Taykey

Taykey, founded in January 2009 by Amit Avner, operated as a real-time audience data company in the advertising technology sector. Avner, the company's CEO, demonstrated his proclivity for technology early on, starting programming at age 10 and creating his first search engine, WittySearch, at 14. Before Taykey, he served in an elite technology unit of the Israeli Defense Ministry after working as a software engineer for several startups during his education.

The firm specialized in analyzing vast amounts of data daily—reportedly hundreds of millions of data points—from social platforms, blogs, and publishers to identify what topics, products, and events were currently capturing an audience's attention. This intelligence enabled its clients, which included major brands like American Express, Best Buy, and Volkswagen, to align their digital advertising campaigns with these real-time trends. Taykey's business model revolved around providing this trend data to advertisers, helping them place messages next to the topical content their target demographic was actively engaging with at any given moment. Revenue was generated through both managed services and programmatic solutions that allowed brands and agencies to buy media placements relevant to their audiences in real time.

Taykey's core product was a trend-based advertising platform that automated the discovery and activation of these trends for marketing purposes. Its technology monitored conversations and sentiment to understand audience interests, and then its "ActivationEngine" would target and optimize media buys against these emergent topics across display, social, and video channels. The platform provided a self-service interface and could integrate with demand-side platforms (DSPs), allowing programmatic buyers to combine their own audience data with Taykey’s real-time trend data for more precise content targeting. In November 2017, Taykey was acquired by Innovid, a video advertising data company, to enhance Innovid's data offerings for advertisers.

Keywords: Taykey, Amit Avner, real-time audience data, trend analysis, advertising technology, adtech, programmatic advertising, content targeting, audience intelligence, consumer insights, social media analytics, digital advertising, trend advertising, media buying, data-driven marketing, campaign optimization, brand safety, Innovid, contextual advertising, sentiment analysis