Kenshoo, long a well-known company in the world of search, social advertising, and retail media advertising, has rebranded as Skai, promising a new mission to go along with the new moniker. This change comes shortly after its acquisition of Signals Analytics, a pioneer in AI-powered analytics for market intelligence, signaling significant new investments from Skai into e-commerce, retail, and data intelligence.
“Acquiring Signals Analytics earlier this year allowed us to connect rich internal and marketing data to a powerful breadth of external sources, numbering in the tens of thousands,” says Margo Kahnrose, Skai’s CMO of Marketing. “From this comprehensive base, we can, of course, enrich our marketing execution applications with better smarts. But we can also do so much more, addressing the needs for agility and connectivity between the stages of go-to-market that come both BEFORE and AFTER marketing execution for better planning, and accurate measurement.”
What Will Change as Kenshoo Becomes Skai?
While Kenshoo focused primarily on search, social, and retail media advertising, Skai will shift the focus of the business toward market intelligence. With its new AI backbone, Skai positions its engine as “full-circle intelligence” for “deeper customer connections and insights-driven success, from concept to commerce.”
For brands selling on Amazon and other retailers, Skai will use its advanced optimization intelligence to drive performance and impact, algorithmically optimizing Amazon Advertising bids and budgets to make the most of marketing investments. The new AI engine also promises to help maximize productivity by automating repetitive tasks, using AI-driven automation and machine learning to streamline time-consuming workflows.
AI-contextualized, actionable intelligence is at the core of Skai’s new functionality, giving brands data and insight to make smarter decisions about everything from planning and marketing execution and growth measurement.
Skai Expands Its Reach with Retailers
We at content26 have used Kenshoo’s expertise in Amazon advertising to run sophisticated ad campaigns on that platform on behalf of our clients, but its knowledge extends far beyond Amazon alone. With the change to Skai, the company is looking to further increase its foothold in the omnichannel marketplace, with expansive reach for retail media advertising that allows brands and agencies to manage, optimize, and automate campaign creation and execution across thousands of retailer and marketplace websites through a single platform.
Before the Signal Analytics acquisition and rebrand as Skai, Kenshoo announced a partnership with Walmart and Instacart to open an API ecosystem on the retailer’s website for sponsored search ads. It also partnered with Roundel to offer biddable sponsored product ads on Target.com, helping brands better engage shoppers with non-disruptive, native ads. This is in addition to adding Shipt, Macy’s, Ulta, Meijer, CVS, and FreshDirect to its roster of national retailers earlier in 2021, with more slated to be added later in the year.
Skai seeks to offer marketing teams a legitimate single-platform solution for all their product advertising programs, and this continued expansion is an impressive step toward making that a reality.
