Background
Seznam provides a gateway to the Czech internet reaching 95% of the population. Their homepage, www.seznam.cz is visited by almost seven million people each month.
As a leading online publisher, search engine, and advertising platform, Seznam.cz understands the importance of delivering a fast, tailored service to maximize positive user experience.
With the ever-increasing global smartphone usage and browser diversity, Seznam’s earlier in-house device detection solution was costly to maintain and keep up with this diversity. Therefore, the decision to source a new solution became necessary.
The Challenge
Seznam’s in-house solution was one of many internal products. It had become increasingly costly to maintain and took people away from more valuable work.
In a world where new smartphones and software updates come out on a weekly basis, they needed a solution which could keep up with this ever-growing list of available devices, to give them accurate analytics and targeting options.
Their main point of focus was to find a modern and easily updatable enterprise solution which would enable better options for their ad targeting within their network. The specific properties of interest were device, manufacturer, device type (smartphone, tablet, etc), OS, and browser. This information was crucial for internal analytics and recommendation services, however, other properties like price band and device age will become more useful in the future.
Seznam’s analytical approach to selecting a device detection solution confirmed 51Degrees as the leading provider. James RosewellCEO, 51Degrees
The Solution
Once they made the decision to switch solutions, Seznam found 51Degrees through their standard market research and Request for Proposal procedures.
During this process, Seznam compared 51Degrees with all the major device detection suppliers in the market. However, as performance and accuracy were at the top of Seznam’s requirements list, 51Degrees came out as the clear winner. 51Degrees proved their claims of superior accuracy, performance, technology, coverage, and frequency of updates in a live technical deployment prior to selection.
Seznam used the following criteria to score the device detection solutions during the RFP process:
- Functional requirements to determine how well the solutions met Seznam’s needs.
- Solution architecture to identify the specific technical details of the solution.
- Company profile to find out more about the company’s history and organisation.
- Pricing to identify the most cost-effective solution.
Apart from the expected standard packages and services, 51Degrees’ proactive and positive approach impressed Seznam. The teams worked together when it came to areas of development and adjustment to make the device detection solution compatible with Seznam’s own browser which was an imperative part of their decision. Integration with Seznam’s high performance Java and NGINX technologies was simple.
We chose 51Degrees to supply the device database for Seznam.cz because it delivers stable up-to-date information, high performance, and the flexibility to include our own rules. A great benefit is the NGINX API that will help us integrate the new solution into our systems. Tomáš WernerHead of Product, Seznam
The Result
The data provided by 51Degrees covers everything the Seznam team were looking for and has provided Seznam with more precise information about their users and supplies a high standard of mobile device model targeting.
This added capability has allowed Seznam to win the business of clients who had requirements for very detailed and specific device model targeting.
Seznam were also able to update their user interface and allow their clients to use more precise and detailed device model targeting in their campaigns. Their analytics teams now have accurate and up-to-date data which they can use to drive business decisions.
It provides us with more precise information about our users, and the targeting capability for mobile devices is much better. 51Degrees provides highly accurate device detection in a fast-paced and dynamic ecosystem with new phone models, OS versions and platforms. Jakub NovotnýProgrammatic Manager, Seznam
About Device Detection
Device detection empowers a web page to understand a great deal of information about the device that is visiting the site prior to making a decision about the content to send to it. This could include information on browser type and capability, processing power of the device, and screen resolution, to name but three of thousands of categories. Responsive web design alone is not enough.
Device detection is an important facet of personalization but does not require a user to register or share personal preferences. Armed with this information, websites can send content that is not only optimized for detailed device specifications but also contextualizes the likely environment of the user, delivering a better user experience.
Like what you see? To get started with 51Degrees Device Detection, please contact us for more information.