The Next Breakthrough Startups at ad:tech

ad:tech was buzzing this year with promising, doe-eyed startups looking to be The Next Big Thing. But out of the thousands of companies (and the hundreds that attended the convention) that aspire to be household names like Google, Facebook and Apple, only a select few will even survive their first few years.

In terms of upcoming trends, emerging sites are the definitive tell-all. They let us know what’s out, what’s in and hopefully what’s effective. So who’s here to stay?

Venture capitalists placed their bets on three new babies this year: Quirky, Flurry and Media6Degrees. Quirky is a crowd-sourcing design for new household products which enables users to view and vote on each invention. Quirky picks the top contenders, then manufactures and sells the products to retailing giants like Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Flurry powers customer acquisition with in-app advertising and Media6Degrees triples your prospective demographic by targeting users with shared brand affinities.

ad:tech also showcased seven innovative sites to add to your online agenda, including the prominent Showyou. Showyou’s simple layout arranges all the videos your friends post onto one aesthetically pleasing page—available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and yes, iPad and Kindle Fire.

During the Startup Spotlight Series, ad:tech judges chose 16 startups they believed possessed the most potential. There were four categories: Social, Mobile, Video and Data and Targeting, with winners in each. The winner for the Social award was Payvment, the number one social commerce platform on Facebook, connecting people and products for an updated twist on online shpping. Encoding.com took the prize for Video; Encoding.com is now the world’s largest online video converter and offers myriad features, including real time statistics and integration options. Stipple left others in the dust in the Data and Targeting category. Stipple allows publishers to tag, promote and monetize images while improving audience engagement.

The upcoming trend for next year? These new companies show us that while social media is here to stay (and that you must incorporate social into your functionalities), tablets might just be tech’s next focus. Advertisers have barely begun to scratch the surface of what tablets can bring to the game, as the creative possibilities to spice up outdated still ads are practically endless.

All in all, these are just a few of the best new startups soon to make an impact for your business or leisure.

This article is part of Allvoices’ series on ad:tech, the largest digital marketing and technology conferences and expositions. Check out allvoices.com/adtech for more of Allvoices’ ad:tech San Francisco event coverage. This series is supported by ad:tech.