Brandwatch

Giles Palmer worked in finance-related roles at Smith & Williamson, Equitas and Sky Interactive before co-founding the software company Runtime Collective. The company was incorporated in the UK on December 21, 1999, as Runtime Collective Limited (company number 03898053) and later became the operating company of Brandwatch.⁠[1][2][3][3][4]

Palmer then founded Brandwatch to help organizations find and engage with online conversations that matter to them; its founding year is recorded as both 2006 and 2007.⁠[1][5][2]

In 2013, Brandwatch acquired PeerIndex. As of November that year, the company was headquartered in Brighton, UK, had offices in the United States and Germany, and served more than 700 brands and businesses in 25 languages.⁠[6][1][1][1]

In 2017, Brandwatch acquired the content marketing platform BuzzSumo and kept it running as a standalone platform.⁠[6]

On October 4, 2018, Brandwatch and the U.S. social intelligence company Crimson Hexagon announced that they had signed a merger agreement, expected to close in the fourth quarter of that year; the combined company would keep the Brandwatch name, have about $100 million in annual recurring revenue and be led by Palmer as chief executive officer, with a board drawn from investors on both sides. Brandwatch had previously raised $65 million from the European venture capital firms Nauta Capital, Highland Europe and Partech.⁠[6][6][7][7][7]

Under the merger plan, Crimson Hexagon’s artificial intelligence and historical data index would be combined with Brandwatch Analytics’ data handling and user interface, while both products continued to operate separately for an extended period. Crimson Hexagon chief technology officer Chris Bingham said the company’s 11 years of investment in AI and machine learning would be at the core of the new platform. At the time Brandwatch had 1,400 brand and agency clients, including Unilever, Walmart and Dell, and offices in Brighton, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Stuttgart, Paris and Singapore.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

In May 2020, Brandwatch had 500 employees; Palmer said the company had received about 700 million social posts a day for 12 years, roughly 1.5 trillion pages in total.⁠[2][2][2]

On February 26, 2021, Cision, a news distribution and media monitoring company, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Brandwatch for $450 million, expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. At the time Brandwatch was headquartered in Brighton, had 10 offices worldwide, served more than 2,000 brands and agencies, and included BuzzSumo in its portfolio; Cision’s businesses included PR NewswirePR NewswirePR Newswire is an American press release distribution service founded in New York in 1954 by Herbert Muschel. It sends news releases from companies, organizations, and public relations firms simultaneously to the media and the investment community, and is one of the pioneers of the commercial newswire industry; since 2016 it has been a business of the communications software company Cision.Open the full entry and the social media platform Falcon.io.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8][9][8]

Palmer said that joining a company of significant scale at this point would create a business and a suite of products with an important global impact; Cision chief executive officer Abel Clark said the combination would help clients understand and engage their customers more deeply. Macquarie Capital acted as Brandwatch’s exclusive financial adviser.⁠[8][8][8][8]

On June 1, 2021, Cision completed its acquisition of Brandwatch and at the same time combined Brandwatch with its social media management company Falcon.io into a social business of about 1,000 people, launching an embedded Brandwatch app in the Falcon.io suite and in the Cision Communications Cloud. After the deal, Palmer became Cision’s chief growth officer.⁠[10][10][10][10][5]

In March 2022, Brandwatch acquired the influencer marketing platform Paladin and renamed it Influence, making it part of its social media management product line; the former Falcon.io products also became part of Brandwatch.⁠[4][4]

As of October 2026, Brandwatch’s products included consumer intelligence (Brandwatch Consumer Research), social media management (formerly the Falcon suite), influencer marketing (Influence, formerly Paladin), media intelligence and insights, and search intelligence, supported by the AI engine Iris. The leadership team listed on the official About us page was made up of Cision executives, with Guy Abramo as chief executive officer.⁠[11][12][12][12][12]

As of October 2026, Brandwatch’s operating company, Runtime Collective Ltd, was registered on the seventh floor of 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, with its registered office listed as Cision Group Limited.⁠[4][3]

Brandwatch: Official website: https://www.brandwatch.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

X: Public account: https://x.com/brandwatch (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brandwatch (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrandwatchVideos (opens in a new window)⁠[12]