Established in 2011, Poland, Epom Ltd. (www.epom.com) is a company with innovative vision, providing creative solutions for publishers, advertisers and networks, namely the integrated platform for fast and convenient digital ad-campaign management. Despite the fact that the enterprise is relatively new on the market, Epom has already got a lot of business partners, including major media companies from Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.
We have spoken to Epom’s CEO, Adam Jablonski, about the current challenges on the ad servers market, about being an European tech startup, and the company’s plans for the future.
Otilia Otlacan: Thank you for putting Epom on our map, it is great to discover a new initiative on the ad serving scene! Can you give us a little background on what led you to create Epom?
A few years ago I was a Head of an advertising agency in Poland, where we were trying to use various ad serving solutions. Unfortunately, all of them either couldn’t fit our requirements, or were too bulky and sophisticated to use.
Much because of that we started working on our own project, and it gradually got far beyond the limits of an in-house solution. At one point I just understood that we could really offer something unique to the market, that a great number of users would appreciate simplicity and convenience of Epom. Having already acquired enough experience with numerous advertisers and publishers, we have put all knowledge we had into creation and development of our solution, clearly acknowledging what exactly each and every user needed. This is, perhaps, what can be named among our keys to success.
Otilia Otlacan: How do you see the current ad servers market, what are the biggest challenges for a new player?
Undoubtedly, the current market features a wide range of ad serving solutions, much due to the rapid development of digital marketing itself and the companies’ willingness to use more money from their budgets in online marketing niche. At the same time, the majority of services in the relative market segment, like OpenX, DoubleClick or Zedo, for instance, were initially introduced more, than 10 years ago, and managed to attract large audience at a certain point of their history. In this respect, I’m absolutely sure that we know what we can offer to the clients, who are searching for something new.
It’s really surprising, or better to say, fortunate for us, that even the largest sites with a great amount of traffic don’t frequently understand the importance of an ad server, all opportunities and benefits that the its usage presupposes. Therefore, we have got an incredibly wide array of options and possibilities for development.
Otilia Otlacan: Is the fact of being a European startup a hindrance when competing on a market that is heavily US-driven?
I would dare say that the actual geographical location of the company’s office is hardly very essential in online business nowadays. It’s possible to manage the enterprise in Asia or Europe, while being mostly focused on the US market and vice versa. Obviously, online business market in the USA is traditionally considered to be the most developed one, yet there’re many trend-setters in the industry that aren’t US-based companies. Let’s just take a simple example: many large networks at Epom Market, like InMobi, Aditic, Buzzcity, Inmobi, or Adsmobi aren’t US-based businesses. Despite having been founded in Asia and Europe, they have succeeded in becoming large-scale and popular projects.
Otilia Otlacan: Who is your typical publisher, who would benefit most from migrating onto Epom?
As for today, both large sites and the mid-sized businesses tend to use our solution. The service isn’t too bulky, on the contrary, it’s very simple, yet comprises all necessary features and peculiarities.
We are especially happy to welcome large publishers, since Epom is a massively-scalable platform and, thus, enables to spare considerable sums of money, in case there’re a lot of impressions served. Moreover, there aren’t any additional, hidden fees, like a set-up fee or a maintenance fee, or the separate payment for particular functions of the platform. Everything is crystal clear.
Epom has been developed as a unified platform to work with any type of traffic or type of ads. Therefore, publishers, advertisers and networks, working with mobile traffic, mobile applications and videos, will certainly enjoy all advantages of ad inventory management opportunities, being available at one place.
Much because of that, one of the largest file-sharing services with huge amounts of traffic 4shared has recently begun its partnership with Epom. The company currently uses the full package of Epom features, including a mobile app and a video solution. In this respect, Epom is really perfect for such clients, especially due to its reasonable pricing.
Otilia Otlacan: Can you tell us about the Epom exchange, what verticals are best represented? Is the exchange open to all publishers or are there minimum impressions requirements?
The launch of Epom ad exchange is a logical and natural way of our project development. In particular, having already got a considerable number (pool) of publishers and advertisers, we have managed to offer them our professional help in solution of tasks and problems.
Namely, as for publishers with high-quality traffic, it’s the access for expensive ads and additional opportunities of traffic monetization. We are cooperating with leading networks, and the system works in such a way that the publisher gets the largest possible profit.
Undoubtedly, Epom Market is beneficial for all participating players. Each and every publisher can apply for membership in it, and we do not determine the minimum impressions requirements.
Otilia Otlacan: What’s on your roadmap for the rest of the year?
Our professional ambitions can be revealed in numbers – we are planning to gain 40B monthly impressions till the end of this year. At the moment we are negotiating with several major publishers, who are ready to test and use our platform in their businesses.
Furthermore, paying much attention to the development of our mobile solution, we are planning to launch Mobile Ad Exchange this year. Besides, we will also be working on the expansion of Epom Market and are going to participate in various thematic exhibitions and seminars. These events are very useful in terms of real-life communication with target audience and can be considered a wonderful opportunity to hear your clients’ wishes, build and develop new valuable business relations.
As for the functionality of the platform, this year we will be working on the development of our mobile solution, SDK for Android and other platforms. We will also introduce the upgrades and modifications in network accounts, our video solution, not to mention our plans to add support of mobile rich-media ads and implement Behavioral targeting.
Otilia Otlacan: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I would like to add, that while creating Epom we had a purpose to launch a unified massively-scalable platform with all needed tools for effective real-time ad inventory management, so that our users would be able to run ads from different advertising platforms, mobile advertising networks and direct ads at one place. I suppose, we’ve done a really great job, as today Epom is increasing the number of its fans, and hopefully the readers of your magazine will also become our clients.
About Epom
Epom is an ad-serving and ad-managing platform proposing publishers, advertisers and networks advanced solutions for running and optimizing ad campaigns. Epom enables its users to run display, video and mobile ads all in one place and hence saves time, resources and brings more profit. Epom is a 100% web-based, massively scalable, real-time platform with free targeting, advanced campaigns management, graphical reporting, mobile solution, and more.
