Intent Media
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Intent Media was a New York-based advertising technology company founded in 2009 by former Site59 and Travelocity executives Richard Harris, Damon Tassone and Josh Feuerstein. Its machine-learning platform served competitors' advertising on online travel agency websites: when the technology predicted a visitor was unlikely to book, it would show, for example, Priceline or Expedia ads on LastMinute.com, giving the publisher added revenue from otherwise departing traffic. Backed by about $50 million in venture capital from Insight Ventures, the company acquired hotel personalization software firm Voyat in 2016 and shut down in October 2020 after a decade-long run.
02 / Intent Media FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors
Intent Media CEO Richard Harris said the company's bank forced a restructuring and took control of assets after Covid-19 crashed online travel advertising; February before Covid had been the company's best month, then operations ceased and investors lost out.
attributes the failure to Covid-19 and the resulting online travel advertising crash.
CEO Harris said the bank stepped in and forced a restructuring, taking control of company assets.
Travel-ad demand collapse after February 2020 peak preceded the forced wind-down.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Asset restructuring
Intent Media shut operations the prior week after its bank forced a restructuring and took control of assets; ~70 WARN layoffs since April including 26 in October; investors lost out; residual ML assets bought into Black Crow AI.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Intent Media raised about $50 million in venture capital from investors including Insight Ventures.
- 02
The company acquired personalization platform Voyat in June 2016 to gain a foothold in the hotel industry.
- 03
In October 2020 the company shut down operations; no asset-sale or creditor-settlement terms were disclosed.