Quantcast Launches U.K. Operation

Online audience measurement and targeting company Quantcast has announced the launch of a U.K. operation, to be headed up by ex-Yahoo Director Philip Macauley.

Having secured relationships with high-profile clients on both the publisher and marketer side in the U.S., Quantcast claims it has seen increased interest from international markets – particularly in the U.K. – since it began breaking out information on a country-specific basis in March.

Quantcast’s platform enables publishers and networks to measure and identify audiences across their properties in real-time, while allowing marketers to plan targeted media buys around that data and target “lookalike” users elsewhere that are likely to have an interest in their content.

Konrad Feldman, Quantcast co-founder and CEO, said U.K. publishers including the BBC and the Economist were initially using the service to better understand and sell ads against their U.S. audiences, but that both publishers and agency clients were demanding the functionality in local markets.

“The U.K. market was a natural next step for us, since it’s such a mature market,” Feldman said. Regarding Macauley’s appointment he added, “It was important for us to find someone who has knowledge and experience of both the buy-side and sell-side, but also understands the technology trends and transitions at play.”

Macauley will join Quantcast as U.K. managing director, having previously served as director of business development and commercial relations at Yahoo. Before that he worked on the buy side at WPP agency MindShare.

Feldman did not disclose how many staff will populate the U.K. office at launch, but said it will build up “adequate resources on the ground.” In response to further expansion, Feldman said the company is “looking at opportunities” and that markets in Europe and Asia are of particular interest.

In terms of what sets Quantcast apart from competitors, Feldman said partnering directly with publishers for its audience data enables it to identify smaller, fragmented, “interesting” audiences that are often missed by panel-based solutions such as those offered by comScore and Nielsen.

The company says it currently works with over two-thirds of the membership of the online publishers association in the U.S., and that it is already serving clients in Europe.