Expanding RealityMine Brings In Spaeth and Sylvester

Manchester, UK-based mobile research tech firm RealityMine is expanding its syndicated TouchPoints and passive measurement business to 20 new markets worldwide; simultaneously securing rights to the TouchPoints name and the services of the co-founders of USA TouchPoints.

Jim Spaeth and Alice K. Sylvester have until now been partners in specialized brand and media consultancy Sequent Partners, and bring expertise in media and cross-media applications, survey research methods, data analytic techniques and statistical models. They now become Chief Product Officer and Chief Growth Officer, respectively, at RealityMine.

UK professional body the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has granted RealityMine the rights to use the TouchPoints name and logo in markets worldwide where it launches the TouchPoints syndicated product, which provides contextual and behavioral analytics through data collected on mobile devices. The new countries include China, India, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The firm already operates in the UK, where the IPA's TouchPoints uses its data collection technology; in the US; and in Canada, where it works with Ipsos.

The company says the expansion makes it 'the only global provider of demographically representative consumer media consumption and mobile behavioral data' - this is achieved through a combination of proprietary passive metering technologies, eDiary participants and other real-time survey tools. By the end of this year, the firm expects to be capturing data from over 50,000 people representing over 350,000 days of data.

In January, RealityMine secured $2.5m of new investment funding, and a month ago it announced that TouchPoints technology would be used in a partnership with media giant Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), expanding the latter's PACE Panel platform to a similar range of countries of around twenty countries.

Garry Partington, RealityMine CEO (pictured) comments: 'The emergence of interest in consumer behavioral and contextual data is growing worldwide. Our expansion will enable marketers in global markets to take advantage of this unique syndicated data to increase the effectiveness of their advertising spend, and more.'


Before founding Sequent Partners in 2003, Spaeth served as President of the ARF for seven years; and led the media research and planning function at General Foods and Young & Rubicam. Sylvester, who joined Sequent in 2008, worked in advertising, in SVP and Director roles at DraftFCB, Young & Rubicam Inc., Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson. She is a past Chairman of the Board of The ARF.

Sequent worked with the IPA in 2008 to develop their method for a syndicated research service probing cross-media use and behaviour in everyday lives - leading to the launch of ESPN USA TouchPoints in 2011; and the partners have helped drive high-profile projects including the Steering Committee of Project Apollo, the DP-AA Audience Measurement Guidelines and the Council for Research Excellence's Video Consumer Mapping Study.

Spaeth and Sylvester have served as strategic advisors to RealityMine since the latter's acquisition of USA TouchPoints in 2013, and Partington says of their appointment: 'We are extremely pleased to have the founders of USA TouchPoints joining us - especially at a time when this powerful media planning tool is expanding globally. Jim and Alice have truly been leaders and innovators in the field of consumer and media analytics and trusted advisors for quite some time. Their joining RealityMine, at a time of incredible growth for our business, could not be better timed.'

The firm has US offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Silicon Valley, and is online at www.realitymine.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.