.
“One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen is a massive focus on owned content,” she says. “Brands are realizing how important it is to have a direct relationship with your audience, where you control not just the message but the context it’s delivered in. Everyone I know who is either a thought-leading CMO or a technology company is trying to move away from social.”
Knotch was founded on the principle that content metrics require an independent arbiter. According to Gansca, marketers have been forced to rely on a hodgepodge of self-reported analytics from publisher partners.
“People aren’t trying to purposefully lie,” she says, “but if you’re allowed to pick how you want to be measured, and if you make more money based on what you say in that interaction, you may pick the metrics that make you look better. That’s an incentive issue. Whoever is trying to bring those metrics together is in a shitty situation.”
Knotch solves for this with a JavaScript or iframe tag that runs across all of a brand’s owned and paid content efforts. In cases where a publisher or platform refuses the tag, Knotch asks its CMO customers to place pressure on the media owners.
Hey, it worked for Moat.
Also in this episode: Knotch’s product road map, Transylvania’s startup scene and what CMOs want.
