Revcontent | John Lemp

Revcontent Acquires Rover To Do For Discovery What Google Did For Search

Read our exclusive story on TechCrunch.

When Revcontent was founded, it was founded on a vision of a personal Web, a Web powered by users and for users. For us, this meant doubling down from the beginning on what matter to actual people: a great user experience and engaging content.

3 years later, Revcontent is able to see that vision through to the next phase – this time, joined by the brilliant team at Rover.

The Story Behind Rover

Rover was founded by 2 Stanford graduates in the same research lab where Google was born. Named after the Mars Rover mission, Jonathan Siddharth and Vijay Krishnan built Rover on a vision similar to Revcontent’s – human discovery.

Our teams were introduced by Stephen Oskoui, Rover’s lead investor and a Venture Partner at Founder’s Fund, a top tier venture capital fund in Silicon Valley.

He said, “The synergy between the two companies was immediately clear to me. With the performance of Rover’s machine learning technology and Revcontent’s focus on the success of its publishers and advertisers, I expect the combined company to rapidly become the leader in content recommendation advertising,”

Rover is funded by visionaries – the creator of Google Adsense, the Former Director of Performance Ads at Twitter, and the Head of Product at Dropbox. Other investors include early execs from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Pandora, and more.

“After our first meeting with Chris Maynard, Richard Marques and the rest of John’s leadership team, it became instantly clear that this was a perfect fit in terms of culture, technology, and vision,” added Jonathan Siddharth, CEO of Rover and now Senior Vice President of Technology at Revcontent.

This is all great, but you might be thinking – Why does Revcontent + Rover matter?

-Together, our shared vision of a personal web will make discovery more personalized and relevant for users.
-Our brand partners reap the rewards – more granularity means more opportunities to discover their most valuable customers at the right time.
-Our media partners can better connect with their users – more engagement means more opportunities to get to know their users, creating content surrounding what they actually care about.

“The future is very bright, and we couldn’t be more ready for the next monumental step in creating a truly personal, engaging web experience for users across the globe,” said Chief Marketing Officer, Richard Iwanik-Marques.

Additional Press Coverage:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/02/24/revcontent-to-conquer-the-content-discovery-market-through-rover-acquisition/#5fca21da10fe

https://martechtoday.com/revcontent-buys-content-rec-engine-rover-195554?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/295715/revcontent-acquires-machine-learning-startup-rove.html

https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/valley-startup-rover-bought-by-revcontent/article17362819.ece

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58ae6fafe4b01f4ab51c76d9

https://marketingland.com/revcontent-buys-content-rec-engine-rover-207635

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170223006802/en/Revcontent-Acquires-Machine-Learning-Content-Recommendation-Company

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/02/24/rover-revcontent-jonathan-siddharth-vijay-krishnan.html

https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/revcontent-acquires-vc-backed-rover

https://blog.revcontent.com/revcontent-acquires-rover/

https://www.martechadvisor.com/news/display-native-ads/revcontent-acquires-rover-to-do-for-discovery-what-google-did-for-search/

February 23, 2017 • Revcontent • Views: 1131

Make America Silent – The Disturbing Trend Towards Censorship Under The Guise of “Fake News”

Recently, news has come out with Google and Facebook entering an age of censorship for deemed “fake news sites.” Some readers are blaming these “Fake news sites” for swaying the recent presidential election. As a result, two of the world’s biggest Internet companies have responded with action to censor these sites (see digiday.com and nytimes.com).

We at Revcontent have policies against this [intentionally misleading news sites] and take the enforcement seriously. We have shutdown sites for this in the past and if a site has a nefarious intent we do not want to allow that on our network, however we are very careful not to cross the lines into censorship. In fact, what most companies won’t tell you out of fear is this challenge is a lot bigger than just a headline. If user protection is the concern, we need to look big picture before we go too far down this slippery slope.

My real fear is that the second companies like Google and Facebook become our editors, that is the second we have lost all hope for the freedom of the written word.

I think earlier this year when Facebook hired people to adjust the trending recommendations on their newsfeed, it quickly became apparent that all people are biased and that the bias of people is the risk in itself. I do not trust a company willing to aggressively cross over that line. I believe we have to be very careful to recognize our own bias and that we ourselves are the greater risk to journalism itself as the platform being engaged upon.

I cannot find a major news organization that has not had issues with accuracy and fact checking – so where is the line? Where is too far? How do you have a compliance team draw that distinction without creating bias themselves?

If you ask, “Does this hurt the integrity of journalism?” I counter that the current state of the integrity in journalism is what has led to this. I read articles from the most established news organizations in the world, and they are all opinions. They have misleading subject lines, which state things as facts and then fanciful writing to express “opinions,” even though most people don’t read beyond the original headline. I believe even in the state that journalism currently is in it is still the single most important institution in each of our lives and those voices and ideas are the single most important thing we need to protect.

I believe we shouldn’t be calling for more censorship; we should be calling for more transparency. We should be calling for transparency of bias, which is a concept our team at Revcontent has actually invented using our machine learning technology. We can run through any articles and now understand political bias and whether that content is left leaning, right leaning, or centrist. I envision a world where people are made aware of the bias and a world where people can see a counter points to the current article bias they are reading, a world where the media can once again build trust with their readers.

This is the future of journalism and protecting people – give everyone a voice, do not shut people’s voices down because it’s the voice you don’t want to hear that we need to protect the most. Those are the voices that change our culture, our democracy.

I believe we need to be transparent with users about the trust of the source – we are working on a technology that will do just that, and using our same machine learning, show the trust level of the source before they click on it.

I predict that Facebook will use this same idea, and eventually its own Edgerank algorithms, to bring more transparency to users before they click on links, and this is just one of about a thousand potential editorial issues this will begin to address. I believe transparency is what saves the world as we know it, not censorship. I have to look at this situation and some of the current anti-free speech headlines in our culture and think ahead and think of a world where the greatest protection of our democracies and our freedoms is put at risk through censorship. I believe in the power of the written word and giving people a voice. I believe people are upset right now and looking for people to blame but now, now is the time we need to think bigger picture. Once we begin the tide of censorship, it will not stop, and I do not want to live in a world like that.

John Daniel Lemp
CEO Revcontent

November 16, 2016 • Revcontent • Views: 1684

What’s New At Revcontent

Revcontent has continued its growth in 2016 and we wanted to take some time to recap a few of the recent news stories, articles, and blog posts from around the web.

Continuing forward with several notable publishers, Revcontent has officially reached a new milestone of 250 Billion Content Recommendations per month!

From announcements by John Lemp to national news and advancements to our platform, we are making 2016 one of the best years ever!

Here is a quick recap of what’s new in case you missed it.