Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l’Archevêque (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the case of Google, they have web self-service advertisement capabilities like Google CPC. If I, as a small business, want to advertise on Google, I can go to Google’s website and set it up to do that advertising. Do you have that in place as well?

Benoît l’Archevêque: Yes. We call that ad boosting. We can do product placement in site. We can actually increase or not, depending on the context of the search. Also, we do product re-targeting. For example, you have a blog. You would like to have contextual products offered in the article you were doing. We can actually place products beside the articles. We call that product re-targeting.

We have our own lead system where retailers go. They can buy other leads because when you go on the platform from the backend, you will see the leads you received that were asked from you. You’ll see also all the leads that were asked throughout the platform.

If we’re selling wines and I didn’t receive any quote, I can go and see all the other quotes that are there. That’s going to give me a lot of information about what people are actually looking for in real time and buy those leads or adjust my offering. We also offer the analytics that goes with it so people can see how people are drilling down and what words they’re using. Every retailer has their own store inside Azzimov. You don’t’ even have to set it up because when we crawl data from a website, all the data is automatically created in our storage. We don’t even have to have access to their database. We just do that through the website.

Sramana Mitra: So how do you talk to retailers? Do you charge them for the leads that you send them on a cost-per-lead basis and then you also charge them for subscription fee for analytics? If they want to buy additional leads, you charge them for additional leads? Is that the method?

Benoît l’Archevêque: It’s free for everyone. The only time they pay is when they buy the leads. Our business model is 1% of the retail price. To do a quick number, if the article is being sold at $100, we’ll charge $1 to sell you the lead.

Sramana Mitra: So you don’t charge for leads? You charge a percentage commission on the sale?

 Benoît l’Archevêque: Not on the sale. We sell the lead. If someone is looking for a TV and that TV is worth $500. If you want to get the name, address, and the intent of that person who’s looking for that TV, you’re going to pay $5.

Sramana Mitra: You charge 1% of the sales price for that particular product as a lead price?

Benoît l’Archevêque: Yes, as a lead price.

Sramana Mitra: Do you also charge additional for analytics?

Benoît l’Archevêque: Right now, we don’t. It’s important to grow the member base so right now, we’re not thinking about charging anything else. Also, the business model is not for us. It’s for China Telecom. China Telecom charges retailers to be a member, for the leads, and they also get a percentage out of the sales for the affiliates.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about how you are working the affiliate part.

Benoît l’Archevêque: In that case, it’s the responsibility of China Telecom. It’s not my responsibility. My business model is offering all the technology, business, and revenue model. They have to execute it.

Sramana Mitra: Your payment is on revenue share basis, right? So you do care about what business models they implement?

Benoît l’Archevêque: Yes, but I’m not going to spend money or time telling them exactly. China Telecom has a call center. Our system, Azzimov, was included into the 114-118 service. Are you familiar with the 114-118 service in China?

Sramana Mitra: No.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Trying to Turn Carriers and Retailers Into Google: Azzimov CEO Benoît l'Archevêque
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