Sven Ruppert is Senior Project Manager at PubliGroupe Ltd. Here he discusses the newly launched Spree7 trading desk in Germany, the partnership with MediaMath and the potential of the new ad trading JV in Germany, including the potential of leveraging business relationships like that of Zanox.

Can you give an over view of the Spree7 proposition?

Spree 7 is positioned as a partner to agencies and direct clients. We try to build a reliable and high performing service layer on top of the market leading T1 platform from our co-shareholder MediaMath.

How are you going to differentiate yourself form the retargeting companies dominating the German market? How will you get closer to the brand advertisers?

In the German market, retargeting is mainly a performance marketing tool. Almost all players who are active in the RTB retargeting space have a very strong background in Performance marketing and therefore focus on this market segment. Furthermore there is still a lack of targeting data in the whole of Europe which is no concern for retargeting campaigns but it is also hindering the branding driven RTB-campaigns.

Spree7 is trying to build a diverse team of complementary experts who do have not only performance but also experience in brand advertising. We are actively exploring partnerships that will help us to get access to data sets that help our brand advertisers.

Is the German data-driven display market primed for big growth in 2012?

I am a big believer. Dmexco will be huge this year for everybody in the RTB-ecosystem. Apart from the missing data sets, the missing inventory from premium publishers has been a downside for brand marketers. I am sure this is about to change in 2012.

There is a trend in Europe now for specialist display buyers - or independent trading desks. Will agencies continue to outsource this speciliasm?

To answer this question you need to include a couple of different factors. There are different types of agencies, media agencies, performance agencies, creative agencies. There are international networks as well as local agencies. We do think that today there is a need to work with spezialized units like us with all types of agencies. Down the road the partnership with media agencies might evolve more into a consulting partnership. Where they use us like a partner and consultant instead of an outsourced unit.

Are you not competition for the agency trading desks?

We are an open to partner with both agencies and direct clients. Obviously if we engage into a strategic partnership with a big agency we will guarantee to not offer any service to their client portfolio. Even today some agencies say that they do not want to work with any service providers like us. We have to accept it and still try to grow our business.

Can you some background on Publigroupe in the European market - and what expertise it will bring to the new Spree7 JV?

Publigroupe,is a Swiss-based group of leading providers of marketing and media sales services. The company offers a wide range of services to its clients: it enables advertisers to spend their marketing budgets more effectively and helps media owners to monetise their reach more successfully.Publigroupe consists of three business segments: Search&Find, Media Sales and Digital&Marketing Services. The later two have entities in different European countries and obviously we would love to leverage as many synergies as possible. Especially Media Sales has a strong sales network across Europe with existing realtionships to both premium publishers and media agencies.

Can you give some insight on how the relationship with MediaMath will work? Is MediaMath just tech partner?

MediaMath is a shareholder of Spree7. Therefore it is more than just a tech partnership. Obviously Spree7 will build all its services on the T1 platform, but we will frequently exchange sales leads and discuss day-to-day business on a regular basis.

Given the Publigroupe partnerships with Axel Springer in companies like Zanox, is there a huge affiliate market spend that the new Spree7 entity can tap into?

To be honest we would love to build a close partnership with zanox. zanox is a great company, Europe’s leading affilate network thanks to the acquisitions of affiliate window and buy.at. Retargeting is a big part of affiliate marketing nowadays and we would like to be a part of that. We believe that we are just at the beginning of the age of data and that performance marketing will down the road use more than just retargeting data to increase ROI. Affiliate networks will enable companies like us to build very intelligent performance marketing concepts of the future.