Audience analytics platform pushes deeper into first party data

TORONTO, Mar. 8, 2020 - Trufan, an audience engagement platform enabling brands to generate first party data and target customers with the highest ROI, today announced the completion of its $2.3M seed round. The oversubscribed round was primarily filled by Moneta Ventures, with participation also from GP Ventures, Protocol Ventures, Athlete Technology Group and a handful of angels including Innovative Fitness founder Curtis Christophsen, Utah Jazz forward Derrick Favors, and Chicago Bulls forward Thaddeus Young. The new funding brings Trufan’s total funding to $4.1M and new investors will join past investors like Michele Romanow, Kyle Kuzma, Jason Robins and Round13 Capital in believing that Trufan can become the world’s leading audience engagement platform. 

Trufan made headlines a few months ago after the company completed its second acquisition in two years. In November 2020, Trufan acquired PLAYR.gg, acquiring not only their product and customers but their development team. With this latest fundraise, Trufan’s co-founder Aanikh Kler says that the company of 29 is now focused primarily on ramping up their development efforts and integrating their products together while hiring strategically within sales and marketing. The Toronto based company hopes to debut a new pricing structure, brand and a consolidated platform in mid-2021 (codenamed Project Arpina internally). 

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. The 40% YoY growth is mainly being driven by the deprecation of third-party data. 

On this deprecation, Trufan CEO Swish Goswami said, “In the last year, we’ve noted that the channels brands use to track and collect customer data are disappearing. Third party cookies across all major web browsers will be removed by the end of 2022, GDPR/CCPA is making it more difficult for advertisers to reach their audiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and Apple’s iOS 14 update will negatively impact a $80 billion mobile ad tracking market.”

Trufan powers businesses to adapt to these changes. Businesses use Trufan’s platform to collect data directly from potential or current customers in a compliant manner. Businesses can create incentives like sweepstakes or discounts and directly offer these to their audiences in exchange for emails, phone numbers, app installs, etc. That’s the beauty of Trufan’s platform – businesses can accomplish their growth objectives and collect actionable data, all while giving consumers the right to choose whether or not they’d like to share their personal data. 

It was Trufan’s product, team and grand vision of becoming an end-to-end solution that excited new investors like Sacramento based Moneta Ventures.

Sabya Das, a Partner at Moneta Ventures, who will also be joining Trufan’s board of directors commented on their investment saying, “Trufan is miles ahead in recognizing and removing roadblocks in the customer data space. We are excited to be backing them because they truly are all-star founders with an incredible team alongside them, and we believe in their conviction and ability to solve the first-party data problem.” Sabya also added, “the revamped and consolidated product suite Trufan is launching in mid-2021 will bolster their position as a leader in helping businesses, large and small, in furthering their marketing and customer acquisition goals.” 

Trufan celebrated three years on December 7 and within these three years, the company has emerged as a leader in audience data. Trufan currently works with over 10,000 free users and over 600 paying customers including companies like Netflix, NBA, NFL, Sony Music and United Talent Agency. Trufan has also structured partnerships with Clearbanc, Hootsuite and Digital Mainstreet/Shopify (ShopHere initiative). 

Trufan will push full speed ahead to unify their two products and help brands and creators get true ownership over their audiences while also respecting a consumer’s right to privacy. On that, Aanikh said, “We believe that the future of data collection is a value exchange and that an ideal world is one where consumers can share their data on their own terms and brands/creators can derive value from their audience without being reliant on any platform.” 

About Trufan:

Trufan is an industry-leading audience analytics company with a strong focus on first party data. They are building an end-to-end product to help brands grow and understand their audience while generating first party data so that they can activate their audience whenever and wherever they want. Trufan also houses the world’s largest social database with over 10 million audience reports and over 2.4 billion social profiles. For more information about Trufan, visit www.trufan.io.