European Media Marketplace: Equativ pools European media and data to strengthen the Open Web

Equativ has officially launched the European Media Marketplace (EUMM). Its partners are Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T Advertising Solutions, data company Experian, travel site lastminute.com, and classifieds sites Kleinanzeigen and leboncoin, both owned by Adevinta. Also on board: Orange France unit Orange Advertising, secondhand marketplace Vinted, and telcos Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone.

For several years, European initiatives have sought to provide an alternative to the major U.S. advertising platforms. Until now, most have primarily relied on alliances between publishers or broadcasters, often limited to specific formats or a handful of markets. The EUMM's ambition is different: to bring together the advertising inventory, audience data and activation technologies of several major European players within a single interface.

The alliance's assessment is straightforward. Advertisers continue to favor major platforms such as Google, Meta and Amazon not only because of their reach, but also because they offer a much simpler buying experience. That means a single interface, powerful targeting capabilities, integrated measurement and relatively seamless activation workflows.

By contrast, the Open Web remains highly fragmented. Data is scattered across numerous players, inventory must be purchased through multiple platforms, and measurement solutions vary from one partner to another. The EUMM aims to recreate the simplicity of the walled gardens without giving up the open nature of the European ecosystem.

"The EUMM builds on the inventory already connected to Equativ and adds an SPO feature that allows buyers to prioritize European media without excluding non-European inventory," explains Arnaud Créput, CEO of Equativ.

In practical terms, the EUMM is a dedicated instance of Maestro, Equativ's curation platform, where the founding partners pool their audience segments under a shared taxonomy. Buyers therefore do not directly activate data from Orange, Vinted or leboncoin, but rather standardized segments built from the combined data of all participating partners.

Eventually, Equativ aims to reach between 100 million and 130 million unique, consented users across Europe, after deduplicating the various databases. The company believes that level of coverage is unprecedented on the European Open Web.

Beyond simplifying media buying, the European Media Marketplace also intends to address a sensitive issue: the growing number of technical intermediaries taking a cut of media budgets.

Today, when an Open Web campaign uses audience data, several players may charge a fee, including SSPs, curators, data providers, identity solutions and measurement vendors. As a result, the working media share often falls to around 50%. That is the portion of the budget that actually reaches publishers.

The EUMM is promising a more direct model. "Equativ will only charge its SSP fees, generally between 12% and 15%, without adding any curation fees," says Arnaud Créput. Data providers will be compensated through a revenue-sharing model, "with the goal of keeping their total compensation below 15%," he adds.

The stated ambition is clear: to push working media above 70%. A much larger share of every dollar spent would then go to publishers and data owners rather than to the various technical intermediaries. It is a way to reduce the adtech tax while maintaining advanced targeting and measurement capabilities through the pooling of first-party data.

Another objective of the European Media Marketplace is to bring the Open Web closer to the targeting and measurement capabilities offered by the walled gardens. To achieve this, the marketplace relies on its members' first-party data, together with several identity solutions, including Utiq, First ID, ID5, RampID and NetID.

"This combination should make it possible to recognize the same user, with their consent, across multiple inventory sources and channels," explains Arnaud Créput.

In practical terms, advertisers will be able to activate the same deterministic audience segment across different publishers, platforms and environments, including CTV, display, video and retail media. That replaces working with different audiences for each source of inventory. This continuity should also improve campaign measurement.

According to Equativ, combining first-party data and identity solutions at scale could drive significant progress in attribution and cross-channel measurement. The Open Web still lags behind the walled gardens in that area.

Créput nevertheless notes that it will remain "difficult to achieve the same level of control as in closed ecosystems, where data, users and activation are entirely controlled by a single platform."

From a technical standpoint, campaigns can be activated directly through the marketplace interface, using Maestro's bidder, or through an external DSP using deal IDs. The latter option may matter for media agencies required to meet spending commitments within their DSPs under joint business plans, or JBPs. But it inevitably adds fees.

At launch, the initiative covers display, video, connected TV, native advertising and retail media. "The advanced creative formats already available in Maestro, particularly those inherited from Sharethrough, will be directly accessible through the marketplace," says Créput. Equativ also plans to gradually integrate new formats developed with partners such as Sofia Pulse, with the aim of providing more personalized, AI-powered ad creative.

With Maestro having embraced the agentic revolution, campaigns will also be configurable from agencies' proprietary platforms through the integration of Maestro's MCP server (see Jellyfish's demo here).

Over the longer term, Equativ aims to turn the EUMM into a full-fledged self-service platform. Both large agencies and mid-sized advertisers would access Europe's leading premium inventory through a single interface.

The European Media Marketplace will initially launch in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. A second wave of announcements is already planned for September. Equativ says it is in advanced discussions with several other major European retailers, which are expected to join the initiative at that point.

If this ambition becomes a reality, the EUMM could gradually develop into one of the most comprehensive infrastructures on the European Open Web. It would bring together inventory, first-party data, identity solutions, measurement capabilities and omnichannel activation within a single platform.