Welcome to the latest issue of the NVCA Connection  on Corporate Venture & The Rise of Automated Advertising, Social Media And Targeting.  First of all, we hope that everyone had a great summer.   For this issue, we chose the theme of targeted advertising and the role that the corporate venturing community has played in the… Read More Welcome to the September 2016 Issue: Corporate Venture & The Rise of Automated Advertising, Social Media And Targeting

SHIFT – NVCA and Global Corporate Venturing’s inaugural conference partnership – focuses on new paths for corporate & institutional venture partnerships in New York this October By Jessica Straus, NVCA VP of Development What are the most effective corporate venture and VC partnership strategies? What are proven paths to launch new corporate venture units? What are the latest… Read More Shifting toward the future of corporate and venture partnerships

By Richard Bravman, Chief Strategy Officer, Affinity Solutions, Inc. U.S. marketers will spend over $127 billion on measured media advertising in 2016, and another $164 billion on direct and digital marketing. Both figures are up meaningfully from the prior year. Deal activity in the MarTech space surged recently to $16.4 billion, as major players such as… Read More Data-Driven Marketing: A Value-Driving Opportunity

By Evangelos Simoudis, Synapse Partners In the face of the rapidly changing innovation environment — and the increasing importance of innovation to corporate growth initiatives — it is becoming apparent that corporations need to reinvent their innovation strategy and associated model.  In Part 1 of this series I provided four observations that corporations must understand about innovation… Read More Silicon Valley’s Role in the Re-Invention of the Corporate Innovation Model

By Mark Smith, Verizon Ventures Verizon Ventures has invested in advertising and marketing technology startups since our formation. Our passion for the space remains strong even through many ups-and-downs of this endlessly transforming industry sector.  In recent years it is increasingly characterized by greater levels of data capture and real time analytics on live data… Read More Verizon Ventures: Tracking Trends in Adtech and Martech – Data Science Goes Native and Ads Go Native

By Jessica Straus, NVCA VP of Development On social media platforms, the brutal reality is that audiences don’t care about your content and there are no short cuts to success in the dynamic, sometimes mercurial, world of social media.  All of those challenges have been particularly acute for brands, companies, agencies, publishers, and, even VC firms, seeking to build… Read More What TV Can Teach Us About Breaking Through on Social Media

By Bryan Wargo, Head of Worldwide Sales, RetailNext The retail industry is huge, like H-U-G-E huge. In 2015, the retail market was expected to be $24 trillion worldwide, with almost $5 trillion of that total coming from the United States alone. But, as big as retail is, it’s not without its problems. In fact, because… Read More Corporate Venture Driving the Convergence of Physical and Digital Retail

What CVC reputations are to novices, and why they’re important By Justin Gage, NYU Stern Class of 2018 As a student and intern at a seed stage venture fund this summer, part of my job has been running around to events in New York and meeting people who might be good syndicate partners for the… Read More Corporate Venture Capital – A Student Perspective

By William Kilmer Recently I have received several calls from start-up CEOs asking me for advice about taking an investment from a corporate venture investor. It’s no surprise that these calls are more common as Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) participation is at a 15-year high, with corporate investors in almost 24% of deals, and data shows… Read More A Message to Corporate VCs: You’re Not a VC, Embrace it.