Next wave in the digital marketplace has been growing in OTR

Two OTR Brandery startups made the final cut in a continental quest to find the most innovative new ventures in the digital marketplace. The iMedia Breakthrough Summit, the most respected gather of brand leaders and agency executives in North America, named Receept and Keepio two of nine finalists in the Next Wave competition, a voter-driven contest in Las Vegas running through October 19.

Receept and Keepio are two start-ups by Dave Pfefferfle of Columbus and Dave Durand of Louisville, respectively. Both are ideas that give consumers a useful product or service and merchants a chance to gain more targeted consumer research.

Receept serves as an aggregation of receipts that doesn’t just email you receipts, which you then digitally throw away. Receept keeps them in an organized, separate place, which you can then print off if needed, keep for records and even use for consumer research.

Keepio is a “Facebook for products” that allows collectors of all sorts of items to share, discuss and sell their favorite products with a safe, interested community. Once interests and purchases are archived, Keepio will also target users with customized deals and incentives.

The next step for both start-ups is to align with brands to form partnerships to get their products off the ground. The iMedia summit, with representatives from American Express, Microsoft and Wal-Mart on hand, may be just the place to do that. Before the event begins, Pfefferfle already has meetings set up with representative from Coca-Cola and American Express among others.

While the grand prize of the Next Wave competition isn’t listed on the website, and Pfefferfle himself doesn’t know, being able to claim the title and attend the conference of more than 300 digital marketplace experts and brand representatives is a grand prize in and of itself.

By Evan Wallis