Genuine VC: 

David Beisel’s Perspective on Digital Change

Why I Like Our Investment in Triple Lift

David Beisel
March 4, 2013 · 2  min.

The web has become increasingly visual.

Of course the same broadband penetration trends which catapulted the rise of online video over the previous decade also empowered delivery of image-heavy web pages. But more importantly and more recently, the proliferation of high-resolution screens epitomized by Apple’s Retina display means that today’s web browsing experience can be far more visually stunning than ever before.

And so the past few years we’ve seen glossy graphically-rich sites which are image-centric become commonplace. The endless scroll of Pinterest, Polyvore, The Fancy, Behance, Tumblr, are just a few mainstream examples of a broader trend towards graphically-rich design, but this aesthetic carries to longer-tail sites like foodgawker which have embraced this paradigm.  The content on these sites are laden with products, largely submitted by consumers. These product images represent valuable brands – in categories ranging from beauty and home goods to fashion and food. Yet brands don’t understand how their own image and photo content is being shared across the broader web, either on the above sites or even core social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In comes Triple Lift. It offers the first marketing platform built for the visual web which takes into account how a brand’s images resonate among consumers. Using real-time image engagement analytics, the company identifies and amplifies brands’ images through initiating paid media and catalyzing earned media. Triple Lift is an ad tech company, which means that the power of the offering is really under the hood. So rather than going into the details about how the combustion engine works (which you can begin to read about on their product page), better to share what they’ve already powered: Triple Lift has delivered successful campaigns for brands like Gucci, Martha Stewart, and Puma just to name a few.

With all of our seed stage investments here at NextView, we both look at the market opportunity as well as the team behind the startup. All three Triple Lift co-founders – Eric Berry, Shaun Zacharia, and Ari Lewine – come straight from AppNexus … exactly the right core advertising technology DNA which we’d want to see in an authentic founding team.

Today Triple Lift announced their $2M seed round financing. We at NextView Ventures are happy to join co-investors True Ventures, iNovia, and the rest of the syndicate. With this investment, everyone around the table is excited about transforming marketing on the web as we know it.  As the web changes, so should brand’s approach to reaching consumers on it.  The visual web has arrived… and so has Triple Lift.


David Beisel
Partner
I am a cofounder and Partner at NextView Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm championing founders who redesign the Everyday Economy.