Global Bing Partner Awards 2018 SoLocal Wins Four Awards

  • Global Channel Partner 2018
  • Partner of the Year (EMEA)
  • Partnership of the Year (EMEA)
  • Influencer of the Year (EMEA)

BOULOGNE-BILLANCOURT, France--()--Regulatory News:

Within the framework of the Bing Partner Program’s expansion to Agencies and Business and Technology Partners, Microsoft presented four awards to SoLocal (Paris:LOCAL) at the ceremony of the 2018 Global Bing Partner Awards in Seattle at the beginning of May: Global Channel Partner, Partner of the Year (EMEA), Partnership of the Year (EMEA) and Influencer of the Year (EMEA) for Thomas Glita (Operations Director – Booster Contact project at SoLocal).
These awards shed a special light on the personalities and organisations behind the most successful, innovative and ambitious initiatives among Bing Ads partners in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.

"After obtaining the Elite Status within the Bing Partner Program in 2017, we are very proud to have been awarded the Global Channel Partner . This award shows recognition of our collaboration with Microsoft and underscores SoLocal's leadership in the local digital communication market. Being the reliable partner of French companies convinces us that the synergies between Bing Ads and our Product Lines create value for the 460,000 small and medium-size businesses and network retailers we support everyday and everywhere in France. Our enhanced collaboration aims to accelerate both the growth of SoLocal, and of course, our customers’ ones!”, Eric Boustouller, CEO of SoLocal Group, states.

“We are delighted to reward the work of SoLocal Group with the title of Global Channel Partner at the Bing Partner Awards ceremony“, Steve Sirich, Managing Director, Bing Ads France, Microsoft said. "The Bing Partner Awards make it possible for Microsoft to highlight the quality of work done by the Bing Global Partnership Program and to underscore the value these partnerships represent for Bing Ads and our customers. Congratulations again for this outstanding award!”

As an Elite Channel Partner in the Bing Partner program, SoLocal, the reliable local, digital partner of companies to accelerate their growth, has been recognised as one of the most successful players, acting as a trusted third party to its customers to manage their Search Advertising campaigns1 on the Bing advertising network2. By ensuring exclusive access to the latest training, marketing support, and the latest Bing API and Microsoft technologies, the Elite Channel Partner status enables the SoLocal teams to keep improving the quality of their expertise in Bing Ads3 and the high-performance of the service provided to their 460,000 customers in France and Spain (via its QDQ media subsidiary based in Madrid).

SoLocal is engaged in the digitization of French companies, and this Bing Award demonstrates its ability to meet their needs in terms of support in Search Advertising. It's a buoyant market that today represents almost 50% of the companies' digital advertising4 investments and is a main lever for SoLocal and Bing customers and prospects.

What with its Booster Site digital services, Booster Contact and Booster Réseaux, SoLocal supplies indeed a whole series of guaranteed high-performance offers to enable businesses of every size to improve their visibility on the search engines of the market. The Campaigns (over 20,000 generated in 2017) are managed across a proprietary platform gathering the expertise of certified media traders and the efficiency of algorithms that continually work on multiple indicators: keywords choices, bid level, etc. This unique association of industrialisation and customisation makes it possible for SoLocal to guarantee performing advertisement to its customers at the most local link, closer to their final customers; furthermore, it materializes, online appointments, phone calls, or store visits , in additional traffic on its website, according to the choice of the advertisers.

"In addition to celebrating the momentum of our partnership, we are particularly delighted that some of these awards attest not only the talent of our employees, but also of their product and technical teams. The leads generation platform they have been developing since 2016, especially with the support of Microsoft experts, has become a main differentiating asset for SoLocal in its ambition to provide the best advertizing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses and network retailers", Amaury Lelong, Digital Advertising Director, data and new products at SoLocal, states.

"I would like to acknowledge the quality of the support provided by the Microsoft teams who have helped and advised us throughout the developments that took place this year. Thanks to them, the considerable efforts made by the Effilab technical team on the integration projects of Bing Ads in our advertising solution have been successful. This is very good news for thousands of our customers, for whom qualified prospects from our new Bing Ads campaigns are an important source of business and growth“, Thomas Glita, Operations Director – Booster Contact project at SoLocal, concludes.

Key figures
In 2017, SoLocal Group generated a turnover of 756 million euros, including 84% via the Internet, and thus ranks among the key European players in terms of online advertising revenues.
SoLocal Group generated 2.4 billion visits in 2017.
*Bing is the 2nd most used search engine in the world with almost 19% market share in France
Bing Ads adoption rate is about 15%
Microsoft reports 24% growth in revenue on Search Products between 2017 and 2018

Please visit the following website for further information about the Global Channel Partner:
https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/post/may-2018/bing-announces-partner-of-the-year-award-winners

Please visit the following website for further information about the Bing Partner Program: https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/fr-fr

* ComScore qSearch, Explicit Core Search (Custom), Sept 2017

About SoLocal Group:
SoLocal Group aims to become the trusted and local digital partner supporting business companies to accelerate their growth. To succeed in this transformation, it relies on its six key assets some of them being unique in France: media with very high audiences, powerful geolocated data, scalable technological platforms, commercial coverage throughout France, privileged partnerships with GAFAM and numerous talents (experts in data, IT development, digital marketing, etc.). SoLocal Group's activities are structured around two axes. First, a range of "full web & apps" digital services on all devices (PCs, mobiles, tablets and personal assistants), offered in the form of packs and subscriptions, ("Digital Presence", "Digital Advertising", "Digital Website"," Digital Solutions" and "Print to Digital"), and integrating a digital coaching service, to support clients success. Second, flagship owned media (PagesJaunes and Mappy) used daily by Frenchs and offering an enriching and differentiating user experience. With more than 460,000 customers across France and 2.4 billion visits on its media, the Group generated revenues of €756 million in 2017, 84% coming from Internet making it one of the leading European players in terms of online advertising revenue. SoLocal Group is listed on Euronext Paris (LOCAL). More information is available at www.solocalgroup.com

1 Search Marketing or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) includes all the techniques of favourably positioning commercial offers, websites, mobile applications or other content (images, video, news) on the search engine response pages for queries.
2 Bing's advertising network is called the Bing Network and brings together Yahoo!, AOL and partner networks.
3 Sponsored links.
4 Source: eMarketer

Contacts

SoLocal Press Contacts
Delphine Penalva
Communications Director
dpenalva@SoLocal.com
or
Edwige Druon
Press Relations Manager
edruon@SoLocal.com
+33 (0)6 23 24 35 09

Contacts

SoLocal Press Contacts
Delphine Penalva
Communications Director
dpenalva@SoLocal.com
or
Edwige Druon
Press Relations Manager
edruon@SoLocal.com
+33 (0)6 23 24 35 09