ShareThis Announces New CEO and Doubles B2B Data Business

By Sudipto Ghosh On Jun 6, 2018

ShareThis Announced New Clients and Partners, Including Digitas, AppNexus, and The Trade Desk; Reveals Data DNA and Deep Learning Engines Fuel YoY Growth Into Second Year

ShareThis, the Sharing Intelligence company that delivers the largest independent consumer interest-and-intent data for targeting and analytics continued its year-over-year growth for its expanded data business. In line with this growth, the company announces that data veteran Dana Hayes, Jr. is taking on the CEO role; current CEO Kurt Abrahamson is moving to the Executive Chairman role.

ShareThis enables both agencies and brand marketers to build custom insights and audiences based on real-time behavior across the global web. ShareThis data is also fueling audience strategy and analytics for marketers.

Building on the company’s key data assets in 2016, ShareThis has quickly evolved and delivered to market a series of owned data offerings serving all levels of the digital ad ecosystem. ShareThis data DNA, coupled with the company’s proprietary data engines — which cut through terabytes of data to identify non-linear patterns, also serve to speed up and deepen learnings, delivering both reach and granularity.

ShareThis’ growth is a result of expansions of its relationships with both publishers and marketers. The company has deepened its publisher base to include more than one-third e-commerce publishers, deepening ShareThis’ intent signals. ShareThis has also expanded its deep learning teams, creating multiple proprietary engines.

At the time of this announcement, Kurt Abrahamson, said, “We quickly saw the opportunity to leverage the nine-year history of our unique data DNA to help marketers who sometimes feel they have a sea of data assets but little in the form of learnings. Our investments are in line with some of the market evolution we’re seeing play out today. We are excited to have Dana take the reins for this next stage of growth.

New Partners and Clients

More than 50 strategic partners and clients have been attracted to ShareThis over the last 18 months through recent investments and enhancements to its growing data services business. New partners include leading data players, such as Acxiom, as well as digital ad leaders including The Trade Desk, AppNexus, and LiveRamp.

ShareThis has also experienced momentum on the brand marketer side, gaining clients including Publicis’s Digitas, The Connected Marketing Agency committed to helping brands better connect with people.

Dana Hayes, Jr., said, “Data is fueling product development, acquisition, and business development and moving marketing organizations from a cost center to a contributor to brand growth. For many players, data is not in short supply, but gaining insight from it is. Savvy brands know when to supplement first-party insights, layer truth-layer data sets or use data for analytics and other marketing strategies.”

The new CEO added, “We now see brands leverage data in unique and proprietary ways to propel their businesses forward. Our shifts and subsequent growth confirm our theories and we’re excited to see the bets we’ve placed take hold.”

Dana Hayes, joined ShareThis in 2017 bringing a proven track record of building both startups and larger profitable units at enterprise public companies. Prior to ShareThis, Hayes served as the group vice president of global partnership development for Acxiom building strategic partnerships and distribution relationships to advance data-driven marketing and advertising globally.

Prior to Acxiom, Dana Hayes held a number of senior leadership positions with Tribune, quadrantOne, and Travora Media as well as serving as an Executive in Residence/Advisor role for Abundant Venture Partners, a business incubator focused on early-stage, service-based companies in media and healthcare.

ShareThis has been collecting and synthesizing social share, interest, and intent data since 2007. Powering the sharing of content across more than 3M global domains, ShareThis observes real-time actions from real people on real publisher sites. ShareThis transforms user-level behavioral data into actionable insights. This unique and powerful view can be used to better understand, expand and validate consumer behavior for targeting and analytics to achieve marketer and publisher outcomes. Privately held, ShareThis is based in Palo Alto, CA.