Portfolio Company Profile: Espotting Media
By Kate Opekar, Deputy Editor

Espotting is Euorpe’s largest online advertising medium with over 10,000 clients across 6 European countries - the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. In addition, operations will be opening in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland by Q1 2003. Espotting’s European focused pay-per-click search network is designed to bring together Internet's 3 core markets: advertisers, consumers and affiliates.

Listed by the Financial Times as one of this year’s top 50 Creative Businesses, Espotting provides consumers with access to highly targeted search results from thousands of the world's most popular brand names including Orange, Go Airlines, British Airways, Norwich Union Direct and Procter & Gamble. Consumers access Espotting’s search listings through an ever-expanding network of Europe's top ISPs, search engines and portals, such as Yahoo! UK & Ireland, Lycos, Ask Jeeves, ntl:home, Netscape, UK Plus and Looksmart. The Financial Times explains: “Unless you’re in one of the top websites in the world, internet advertising has probably been a bit of a disappointment. But the better targeting that net technology offers can still prove a serious draw…That’s the premise behind Espotting, a UK start-up that specialises in paid searches.”

Return On Investment (ROI) for advertisers is the main premise of the Espotting model. Advertisers pay to be listed in our search results, bidding against each other on keywords and phrases relevant to their website content in an online, real-time auction. The higher an advertiser bids, the higher they are listed. The cost-per-click payment system means advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their listing. Advertisers' logos are displayed next to their listings, so they benefit from impressions while only paying for the traffic they receive. It's targeted traffic they control as they determine how much they want to pay per click, where they appear within the search results and therefore, how much traffic they want to receive.

In September, Espotting announced a three-year pan-European deal with Lycos Europe, one of Europe's leading Internet destinations, representing the first time a paid for listings provider agreed to integrate their sponsored listings into the Directory and Channel pages of a portal on a pan-European basis. The deal covers inter alia UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. The implementation will take place in Q3, 2002.

Other recent wins for the company include the securing of MP3.Com as its 10,000^th advertiser.

In addition to introducing companies that may become customers or strategic partners, Ariadne Capital will be advising Espotting Media in the development of its sales strategy and enhancement of its key demonstration material/processes.

For further information on Espotting Media: http://www.espotting.com