Roqad, an identity solutions provider, today announced the acquisition of Zeotap-Data, Zeotap’s third-party audience business based in Berlin, for an undisclosed amount.
The ID company said the acquisition was designed to meet demand for privacy-safe, personalised targeting in European markets. Strict data protection laws in the EU require ongoing compliance with privacy regulation, while recent moves away from cookies are pushing digital advertisers towards alternative targeting solutions.
The companies said the deal addresses these changing market conditions through the combination of Roqad’s European identity graph and data onboarding solutions, with Zeotap–Data’s large-scale third-party audience segments and integrations with trading platforms.
The combined solution enables brands and their ad tech partners to enrich their first-party data using Zeotap-Data’s third-party audience segments, according to the companies. These IDs can then be used to target audiences across demand-side platforms (DSP) including The Trade Desk, Adform and Amazon DSP, with which Zeotap-Data has an exclusive integration.
Initially the integrated services will be available in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and France, before expanding to the US and APAC in Q3 2025.
“The strengths of Roqad and Zeotap-Data perfectly complement each other in addressing the critical challenges of privacy-compliant identity resolution, data onboarding, and data activation in digital advertising,” said Carsten Frien, Founder and CEO of Roqad.
“We’re excited about Zeotap-Data’s exclusive integration into the Amazon DSP and being able to now offer clients the huge reach and precision of targeting this allows; nobody else in Europe can do that,” he added. “I look forward to collaborating with Zeotap-Data to support advertisers in driving greater ROI in a cookieless world where transparency and trust are paramount.”
Matching up
Founded in 2014, Roqad matches devices to households in compliance with privacy laws in the EU and US. The company now has bases in Berlin, Poznan, London, and San Francisco, and counts Microsoft Advertising, Samsung Ads, Nielsen, Publicis, Epsilon and Zeta among its clients.
In June the company launched Link, a data collaboration service built on AWS Clean Rooms. The product allows advertisers to securely match their first-party data against Roqad’s consented ID graph, according to the company, in order to target and measure campaigns across devices. The firm said Zeotap-Data will now be used in the clean room to improve accuracy and scale.
Zeotap was also founded in 2014 in Germany as a customer data platform (CDP), and developed capabilities including omnichannel orchestration and ‘Audience Boost’, an audience expansion tool designed to enrich customer profiles with privacy-safe, cross-device identifiers. The company has forged exclusive data partnerships with telcos, premium publishers and other European data providers, and by 2024 it had raised over €100 million in funding.
Zeotap built Zeotap-Data as a third-party audience business bringing telco data to market in compliance with GDPR. The company launched ‘Zeotap Tribes’ in 2023, comprising 12 audience segments derived from its various mobile telco partnerships.
Under the terms of the deal, Zeotap-Data will continue to operate as a third-party data provider within the Roqad brand. The companies added that all current staff would be retained, and the merged business will grow its headcount by an additional 20 percent in the UK and Germany.
“We are very excited about the future of this newly formed partnership between us and Roqad,” said Zeotap CEO Elad Simon. “On the one hand, it will allow us to focus 100 percent of our efforts as a company on our CDP customers and capabilities, which will strengthen our position as the leading CDP in Europe. On the other hand, the exclusive partnership with Roqad means we will be maintaining and enhancing our competitive edge in the CDP space through making Audience Boost the leading audience expansion solution in the CDP market.”
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