Key Takeaways
- Marketbridge’s acquisition of Channel 99 gives the B2B growth consultancy a measurement platform it can sell right away, while Channel 99 and founder Chris Golec gain the sales team and client base to scale fast.
- The new AI Visibility solution helps raise a brand’s rank with ICPs in AI search, tie those results to pipeline and compare AI search against every other channel using the same KPIs.
Marketbridge, a B2B growth consultancy and marketing services firm, has acquired Channel 99, a measurement and attribution platform for B2B marketers. The deal gives Marketbridge a technology platform it can take to clients right away. It also gives Channel 99 the sales reach and client base to scale faster than it could on its own.
The two companies announced the launch of Channel 99’s AI Visibility solution. It’s designed to help B2B marketers measure and improve how their brands appear in AI search, then tie that visibility to real pipeline results.
As part of the acquisition, Channel 99 founder Chris Golec, a pioneer of account-based marketing and who founded Demandbase, is joining the Marketbridge leadership.
A New Model for B2B Services
The deal anchors Marketbridge CEO Bob Ray’s plan to build a technology-enabled B2B services company. Over the past three years, Marketbridge has acquired firms in public relations, commercial consulting, analytics, creative and media as well as building its own AI capabilities in-house.
Marketbridge CEO Bob Ray
“We look at it from a buy, build, partner perspective, and it’s kind of the other way around,” Ray said in an interview with Golec for B2BMX Insights. “It’s partner, build and then buy. I think there’s a new era of services companies that are going to build, buy and partner to provide a more ecosystem-like way to do everything from demand to reputation.”
Ray said partnerships alone can’t keep pace with how fast the market is changing.
“I don’t think you can get there just by partnering with software companies. I don’t think you can build fast enough in the market,” he said. “If we could buy a few of these technology companies, we’ll really differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. It creates a moat, I think, differently than what agencies have had in the past.”
Speed to Market for Both Companies
For Golec, the deal comes down to time as building a sales organization from scratch would have taken years.
“The opportunity to work together gives us both a lot of speed,” Golec said. “Bob can go immediately to market with a technology platform, and we can help be the catalyst within his company to be transformed into a technology-enabled service.”
“We’re a small company of mostly product engineers,” he added. “We get immediate scale from a sales and marketing standpoint, and we now have a sales team and client base we can grow from. Time is important, and it’s a race out there.”
AI Visibility: Measurement Built for B2B
Channel 99 Chris Golec
Channel 99 already measures and attributes performance across display, social, email and other channels. The new AI Visibility solution adds AI search, a channel that has moved quickly to the front of the B2B buying process.
“There’s a new channel in town— it’s called AI search, and it’s caught B2B marketers flat-footed as 90% of the buying process is starting there,” Golec said. “Most of the solutions that have come out are very general. We’ve rolled out this AI visibility solution designed specifically for B2B marketers.”
The solution focuses on three outcomes:
- ICP-specific visibility: Improving a compnay’s rank and score for their ICP.
- Pipeline attribution: The platform ties AI search actions and results to pipeline improvement.
- A single source of truth: Marketers can compare AI search with every other channel using the same KPIs in one place.
Because Channel 99 already tracks other channels, it can use historical keyword data from a company’s audiences to shape the prompts it monitors in AI search. Single-channel tools can’t do that. Ray said measurement is the missing piece for marketers trying to influence large language models.
“Measurement is everything in the LLMs, and no one can measure anything other than your rank,” Ray said. “Now we have a technology that can help us measure what we need to do from an optimization perspective across the other channels to influence this new channel.”
What Excites Both Leaders Most
Golec pointed to shared customers and a shared goal. “We’re focused on the same customers and making them more successful,” he said. “We help Marketbridge get to market faster with technology, and they help us get into customers faster as well. It simplifies life in a lot of ways, not just for us, but for our customers.”
For Ray, the people come first.
“Technology evolves, product evolves, so it’s more about the people,” Ray said. “I’m most excited about working with Chris and his team, and giving them the aperture to build on their vision. That’s not to say I’m not excited about the technology Channel 99 brings, because I think it’s exceptional. It answers a few of the questions we were going to have to build or partner to solve. And now we have it.”
