Predictions Series: AiThority Interview with Nikos Mouroutis, Product Team Lead and Evi Bourgaza, Regional Director, SE Europe, MENA at Exit Bee

Could you tell us a bit about your roles at Exit Bee?

Evi: My main focus is sales for EMEA. But I’m also in charge of the campaign optimisation team, and the creative department. That’s the team responsible for developing our high impact ad formats. I occasionally help the finance team out, too… it might be quicker to talk about the things I don’t do! 

Nikos: I look after anything to do with the product, coding, infrastructure and NPD. I joined Exit Bee right at the beginning as a co-founder and software developer, way before we were in the ad business. Back then we were a conversion optimisation platform, mainly for commerce websites. 

Can you tell us how the company started?

Nikos: Exit Bee started as a software service for e-commerce sites looking to optimise their visitors. Basically, we were looking at ways to boost return on advertising spend (ROAS) by reducing the high bounce rate that comes as standard with paid traffic. Eventually we started thinking, what can we do for publishers? E-commerce sites have low traffic but high conversion rates, while publishers have high traffic rates with very little value attached to that traffic, so we started thinking about ways to change that. Given our previous work around bounce rates, we experimented with some ads aimed at users just before they left a website and were astonished by the results. We immediately pivoted Exit Bee towards advertising, and we haven’t looked back. 

Evi: This was in about 2020 – which was bad timing given the pandemic – but after running successful tests in Greece we started expanding into the rest of Europe, starting in the UK, then Germany and France before also expanding to the Middle East.

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What sets Exit Bee apart from its competitors? 

Evi: Exit Bee provides a truly unique product. Our offering is based on three pillars: contextual targeting, high impact creative and our micro-moment philosophy. The result is we provide ads that achieve almost 100% viewability, which is unparalleled in the industry.

Nikos: When we started Exit Bee we made the decision not to rely on third-party cookies. Even back then it was clear there are too many privacy issues with this kind of targeting, so we focused on developing a range of technologies that would allow us to deliver ads contextually via high-impact ad formats. These are large, engaging ads that lean on creativity and allow advertisers and brands to tell their stories with emotion, colour and rich media. These two elements – combined with our micro-moment targeting philosophy – have proved a recipe for success. And it’s obviously struck a chord with advertisers because we have run campaigns for Ikea, Disney, Coca-Cola, Visa, Red Bull and dozens of others.

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Please can you define micro-moments for us, and explain their importance? 

Nikos: Our definition of micro-moments is “a very brief period of time during which a user’s attention becomes available” – for example, just as they finish browsing a news site – then immediately serving an ad in the moment before they exit the site. A good example is a smartphone campaign we’re currently running with Heineken. Our technology recognises when the audience has disengaged from the content they’re consuming, and serves them a game that uses their phone to teach the exact angle a glass needs to be held at to pull the perfect pint of beer.

Can you share some micro-moment performance figures?

Evi: As I mentioned, the viewability rates we get are astonishing – nearly 100%, paired with 100% share of voice. And because our formats appear when our audience’s attention is free, there is none of the ad-blindness that is currently plaguing the industry. Our formats get 10 to 30 times greater click-through rate than standard banner ads, and we’re also carrying out a piece of work that proves our ad formats provide a significant boost in brand recollection in comparison to the competition. And just finally, because our ads are served exclusively on ‘the exit’, it means publishers don’t need to alter, add to or rearrange their units to cater for us, making it an easy decision to work with us. 

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Finally, what does the future hold for Exit Bee?

Evi: For now, our principle focus remains exploring ‘the exit’ as a means of engaging consumers. However, we’re doing a lot of research on a variety of potential micro-moments, but it’s an ongoing process. We’re also introducing new engagement opportunities like multi-step campaigns, surveys and shoppable ads. And let’s not forget about the publishers, we’ve been working on something for them as well, but it’s not announced yet…

Nikos: We’re also constantly developing our range of high-impact ad formats, researching how we can add extra elements and interactivity. But we’re also keen to provide a suite of formats that offer users a variety of creative, and our clients a range of prices. As Evi says, it’s a process.

Thank you, Nikos and Evi ! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.