Bertrand Quesada and the business between the paragraphs

Bertrand Quesada once described his idea for eBuzzing as a “Meetic du post”: a dating service for the sponsored blog post. Brands wanted introductions. Bloggers had readers. Somebody needed to arrange the meeting, explain the terms and make sure the relationship did not embarrass everyone involved. It was 2007. The vocabulary was different; the problem of turning online attention into income was already familiar.

Years later, the company he helped build would sell video advertising inside newspaper articles. A reader could be halfway through a story when an advertiser appeared between the paragraphs. Quesada’s business had moved from finding someone to write about a product to finding somewhere a product could be seen. That small change in location carried a rather large commercial possibility.

The introduction before the invention

His route into the internet business began with an introduction of his own. After business school, Quesada worked in financial control at Motorola. A childhood friend, Sébastien Bishop, invited him to join Espotting, the sponsored-search business. He went on to run its French operation and discovered an appetite for selling a product whose market was still taking shape.

In 2005 he moved to Golog, a company that made commercial use of mistyped web addresses. Then came eBuzzing. Quesada was thirty when he started his own company. He later described a career shaped by encounters and opportunities rather than a fixed determination to become an entrepreneur.

One encounter proved particularly durable. Pierre Chappaz, the Kelkoo co-founder, organised a startup competition on his blog. Forty-seven businesses entered. eBuzzing was selected alongside HelloTipi. By January 2008, Chappaz had become chairman of a company then described as having just eight people. Quesada wanted his help with European expansion and strategic choices. A pitch had become a partnership.

A recommendation with a price attached

The original eBuzzing proposition was direct. An advertiser posted a brief. Bloggers browsed the available campaigns, chose those they liked and received payment for the resulting posts. Prices could reflect a blog’s influence; the platform also allowed bloggers to set their own rate. The scarce resource was a relationship with readers.

Quesada knew what made that arrangement awkward. In his early explanation of the service, he insisted on disclosure of sponsorship and freedom to choose campaigns. A blogger could register without taking on an obligation to publish. He argued that the desire to write had to survive the transaction. An unwilling enthusiast is, after all, a difficult product to recommend.

“Le moteur de tout cela doit rester l’envie !”

Bertrand Quesada, 2007
“The driving force must remain the desire to do it.” Translation.

The editorial tension was real. Early coverage questioned the requirement for posts to go back to the platform for validation before publication. Quesada defended the blogger’s right to decline. Even at this scale, the business had to negotiate between three interests: the advertiser paying, the publisher speaking and the audience deciding whether to believe either of them.

Video without a video programme

By 2014, the opportunity had shifted toward video. Advertisers were moving money online, but a publisher generally needed video content before it could sell the advertising that ran before a video. A newspaper might have a substantial audience for its reporting and comparatively few opportunities to sell a pre-roll commercial.

Outstream advertising loosened that constraint. A video ad could appear within another kind of content, including the space between paragraphs. The article supplied the setting. The publisher did not first have to commission a programme simply to obtain an advertising break.

That March, eBuzzing and Teads announced their merger. The names concealed two histories. Quesada and Chappaz had built eBuzzing; the Teads company created in 2011 had been founded by Loïc Soubeyrand, Loïc Jaures and Olivier Reynaud. The combination brought an advertising distribution business together with technology for managing and monetising publishers’ video inventory.

Initially, the announcement preserved separate operating identities. By the autumn, the combined business had settled on Teads. Quesada was CEO. The resulting company had both a product to explain and an international organisation to assemble.

In an October 2014 interview, he set out the next shopping list: more capital, more developers, new countries and possible acquisitions. Brazil, Singapore, Tokyo and Russia figured in his expansion plans. He talked about doubling a development team already numbering more than one hundred. Behind an apparently simple advertising slot sat a considerable engineering bill.

There was also a planned stock-market listing. “We want to be independent,” he said. The ambition was explicit, as was the scale he imagined: a billion-dollar company. At that point, these were plans and expectations, with all the work still attached.

A company large enough to travel

Quesada’s mobile pitch made the same argument in a smaller frame. In May 2015, he said Le Monde and Forbes had adopted Teads’ recently launched mobile software development kit. Publishers had readers moving to phones and a need for revenue that did not depend entirely on having a video to play first. He also said the United States had become Teads’ largest revenue market.

The publisher names mattered. A business promising access to editorial environments needed those environments to be recognisable to advertising buyers. Condé Nast, the Financial Times and News Corp were among the relationships Quesada discussed. Selling the format meant selling confidence in where it would appear.

By the time Altice announced its acquisition in March 2017, Teads had more than five hundred employees, twenty-seven offices and operations in twenty-one countries. Investor Gimv put revenue at almost $200 million for 2016, compared with $15 million in 2010. It also reported four consecutive years of positive EBITDA. Expansion had become a matter of payrolls, offices and recurring commercial activity.

The Altice deal gave this publishing business a telecommunications connection. Its proposed attraction included access to first-party data in the United States and France. Quesada and Chappaz stayed in management. The argument about offering advertisers an alternative to the major platforms now involved another corporate owner and another set of assets.

Scale did not settle every advertising question. An ad placed inside an article still had to earn attention. Industry discussion around outstream raised concerns about targeting, buying for the lowest price and whether the placement added anything to a reader’s experience. Quesada argued that advertisers had become dissatisfied with ads that were unseen or appeared in unsuitable surroundings. The promise had to hold up at the level of a single impression.

Teads’ 2018 results showed the business broadening. It reported $430 million in revenue, up 35 percent organically, and a sixth consecutive EBITDA-positive year. Display and performance products together accounted for nearly a fifth of revenue. Its self-service buying interface was being used by agency groups including IPG, Dentsu Aegis and Havas.

Quesada’s proposition had expanded from a format into an access point for publishers. Creative work also belonged inside that proposition: Teads Studio adapted television assets for mobile and developed new formats. Opening inventory was only part of the task. Advertisers needed something suitable to put into it.

The neighbours across the street

In August 2024, discussing the proposed Outbrain transaction, Quesada recalled that the two companies had once occupied offices opposite each other in New York. Corporate combinations are commonly presented through financial logic. This one also had the useful advantage of people who already knew one another.

His argument had changed since the independence pitch of 2014. He now maintained that advertising technology needed consolidation to compete with Google, Meta and Amazon. Outbrain’s performance advertising business and Teads’ video and branding capabilities offered a reason to combine. Each brought something the other wanted to develop further.

He also looked back to the basement of a shop in Paris’s ninth arrondissement, where the business had started. The recollection gave the transaction a human scale: the distance between working below a shop and discussing how to compete for global advertising budgets. Growth had accumulated through products, introductions, acquisitions and countries, rather than arriving in a single revelation.

The acquisition closed on February 3, 2025. David Kostman became CEO of the combined company. Quesada moved into the role of co-president and chief business officer for international markets, while Jeremy Arditi took the corresponding Americas remit. The Teads name continued, attached to a different corporate combination and a wider commercial proposition.

Another discovery problem

There is now a further chapter in Quesada’s public business life. Meikai lists him as a non-executive board member, investor and adviser, alongside Arditi. The company works on how brands appear in AI-driven search and discovery. Its leadership includes Rachid Ait Addi and Jean-Baptiste Pringuey, both with Teads experience. Familiar professional relationships have travelled into a new company.

The problem has moved again. A brand once needed a blogger willing to recommend it. Later, it needed an effective place inside a publisher’s page. Now Meikai addresses visibility in the answers and recommendations generated by AI systems. Quesada’s advisory remit covers growth, fundraising and long-term positioning.

Across those chapters, his career offers a fairly practical account of entrepreneurship. Someone has an audience. Someone else wants to reach it. Between them sit questions about trust, price, software and who gets paid. Quesada has spent much of his working life arranging that meeting. The guests, and the room, keep changing.