Profitero, an ecommerce analytics firm that includes Adidas, L’Oreal and General Mills among its 4,000 clients, has raised $50 million in a Series B round and brought in ad industry veterans to its management team as it looks to develop new products and grow its business.
Bryan Wiener has been named CEO and Sarah Hofstetter is the president of Profitero. Both had been acting as advisors to Profitero’s board on its product roadmap and growth strategy since January. Before that, both became interested in the firm through work with a venture firm that ultimately decided against investing. The current round was led by by Scaleworks, with participation from Conviction Capital.
CEO Vol Pigrukh, who co-founded the company in 2010, is stepping down from leadership as the new team comes on board. In addition to Wiener and Hofstetter, Sandor Palfy, former CTO of LogMeIn, has taken on the same role at Profitero.
Wiener and Hofstetter had both worked at media measurement firm comScore as CEO and president, respectively, but left in 2019 after less than a year due to differences with the company’s board, according to the Wall Street Journal. Prior to that they had led ad agency 360i, which they sold in 2010 for $275 million to Dentsu Inc.
Profitero’s technology and algorithms allow brands to analyze product, placement, price and promotions across 8,000 retailer sites in 50 countries and track competitor behavior. It also estimates daily sales for products sold on Amazon, allowing brands to measure market share growth and size category opportunities for future investment. One new product under development is a series of ad campaign management tools for Amazon.
Hofstetter said while the other firm they worked with decided against the investment, she and Wiener “got hooked on the company, went directly to the board, said we’re really interested and why not see if we can work together.”
“Our clients, who are primarily responsible for ecommerce in their organizations, are now in the spotlight at the C suite level, with consumer adopt of ecommerce to buy almost everything accelerating at hyper speed in this environment,” she said. “At the same time, brand readiness isn’t where needs to be. A recent Kantar study found only 11% of brands surveyed said they had integrated their ecommerce strategy and activation throughout the company.”
Hofstetter said Pikrukh and his team had done a great job growing the company and innovating. “They brought in more than 4,000 brands in 50 countries, it’s amazing what they did so far,” she said. “We want to take it to the next level, with features and innovations that align with where ecommerce is going.”