This interview was originally published in Spanish on the Programmatic Spain website

What have been the key drivers behind Taptap’s growth, and which market would you highlight as the most strategic right now?

The first key to our growth has been building a robust product that is truly scalable and can be activated in any market in the world with the same level of consistency. To this we add something essential: our product is in constant evolution, continuously innovating not so much to compete with others, but to deliver increasing value to our clients. This vision has enabled us to offer a global technology that maintains its differentiated value proposition in any context.

The second key lies in the way we organise ourselves. We have brought together exceptional talent and evolved towards a structure that is increasingly based on processes and on their agile orchestration. This approach allows us to scale on two fronts: by deploying our own operations with local teams where this brings added value, or by driving partnership models in which our partners cover the last mile to market while we support them with 360-degree backing across operations, marketing, product and finance.

As for our most strategic markets, we are seeing particularly rapid growth wherever demand for omnichannel, data-driven solutions is transforming the way campaigns are planned and activated. In this context, we continue to consolidate our position in two markets that are decisive in terms of their size and influence, Brazil and the UK, where we are already competing at the level of the sector’s most demanding standards. In parallel, our partner model has undergone very strong expansion over the past 18 months, with a growing presence in Europe (Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands) and in the USA, strengthening our global footprint and our ability to reach more markets with speed and consistency.

What sets Taptap apart from other data, geo-intelligence, and media solutions?

Each day at Taptap we work with the biggest brands across the world who experience the benefits of location or the “power of where.”  Location underpins everything we do, we believe it’s a strategic lever for modern day marketers. 

Every action or behaviour that generates data we use in marketing can be understood by where it happened, everything happens somewhere. From credit card purchases to sales in store, movement patterns (mobility), online content consumption, social media engagement, home vs work to sociodemographic, all can be understood by location. So, for Taptap location isn’t just a dataset it's the key understanding and connecting all datasets and delivering truly integrating omnichannel strategies.

One of our differentiators is how we bring these fragmented datasets together to define and discover audiences through a process called georeferencing. We aggregate each dataset into standardized area sizes (from country level, down through region, district, city, postcode sector to geohash), so these datasets become comparable and can be combined using indexing.

In addition, we have a powerful real-life contextual solution which is redefining how the industry approaches context in advertising. It goes beyond mere content adjacency to encompass a broader set of on- and offline variables, such as mobility, purchase behaviour, social media engagement, all understood by time and place. This approach allows marketers to create more dynamic and effective campaigns that better reflect their audience’s multifaceted lives.

What specific challenge do Total Retail and Retail Origins solve for retailers and brands?

Retail media is booming, but most spend has focused onsite within retail media networks, environments that are increasingly saturated and inventory-constrained.

Sales don’t start in store so Total Retail offers a smarter sofa to store strategy for FMCG brands that focuses on “offsite” retail media (vs “onsite” i.e. a retailers ecommerce site and their physical stores). Total Retail allows brands to complement their existing onsite retail media network activity with an offsite strategy that influences customers throughout the purchase journey across a wider range of media channels that includes CTV, prDOOH, desktop, mobile and audio.

Our Retail Origins solution goes beyond FMCGs to appeal to high-traffic retailers from grocery to QSR who can now harness mobility insights derived from consented, anonymised mobile data to understand where their customers truly come from. These catchment areas help to inform sharper strategies: reinforcing loyalty in core areas or targeting competitive areas to win market share.

How are you integrating retailers’ and brands’ first-party data into your platform, and what is the main challenge you’re encountering?

First party data is much talked about but seldom used effectively within advertising.

Often a major roadblock are valid concerns about data protection and privacy. Thankfully our approach of aggregating data to an area rather than an individual means Taptap doesn’t need PII data.  Aggregated business data by area like sales, basket size, app usage and delivery volumes are ideal signals.

We’re working with an increasing number of brands to activate first-party data dynamically by location and orchestrating this across media channels. By mapping real-time data such as sales and search volume to specific areas, advertisers can deliver omnichannel campaigns that react to these signals where it matters most.  The results are impressive, a recent campaign with a major airline brand leveraged live booking data and search volumes to trigger specific channel mix and media investment combinations in campaign areas that drove an 84% uplift in bookings in just four days.

In what tangible ways is AI currently being applied at Taptap, both in the product and in the day-to-day operations of the team?

Today, the use of AI at Taptap is very clear because we’ve adopted a transversal approach. We integrate intelligence into the product to increase its value and impact, while at the same time applying it at a corporate level to better connect teams, streamline interactions and automate processes that make us more efficient.

In the product, AI has driven clear progress. We are significantly improving the interpretation of data and results, generating new optimisation levers and strengthening our ability to maximise performance in increasingly complex environments. We’ve also made an important leap in Location Intelligence: AI allows us to build more precise models to understand consumer behaviour and to improve the definition and interpretation of contexts, which translates into more effective activation strategies that are better aligned with the reality of each market.

On top of this, we’re developing assistants and agents that allow teams to focus on what really matters. They simplify planning, campaign creation, proposal design and in-depth data analysis, turning information into actionable insights with real value for the client.

Internally, these same capabilities are helping us reduce manual tasks, connect departments more effectively, automate repetitive steps and speed up workflows. The result is a more cohesive, agile and focused organisation, with more time to think, create and evolve our technology and processes.

This dual approach is already tangible: a smarter product and a company that operates more efficiently, ready to scale and to deliver more value in every interaction.

If you had to choose just three words to describe the future of Taptap in 2026, what would they be, and why?

If I had to choose just three words to define Taptap’s future in 2026, they would be Intelligence, Efficiency and Effectiveness. They reflect where we’re heading, both as a product and as an organisation: a model increasingly built on Intelligence, powered by AI and by our ability to interpret data better, understand contexts and anticipate our clients’ needs. A company driven by Efficiency, connecting teams, automating processes and creating more agile workflows that allow us to scale with confidence. And, finally, a vision centered on Effectiveness: executing better, activating with greater precision, turning insights into real impact and taking our global expansion to a new level of consistency.

These three words sum up our path: technology that evolves, talent that drives it, and a clear ambition, to keep growing with the same strength, but with more intelligence, more efficiency and more effectiveness than ever.