On Friday 7th July, we celebrated 5 years since Empello was established. As far as we know, we are the first company to monitor 3G ad network advertising, with a specific focus on mobile-paid products (Value Added Services, Direct Carrier Billing and Premium SMS)
Back in 2012 we started with a small office space in Clerkenwell, London EC1. With room for 6 people and a shared meeting room, we hired our first employee in October 2012. Back then some of our work still consisted of monitoring print advertising (magazines, newspapers etc), which has become a rarity these days !
We remember very well our first 3 clients, one of whom is a UK mobile operator. We believe this was the first mobile operator in Europe to commission monitoring of 3G advertising delivered via intermediaries such as Affiliate Networks. All 3 of these early clients are still with us today !
5 years and 3 office moves later, Empello now has 30 staff at our HQ in Shoreditch, London EC2A (about 1km from the first office). We are very lucky that our present base is two floors of a former warehouse, renovated to a contemporary, homely environment.
Doing a quick survey of the current HQ office, we found 17 different nationalities and 21 different languages (not including answers from the Tech department like Python, Java..!). This is only the Empello colleagues based in London. We have many more who help us throughout the world, with the furthest away being Erik Heintze, LATAM Regional Manager based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Our ongoing goal is to provide clients throughout the VAS value chain (content providers, mobile operators, aggregators, regulators) with the most comprehensive ad monitoring possible. Recently, the top sources of problematic marketing we are finding are connected with Facebook, Whatsapp, content-locking (incentivised), i-frame overlay, in-app, email, and malicious apps.
Techniques and tactics by non-compliant advertising partners are constantly shifting, which is why we continue to invest heavily in our staff and in our technology.
Thank you to all our clients and to all our colleagues who have made the last 5 years possible, and here’s looking ahead to the next 5 …