Eyelevel.ai, a startup emerging from the 2018 Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator winter cohort, is introducing its first native conversational marketing platform.
EyeLevel.ai’s in-context, conversational ads and promotions deliver relevant messages to users that feel like recommendations from a friend. With more than 45 customers already signed up, and with a publisher network of more than 1700 chat applications, the company has closed a $2 million seed round, led by Birchmere Venture, with participation from Strawberry Creek Ventures, Inspiration Ventures as well as a second investment by Berkeley SkyDeck.
“We’ve created a technology that’s very easy to access and you don’t have to be a developer to use it,” said Ryan Begley, Co-founder at Eyelevel.ai. “As an end user interacts with these applications, chatbots, or digital assistants at specific times or moments within the experience, recommendations will be made.”
The brands and businesses using the new platform are also delighted to uncover a new and more natural way to find and interact with new customers.
“It’s highly contextual, it feels very native to the experience, and it’s quite effective,” Begley said. “The early metrics we’re seeing leads us to believe this is something obviously worth pursuing and turning this into a business.”
End users, publishers, and advertisers will benefit the most from this platform, according to Begley.
“Because it’s in the form of a conversation, it’s bidirectional,” Begley said. “This delivers less ads, disruption, and so forth and higher quality, more contextual promotions that are delivered in the moment, when they’re most relevant and needed.”
As Natural Language as an interface becomes more apparent, Begley explained, Eyelevel will continue to evolve with future trends.
“Wherever consumers are, businesses want to be there too and you have to have some sort of way to connect to them in a meaningful way,” said Begley. “We’re going to continue marching along to try to become the biggest and best at addressing this emerging voice in Natural Language as a UI/UX space.”
The Eyelevel.ai founding team met while working at IBM Watson and have been joined by now president Mike Werner, a 20-year adtech pioneer. Prior to joining Eyelevel.ai, Werner was Vice President at Rakuten and a co-founder and head of sales at both BlueLithium & RadiumOne.
“We’re super excited about being in this market and creating value for both our customers and our publishers,” said Begley.
For more information about this news, visit www.eyelevel.ai.