The traditional Market Research market is being radically disrupted by a fundamental shift in the requirements of modern brand marketers – namely the ability to quickly and efficiently gather data from real mobile consumers to enable better business decision-making and create more personalized customer experiences.  

In the wake of this disruption, a new breed of MR providers is arising.  Pollfish was built from the ground-up to realize this opportunity and meet the needs of modern marketers and their agency partners, providing unparalleled data quality and speed, at a significantly lower cost.  Investors and clients alike have taken notice.

We are thrilled to announce that we have reached a significant milestone – we recently raised a $6.3M Series B round of financing led by EBRD Venture Capital Investment Programme and have expanded our client base to now include a number of new relationships with enterprise clients.  We also welcomed Zaya Kadyrova, Principal at EBRD VC, as our newest Board member.

This new round of funding will be put to work to build out our team, expand our publisher network and our solution set to better meet the needs of our expanding client roster.  This funding follows our $2.5 million Series A round in 2015. To date, we’ve raised close to $9M from European VCs, including EBRD VC, Odyssey Venture Partners and PJ Tech Catalyst.

Our success has also caught the attention of some of the world’s biggest companies. One of the largest footwear companies in the world has selected us as their global survey provider of choice after an exhaustive vendor review, and we are now working with the top four ad agency holding companies (WPP, IPG, Omnicom and Publicis Group), as well as Bustle Digital Group.

This news comes on the heels of some of our most exciting product developments to date. In less than three years, we’ve grown from reaching 120 million consumers to 475 million. We’ve deployed Pollfish in more than 160 countries and built survey capabilities in more than 24 languages.

We’ve also honed our audience targeting capabilities. Researchers now have the ability to target by geolocation using very specified criteria, like ZIP code, market, and census. We’re able to apply audience filtering by mobile data through previewing the apps a users has on their phone (such as Uber or Snapchat). And, we’ve expanded our demo targeting. It can now reach 9 different personas, including more niche audiences like “bookworms” and “value shoppers.”

To capitalize on these new features and ensure we continue our rapid growth pace, we have added two new executives to the team as well as a new board member.

Michael Harbolt, who’s worked at some of the biggest digital media and financial services companies in the world, joined Pollfish as our new VP of Marketing in January. Michael leverages 18+ years of driving revenue, profit, and performance across digital marketing channels. His resume spans leadership positions at Macmillan, Bloomberg, and The Financial Times. On the B2B side, he brings expertise in securing highly effective and low-cost solutions (like Pollfish) to meet business objectives.

Kyle Gollins also brings 18+ years of experience to the team from the market research industry. He joins Pollfish from Research Now, a global leader in digital research data. As VP of Client Development, Kyle worked with corporate and media clients to hit $30 million in annual revenue. He began his career at InsightExpress, which was later acquired by Millward Brown—one of the biggest brand, media and communications research firms in the world. Kyle’s specialties include ad effectiveness measurement, segmentation, and brand tracking.

We’re also excited to announce that marketing information services operating veteran Jim Follett has joined our board of directors. After rapidly establishing himself in marketing director positions at four major CPG brands—including Kraft, Procter & Gamble, and Nestlé—Jim transitioned into leadership roles in market research, serving as President at IRI, CEO at NOP World (GFK), CEO of SSI and CEO of Authentic Response.  He has recently launched a growth advisory services firm, InsightTech Advisors, servicing marketing information services firms. Jim brings an agile innovation model and 25+ years of operating experience that will help Pollfish to sustain long-term growth across all channels.

In addition to the exciting company news and product updates discussed here, Pollfish continues to develop new features that will dramatically improve data quality, shorten field times, and facilitate a more efficient end-to-end process. We’re confident that the veteran knowledge of our leadership team will help us bring these groundbreaking capabilities to businesses around the world.  Stay tuned for more updates as we reinvent traditional market research!