By Mike Zacharski
VP of Publisher Acquisitions, CPX Interactive

When we first opened offices in Europe (Italy and Spain), we had a vision of how we wanted these International incarnations of CPX to turn out. The process was much like telling someone about your favorite place, and then hearing their own opinion after they’ve made their own memories there. Before each new office opened, we did all we could to teach them what it meant to be CPX Interactive, but then we had to step back and let them develop into their own. I spent this past week visiting CPX Italy, and the following is my recounting of how they have taken the core of CPX and added some Italian flavor:

Milan, the city itself, is modern and fast-paced. It is the fashion capital of the world and it’s a great mix of the traditional and modern. Of course, the Internet is not new to Italy. There are many successful online companies there, and Milan has grown into a hub of activity in the space since the late 1990s. Companies based there include those that service the local market as well as others that span globally and reach hundreds of millions of users in many countries. Most of the major .com’s have offices there, along with the .it’s, and you feel a definite and established online culture there, something both traditional and modern.

We have a dynamic staff led by Massimo Fontana as well as Piero Mundi on the Ad Sales side and Cecilia Sandrucci on the Business Development/Publishing side. They are like our Italian cousins, and the office is equally vibrant and lively. The days do seem to go by much faster there though, as interfacing with the US begins in the middle of the day…or maybe it’s the 2-3 espressos.

My first few days, I was focused on working with Cecilia and Henar Perez, our new hire who flew in from our Spain office. I spent the last few days there going to meetings with some of the publishers located in town.  Our team is very well respected, and as it was explained to me by a friend, “the online world is a large city with a small population”. This credibility and respect is tied deeply into the culture of the country and part of the traditional way of doing business in Italy, yet at the same time, there is a deep appetite for change and growth built on new technology and a global approach, as well as a vision of media and consumption.

There is a heritage of understanding there, a very academic approach to things. Companies and people desire to learn and understand all things fully, and from all angles. There is also a sense of nationalism and pride in Italian companies and brands and a genuine welcoming of those institutions that, like CPX, have opened their doors here, and are looking to service the local market. We have the opportunity to educate a hungry market on the value of our company while at the same time filling the needs of a growing marketplace.

We have been successful there, and will continue to be, because we have aligned our solutions to meet the local needs. We reach 11 million unique users each month. We provide scalability and value for publishers and for advertisers, and we have traffic solutions from numerous sources, such as local publishers, large .com’s, and exchanges, to create campaigns that can provide branding as well as performance. We are bringing with us efficiency, as well as the experience of being a global player and of course, a healthy sense of competitive appetite and creativity that has always set us apart.

CPX is welcome in Italy, and in a short time we have established ourselves as a strong and respected brand in the market. All in all, it was great to see how the Italy team has taken the foundation that we laid for them and carved out their own place in the online advertising space.

Contact CPX Italy:

CPX Interactive Italia
Via Conservatorio, 22
20122 Milano-Italy
Italy@cpxinteractive.com
http://cpxinteractive.it/

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