Anchor Intelligence
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Anchor Intelligence was a Mountain View, California-based click-fraud detection service founded in 2007. Its flagship product, ClearMark, was the industry's first real-time traffic scoring system: it assigned a quality score to each ad event (like a FICO score for credit), enabling ad networks and search engines to increase conversions, improve traffic sources, eliminate click and impression fraud, and maximize advertiser ROI. The company was led by CEO Ken Miller and raised $6 million in venture capital plus about $1 million in debt.
02 / Anchor Intelligence FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Anchor Intelligence failed to secure fresh capital: an attempted venture round in early 2010 never closed, and a would-be acquisition by Facebook that summer fell through. Competitors such as Click Forensics were executing well, eroding its market position. With no new investors at hand, the company's investors and creditors decided to shut things down and sell off the assets.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Anchor Intelligence is founded in Mountain View, California, building ClearMark, a real-time traffic scoring system for ad networks and search engines.
- First coverage
TechCrunch first writes about Anchor Intelligence in December 2007.
- Failed deals
A new venture capital round the company was raising in early 2010 never closes; a Facebook acquisition that was close in the summer of 2010 falls through.
- Shutdown decision
On December 22, 2010, TechCrunch reports that investors and creditors have decided to shut the company down and sell off its assets, and that CEO Ken Miller has left.
- Acquisition
Anchor Intelligence is acquired by comScore in March 2011.
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
With no new investors and a failed Facebook acquisition, Anchor Intelligence's investors and creditors decided to shut the company down and sell off the assets (December 2010).
- 02
CEO Ken Miller left the company.
- 03
Western Technology Investment, which had provided about $1 million in debt, was expected to have its debt repaid, with any additional proceeds divided among investors.
- 04
Anchor Intelligence was acquired by comScore in March 2011.