Proxima: Helping Companies Find Customers More Efficiently

According to Alex, iOS 14.5 requires users to affirmatively allow applications to track their behavior when it comes to clicking on ads. Previously, such tracking was automatically allowed unless users declined or opted out. 

Since this change was made, some 80% of users now opt out of being tracked. While this may be understandable from their perspective, it makes it much harder for companies to specifically target ads based on past consumer behavior. They also can’t as easily judge how well their advertising dollars are being spent.

Proxima can help by offering proprietary access to more than 60 million “unique personas.” These personas don’t have individualized purchasing data, but they do have anonymized data, which is much better than nothing. Proxima can build customized data sets with these personas that help businesses better target their social media ads and increase the efficiency of their advertising spend by some 30% to 40%.

“We've been able to help combat some of the challenges caused by iOS 14.5, arguably the biggest problem in technology over the past 12 months,” he says. “And we're very proud to be helping over 50 clients navigate these troubled waters to find more efficient acquisition in a very challenging time.”

Users themselves can indirectly benefit from Proxima’s services, Alex says, because they help companies create ads that are more relevant and engaging. 

“You hear this movement towards engagement, meaning the social ad platforms today are much more focused on entertaining you, keeping you on the platform as long as possible,” he says. “In order to keep them engaged, you need to keep putting out relevant creative content. And by mixing in advertising that’s more relevant, everyone will have a better experience. And the truth is, right now, from an advertising perspective, it is less effective, less relevant for the average consumer like us.”

Alex says making ads more engaging helps to make companies more personable. This, in turn, helps promote long-term interest in the companies’ products. This is known as post-sale retention or “continuously expanding that customer lifetime value.”

“I think that's where a lot of these other channels like text message, like email engagement, like sending loyalty incentives and rewards, have been very effective,” he explains. “We are purposely very hard on ourselves in that we don't ask for credit on the retargeting and customer attention side. Even though we do it naturally by providing better targeting, we ask to be measured by first purchase. And that's actually the hardest part. [It’s] five times cheaper to get a customer to buy again that's already purchased with you versus a new customer. And also, that's where our brands are suffering the most because that's the most expensive, most inefficient part of the sales funnel. We like to do the hard work because that also allows us to validate the value we are providing our customers.”

Alex has a lofty goal for his company: to become “the essential acceleration platform for all digital businesses.”

“That is [the] big, hairy, audacious goal that we want to strive for,” he says. “It's become especially important to us, being that we were solving our own pain points in the very beginning as digital business founders. And now it's taken on this desire to continue to expand anywhere our clients need help growing.”

Proxima is focusing on social media ad targeting right now because there is a significant opportunity in that space, Alex says. “But we want to go everywhere where our clients need support to grow … making sure that we are solidifying our data, which is at the core of the foundation that allows us to go anywhere our clients need us,” he says. “And then from there, making sure that we build the software and the technology that allow us to be effective and provide the differentiated value that makes us essential to our clients.”