GlimpzIt lands $1.1M to strike up visual conversations with consumers

Some of us remember when the early web was mostly text, when each photo — or even a barely moving and tiny video — was a rare treat.

Today, of course, the Web is a firehose of high-end visuals from an ocean of mobile devices. A new visual engagement platform called GlimpzIt is today announcing it has lassoed $1.1 in seed funding to help brands harness and understand that energy.

“We start with the premise that images are now the way that a whole generation of consumers communicate,” cofounder Parry Bedi told me via email.

He noted that some platforms “allow brands to gather images about their company and product, but those are mostly open, social settings like Instagram.”

By contrast, GlimpzIt is “a way for brands to communicate with the consumer in a one-to-one closed setting and that uses visuals.” The company points to the platform’s ability to generate “in-the-moment,” private conversations with consumers, noting that such imagery is “ripe with valuable data.”

Uses can include gathering consumer insights, scaling branded content creation, and running interactive mobile campaigns.

The platform is currently in a closed beta with more than 20 brands, but the San Francisco-based company expects to launch an open beta sometime in the next few months.

---

Making a decision on marketing clouds?
See which marketing clouds are right for your organization.

---

The new funding — raised from Founder’s Coop, David Humphrey, and the Seattle Angel Conference — is the company’s first, and will be used for further development and to support the launch of the open, freemium version.

A variety of tools, like Chute, Piqora, or Thismoment enable the management of consumer-generated visuals. Others, Bedi noted, harness “data from images, like Curalate,” or they can generate research about consumers, like SurveyMonkey.

“But there is no one that is doing exactly what we are doing,” he said, combining consumer creation of brand-related content, visually based campaigns, and consumer insights based on data.