zeotap, the data platform that we mentioned among “10 German startups to look out for in 2016“, today announced its Series B funding round of €12 million. The new investment reflects both zeotap’s achievements in telecom data onboarding for advertising targeting and measurement, and its potential to grow into the single platform that aggregates deterministic data across industries.
Data is increasingly the cornerstone of the mobile advertising market and determines the efficiency of any buying or selling decision in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. At its inception in September 2014, zeotap aimed to leverage this trend by creating a global platform to effectively integrate deterministic data from different telecom operators. By using these telecom assets as a nucleus, zeotap has proven the efficacy and value of its data by achieving up to four times the average data price in the market. Simultaneously, Mozeo, zeotap’s Indian joint venture established a few months ago with local partner Mogaé Media, has reported strong progress. Mozeo aims to provide a unique solution that promises to comprehensively improve how advertising is bought and sold in India today.
Headquartered in Berlin, zeotap has recently broadened its ambitions to other deterministic data sources that diversify its data graph while still adhering to the same quality standards. In just the last six months, the company has signed several contracts, including a global one with a leading security company as well as a top navigation services provider. For data buyers, the zeotap platform might become even more attractive with a variety of impactful data attributes, including socio-demographic, location, interest and even deterministic mobile purchase intent signals, available from a single trusted source.
zeotap is unique in affording data owners complete control and preventing buyers from storing data against persistent identifiers. This solves one of the fundamental problems of the mobile data business, where datasets are still traded loosely and leakage is rampant.
The latest funding round was joined by New Science Ventures (NSV), HERE, and also included existing investors like Capnamic Ventures and Iris Capital. zeotap has also attracted several strategic business angels.
Somu Subramaniam, Managing Partner of New Science Ventures, stated: “zeotap’s focus on bringing the best data assets together in one single platform is a unique opportunity for data owners and buyers alike. We are effectively escaping a world where companies have to manage the complex integration of a multitude of sources before they can draw any real value from data.”
With the new investment, zeotap is looking to grow its team in the areas of engineering and data science in Bangalore as well as data on-boarding, data monetization and marketing in Berlin, New York, Madrid and Milan.
