By Hector Calabia
IDG News Service, Buró de Buenos Aires
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (19/7/2000) - A
new Internet audience audit firm has just landed in Buenos Aires, and plans to
cover the rest of Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic market within a year. It
is Certifica.com S.A., a company that plans offering a Web traffic
certification service, for the entire Latin America market, in less than eight
months time.
The firm is backed by Fundación Chile, an organization that
serves as an "incubator" for diverse Chilean companies (not just Internet
start-ups). Certifica.com operates in Santiago de Chile since April 2000, and
is now opening offices in Argentina and Perú. In the near future, it plans
expanding to Brasil, Colombia and México. It will establish operations in
Venezuela and Miami by this year's end.
During a press conference held on Tuesday in Buenos Aires,
there was a discussion panel with the heads of Comunica. com. The President is
Eduardo Bitrán, who also serves as General Director of Fundación Chile, the CEO
(chief operating officer) is Alejandro Fosk, and the general manager for
Argentina is Daniel Grunfeld. The company is incorporated in Chile, and it is
being incorporated both in Argentina and Perú.
According to Fosk, their aim is making of Certifica.com the
standard for Internet audience auditing in Latin America.
To this end, Fundación Chile invested a "seed
capital" of US$500,000, and the firm is now doing a financing round. It
expects raising US$5 million funding for its initial operations in the region.
The certification system is aimed to companies that have
Internet sites. The system offers an external objective certification of
visitors per hour, per month and page views. This information can be used for
selling advertising, raising capital, and for internal management control, Fosk
said.
According to the executive, the system works by inserting a
script at the bottom of each audited page. Each time that a browser makes a
page request, and the page is fully displayed, the script sends a
"notification" to Certifica.com own servers, and the system adds the
page view to the suitable account. The software has been developed in-house and
it has safeguards against artificially induced statistical swelling.
The audited figures are permanently available to the clients
from the Certifica.com Web site, and are being updated by the minute.
Asked by the IDG News Service, Fosk said that each audited
Web site has the right to see its own statistics only, and it has also the
right to publicize them as it sees fit. Certifica.com service is not being
offered to advertising agencies by now. It is just being offered to Web sites
operators.
Backing up its operations, Certifica.com recently signed a
deal with PrecewaterhouseCoopers for developing new joint Internet audience
audit products. These products will use Certifica's technology, backed by the
American firm exoertise. The product will be called Certifica Audit and will be
issued jointly by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Certifica.com.
Pricing Policy
The basic idea is that Certifica.com's service should be
affordable for all interested Web sites, so as to cover all commercial sites in
Latin America and the U.S. Hispanic Internet market.
The pricing scheme is very flexible, and it is dependent on
the number of monthly page views, and the sophistication of the generated
reports. The basic Certifica service is free for Web sites with up to 10,000
page views per month. From that point up, prices go from $30 for sites that
barely exceed that figure, up to $400 monthly
for Web sites with more than 1,000,000 page views per month.
"Sites that range between 1 million up to 10 million
page views per month are considered important in Latin America", said Daniel Grunfeld, general manager of
Certifica.com in Argentina. But smaller sites should not be overlooked, because
sometimes they are important "niche markets". Certifica.com has no
competitors in this field, he said, because it serves Web sites of all sizes.
The system plants a cookie in the visitors' s computers, in
order to track repeat visits. "The information is always reported as
statistical aggregates. No information about individual users is ever
released", said one of the panel members.
Asked about the foreseen financial results of the venture, Alejandro
Fosk answered that, conservatively speaking, the company expects reaching its
break-even point in about ten or eleven months, with yearly revenue of about $3
million to $4 million in Latin America. Fosk emphasized that this a
conservative calculation, considering the explosive growth of the Internet
market and that Certifica's service is being accepted by "99 per
cent" of Web sites operators.
Fosk revealed that they were extremely interested in opening
an office in Argentina "as soon as possible", considering that that
country – although it still has a relatively low percentage of Internet users
-– has been the most significant and successful contributor of Web sites and
dot-com companies in Latin America. "Argentine entrepreneurs have a special
quality, maybe a better capacity for facing risks, that is not to be found
elsewhere in Latin America", Fosk said.
Legally speaking, there is now Certifica S.A. in Chile. In
Argentina and Perú they are organizing companies under the name Certifica.com
S.A., and the company is planning setting up its headquarters in the British
Virgin Islands or in the state of Delaware in the U.S.A., according to Fosk.
Certifica.com can be reached at +54-11- 4775-5087 in
Argentina, or at +56-2-240-0420 in Chile. Its Web address is: http://www.certifica.com
.
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