Audience analytics platform enters first party data market

Trufan, a social intelligence platform that helps brands make smarter marketing decisions using data, today announced its acquisition of PLAYR.gg, a leading technology platform for brands and content creators to grow their audiences and generate first party customer data. The acquisition significantly accelerates Trufan’s growth while also making an entry into the first party data generation and activation market.

As a Toronto based startup that will celebrate three years on December 7, Trufan has emerged as a leader in Canada’s tech scene. The company of 18 led by Swish Goswami and Aanikh Kler has raised over $1.8M CAD to date, acquired New York based SocialRank last November and has over 500 customers and over 10,000 free users. Their platform used by companies like NBA, Netflix and Sony Music houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and 2.4 billion social profiles.

Trufan founders Swish Goswami & Aanikh Kler

This year has not slowed down Trufan’s growth. The company became cash flow positive in December 2019 and has remained profitable throughout the last year. Despite COVID, Trufan saw consistent organic growth and they expanded their acquisition channels: integrating their platform with Hootsuite and partnering with Clearbanc and Shopify/Digital Mainstreet on the ShopHERE initiative.

The team at PLAYR has seen similar successes with their company. Founded in 2017 by Austin Walper, the Kelowna based startup has grown to become one of the leading growth platforms and works with some of the largest brands including Electronic Arts, UFC, Bud Light and GFUEL to activate their audiences, grow their social followings, and generate first party data. PLAYR also works with thousands of content creators across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming to drive audience growth and fan engagement campaigns. PLAYR has previously raised $2.3M from several institutional and angel investors across Canada and the US.

Praising PLAYR’s product, Trufan’s COO Aanikh Kler said, “The PLAYR team has done a phenomenal job of building a product that is powerful, intuitive, and visually beautiful. It solves the needs of both large enterprises and individual creators. We are extremely excited to work with their team and bring our two products together.”

As part of the transaction, Trufan has acquired PLAYR’s technology, customers, and brought on PLAYR’s entire team of 10. Austin Walper will join Trufan as Chief Strategy Officer and Andrew Mastracci (President of PLAYR) will become Trufan’s Chief Technology Officer.

First Zoom call with the combined team!

“We’re very excited about PLAYR becoming part of Trufan”, said PLAYR’s CEO Austin Walper. “Our team has always been focused on building the best platform for brands & content creators to grow and manage their audiences, and this acquisition really accelerates our ability to execute and enhances our product offering. Integrating with Trufan will allow us to introduce best-in-class analytics and allow us to further develop our platform by helping brands and creators to grow, segment, and activate their audiences in new ways that have never been done before”.

In adding PLAYR’s technology and team, Trufan will push full speed ahead to unify the two products and help brands and creators get true ownership over their audiences while also respecting a consumer’s right to privacy. On this vision, Trufan CEO Swish Goswami said, “If you look at 2020, a lot has happened in the marketing world. Third party cookies across Firefox, Chrome and Safari were taken away, platforms like Instagram and Facebook are making it more difficult for advertisers to reach their audiences and this is all happening while consumers are continuing to adopt ad blockers. As consumer privacy concerns rise, we realize brands will need to shift towards first party data in an effort to reach their customers across several channels (email, SMS, push notifications, direct mail, etc).”

Along with completing this acquisition, Trufan is currently raising $3M USD to accelerate growth across marketing, sales and product development. The company is hoping to have the round closed by the end of the year.

The first party data market is currently valued at over $6 billion and it is projected to grow to a $25.9 billion market by the end of 2025. Trufan hopes to become an affordable yet effective end to end solution that can help brands and creators generate, segment, and activate first- and third-party data. This acquisition has brought them one step closer to achieving that vision.

About Trufan:

Trufan is a leading social intelligence platform helping brands make smarter marketing decisions using data. Their platform houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and over 2.4 billion social profiles. Brands utilize this data to understand their audience better, build loyalty with top fans, and find affordable/aligned influencers. For more information about Trufan visit www.trufan.io.

About PLAYR:

PLAYR.gg is a technology platform that enables brands & content creators to grow their audiences and generate first-party customer data through viral marketing campaigns. Founded in 2017, PLAYR has grown to become a market leading growth platform working with thousands of clients including Electronic Arts, UFC, Bud Light, and GFUEL. For more information about PLAYR, visit www.PLAYR.gg