You probably never heard of the company Quantcast. But, they are one of the top 10 most innovative for 2010 according to Fast Company (Quantcast is number 3 in the web category, one notch ahead of twitter). We started using Quantcast to track website demographic data a few years ago after reading an article about the firm on TechCrunch.
Quantcast, with just 70-employees, is already the de facto standard for measuring Web audiences. They determine who’s clicking on ads, visiting websites, and buying products online. Subsequently, the information is used to help match consumer characteristics with the campaign goals of media buyers. According to Fast Company, 9 of the top 10 media buyers in the U.S. are customers; as are CBS, ABC, and MTV Networks.
Here’s a quote from the “About” page at Quantcast:
Ten years ago the Internet had 9.5 million websites and 150 million people online. Email was a relatively new phenomenon. Fast forward a decade and we’ve seen the most rapid adoption of a new technology in the history of the planet. Not only is everyone, including your grandmother, using email, chat, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, but 1.6 billion people, and growing, now engage with over 240 million web pages on the Internet.
CrunchBase reports that Quantcast received $27.5M in Series C funding (1/4/10), $20M in Series B funding (1/1/08) and $5.7M in Series A funding (3/1/07).
Another company on the Fast Company top 10 list is Slide. Through its branded Funspace, the company now serves some 10 million videos a month and is the largest video-distribution platform on Facebook. And Facebook, by the way, is number one on the most innovative list in the web category.
What do all of the companies on the list have in common with small business owners?
The ability to identify opportunities and react quickly – innovation. How does your company plan to innovate in 2010 and beyond?