Blis, the global pioneer in advanced location data technology, today announced the appointment of industry veteran Diane Perlman as Chief Marketing Officer to oversee the company’s global marketing strategy. Based in London, Perlman will be report directly to CEO Greg Isbister and serve on the company’s leadership team.
An established marketing leader with big brand, startup, scaleup and agency-side experience, Perlman comes to Blis after having spent the last ten months as Interim CMO at video ad tech company Unruly. Previously, Perlman led the UK marketing communications for Windows Phone at Microsoft and later created and ran the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator, graduating nearly 40 startups. She was subsequently the CMO at global startup accelerator MassChallenge.
“We are thrilled to welcome Diane to the Blis team,” said Isbister. “As an American who has been living in London for the last two decades, Perlman is uniquely positioned to oversee marketing across regions, but especially the U.S. where we are seeing incredible growth.”
Perlman’s addition to Blis comes off the heels of impressive U.S. growth where the division is on track to more than triple YOY revenue in 2018, having already doubled total 2017 numbers midway through the year. Contributing to this growth was the roll out of industry-first cost-per-visit (CPV) pricing model in early 2017 as the industry suffered from major data quality and transparency issues. Blis’ perspective has always been that brands deserve accurate data and verifiable value, creating a high standard in the quality of data used and subsequent insights and analytics reporting.
“I am very impressed with Blis and its mission to provide transparency to brands through its proprietary data and insights verification platform in a post-GDPR world,” said Perlman. “It’s super exciting to be joining Blis at such a big milestone in their U.S. growth, and I look forward to leveraging my expertise to help scale the business further both in the U.S. and globally.”
Launched in New York in 2016, Blis has grown rapidly in the region, especially in the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, quick serve restaurant (QSR) and travel categories. The U.S. division has seen ad campaigns run on the platform increased by 144% YOY while the number of brands running campaigns increased by 154% YOY. In May, Blis won a Gold Stevie® Award in the Marketing Campaign of the Year – Culture & The Arts for a campaign that used its proprietary technology to create unique and relevant audience segments for a design studio client looking to drive attendance to an upcoming event.
The company recently expanded into the Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, DC markets with plans to open additional additional locations in Los Angeles and Toronto by the end of this year. Earlier this year, the New York City office was certified as a great workplace by the independent analysts at Great Place to Work®.
“We’ve seen great success in the U.S. by helping brands drive customers in-store by leveraging a combination of our movement and foot traffic data coupled with third-party purchase based and sales uplift data” said Gil Larsen, VP, Americas. “Our continued U.S. growth speaks to this collaborative approach with our partners to leverage the quality of our data and power of our technology to develop right-time and place personalized consumer experiences that ultimately increase ROI.”
To further address the challenges brands are facing around transparency and verification of data, Blis launched a global blockchain pilot platform with IBM earlier this month and brought on Unilever as the pilot partner to help evaluate and refine the service the company can provide to advertisers and data providers moving forward.
Since its launch in the U.S. market, Blis has been leading the conversation around the value of location-based marketing with two proprietary research studies into the changing consumer purchase journey. Blis’ research surveyed consumers across the US, discovering a new conscious consumer and how best to reach them as well as how the path to purchase as marketers know it is dead and best practices moving forward.
About Blis
Blis is the global pioneer in location data. Our proprietary technology and platform helps agencies and brands use location data to better understand consumer behavior, allowing for effective targeted advertising to drive business outcomes. We believe that where you go defines who you are, and advertisers must capitalize on these insights for meaningful marketing experiences across devices. Our technology filters and scales location data, giving advertisers access to the most accurate location events, location data, and unique devices. The data is then applied across the apps that matter most to their consumers for targeting based on rich insights. Clients are supported by our location experts or can work in an agnostic service model of their choice. Since creating the world’s first location data technology platform in 2004, Blis has grown to be a global company with 25 offices across 5 continents. Blis’ clients include all major holding companies as well as leading brands in top verticals including Samsung, McDonald’s, HSBC, Mercedes Benz and Peugeot.
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