# Spot Trender

> Spot Trender is a bootstrapped Silicon Valley ad-testing and consumer-insights platform that lets brands and agencies test TV, video, radio, and print creative against a pool of 100 million-plus consumers - and get back second-by-second emotional reactions in hours instead of weeks. Founded in a garage in 2011 and launched in 2013 by Christopher South and Rick Nguyen, it swaps the slow, expensive focus-group model for a cloud dashboard and a patented live emotion-capture system, at prices starting under $1,500 a spot.

- **Founded:** 2011
- **Headquarters:** Mountain View, California, United States
- **Founders:** Christopher South (CEO & Co-founder), Rick Nguyen (President & Co-founder)
- **Team size:** 4-5 employees
- **Products:** Ad Testing, Brand Tracking, Data Collection, Emotion Capturing System, Spot Trender Cloud
- **Notable:** Built the industry's only patented live audience emotion-capturing system., Predicts ad success in as little as 3 hours versus the traditional 3 weeks., Grew to serve Fortune 100 and Global 5000 clients while staying bootstrapped and profitable.

## Products & services

- **Ad Testing** — Tests TV, online, radio, and print creative from concept and storyboard through post-production, predicting persuasiveness and performance with second-by-second audience feedback.
- **Brand Tracking** — Customizable, scalable monitoring of brand awareness, perception, and consumer sentiment over time across worldwide markets.
- **Data Collection** — Custom online survey design and large-scale respondent recruitment across consumer, B2B, and niche audiences including healthcare providers.
- **Emotion Capturing System** — The industry's only patented live audience emotion-capture technology - records real-time, second-by-second emotional reactions alongside demographic and survey data to reveal what drives ad performance.
- **Spot Trender Cloud** — Second-generation self-service (with optional full-service) cloud platform and analytics dashboard delivering insights in hours; over 80% of full-service clients migrated to it in 2018.
- **AI Insights** — NLP summarization of open-ended answers, sentiment analysis, automated trend identification across demographics, and actionable-insight generation.

## Achievements

- Built the industry's only patented live audience emotion-capturing system.
- Predicts ad success in as little as 3 hours versus the traditional 3 weeks.
- Grew to serve Fortune 100 and Global 5000 clients while staying bootstrapped and profitable.
- Migrated over 80% of full-service clients to the reimagined Spot Trender Cloud in 2018.
- Connects brands to a pool of 100 million-plus consumers worldwide.

## Latest updates

- **2023-03** — Launched AI features - NLP open-end summarization, sentiment analysis, and automated trend identification - pitched as helping businesses save time and money during a downturn.
- **2018-09** — Launched the reimagined Spot Trender Cloud for ad testing and brand tracking; over 80% of full-service clients migrated within the year.

## Links

- Website: https://spottrender.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spot-trender
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/spottrender
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/SpotTrender/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/spot-trender
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-20