Kelkoo

Kelkoo

Initial release	November 30, 1999 (1999-11-30)[1]
Operating system	Any (web based application)
Type	Price comparison service, Online advertising
Website	kelkoo.com

Kelkoo is a leading European eCommerce advertising platform. It was founded in 2000 following the merge of Zoomit, Dondecomprar and Shopgenie, and was sold by Yahoo to Jamplant, a British private equity, in 2008. Kelkoo offers a complete and integrated service for online shopping, helping users to search, find and buy products in a safe environment and ultimately to increase revenues for both merchants and publishers. Today, Kelkoo, with the acquisition of LeGuide Group, that includes LeGuide, Ciao and Dooyoo, represents the European leader in ecommerce advertising and shopping comparison and it’s the ideal partner for players operating in the online shopping industry, with thanks to new and sophisticated retargeting and prospecting technologies that leverage on a powerful algorithm to manage consumer shopping intent data.

The Kelkoo Group is now operating in 20 countries (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK), can count on 220 million offers from more than 31,000 merchants and 2,700 direct publishers. The plans are to expand further into the US and Mexico later this year (2016). On October 13, 2016 Kelkoo, the ecommerce advertising and price comparison platform, announced the acquisition of LeGuide group.^[2]

Kelkoo is headquartered in London, UK; with operating officces across major European cities such as Paris,Grenoble, Vilnius and Milan.

History

Kelkoo was founded in 1999 by Pierre Chappaz and Mauricio Lopez.^[3] Initial funding of $3 million was provided by Banexi Ventures and Innovacom. Once Kelkoo merged with 3 other European businesses, it absorbed those founders into one single collective, consisting of Per Siljubergsåsen, William Klippgen, Philip Wilkinson, and Jorge Garcia^[4]

In April 2000, within days of each other, Kelkoo merged with Spanish-based Dondecomprar.com^[5] and UK based competitor ShopGenie, founded by Philip Wilkinson.^[6] In September of the same year, Kelkoo merged with Norway-based Zoomit.com,^[7] paying the Zoomit-shareholders in shares amounting to a third of Kelkoo's total equity making Zoomit.com the largest entity within "new" Kelkoo.

In June 2003, it partnered with the European arm of the Microsoft site MSN to provide shopping listings.^[8] A similar deal was announced in June 2004 with Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves).

On March 26, 2004, Kelkoo was bought by Yahoo! Inc for €450 million.^[9][10] Yahoo explained this move as providing advertisers with the ability to target individual products.^[11]

In October 2005 a book on Kelkoo appeared in French called Ils ont réussi leur start-up! La success-story de Kelkoo.^[12] written by Julien Codorniou and Cyrille de Lasteyrie.

In November 2008, Kelkoo was sold by Yahoo! Inc to the private equity firm Jamplant Ltd.^[3]

In October 2016, Kelkoo acquired LeGuide group, the price comparison market leader in France. This newly formed group of two historical players radically shifts the sector lines, having a major impact on the industry as Kelkoo becomes the European leader in shopping comparison, securing a unique international position.^[2] Both companies have almost 20 years of experience in ecommerce, digital advertising, publishers, and consumer analytics, and have lately been extensively investing in R&D, especially in big data and machine learning, as a commitment to driving exceptional revenue growth for merchants and publishers.

Origin of the name

The name "Kelkoo" is a phonetic spelling meaning primarily the French phrase "Quel coût?", meaning "At what price?". It can also be understood as "Quel coup", meaning "What a bargain".^[13]

Business model

Kelkoo has been profitable since Q4 2002. Similar to other price comparison services in how it operates, Kelkoo has focused much of its marketing on capturing users through SEO and launching partner sites^[14] including ITV's PriceTerrier.com.^[15]

In addition to being a price comparison site, Kelkoo also offers an API webservice where other price comparison websites, such as PriceSpin.com^[16] shopping comparison website, and SmartShopper.com^[17] price comparison browser add-on, use data and content from Kelkoo's database.^[18] This is a shared revenue business model. Kelkoo offers an affiliate commission to the partner sites who use their data for every qualified click that they generate.

Brazil Launch

Kelkoo historically was a Europe-based shopping price comparison service.With the rapid e-commerce growth of the BRIC countries, Kelkoo launched their Brazil website in 2012. Winning over India and China, Brazil has a large growing market with a sizable population who have purchased online previously. Since the launch, the Brazil business has shown growth and potential.^[19]

References

External links

• UK Website: Kelkoo.co.uk