This social data company snagged deals with Samsung, Walmart - and you’ve never even heard of them

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4C Insights, a social data and marketing intelligence company, has been flying mostly under the radar for two years, Kumar Ramachandran, EVP of Corporate Development and Partnerships, said.

That’s why there wasn’t much press coverage of 4C’s $5 million round back in September 2013 or the merger that actually created the company in August 2013.

Despite the low profile, the 30-person team has been making moves in the adtech world this whole time. 4C has expanded beyond its Chicago headquarters by building up offices in New York, Seattle and Singapore, while simultaneously securing deals with some of the world’s top brands. Chase, Samsung, TMobile and Walmart are just a few of the 250 brands 4C has worked with throughout its lifetime.

4C actually began as Voxsup back in 2011 via Northwestern University electrical engineering and computer science professor Alok Choudhary’s research. He started working with Microsoft and John Deere, helping them to find the real influencers of their brands and target them via Facebook.

Then, Voxsup partnered with The Echo System, a New-York based company that focused on advertising and e-commerce, to make a perfect match.

“On one side, we have a deep science talent base,” Ramachandran said. “On the other side, we have very strong agency folks to help us grow the company.”

Together, the two companies merged and rebranded as 4C Insights. Ramachandran said 4C set out to help brands make data-driven decisions, a major need in adtech.

“Most of the adtech companies shoot randomly, see some action and then start pumping more bullets in that direction,” Ramachandran said.

Not 4C. As a preferred Facebook partner and one of the 11 Twitter Ad partners, their team analyzes over 1 billion Facebook accounts and over 200 million Twitter accounts to study exactly who is engaging with and sharing brands’ messages. They analyze historical data (from the last seven or eight years) and real-time data to keep a pulse on what is trending.

Largely driving this data focus are about 10 PhD students, many from DePaul and Northwestern, that work in Chicago with Choudhary: “The technical team is very strong; predominantly, we’ve taken a lot of talent from Chicago,” Ramachandran said.

The Chicago roots of 4C are also evident in the company’s Chicago-based backer, Jump Capital, which invested $5 million in the fall. This round will help propel 4C to develop its social TV product, which helps broadcasters and publishers (like Digitas and Starcom) with social data on top of news and ratings.

“We want to make sure we have a strong second product,” Ramachandran said. “We are working with publishers already - and that will really kick into high gear in the second half of 2014.”

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