audience-engagement
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The Company That Taught Radio to Talk Back
Futuri spent a decade helping radio stations listen to their audiences. Then it built a robot that could do the talking - and pointed the same AI at the ad-sales desk.
Maestro
Maestro is a Los Angeles-based interactive video and live streaming platform that lets brands, creators, and rights holders build their own direct-to-consumer streaming destinations. Instead of renting an audience on someone else's platform, Maestro customers own the experience end to end - custom branded sites, interactive overlays (chat, polls, tip jars), and built-in monetization through ticketing, subscriptions, live shopping, and tips, while keeping their data and most of their revenue. Founded in 2015 by Ari Evans, the company powers streams for names like Billie Eilish, the Grammys, Coachella, Fortnite/Epic Games, and Microsoft.
OpenWeb
OpenWeb is a social engagement and monetization platform that helps publishers own the conversation on their own sites instead of renting their audiences to social networks. Founded in Israel in 2015 as Spot.IM and now headquartered in New York, it pairs comment sections, live blogs and polls with AI moderation and in-conversation advertising. The company works with 5,000+ publishers, reaches more than 150 million monthly active users, and reached a $1.5B valuation after a $170M Series F in 2022.
Arena
Arena is a San Francisco-based audience engagement platform that turns publishers' and brands' own websites into social-network-like communities. Through live blogs, group chats, comments, AI-powered content feeds and audience analytics, Arena helps over 20,000 organizations - including Fox Sports - keep readers on-site, collect first-party data and monetize attention they used to give away to social platforms.