ZEOTAP

An innovative leader in the Customer Data Platform space

“The impact of these efforts can be seen directly in key metrics like ROAS and retention rates. Yet, many marketers still struggle with creating a single view of the customer and actioning their data across campaigns – especially in a way that adheres to today’s privacy and compliance standards. Our next-gen Customer Data Platform bridges this gap,” “ Projjol Banerjea, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer

In today’s digital landscape, an integrated, actionable customer dataset that is also compliant with strict privacy and security standards is crucial for any marketer looking to provide personalised customer experiences and remain competitive.

To get more insights into Zeotap’s offering, our team sat down for a virtual chat with Projjol where we covered several aspects of his business portfolio.

THE PREFACE
Founded by Projjol Banerjea and Daniel Heer in 2014, Zeotap began as a platform that provided data solutions for marketers. In 2019, the team saw a new data challenge emerging: the problem now was not the data itself, but using it. Marketers needed a way to unify customer data into a single view, store and segment it, and activate it across multiple channels. The deprecation of third-party cookies in 2023 also meant that most CDPs would be unable to recognise unauthenticated website visitors.

This joint challenge of privacy and identity was holding marketers back from being able to harness their customer data to create competitive customer journeys. This led to the launch of Zeotap’s customer data platform in 2020. It enables marketers to unify, enhance and activate their customer data, preparing them for a ‘cookieless’ world that puts data privacy, compliance and customer consent front and-centre.

When it comes to its mission, Zeotap is determined to transform the world of customer intelligence. Every team member at the company shares the same passion to create something innovative that can make a real difference to their clients’ objectives – setting their sights on driving results backed by data.

While they strive to develop outperforming products and solutions to raise the bar, their client-partner relationshipbuilding strategies are formed over the groundwork of transparency and integrity. Zeotap is making leaps by addressing the pain points of marketers via its Customer Data Platform, ensuring a steadfast foundation for its future growth.

THE COMPETITIVE EDGE
Zeotap emerged from Germany – a country that is well known for its strict data privacy and security standards. Projjol explains that, from a compliance standpoint, Zeotap is an unmatched player in the industry as most of the CDPs in the market are ill-equipped for these challenges.

Zeotap delivers a solution for one of the biggest challenges in marketing today: safeguarding a consumer’s privacy while enabling marketers to continue to act at scale.

“Zeotap’s platform is built to enable marketers to fully leverage and enrich their data, leading to insights that can be used not only in marketing but throughout the rest of their organisations,” affirms Projjol.

The company has a client base consisting of over 80 of the world’s top 100 brands – including P&G, Nestlé and Virgin Media – and is recognized by leading organisations among the likes of Gartner, Forrester, and G2 Crowd.

R&D ALIGNMENT
Zeotap’s Data Science team makes continuous strides to get the best out of its analytics and research and development abilities, allowing them to innovate, experiment and improve their products and services.

Recognising the team’s contribution, Projjol adds, “Our team has produced several papers that have been accepted by major organisations across NLP, AI, and AdTech space. Our most recent papers accepted for publication include the Ensemble Model for Chunking, accepted at this year’s International Conference on Natural Language Computing and AI, Estimating the instantaneous survival rate of digital advertising and marketing IDs, accepted at AdKKD (one of the most prestigious conferences/journals in Adtech), and Multigraph Approach Towards a Scalable, Robust look-alike Audience Extension System, also accepted at AdKKD.”

HARMONY WITH TECH TRENDS
The future of digital marketing is held on stricter privacy and security standards than ever, and brands are expected to maintain a balance between offering hyper personalised experiences and adhering to these data security and privacy standards. With the deprecation of third-party cookies set to happen in 2023, marketers are also pushed to rely further on first-party data – thus increasing the pressure to have compliance under control.

“As one of the few Customer Data Platforms made in – and for – Europe, we know just how much marketers here can be paralysed by the challenges that data privacy regulations create, and that’s the problem we set out to solve,” said Projjol Banerjea, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Zeotap.

“In doing so, we’re hoping to deliver a balance on three priorities that have previously competed with each other: scalable results for the marketer, fairness and transparency for their customer, and fewer headaches for their DPO.”

CULTURAL PRINCIPLES
Zeotap has operated at a global level since its inception in 2014. Today, its offices are distributed across three continents, making it a multicultural and diverse workforce. This diversity in its culture has made Zeotap a fascinating institution to work for, where there is maximum exposure to several cultural values. In this regard, Projjol explains, “Though we’re stationed in many parts of the world, we use our collective intellect and creativity to engineer a smarter future – and always do so together.” The global repute of the company is the result of ceaseless dedication, determination and hard work of every employee.

ACHIEVEMENTS TO DATE
Needless to say, the company has crossed several new commercial milestones in its journey so far. These achievements have solidified the company’s position as a prominent player in the industry. A few of their worthy mentions include:

A year-on-year revenue growth of 126%, representing a 201% YoY growth in subscription revenue
$42 million Series C round announced in July 2020
An additional extension of $18.5 million in November 2020 to speed up its acceleration in the CDP space
An $11m extension to its Series C round in September 2021
Recognition as a “Cool Vendor” in Gartner’s Cool Vendors In Advertising report
Recognition as a Leader in G2 Crowd’s Spring 2021 Grid Report for Customer Data Platform Software
Projjol Banerjea was also awarded ‘Tech Pioneer of the Year’ at the Campaign Tech Awards as well as ‘Martech Visionary of the Year’ at the E4M Martech India Awards 2021
A growing portfolio of clientele including Virgin, Audi, N26, DER Touristik, ITC, La Liga, Desigual, Palladium Hotel Group, Barceló Hotel Group, and Nestlé.

A GLIMPSE OF CORPORATE LESSONS FROM A LEADER
“Innovation and collaboration have always been our core focus. Throughout our journey, we’ve emphasised the significance of keeping an open line of communication with our teams. I think anyone can agree that the last year has been a challenge in terms of maintaining morale and driving a collective vision forward, and as a leader, I wanted to ensure that our teams have the resources they need to adapt and thrive, but also navigate the reality of these changes together and on a human level.

The changes we’ve experienced since 2020 have only made our organisation stronger, and my suggestion to others in the industry is to continue openly communicating to one another (both internally with your colleagues and with external partners and clients) to maintain strong relationships and succeed together.”