Context Optional expands to Europe after acquisition

Social marketing management company, Context Optional, is launching in Europe following its acquisition by Efficient Frontier in May.

Context Optional has a number of international clients with significant presences in Europe, including Hyatt, Live Nation, Cathay Pacific and Expedia (also a client of Efficient Frontier).
It has already won two new clients ahead of its launch – GOVoyages and Eurosport. GOVoyages already works with Efficient Frontier.
Its new European headquarters are with Efficient Frontier in London, with additional offices in France (Paris) and Germany (Hamburg).
The European team is headed by Marc Blinder, Context Optional’s VP European Operations, who has come over to London from the company’s international headquarters in San Francisco.
Context Optional’s European launch is part of its aggressive international expansion plans. Since the company was formed in 2006.
It offers the first solution to combine moderation, publishing, app-building and analytics onto a single platform, and the combined power of Context Optional and Efficient Frontier means that brands can now manage and optimise their social media campaigns – from fan acquisition to fan engagement and retention – through a single company.
Context Optional has been developing on Facebook’s Preferred Developer Consultancy Program since the day it launched.
Context Optional has also achieved a number of social media ‘firsts’, including creating Facebook’s most popular branded application, Travel Channel’s Kidnap; the first branded Pages application on Facebook for OpenTable; the first moderation tools for Facebook Brand Pages; and the first ‘RT to win’ Twitter competition.
Marc Blinder, VP European Operations, Context Optional, said: “Brands are now considering social media as part of their long-term marketing strategies. Social media is less ‘how do I do this’ and more ‘how do I build a sustainable social presence for the long term’. Long-term engagement has a far greater impact on fan behaviour and interaction with the brand. Our platform gives brands deep insight into their customers’ behaviour, which then informs sales, product development, customer service and engagement strategies.
“Imagine being able to integrate your marketing right from the first time a consumer sees your advert – whether that’s over display or search – through to your engagement with that consumer as a fan. And then imagine being able to scale that to millions of fans, using technology. That’s possible now with the combined might of Efficient Frontier and Context Optional.”
Research from Efficient Frontier and Context Optional released in July shows the rapid growth of Facebook as an advertising medium for brands. Facebook advertising cost-per-click (CPC) increased by 22 percent in the second quarter of 2011, and Facebook CPCs are expected to reach 80 percent growth in a year, by the end of 2011.
www.efrontier.com
www.contextoptional.com