In the world of online advertising, it is vital to have a global scale reach with tailor made services to be impactful to the local customer. One such firm that has mastered the space of digital advertising is Eskimi.
The Ad-tech company features an in-house audience data and geolocation platform, rich media platform and media platform combining more than 65 Ad exchanges and 2.5M sites and apps. The firm helps brands build audiences for targeting and analytics, engaging with target audience with most innovative rich media ads and reaches 100% of online users within brand safe and measurable environment.
For over a decade, Eskimi has provided global Ad-tech solutions bringing return on investments to agencies and brands across various segments. Eskimi is trusted by partners like Mondelez, Barclays, Toyota, Vodacom and many more global brands together with local and global agencies.
Capital reached out to the firm’s CEO, Vytautas Paukstys for in-depth insights of how the firm functions and their potential joining of the Ethiopian market. Excerpts;

Capital: What is AdTech in a snapshot?
Vytautas Paukstys: AdTech is the short word for Advertising Technology. It is the broad term for the software and tools that help agencies and brands target, deliver, and analyze their digital advertising efforts. It involves tailoring your digital advertising campaign to the right target audience based on consumer data while leveraging tools and software solutions. Adtech emerged to streamline the digital advertising process as buying and selling digital ads became more complex.

Capital: What is ESKIMI? (Give us a brief about what your company does.)
Vytautas Paukstys: Eskimi is an AdTech platform with over a decade of experience working with a team of ambitious professionals that add the +1 to agency or brand’s marketing team. Eskimi combines programmatic, big data, research, creative innovations and digital media into a powerful platform to create and reach unique audience segments for Telecom, FMCG, Financial, and other business sectors. The platform combines over 1000 unique 3rd party and 1st party data points across user interests, location, devices, telecom data, behavior and many more to provide insights and targeting of your audience. Eskimi reaches 10 million+ consumers in Ethiopia.

Capital: What makes it different/or similar to Google ad?
Vytautas Paukstys: I have got so many people ask me this question over time. There are differences between Google display ads and Eskimi programmatic advertising platform just as there are similarities between the two. While Google display network or ads takes place on a closed network, programmatic is a method of buying ad space that involves multiple ad exchanges. Both display network and programmatic advertising use advanced data analytics and software to get the most effective ad placement. The Google display ads closed network impacts its reach while Eskimi programmatic advertising platform covers inventory from multiple ad exchanges, supporting a truly massive inventory that expands the advertiser’s potential reach, meaning ads can be seen by far more people than they otherwise would on a display network.
On the types of ads, Eskimi programmatic and display network advertising platforms both support a wide variety of ad types, including video and interactive HTML5. However, while display ads look like ads, native programmatic ads do not. Native ads are designed to fit seamlessly into the design of the web page they appear on. On the other hand, Eskimi programmatic also supports a lot of rich media which display does not.
Other areas include deep targeting options and efficiency you would get with the Ekimi DSP. In addition a key advantage of programmatic advertising is the automated, real-time nature of ad buying. This makes the whole process faster and more efficient.

Capital: What makes it different from other ad tech companies?
Vytautas Paukstys: Eskimi is the only AdTech platform that adds a +1 to any marketing team. Eskimi’s platform and service combination helps you set the right KPIs, delivers hands-on guidance and runs ad campaigns – all on your brand’s or agency’s behalf. Eskimi uses unique rich media creative that can be easily adapted to local context; DSP & SSP alike. Eskimi DMP data also allows for the definition and reach to relevant audiences. Eskimi offers support for media planning, campaign management and creatives. Eskimi also has a unique data platform for telecoms and device brands.

Capital: We hear you are planning to get in the Ethiopian market. If so how are you prepping for it? On what stage are you? What are you currently doing?
Vytautas Paukstys: Eskimi has been working with Ethiopian agencies and brands for more than two years now. We keep investing in localizing our solutions even more and offer constant innovative solutions to meet our clients’ needs. Programmatic advertising in general is quite a new concept for some of our clients, so investing in the education of market professionals is and will be one of the company’s priorities in Ethiopia.

Capital: What’s your evaluation of the market in Ethiopia? What are the opportunities in the Ethiopian market?
Vytautas Paukstys: Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Africa with a population of over 110 million people second to Nigeria. Also, the economic growth over the past ten years has been impressive as well. At the moment there are more than 10 million internet users who can be reached via Eskimi online advertising platform in Ethiopia. Due to the changes happening in the Ethiopian telecom industry, it is expected that the internet access will grow exponentially opening huge opportunities for even more rapid adtech development in the market.

Capital: Do you have new/or different plans for Ethiopia?
Vytautas Paukstys: Ethiopia is one of our emerging markets; we are making concerted efforts to continue to invest more on educating marketers in Ethiopia and help them to improve their digital marketing proficiency. We believe there is a huge return in contributing to the body of knowledge in digital marketing in the country and helping practitioners adopt the right tools and platforms in developing and implementing effective digital advertising campaigns.

Capital: What are the challenges that you could face in Ethiopia?
Vytautas Paukstys: Some of the major challenges Ethiopia faces include foreign currency shortages and the recent peace instabilities in the Northern part of Ethiopia. We believe that these challenges the country faces are short term and we hope to see a prosperous and peaceful Ethiopia.

Capital: How are you going to cope with these challenges?
Vytautas Paukstys: Over the past three months we have seen some improvements in both challenges. We are also looking for options to partner up with local marketing agencies to make sure that payments are in local currency.

Capital: What’s your view on the digital monetization progress in Ethiopia?
Vytautas Paukstys: As more websites and applications in Ethiopia are monetizing their platforms, our ability to serve ads to the population also increases. This is a win-win for all as owners of the platforms generate income from allowing ads on their platform thus helping us to grow our profile users as well.