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Fanplayr aims high. Having completed its international expansion plan, the company aims to be "the behavioral data hub within the technological infrastructures of the best Italian and international companies”, Enrico Quaroni, Fanplayr VP Global Sales, explains to Engage.The next development steps of the company mostly concentrate on Italy (the company's European headquarters) that since last March has appointed Walter Rapino as new Country Manager, and has a constantly expanding team.

‍Enrico, since last March Fanplayr has a new Country Manager for Italy. What role does the entire "tricolor" team play in the Fanplayr ecosystem?
‍Our Country Manager, Walter Rapino, is a Fanplayr veteran. Walter, in fact, started working with us in 2015, decisively contributing to the growth of the company, starting as an intern up to holding the highest position in the Italian branch. Walter, and the Italian team in general, play a fundamental role in the development of the company, since Milan is the European headquarters of Fanplayr, and this is certainly a source of pride for us, but also a source of greater responsibility. The challenges, as for everyone, have certainly not been lacking in recent years, but it was a great inspiration for me to see the resilience, the fortitude and the energy that the whole Italian team has put in place to continue to grow our company within our borders and in Europe. Just this month we have hired four new people in Italy and this is certainly a very encouraging sign.

‍What are the goals now for the near future?
‍The goals for this year are to increase the number of our enterprise customers and to position our technology as the beating heart of all organizations that want to fully exploit the wealth generated by their users' behavioral data. Fanplayr wants to be the behavioral data hub within the technological infrastructures of the best Italian and international companies. Today, thanks to more than ten years of experience and, having served the most important brands globally, we are ready to insert ourselves as a solution within any data-driven strategy, as experts in the behavioral data vertical and we are ready to integrate with all the most important technological infrastructures.

‍How is the international expansion plan announced at the beginning of the year progressing? What are the next development steps?
‍The international expansion has been carried out as planned. Today we have a first-class team in the UK, headed by Andy Mcnab, a legend of the English martech market who is helping us bring important brands on board. In the last months of 2021 we also launched operations in the Spanish market, setting up our base in Madrid with Juan Sevillano Zabala, former country manager of Rocket Fuel Spain and a reference figure for the Iberian digital world. The next steps will be to focus on the training of operators in the Italian market by offering the possibility of using our technology in self-service.

‍What is Fanplayr self-service management?
‍Our goal is to expand the use of our self-service technology, allowing brands to independently manage the entire Fanplayr platform. Fanplayr offers a user friendly portal that allows you to configure campaigns and access in-depth insights of the same, as well as data regarding the general performance of the site. Furthermore, it allows the configuration of all messaging activities. Finally, creative design can be done directly from the platform, with a simple interface that doesn't require a developer or html knowledge. To make full use of it and to exploit its full potential, training courses are required. There is already extensive documentation about our technology, but Fanplayr is available to provide training courses for its customers who want to activate the technology in self-service mode. At the end of these courses, brands that have successfully attended the course are awarded a certification for use with a Fanplayr badge.

‍In the meantime, however, the market is also dealing with the end of third-party tracking and with the increasingly stringent and necessary regulations to protect user privacy. In your opinion, where are we and what should still be done?
‍Today we find ourselves in a kind of limbo that is quite difficult to interpret. On the one hand, operators in our sector are evaluating and testing solutions that can cope with these (theoretically imminent) changes, on the other hand, there does not seem to be too high a level of adoption of new technologies to cope with the much feared cookiegeddon. There is certainly a great desire in the air to move this revolution a little further in time. However, the wave of change is underway, even if it is still moving slowly.

What is the right solution according to Fanplayr that can be replicated on a scale to restore the right balance between the need for quality data and respect for user privacy?
‍There are many solutions on the market and each offers different levels of efficiency and effectiveness. In order to better face a future without cookies, Fanplayr has developed the Fanplayr PrivacyID solution that allows marketers and advertisers to take advantage of our patented segmentation and enhanced user identification technology in order to better compensate for the future lack of third-party data (on a cookie basis). This technology, with a single server to server integration, will allow us to continue to recognize users by exploiting only first-party data and remaining fully compliant with all the regulations on the subject of the GDPR. In addition, each third-party provider of the site will be able to benefit from the Fanplayr PrivacyID technology, receiving a unique code, which does not in any way violate the regulations in force, but rather will allow them to offer users of the site a message and a personalized communication experience. Basically, with one and only one server to server integration it will be possible to serve multiple partners and technologies while maintaining a high level of functionality for most of the marketing solutions historically used by advertisers