Big data startup Sociocast goes beyond analytics with new SaaS tools (exclusive)

Big data and analysis startup Sociocast has launched two new Software-as-a-Service tools aimed at helping advertising and media companies better understand their customers, the company revealed today.

Sociocast’s software analyzes “big data” sets and delivers predictive real-time audience data to help companies make more informed marketing decisions. Sociocast CEO Albert Azout told VentureBeat that it can’t disclose specific customers yet, but said it works with many large data aggregators, ad networks, and agency trading desks.

The company’s significantly updated software tools are versions 2.2 of Sociocast Connect and Sociocast Signal, both of which advance the company’s mission of creating “actionable” intelligence.

“Unlike other companies, we’re not just creating intelligence and analytics,” Azout told us. “We’re also working with decision makers that are actually buying media. That means you get better and more meaningful data on the fly.”

Sociocast Connect, the company’s flagship product, now offers the following features:

• Data Transformation: Sociocast Connect translates brands, ad networks, and large data owners’ data into highly segmented, comprehensive user profiles and audience clusters using first and third-party data sources. These highly accurate data outputs can plug directly into clients’ decision engines.
• Enhanced Real-Time Analytics: The new platform can provide analysis on more than 2 million time-stamped interactions per minute. What’s more, this information will identify contextual attributes that serve as the basis of a brand or advertiser’s “signature”.
• Private Cloud: Sociocast Connect operates a multi-tenant framework that isolates clients’ data in order to ensure enhanced security. The platform also includes cutting-edge security features that prevent data leakages.
• Easy Integration: Sociocast Connect supports dynamic sFTP batch data transfers and seamlessly complements 3rd-party platforms including DMPs, SSPs, and DSPs.

And Sociocast Signal now offers the following:

• Mobile Detection Services: Sociocast will process mobile and app logs with greater speed and accuracy, as well as increased coverage of mobile sites for classification.
• Coverage & Granularity: The new platform introduces an extremely logical classification taxonomy, as well as classifications into 1 million different people, places, things, and brands.

Sociocast’s data-crunching acrobatics are run out of a data center with 100 servers in Virginia. Interestingly, Azout said the company had looked at Amazon’s highly touted public cloud as an option, but it was too expensive and had too much latency for Sociocast’s needs.

New York-based Sociocast has raised about $5 million since it launched in early 2010. Its latest $1.5 million round was led by Detroit Venture Partners and angel investors Bobby Yazdani, Joe Zawadzki, and Doug Imbruce.

Check out the diagram below to see how Sociocast’s services work together: