BEN Group Closes H1 2022 With Continued Growth, Client Expansion, and AI Patents and Breakthroughs

The Company Continues its Growth Streak with 100 New Hires and the Development of Intelligent Creator and Brand Tools.

BEN Group, the leading entertainment AI company that enables brands and creators to capture human attention across social media, streaming, TV, music, and film content, closed the first half of 2022 off with record momentum across its business.

Since 2020, BEN has seen a 65% increase in total revenue and a 70% increase in client bookings, including an over 8.6x increase in both revenue and bookings for the EMEA region. In that same time, the company doubled the number of users on its TubeBuddy platform with 11M total users while tripling the usage by large-size channels. In 2022, the company invested heavily in building out its technology and sales teams to support this growth, with nearly 100 new team members joining in H1 alone, and has received allowance of two additional patents focusing on contextualization and predictive analytics for social media content. Of note, Tim Mulligan, J.D., who previously led HR at Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s company, Vulcan, including their Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence – was welcomed as Chief Human Resources Officer. In his new role, he will be helping BEN scale its team while building a cohesive culture across the company’s global offices.

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BEN’s creator and influencer marketing division doubled down on campaign success in H1 with 30+ new clients and over a 23% increase in completed integrations since 2020. The company tapped various arenas for creator and influencer marketing, from interactive in-person activations to campaigns in the metaverse. Durex partnered with BEN on a first-of-its-kind campaign for the company’s Purpose launch through an interactive activation at Ladyland Festival that promoted living a shame- and stigma-free life. In addition, BEN continued its decade-long investment in executing campaigns in the metaverse by partnering with Forever 21 on a high-impact campaign to drive awareness for Forever 21’s shop in Roblox’s Shop City.

“The evolution of the entertainment industry over the past decade has been transformative — and is still in its early stages,” said Ricky Ray Butler, CEO of BEN Group. “One thing has become clear in this time — entertainment is a pervasive and critical part of how we connect with one another and the world. I’m proud of the strides BEN has made in building industry-leading technology that can underwrite entertainment advertising. From ad avoidance to decentralization, we’re continuing to help brands navigate the industry to capture human attention across every facet of entertainment and art.”

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With ad-avoidance shaping consumer behaviors, there has been an increased appetite from both Hollywood studios and brands for product placement. Since the start of 2020, BEN’s product placement division has seen an 89% increase in revenue, with Q1 2022 being the division’s strongest quarter to date. BEN signed exciting new clients to its roster in H1, including Quest, Ecco, and Rovio, and continues to expand its global footprint to productions across LatAm and EMEA, including numerous integrations for Microsoft in Netflix’s “Elite” and additional integrations for General Motors in “Quien Mato A Sara.” In tandem, the company executed high-impact placements for Benjamin Moore in “Riverdale,” “The Hating Game,” “Rebelde,” and Lizzo’s chart-topping “About Damn Time” music video as well as executed an integration for KAHI Skincare in Doja Cat’s “Vegas” music video.

TubeBuddy, BEN’s creator audience growth and content optimization tool, saw its business skyrocket in 2022, having doubled the number of users of platforms in the last two years alone. In H1, the division introduced chapter editor, a new video-specific tool that enables creators to increase SEO while making content more easily searchable. The division leveled up its current offering by increasing access to A/B testing as well as adding new functionalities like bulk deletion of comments, scheduled publishing based on audience engagement, onboarding flow, and easier access to tutorials. In tandem, TubeBuddy increased its Enterprise client base by 50% in H1, and in turn, accelerated advancements to its B2B Enterprise licensing package for brands and businesses.

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