• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 18, 2010

Web analytics firm Quantcast on Tuesday named Philip Macauley as its new UK Managing Director. Macauley comes from Yahoo where he spent 10 years, most recently as director of business development and commercial relations.

In his new role at Quantcast, Macauley will be responsible for leading the company's operations and expansion into the UK market.

The appointment comes on the heels of the international launch of Quantcast's audience insight tools in March. "Since the launch of our global audience service in March, we've seen strong worldwide growth, particularly in Europe," said Konrad Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Quantcast.

"Phil has exceptional knowledge of the UK marketplace, the needs of buyers and sellers, and a deep understanding of the emergence of real-time media solutions and the value these technologies deliver to publishers, marketers and consumers," Feldman added.

Going up against virtually every Web measurement firm from comScore to Compete.com, Quantcast launched in 2006 as a straightforward audience measurement service. Then, last June, the San Francisco-based startup debuted a product for advertisers to better define and buy audiences online.

By incorporating impressions from any site on Quantcast's radar, the Quantcast Media Program began offering advertisers a scalable way to define target audiences via their own "data insights," and apply this custom segmentation throughout the buying process.

Taking customer interaction data from marketers' media campaigns, search activity and brand site visitation, Quantcast endeavors to help marketers determine the characteristics of distinct consumer segments.

Clients, both domestic and international, include MTV Networks, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters, IAC, BBC, Time Inc., NBC Universal, Discovery Communications, TypePad, WordPress, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Hi5, Netlog, Demand Media and LinkedIn.

Presently, Quantcast analyzes the user behavior of over 220 million US Internet users, and anonymously segments the users based on attributes that are relevant to advertisers.

Its technology supports integration for various content, video and ad-serving platforms, including Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Brightcove, Freewheel, Auditude, LiveRail, Visible Measures, WebTrends, PointRoll, Atlas, and DoubleClick, among others.

To date, Quantcast has raised over $50 million from such high-wattage investors as Cisco Systems, Polaris Venture Partners, and The Founders Fund.

Macauley joined Yahoo as head of planning and strategy for the UK and Pan-European market. In his tenure with the company, he has held various senior roles including driving media agency relationships as agency sales director and leading the company's publisher efforts as head of publisher partnerships. Prior to Yahoo, Macauley was with WPP's MindShare.