Zeotap gets $13 million to unlock treasure chests of telco user data for mobile ads

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Whether it is artificial intelligence or targeted advertising, it’s the quality of data that determines how smart the results will be. Berlin-based Zeotap, which also has a joint venture in Bangalore, zeroed in on this aspect from the very outset of its adtech business in late 2014. It started tying up with telecom companies across Europe and Asia to use their customer data for targeting mobile ads.

Today it has partnerships not only with major telecom companies but also a leading security company and a navigation services provider for their user data. What makes large corporations such as these comfortable in sharing their user data with Zeotap is its leak-proof systems to protect the privacy of consumers, under strict European norms. It has already been certified for the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that comes into effect next year.

“Our unrelenting focus on privacy by design principles in systems engineering is one of our most formidable assets,” says Projjol Banerjea, co-founder and CPO of Zeotap.

Investors agree. Zeotap today announced US$12.83 million in series B funding from US-based New Science Ventures and Here, a provider of mapping and location-based services backed by German auto companies.

Existing investors Capnamic Ventures and Iris Capital also participated in the new round.

Mobile advertising accounted for more than half of the US$195 billion digital ad spend in 2016.

“Their solution comes at a time when many data owners are looking for the right partner,” says Edzard Overbeek, CEO of Here.

Zeotap will use the funding to grow its engineering and data science team in Bangalore and expand into new markets for partnerships with data owners. It formed a joint venture called Mozeo in partnership with Mogae Media in India a few months ago.

Mobile advertising accounted for more than half of the US$195 billion digital ad spend in 2016, according to eMarketer. There’s also a growing shift towards programmatic advertising. This is an automated process of buying and selling digital ad inventory, instead of the manual negotiation and insertion of ads.

The main hitch lies in the lack of reliable large-scale data. “Programmatic advertising hasn’t picked up pace in India yet, especially on mobile, even though consumer eyeballs continue to move to mobile,” points out Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media. “The fundamental reason is the scarcity of trustworthy data for targeting. This leads to imprecise and ineffective campaigns that disappoint buyers and curtail their appetite for programmatic advertising.”

This is the gap Zeotap is filling with its access to telecom user data. Three of India’s largest telecom operators are among its clients. “India is an important market for us where we’ve established the benefits of a cross-carrier model with multiple operators,” Projjol tells Tech in Asia. “We have coverage of over 60 percent of the market currently.”

The value proposition for Zeotap is the quality of telecom data which has specifics on the user’s age, sex, location, income level, and more. This is richer than the user data mobile advertisers have to work with otherwise.

See: User data superior to Facebook, Google: one startup’s recipe to dominate mobile ads