Boost Media provides ad optimization for search advertising by testing variants created by a network of freelance copywriters and designers, identifying the versions that produce the most clicks or highest conversion rates, and promoting the best creatives more broadly. The platform runs experiments to find the most persuasive ad copies and then scales winning variants in campaigns. The company previously operated as BoostCTR and is led by CEO David Greenbaum, who shifted the focus from small and medium businesses to enterprise customers. That strategy has resulted in more than 100 large brands using the platform. Greenbaum said he is interested in eventually moving into display advertising but is currently doubling down on search. Financially, Boost announced a $19M Series C in the latest round and has now raised $31M in total. BoostCTR operates a crowdsourced platform where copywriters and image specialists compete to create better ads and approved submissions are A/B tested against existing creatives. Customers submit ads they want optimized, and the variant with higher clicks or conversions is scaled. The company says it has a network of more than 1,000 freelancers who earn an average of $25 per hour. BoostCTR has expanded beyond ad copy to optimize images and has shifted its sales focus toward large enterprises. It has hired two data scientists and taps external resources to provide deeper feedback on campaign performance. Revenue has grown 100% quarter-over-quarter. The company also recently hired Shawn Kernes as CTO and senior vice president of product while its previous CTO moved to the COO role. BoostCTR offers a dashboard that connects to advertisers' AdWords accounts and runs contests among a bullpen of screened copywriters to generate and test new text ads automatically. Copywriters never access client accounts directly; they see contest pages and are paid (typically about $25) when their entries outperform baselines. The company sells monthly subscription credits (priced between $60 and $90) where each credit starts an optimization contest for a new ad group and offers refunds or reimbursements if advertisers are unsatisfied or if ROI doesn't improve within 10 attempts. CEO David Greenbaumsaid the startup claims it can deliver roughly a 30% lift in click-through rates and sales volume. BoostCTR faces competitors such as Trada (which requires AdWords certification and has Google Ventures backing) but plans to differentiate via scale, matching algorithms and automated testing. Planned product work includes expanding to Bing and Yahoo ad platforms, integrating with bid-management platforms, building a public API for third-party developers, and sharpening algorithms to match writers and track performance (aiming to build an equivalent of Google’s “quality score” for writers).

Total raised

$29M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Nov 2014