 | |
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| CLWD | |
| Industry | Software |
| Headquarters | San Antonio, Texas |
Key people |
|
| Services | Strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations |
Number of employees | 49 [1] |
CloudCommerce, Inc., is a company based in the United States which provides digital marketing and analytics solutions.[ buzzword ] [2] The company was traded OTC Pink as CLWD, but has since been renamed to AiAdvertising, trading as AiAd.
The company began operating in Texas in 1999, and incorporated in Nevada in 2002 as Warp 9. It had subsidiaries of Roaming Messenger Inc. and Latinocare Management Corp. [1] Andrew Van Noy became director, president, and CEO in 2012. Van Noy was previously a VP at PageTransformer and has a BS from BYU. His annual compensation as an executive officer is $195,000 plus 18 million unexercised options as of 2019. Gregory Boden, CFO, has annual compensation of $120,000 plus 70 million unexercised options as of 2019. [1]
As of March 2020, CloudCommerce subsidiaries include CLWD Operations (previously Indaba Group), Parscale Digital (marketing), WebTegrity (website development), Data Propria (data science), Parscale Media (web hosting), and Giles Design Bureau (creative design). [3]
The company acquired the trademark and domain name for CloudCommerce in 2015. [3]
In August 2017, CloudCommerce acquired companies co-owned by Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's digital campaign manager, and his business partner Jill Giles, for $7.9 million in stock. This included subsidiaries Giles Design Bureau, Parscale Digital, and Jill Giles' Giles-Parscale company, which leases 8,200 square feet (760 m2) of office space to Parscale Digital on a five-year lease for nearly $120,000 per year. CloudCommerce also acquired Parscale Media for $1 million in cash. At the time CloudCommerce valued the Parscale Creative name at nearly $2 million, later stating "We expected to retain the name and brand, leveraging the good reputation and client following. The name Parscale was revered in the digital advertising space." The company also valued the Parscale Media brand for the same reasons, valuing it at $100,000. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Following the acquisition, Parscale joined CloudCommerce's board of directors. [4] [7] [8] The company wrote off the remaining goodwill and intangibles from the Parscale Creative acquisition as a $6 million loss at the end of 2019, which included the indefinite asset of the "Parscale" name they had valued at nearly $2 million. CloudCommerce also wrote off $744,000 from the $1 million Parscale Media acquisition at that time, which included the $100,000 brand name. [3] [1]
Brad Parscale resigned from the Company's Board of Directors in December 2019. He still operates the Parscale Strategy company, which held the Giles-Parscale office furniture lease. [3] [10] [1]
The company also acquired WebTegrity in November 2017 for $900,000 in stock. [3] [1]
Giles-Parscale was paid $94 million for its work on the Trump 2016 U.S. Presidential election campaign, and gained notoriety for its expenditure on Cambridge Analytica psychometrics and Facebook advertisements. [5]
In February 2018, CloudCommerce created the subsidiary Data Propria, employing at least four former Cambridge Analytica staffers.
The company was ranked as 235th fastest growing company in North America on Deloitte’s 2019 Technology Fast 500. [11] In 2019 the company's revenue was $9.2 million, ending with a net loss of $10.1 million (which included the $6.76 million writeoff). In 2018 the company's revenue was $11.6 million revenue, ending with a net loss of $2.9 million in 2018. The company's auditor stated "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern." [1] At the end of 2019, the company's ownership was Brad Parscale (34.9%), Andrew Van Noy (15.8%), Zachary Bartlett (13.9%), Ryan Shields (9.5%), Blake Gindi (8.7%), and Gregory Boden (4.1%). [1]
As part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company received a $780,680 federally backed small business loan from Cache Valley Bank on May 5 as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. CBS News stated Brad Parscale remains the largest shareholder of CloudCommerce. [12] [3] [13] [1]
There have been instances of financial misconduct reportedly committed by its senior member Andrew van Noy [14] [15] prior to joining CloudCommerce, and Jonathan Lei, [4] [14] a senior member of the predecessor to CloudCommerce.
In March 2020, Facebook removed CloudCommerce ads as these deemed misleading to the people. The ads promised a 10% high dividend payment. [16]
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, commonly referred to as Deloitte, is a multinational professional services network. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professionals in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms along with EY, KPMG and PwC.
Acquia is a software-as-a-service company co-founded by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson to provide enterprise products, services, and technical support for the open-source web content management platform Drupal.
Social media analytics or Social media monitoring is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks. It is commonly used by marketers to track online conversations about products and companies. One author defined it as "the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision-making."
SCL Group was a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving its subsidiaries Cambridge Analytica and Crow Business Solutions MENA. It was founded in 1990 by Nigel Oakes, who served as its CEO. The company described itself as a "global election management agency". The company's leaders and owners had close ties to the Conservative Party, the British royal family, British military, United States Department of Defense and NATO and its investors included some of the largest donors to the Conservative Party.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelligence company and self-described "global election management agency" SCL Group by long-time SCL executives Nigel Oakes, Alexander Nix and Alexander Oakes, with Nix as CEO. The well-connected founders had contact with, among others, the British Conservative Party, royal family, and military. The firm maintained offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C. The company closed operations in 2018 in the course of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, although firms related to both Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL still exist.
Donald Trump, the then incumbent president of the United States for the Republican Party, led an unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 United States presidential election. He was inaugurated for his first term on January 20, 2017, and officially announced his re-election campaign on June 18, 2019.
Brad Parscale is an American digital consultant and political advisor who served as the senior adviser for data and digital operations for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign. He previously served as the digital media director for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign from February 2018 to July 2020, being replaced by Bill Stepien. In September 2020, he stepped away from his company and the Trump campaign.
Lara Lea Trump is an American former television producer who is married to Eric Trump, third child of Donald Trump. She was the producer and host of Trump Productions' Real News Update and a producer of Inside Edition.
"Project Alamo" was a database of voter information created for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and an associated fundraising and political advertising operation on social media platforms. It was organized by the Giles-Parscale firm in San Antonio, Texas. The campaign paid Giles-Parscale as much as $94 million for fundraising, political advertising, and digital media services, including the creation of Trump's website. A new database of voter information named "Project Alamo" was at the heart of Giles-Parscale's efforts, allowing highly targeted advertising on social media platforms. The advertising campaigns added to the database over time, driving more effective targeting. The scale of the fundraising and political advertising campaigns on social media was massive, with hundreds of thousands of targeted ads being delivered daily. Project Alamo has been credited as an important factor in Trump's 2016 victory.
Alexander James Ashburner Nix is a British businessman, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica and a former director of the Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) Group, a behavioural research and strategic communications consultancy, leading its elections division. Cambridge Analytica and its parent SCL were involved in psychological warfare operations for the British military and involved in influencing hundreds of elections globally; Cambridge Analytica helped Leave.EU with its Brexit campaign, according to both Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica staff. The company was also engaged by the Ted Cruz and Donald Trump campaigns during the 2016 US presidential election. The company also ran Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's campaign.
Christopher Wylie is a Canadian data consultant. He is noted as the whistleblower who released a cache of documents to The Guardian he obtained while he worked at Cambridge Analytica. This prompted the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which triggered multiple government investigations and raised wider concerns about privacy, the unchecked power of Big Tech, and Western democracy's vulnerability to disinformation. Wylie was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018. He appeared in the 2019 documentary The Great Hack. He is the head of insight and emerging technologies at H&M.
Alex Stamos is a Greek American computer scientist and adjunct professor at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is the former chief security officer (CSO) at Facebook. His planned departure from the company, following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, was reported in March 2018.
In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.
Data Propria is a company formed in 2018. It is managed by Cambridge Analytica's former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, and employs at least three other former Cambridge Analytica staffers including Cambridge Analytica's former chief data scientist, David Wilkinson. It reportedly worked on the 2020 Donald Trump presidential campaign.
[We're] doing the president's work for 2020.
Oczkowski acknowledges there will be plenty of "overlap" with Cambridge Analytica. Like that company, Data Propria will focus on behavioral data science, which is essentially the practice of using data to target people with ads and marketing based on, as Oczkowski puts it, people's "motivational behavioral triggers."
Auspex International is a company founded in London in 2018, by former Cambridge Analytica staff members Mark Turnbull and Ahmad Al Khatib. It is one of several companies founded by people formerly affiliated with Cambridge Analytica following its downfall in the aftermath of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving the misuse of data.
Social media was used extensively in the 2020 United States presidential election. Both incumbent president Donald Trump and Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden's campaigns employed digital-first advertising strategies, prioritizing digital advertising over print advertising in the wake of the pandemic. Trump had previously utilized his Twitter account to reach his voters and make announcements, both during and after the 2016 election. The Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden also made use of social media networks to express his views and opinions on important events such as the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the protests following the murder of George Floyd, and the controversial appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Brittany Nicole Kaiser is the former business development director for Cambridge Analytica, which collapsed after details of its misuse of Facebook data became public. Cambridge Analytica potentially impacted voting in the UK Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kaiser testified about her involvement in the work of Cambridge Analytica before a select committee of the UK Parliament and to the Mueller investigation.
Robert G. 'Bob' Dello Russo was an American businessman and golf course owner in Florida. He died from COVID-19 complications on June 4, 2021.
Phunware Inc. is an American mobile software and blockchain company. It produces mobile applications for advertising and marketing purposes such as personalized ad targeting, location tracking, and cryptocurrency brand loyalty programs.
America First Policies is an organization created following the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017 to promote the America First policy agenda of his administration. It was founded by Trump campaign people including Nick Ayers, Rick Gates, and Brad Parscale.
 | This United States corporation or company article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |