Eric Porres Joins Lotame as Chief Marketing Officer

Digital Marketing Veteran to Educate Market on Value of Social Data

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – December 14, 2009) – Lotame, the data-driven audience marketing platform that combines social data with audience insights to deliver greater marketing accuracy and audience engagement for brand marketers, today announced that Eric Porres has joined the fast growing company as Chief Marketing Officer.

“Eric will use his respected experience to explain, position, and demonstrate to brand marketers why social data revolutionizes their approach to online marketing,” says Andy Monfried, Lotame’s CEO to whom Mr. Porres will report. “He will be our leading voice to pioneer an evolutionary change in understanding the value of social data and its resulting return on marketing investment for brand marketers.”

One of those value initiatives is having Lotame included in the comScore Media Metrix advertising networks report, which will provide greater visibility into its social audience segments. “We are looking forward to including Lotame as part of our ad networks report,” says Lynn Bolger, EVP of Advertising Solutions for comScore. “As social media becomes a more integral component of digital initiatives, comScore is committed to providing the requisite digital market intelligence required to understand the reach and behavioral profile of important audience segments.”

Mr. Porres was a founding partner of Underscore Marketing, a fully independent, full-service digital media agency launched in 2002. He helped build the team into a recognized Inc. 5000 company and expand its presence internationally. Mr. Porres is also one of the founders of Pericles Consulting, an online political marketing firm that developed and executed online marketing programs for Presidential and Senatorial campaigns across the country. Earlier in his career, Mr. Porres held management positions at AOL Time Warner, Agency.com, and LiveTechnology, and as a partner with Outrageous Media produced two of the largest Internet webcasts in history, Michael Jackson’s “What More Can I Give” concert in Munich, Germany in 1999 and Paul McCartney’s “Run Devil Run” concert in Liverpool, England in 2000.

For two years Mr. Porres served on the board of 212, New York’s Interactive Advertising Club, most recently as its Vice-President. He is an active investor and advisor to several start-up companies and a frequent panelist and moderator at leading industry events. Mr. Porres graduated from Duke University.

“Lotame built an excellent reputation in social media, and with almost two billion daily points of social data rendered in our taxonomy of human behavior, it’s a great foundation for our path forward,” says Mr. Porres. “For marketers, we are able to answer fundamental questions like: ‘Did I reach my intended audience?; Did that audience engage?; Did I have brand impact?; Do I have a model of engagement that makes sense?; and Do I have insights into what my audience does online beyond content consumption?’ Aided by our technology and publisher partnerships, we will deliver against these objectives.”

In addition to his responsibilities as Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Porres will lead Lotame’s brand research and insights initiatives.

Lotame (www.lotame.com) integrates anonymous social media activity data (such as blogging, uploading, posting and sharing) with intent, interest and demographic data in order to generate actionable marketing insights and waste-free audience delivery. This cumulative effect results in stronger consumer engagement and better campaign results for its brand, agency and publishing partners. The privately-held Maryland and New York-based company is backed by funding from Battery Ventures, Emergence Capital Partners, Betaworks and Hillcrest Management.

• 1991 Dominus
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• 1998 Talenti Riserva, Brunello di Montalcino, Vigna del Paretaio

To treat yourself this holiday season, what are some of your favorites?

There’s a perception that Twitter will have a grip on the real-time Web, which connects customers to brands.

So what was I talking about?  Well, there’s a notion in marketing circles that Twitter is the ‘first hop’ on the information superhighway of what’s ‘en vogue’ now, and that stream of real-time consciousness is made more prescient by the never-ending-friending/following phenomenon that’s unique to Twitter.  Therefore, marketers have first look at what’s hot or not, what’s new or through, and that is valuable for market research, product feedback, trend analysis, etc.

However, a billion dollars is a ludicrous sum and I cannot justify that valuation, not at least until Twitter starts earning revenue of its own and shows a path to break-even.

• Utne Reader – Music From Your Brain

Many ad buyers are maintaining a “test and see” approach, since it’s unclear whether behavioral data derived from online social networks will supercharge ad performance or merely provide incremental improvement. “The jury is still out,” says Eric Porres, a partner at New York digital agency Underscore Marketing. “Hypothetically, it makes a lot of sense.”

This was just a small part of our conversation. Suffice to say, it’s more than just hypothetical.  Social networking data presents an extraordinary trove of untapped potential for marketers to tap into active human interests (vs. the passive experience of consuming web page content).

What do these relationships [Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn] say about us and the people in our networks? Companies armed with rich new data and powerful computers are beginning to explore these questions. They’re finding that digital friendships speak volumes about us as consumers and workers, and decoding the data can lead to profitable insights. Calculating the value of these relationships has become a defining challenge for businesses and individuals.

It’s a great article and worth your time.  Read it here.