Sixteen startups. Six judges. Four categories. Who will win?

It’s the ad:tech Startup Spotlight Series, a push to find and reward the most innovative, enterprising new companies in digital marketing.

The competition started in January. We invited a group of agency execs, VCs and entrepreneurs to be the judges. Then we issued the call for startups. Dozens of companies entered – from mobile and social marketing platforms, to data & targeting technologies, to tools that make video advertising simple and scalable – and the judges narrowed it down to just 16 finalists.

During the Startup Spotlight sessions at ad:tech, the companies will pitch their platforms as if they were competing to win a real client account. They can’t just talk about how they’ll help advertisers – they have to demonstrate it. Four companies will compete in each category, and the judges will choose one from each group to win the ad:tech Innovation Award.

Join us for these exciting sessions, where we highlight the rising stars in digital marketing!

Learn MoreHide description

Involver is the solution of choice for the world’s biggest brands trying to connect with customers on social networks. Over half a million brands and agencies use Involver to power their marketing efforts to a combined audience of over a billion. Involver pioneered the first social app suite on Facebook and is now leading the industry with SML (Social Markup Language), allowing front-end developers to achieve pixel-perfect application development. Involver’s Audience Management Platform acts as a marketer’s system of record, bringing everything from app management and wall response/moderation to publishing updates and analytics into a single intuitive interface.

Learn MoreHide description

GraphEffect, social marketing software, enables companies to integrate and manage their advertising and marketing programs on a single platform. Large brands and agencies can use GraphEffect’s collaboration tools to coordinate their efforts and measure bottom line impact. Powered by a suite of SmartBoost technologies, GraphEffect enables brands to identify and amplify ads, audiences and stories that perform the best.

	Learn MoreHide description
Compass Labs applies science to social media advertising with CLIQ (Compass Labs IQ), a self-service or fully managed social media advertising platform that makes scalable, targeted social advertising campaigns easy to execute and measure for agencies and brands. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Compass Labs was founded in 2009 by industry veterans and scientists.

	Learn MoreHide description
Payvment’s Facebook e-commerce platform helps brands and merchants monetize their Facebook presence, turning their page into transactional and promotional storefronts so millions of users can discover new products and shop without ever leaving the social network. The solution also puts a user’s products into the only Shopping Mall on Facebook.

Learn MoreHide description

Punchcard, an Idealab company based in Pasadena, CA, is a mobile app that rewards consumers for being loyal customers. Local retailers, restaurants and merchants finally can know who their loyal customers are, and send highly targeted offers to incent their customers to come back again and again. Consumers get cash back for being loyal customers. Checking in and winning points and badges is cool. Checking out and getting cash back is better.

Learn MoreHide description

ShopSavvy is the hottest mobile shopping assistant, with more than 20 million downloads and 11 million current unique users. ShopSavvy empowers smartphone users to quickly and seamlessly locate, research and buy products at the point of sale. When users scan a barcode or input a product name, they discover where the item is sold locally and online, where it’s in stock and at what price. ShopSavvy aggregates product data, deals, ratings and reviews from retailers, partners and its own users to provide the most comprehensive source of information and advice for mobile shoppers anywhere. For advertisers, ShopSavvy delivers “hyper-relevant” deals, promotions, warranty offers, and other UPC/GPS-targeted content to consumers.

	Learn MoreHide description
Fiksu is a mobile app user acquisition platform that helps app marketers overcome the complex and expensive challenge of promoting iOS and Android apps in the vastly crowded app marketplace. Fiksu increases ROI by cost-effectively delivering loyal users – those most likely to engage by repeat use, registration, in-app purchase, etc.

	Learn MoreHide description
Headquartered in Liberty Lake, WA, Gravity Jack has quickly become an industry leader in design and development of robust, custom augmented reality solutions. Clients of Gravity Jack come from a wide range of industries, and include some of the biggest names in the entertainment, gaming, and retail space.

Learn MoreHide description

SeaWell Networks Inc. provides software for service providers to manage and optimize the delivery of HTTP adaptive bit rate (ABR) streaming video to any device or platform. Our intelligent ABR management solution, Spectrum, simplifies the delivery of video while enabling new ways to monetize content. Spectrum combines ad insertion capabilities and on-the-fly repackaging for the most personalized video experience available.

	Learn MoreHide description
Encoding.com is the world’s largest video encoding service powering video for thousands of leading brands. Take advantage of its highly scalable and reliable cloud-based application to enable video playback across all web and mobile platforms.

	Learn MoreHide description
Addroid is a web-based platform that streamlines the production of in-banner video ads while dramatically reducing their cost. With Addroid, agencies can create in-banner video ads for a 15¢ CPM and build those ads in as little as 30 seconds–the process is as easy as uploading a YouTube video.

Learn MoreHide description

DOTSTUDIOZ is an entertainment technology company based in Los Angeles, CA and Vancouver, BC. With 25 years’ combined professional experience, Dotstudioz services the needs of entertainment professionals seeking ways to monetize video online. Through its (SaaS), Dotstudio and Viral Swagger (Fan Incentive Engine), Dotstudioz introduces an intuitive workflow integrating the latest breakthroughs in HTML 5 video and social media analytics.

Learn MoreHide description

Stipple’s mission is to enable commerce, search and discovery through images. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, but where can you find those words for most pictures? Stipple powers the ‘thousand words’ for web images by connecting pictures with commerce and information. We believe that the people, places and products in images should be searchable, social and shoppable. Using Stipple advertising platform brands, retailers and agencies can surface product information right on the image and at the exact moment when the curious consumer is most interested.

	Learn MoreHide description
Cloudwords is revolutionizing translation for digital marketers and the social media industry, empowering companies and brands to be instantly everywhere. As the leading on-demand language management platform, Cloudwords makes going global easier, faster, less expensive and more reliable than any other solution.

	Learn MoreHide description
MixRank is the first media planning and competitive intelligence software that uses sophisticated algorithms to automatically identify the most effective ads and traffic sources in any market. Instead of wasting money on split testing and optimization, over 5,000 advertisers rely on MixRank to pinpoint the exact creatives and traffic sources that will make their campaign successful.

	Learn MoreHide description
Founded in 2008, Magnetic is the first company to focus 100% on search retargeting. Magnetic’s technology targets users with display ads based on their search history. By leveraging search data as an indicator of user intent, marketers scale keyword-level targeting and SEM campaigns by serving display ads to consumers who have already signaled intent within the search engine.

Startup Spotlight Advisory Board Members

Ben Parr Entrepreneur & Columnist CNET & CBS Interactive	Tim Chang Managing Director Mayfield Fund	Husani Oakley Technology Director Wieden + Kennedy New York

Noah Elkin Principal Analyst eMarketer	Gayle Meyers Partner DMR Partners	Mike Geiger President, Chief Integration Officer JWT North America