Management consulting firm McKinsey calls the demise of the cookie a “profound and abrupt shift” causing a “reckoning for the advertising industry.” These digital crumb trails inform advertisers of users’ web browsing history. Cookies play an integral role in many online marketing strategies, enabling advertisers to better target consumers without their explicit consent.
Enter Prescient AI, a Miami-based startup that is developing a marketing simulation and prediction platform. Their artificial intelligence-powered tools help eCommerce and direct-to-consumer companies more accurately forecast demand and optimize marketing efforts to target their most valuable customers.
“Facebook’s pixel and cookies are going away, and marketers are having a tremendous challenge to understand how their marketing is impacting their sales,” Prescient AI’s co-founder and CEO Michael True told Refresh Miami.
“Our mission is to simplify the inherent complexities of the cookieless world to grow brands profitably. It’s a really interesting area, and we’re poised to become the front runner in solving this problem,” True said.
“We’re giving companies and marketers the same type of ability to measure what’s happening with their marketing spend, while not actually requiring them to have any real customer data stored anywhere,” explained Cody Greco, Prescient AI’s Chief Algorithms Officer.
“What’s cool is that we’re saying hey, you can still operate a healthy, successful company, and still have your customers best interests in mind,” said Greco. That consumer-first approach stands in stark contrast to that of major players like Google and Facebook, which rely on tracking users’ data.
Investors have taken notice of Prescient AI’s unique value proposition. The company recently closed just under $1.7 million of funding through a pre-seed round primarily led by Darling Ventures. This fundraise has enabled Prescient to hire top talent including demand forecasting expert Chris Kang and a VP of Product.
After just around a year and a half of operation, Prescient AI already boasts an impressive lineup of early beta-testing clients such as South Florida companies Boatsetter, SwagUp, and The Snow Agency. However, the Prescient AI platform was perhaps most successfully deployed in a project for one of the world’s biggest record labels. The startup reports that it was able to analyze a prominent female rapper’s new album and predict her number one Billboard-ranked song with 96.3% accuracy.
The D2C application is slightly different, with Prescient AI’s platform helping companies acquire high valued customers at a profitable rate while simultaneously maximizing the value of existing customers. Prescient AI’s clients can run simulations, helping determine outcomes based on actions such as running a promo code or increasing social media ad spend.
True is a former IBM executive who managed major accounts like Uber, Google, and Microsoft at mobile analytics company App Annie. Greco was previously Director of Data Science for Grubhub. The two met online during the pandemic and have since developed what True describes as a “digital brotherhood.”
Prescient AI is aiming to open early access to roughly two dozen more D2C brands starting this fall. Companies can register their interest in joining this pilot by filling out this form on Prescient AI’s website.
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