News - June, 2018

Cipio Partners Invests in Blackwood Seven: Media Planning Powered by Artificial Intelligence

Munich/Luxembourg – June 05, 2018 – Cipio Partners invests in Blackwood Seven: media planning powered by artificial intelligence

Cipio Partners buys a secondary position in Blackwood Seven and invests into the latest growth round of the company joining existing shareholders Jolt Capital, Sunstone Capital, Vaekstfonden and Conor Capital to further support and scale Blackwood’s software sales in Europe and the US.

Although almost 100 years old, John Wanamaker’s famous quote: “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”, remains true for most marketing executives today. However, more recently, traditional media planning and handling services offered by large global agencies have come under attack by advertisers due to lack of transparency, inability to measure returns and dependency on long and expensive planning cycles.

Copenhagen-based Blackwood Seven, founded in 2013, has developed a real-time AI powered software platform which automates customer specific media planning and allocation. The company’s software tracks customers’ historic marketing spend, sales impacts and a wide range of exogenous parameters providing visibility into the effectiveness of specific marketing channels and measuring returns on investment based on its customers’ target KPIs. Covering both online and offline media channels, Blackwood Seven’s cloud-based technology allows marketeers to regain control of media planning and use their media investments as a more powerful and targeted business driver.

Christoph Wedegaertner, Managing Partner at Cipio, comments: “I am excited to join the board of Blackwood Seven and support existing shareholders and management in building out Blackwood Seven’s leadership as only pure-play cloud-based software business in the emerging market of media planning automation and analytics. Different to most competitors, Blackwood’s solution is non-consultant based but highly scalable and powered by sophisticated AI driven algorithms, allowing customers to regain control and transparency of media planning and substantially increase media efficiency and related sales.”

Carl-Erik Kjaersgaard, CEO of Blackwood Seven adds: “We are delighted to have the Cipio team join us at a time where we see our message to the market resonate with many of the large advertisers. The traditional non-transparent agency model is broken and will be replaced by software that allows advertisers to measure media impact and take planning in-house. Our existing customers recognize the strong ROI and scalability across different brands, geographies and KPIs that they can achieve with our solution both in offline and online marketing channels.”

Leading companies such as VW, Telenor, eBay und Groupon already use Blackwood’s software to plan campaigns and increase their sales and media ROI.

Media contact
Sophie von Eberhardt: AL16BbWVkaWFAY2lwaW9wYXJ0bmVycy5jb20=