Europe is on the cusp of rolling the welcome mat out to another fast growing tech firm, with US content monetisation platform Sharethrough preparing to set up shop in London.
The company is looking to use its new big smoke office as an international headquarters, forming part of an immediate launch into Europe.
US publishers such as Time Inc., Men’s Health and Forbes already use Sharethrough to monetise the streams of content uploaded to their respective sites. The platform works much in the same way as its competitors, such as Outbrain, allowing advertisers to place links for their branded content on external sites, with companies bidding for their most desirable locations.
Exploring in a VAN
After finding its feet in San Francisco’s bay area, Sharethrough will now look to grow the business in new surroundings, starting with Europe. To ease the transition, it has announced the purchase of UK-based company VAN – a business which also works with online content distribution.
Despite only forming in 2009 VAN has already made big strides with its own ad exchange, but the company will have to embrace a new way of working under Sharethrough.
Part of the move will grant the buyer access to VAN’s bank of publisher and brand clients, such as Phillips and BBC, who will soon be introduced to the Sharethrough’s line of content distribution and monetisation products. As a result, VAN has shared plans to scrap its existing distribution network in favour of the Sharethrough Exchange (STX).
It is believed that all VAN campaigns will take this into effect by 30 September 2014. Chris Quigley, managing director and co-founder of Van, also announced that all advertiser and publisher dashboards will run up until 8 October, by which time they will switch over to Sharethrough.