Consolidation Boosts OC E-Comm Landscape

OC’s marketing and advertising landscape continues to shift more towards digital and e-commerce service firms that help companies with their backend tech solutions.
 
Look no further than Branded Online Inc., which debuted last year at No. 4 on the Business Journal’s list of the largest advertising agencies locally. This year, the Tustin-based company opted out of the list and said it’s no longer labeling itself an ad shop.
 
It’s also no longer calling itself Branded Online either, following a rebrand announced late last month to Nogin. The change, the company said, was because of the additional capabilities that came from a pair of acquisitions: OneStop two-and-a-half years ago and Zther Interactive four years ago to become the aforementioned agency with the trio’s skillsets now merged.
 
Nogin has since been working for the last year-and-a-half on its e-commerce technology, helping their clients boost traffic, customer retention and ultimately transactions using artificial intelligence.
 
Some of the companies it’s worked with include Bebe, Hurley, Lululemon, Yeezy and True Religion.
 
Nogin now counts 200 workers in Tustin.  
 
The company declined to say how much in revenue it closed 2020 with. Instead, Vice President of Corporate Marketing Jeeyan Rostam-Abadi cited to the Business Journal GMV—gross merchandise value, a term referencing the total product sold using Nogin’s technology—saying it was up more than 50% in 2020 from the prior year.
 
When it was still Branded Online, the agency reported to the Business Journal its 2019 revenue to be $43.6 million with 131 workers, 64 of them local.