In what is likely to be the break-out year for the data market in Europe, third party data providers are now integrating with DSPs, SSPs and exchanges across Europe. Weborama, a leading ad server provider in the European market, is now looking to leverage its publisher relationships to provide display buyers with actionable third party data. Mathieu Roche, Directeur Général at Weborama and buy-side panelist at the upcoming Data Economy event, spoke with ExchangeWire this week about the offering in more detail, and the challenges of bringing a third party data solution to market in Europe..

For those who don’t know Weborama’s business, can you give readers an overview on your offering? Is Weborama more than just an ad server?

MR: Weborama was created in Paris in 1998 and operates in five European countries (France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and the UK). We’ve been listed on the Paris stock exchange for four years and generated revenues of €11M in 2009 (2010 figures will be released soon). Our original business was in the web analytics space. We moved on to the ad network business, then launched an agency adserving & tracking solution. Weborama also have a behavioural advertising platform, and most recently we acquired a rich media & video solution. All of these business lines have three things in common: they rely on advanced proprietary technologies, leverage our media relationships, and are enriched by data.

Can you give some insight on the European markets Weborama is currently working across? Has Weborama a significant footprint in other countries – other than France?

MR: In addition to France, we are very strong in Spain and Portugal where we have been active since 2005, and in the Netherlands where we acquired a company specializing in rich media and video solutions in Feb 2010. We also opened in the UK and Italy last year, and those two markets are a strong focus for us in 2011.

Weborama is now offering 3rd party data to the buy-side? Can you explain the Weborama data offering in more detail? How is Weborama currently selling to media buyers?

MR: Data has been at the core of our technology and media activities since the early 2000s, but it was not very “visible” from the outside, except for a few direct deals with publishers. Now, with the development of audience buying, there is a market for data. We’ve been ready for this kind of infrastructure for a long time because it creates great opportunity to generate value directly from our data assets. We’re integrating with all possible channels (DSPs, networks or SSPs) to distribute our profiles, and we are able to provide significant reach in our core markets – we have 30+ million unique profiles in France and 20+ million unique profiles in Spain for instance.

Our profiling methodology is based on advanced lexical, statistical & mathematical expertise: we collect all the words involved in a users’ navigation, analyze their relationships, and apply a set of algorithms to update profiles daily and on a grand scale. This methodology based on words allows us to build very specific target groups –we receive briefs that can be as refined as “people looking for a family car, interested in outdoor activities and worried about safety” for a SUV manufacturer for instance! Since we go ... Lire la suite de l'article