As self-service marketing platforms race to deliver precise customer data in order to show those customers the most relevant ads possible, one such platform has been gaining a lot of attention and funding. Ubimo, which was founded by former Googler employees, recently closed a series B funding round for $7.5 million. The round was led by Pitango Venture Capital with YJ Capital, a venture capital arm of Yahoo Japan, joining in as well. This marks the first time that Yahoo Japan has invested in an Israel-based startup. Currently, Ubimo has raised a total of $9.7 million starting in August 2013.

Ubimo CEO, Ren Ben Yair

Ubimo CEO, Ren Ben Yair

Ubimo’s co-founder Ran Ben-Yair believes that any location-based marketing platform is a potential competitor but there are some innovative ideas behind Ubimo that make it stand out. While there are indeed other platforms that provide similar features, Ubimo collects even more data points that may be useful for marketers looking for higher conversion rates. The additional data points that Ubimo incorporates includes weather information and local events that may be happening around a consumer’s area.

This allows marketers and ad agencies to better deliver ads that a consumer may find relevant. Factors that can influence the relevancy of ads, and therefore conversion rates, include purchasing trends, age, location, location of certain venues or nearby events, the weather, demographics of the consumer’s neighborhood and gender. Since marketers know that businesses tend to draw out different, but sometimes specific groups of people, it is important to know who and where those people are in order to better serve them relevant ads. In advertising, one of the biggest complaints from the regular consumer is that some ads are just irrelevant to their interests. But when an ad is relevant, consumers are more open to them and do not mind having data on them collected for that purpose.

Ubimo works in real-time and serves the growing mobile marketing sector which is quickly overtaking other traditional forms as more and more consumers become mobile. After receiving its first round of funding in 2013, Ubimo opened a sales office in New York City and attracted the attention of ad agencies and Fortune 500 brands.


John Partilla is the CEO of Screenvision, and he’s a veteran of the marketing industry with nearly three decades of experience in a variety of roles.  Please read “John Partilla Named Screenvision CEO,”  “John Partilla: Screenvision Names Exec CEO – Variety,” “Screenvision Taps John Partilla To Be CEO As It Seeks To Rebuild” and his  Screenvision profile to learn more. Also, check out his CrunchbaseTwitter, and LinkedIn.