When Bitly launched in 2008, it had the good fortune of being the official URL shortener for Twitter. Now, the company encodes 500 million links that generate seven billion clicks per month across Facebook, Twitter, and many social networks and brand sites around the world.
“We’ve gotten really big,” says Bitly CEO Mark Josephson, attributing the company’s success to being in the right place at the right time.
Bitly’s large Internet footprint enables it to collect consumer data and develop detailed profiles based on click-through behavior. Josephson believes the company is in a unique position to help its roster of 40,000 clients “connect earned and owned media to paid performance.”
According to Josephson, the content strategy teams that manage the owned and earned media channels often do a lot with very limited resources, while the teams managing the paid media have bigger budgets. Josephson says there’s a disconnect, and brands need to understand that owned and earned media is just as important as paid media.
“You can’t do one without the other,” he says.
Josephson calls Bitly the “kings and queens of earned and owned performance.” “If you want to know how your links and content are performing, you work with us. Default.” While this is a great position for Bitly, Josephson believes the company can do more to help its clients and partners develop better strategy.
To execute this new vision, Bitly made two strategic additions to its executive team last week. Former Oracle and Eloqua sales lead Jason Swetnam was hired as Bitly’s first VP of sales, and former product lead for ShareThis, Yahoo and Microsoft, Vivin Williams joined the team as VP of product.
Williams built the analytics products at Microsoft and Yahoo, and built the paid media products at ShareThis. Swetnam brings to the table a track record of developing teams that know how to connect with enterprise marketers.
“We believe that we have more value than just counting clicks, Josephson says. “So we’re investing more time and more resources into evolving the stack to provide more value to our customers.”
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