Ligatus internationalisation

Premium Performance Vendor Ligatus starts second phase of its internationalisation

After the successful market entry in Austria, Ligatus will continue the implementation of its business model in the European market with the opening of offices in the Netherlands and France.

Cologne, September 15th, 2009 – In July 2009, Ligatus – owned by Europe’s largest magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr – introduced the first phase of its internationalisation with the market entry in Austria. The expansion into the French and Dutch market flags the beginning of the second phase: Already in June 2009, the Ligatus office in Amsterdam in the Netherlands was opened. In the meantime it counts a team of three employees under the management of Michel Hoekstra (39) and plans its market entry for October 2009. The French subsidiary in Paris, headed by Julien Mosse (33), was opened as well and is planning to enter the market before the end of 2009. Further market entries are considered for the following years.

Michel Hoekstra worked for the Dutch media agency Advancee Interactive where he was responsible for the commercial strategy as Commerce Director since 1999. Prior to that, the graduated student of economics was employed as Sales Manager at Solvay Pharmaceuticals.

Julien Mosse worked in different functions for Yahoo! France in the area of search marketing since 2004. As Sales Development Director he was responsible for the relationships with advertisers and agencies for Yahoo, Yahoo Search and Kelkoo. Subsequently he was in charge of the sales team as Head of Advertising Sales. Before that, he was working in the online advertising sales business at Libertysurf -Tiscali.

Klaus Ludemann, Managing Director Ligatus GmbH and responsible for the international expansion of Ligatus: „I am very glad that we found with Michel Hoekstra and Julien Mosse two experienced media managers for Ligatus who have a profound experience in the Dutch and French markets. With the opening of these two additional subsidiaries after the successful start in Austria we come closer to our objectives of providing a full service offering of Ligatus in the areas of performance marketing and technology for partners and advertisers across Europe and of occupying this growth market sustainably.“

In Austria, the Ligatus network – at the beginning consisting of a dozen premium partners – has been expanded successfully under the management of Thomas Obkircher: with profil.at, format.at, woman.at und e-media.at the News Networld Group brought further high-class websites besides news.at into the Ligatus Premium network already in July. In August, we could sign up the online offerings oe24.at, wetter.at und madonna.at from Media Digital and starting from September nachrichten.at und kleinezeitung.at will appear on the Ligatus Network. Until the end of the year the Ligatus Network will include about 30 premium portals. In parallel, various advertising campaigns of well-known brands have been realised – among them clients like T-Mobile, Mazda, Ricardo.at, TUI, MyHammer, Erste Bank und Falkensteiner.

Thomas Obkircher, Managing Director Ligatus Austria: „In the past months we have successfully integrated the most important Austrian web sites into the Ligatus Premium Network, thus expanding our reach continuously. Furthermore, due to our excellent performance we achieved very good results not only for our partners but also our advertisers are very pleased with the obtained clicks and leads we generated for them.“

Press contact:

Carola Holtermann
Marktkommunikation Ligatus
c/o Holtermann.CC
Schmarjestraße 50
22767 Hamburg
Telefon +49 (0) 40 / 35 70 33 - 15
Telefax +49 (0) 40 / 35 70 33 - 18
E-Mail carola@holtermann.cc

About Ligatus

Ligatus is a company of Europe’s largest magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg and is focussing on the performance marketing business. Based on its self-developed technology platform the performance marketing vendor delivers more then 5 billion ad impressions per month for more than 300 advertising campaigns within its high-class network of about 220 premium partner portals.

With the help of its proprietary optimisation algorithm Ligatus enables advertisings and agencies to achieve an intelligent ad placement by addressing their target groups without any losses. In close cooperation with the clients Ligatus is developing and realising successful campaigns. Some of the most well-known clients of Ligatus are CosmosDirekt, Fidelity, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Postbank, SAP or Vodafone. All ads are integrated as text links in editorial content surroundings. The solely performance-related accounting mode ensures an optimal cost control. Some of the renowned partner portals of Ligatus are BRIGITTE.de, Handelsblatt.com, Spiegel Online and Welt.de.

Beyond that, Ligatus acts with the White Label Solution of its established technology also as a software provider in the performance segment. Interested market partners can license the ready-for-use performance marketing system. It offers a tailor-made solution for taking complete advantage of the full performance marketing potential.

Carola Holtermann

Ligatus Market Communications
c/o Holtermann.CC
Schmarjestraße 50
22767 Hamburg

Telefon: +49(0)40/35 70 33 - 15
Telefax: +49(0)40/35 70 33 - 18
eMail: info@ligatus.com

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