Weborama, a leading European ad technology company, announced strong revenue growth in the first quarter of this year when numbers were released last week. Here Alain Levy, CEO at Weborama, and Mathieu Roche, Managing Director UK, discuss the first quarter results, strategy in the Southern European market, and the growth of Weborama's data business in Europe.

Can you give some overview on the recent financial numbers – which saw a rise of 31% in revenue in the first quarter of this year? Where is Weborama seeing growth?

AL: Our revenue growth of 31% in Q1 2011 (including 26% organic) comes from all business units and all regions: our Media operations remain strong thanks to annual agreements with major advertisers like Renault and Nissan in France; Adperf & Adrime, our Technology platforms, are now used by 31 of the top 100 advertisers in France and since Q1 we gained new clients like Mediabrands in Portugal, Manzoni in Italy and El Corte Ingles in Spain; we’re benefiting from very high demand for our Data business coming from large agencies’ trading desks as well as publishers and networks. It’s really global growth that validates Weborama’s activities at the crossroad of media, technology and data.

You opened offices in the Italy and the UK over the last twelve months – which are now big growth areas for the company? Can you give some insight into your offering in these new markets?

AL: We’re deploying our offering based on media, technology and data solutions in all our markets which are France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal & the UK. We opened in Milan and London in 2010 and we’re very ambitious in these markets. In Italy, we will deploy the entire spectrum of our services over time. In the more mature UK market, we’ll put more focus on our Technology and Data services. And we’re already on track with technology clients like iCrossing, Total Media, MSN, Haymarket, Dennis Publishing - and we have media and data deals in place with Initiative, Vivaki, Group M, etc.

Weborama recently launched a data product for the European market. Can you give some insight into the data partnerships with the likes of Vivaki and Orange?

MR: Our data product is indeed a recent offering, but data has been at the center of our media and technology solutions for 10 years. We were offering network campaign targeted to our proprietary demographic audience segments back in 2003! Since late 2009, we’ve seen more interest in data in itself, and not only through our media operations and our technology solutions. We have worked a lot with early partners to structure and test our audience solutions so that they would be in line with market demand. It is very different to use profiles internally, to target, optimize network campaigns or enrich tracking statistics - and to sell them directly to clients. Vivaki and Orange have recognized early on that our proprietary profiling technology, based on lexical analysis and modeling algorithms, was quite unique and they’ve trusted us to help them optimize their audience buying and selling solutions. Vivaki announced recently the launch of Audience On Demand in France, based on Google’s Invite Media platform and powered by Weborama Data. It’s still very early on, but we’re seeing great traction in the data market and we’re very happy about it!

You recently signed up to the IAB self-regulatory initiative. Given that Weborama works across multiple markets will a self-regulatory approach be enough to adhere to the requirements of the incoming directive?

AL: Weborama has had a strong privacy policy for about 10 years. We believe that the current concern about privacy gives the industry a unique opportunity to work together, at a global level, to build the conditions of a sustainable digital economy. To do that, one needs to understand that privacy is indeed an issue and that the end users are key stakeholders of our ecosystem. Any solution should include 3 dimensions: education, information and control. The OBA framework, an IAB Europe initiative, goes right in this direction and Weborama is very happy to participate early on.

Weborama has a growing share of the ad server market in France and Southern Europe. Are there plans to launch a DSP solution to service clients’ automated buying requirements?

MR: We’re bringing innovation to a market that’s been stuck with platforms dating back to the 1990s. Ad servers have been the foundation of the ad business for years, but have commoditized over time for lack of innovation; rich media, creative optimization, ad verification, analytics, conversion attribution – all these things have been developed AROUND adserving solutions, while they should really be part of the ad servers themselves. That’s exactly what we’re doing with Adperf, and advertisers and agencies in France and Spain, but also in the Netherlands (where 3 of the top 5 advertisers run on Adperf), Portugal, Italy and now the UK are starting to recognize that. I can’t communicate on our plans regarding DSP capabilities specifically, but our ambition is to provide a technology platform that manages 100% of our clients’ online advertising investments, help them optimize these investments, and provide a single source, centralized reporting dashboard. When you do that, the ad server is not a commodity anymore, it’s the cornerstone of your e-marketing activities.

You’ve seen some growth in Portugal and Spain this year. What trends are you seeing in the Southern European markets – particularly around automated buying?

AL: Southern Europe is coming up strong. Spain has delivered strong growth for Weborama over the past years, and the outlook is very positive for 2011 and beyond. We have a very large profile database in Spain with over 50% reach, and we are building up in Portugal and Italy. We will be ready when the bigger part of the market catches up. 2011 and 2012 will be decisive years in the development of the audience-buying market and we are confident our media experience in this area, combined with our data and tech solutions, will allow us to address these opportunities all over Europe.