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Marketing technology

From Advice Group to Bakeca.co.uk, the customer community makes the difference

Having a known and effectively classified fanbase, whose habits and consumption are known, is a solid economic asset for companies

21 July 2025

3' min read

A yellow school bus identical to those in The Simpsons parked in front of Italian universities in 2005: this is how Paolo Geymonat promoted Bakeca.it, the classifieds site born of his entrepreneurial intuition in Turin.

Twenty years later, that visionary startup has become a platform that generates over 5 million monthly visits, an active base of 3 million unique users and a projected turnover of 5 million euros by 2025. In parallel, still in the Piedmontese capital, Advice Group SpA founded by Fulvio Furbatto has built a martech empire with over 15 million euros in orders and a CAGR of 20% in the last three years, demonstrating how the Italian data economy has become a strategic tool even against tariffs.

"Having a known fan base or an effectively categorised customer community, whose habits and consumption I know, today becomes a solid economic asset for companies, which does not require investments subject to tariffs," explains CEO Furbatto.

The Bakeca.it case perfectly illustrates the evolution of Italian digital: from a simple digital noticeboard for student rentals to an intelligent platform, part of a complex ecosystem. Today, it hosts over one million active listings, with a particular focus on the job segment, which is growing at 15% per year. The platform has maintained a user-centric approach that guarantees a 50% retention rate of monthly users, generating over 1.5 million monthly contacts between supply and demand. Today, Bakeca.it is also an important vantage point on the labour market. The investment in AI, as well as revenue based B2B services, show how even the more traditional models are being transformed according to data-driven logic.

'The data guide product development and site improvement,' explains CEO Stefano Pavignano. 'AI is a useful tool in analysing this mass of information, but also in managing a better ad security policy and in supporting users and advertisers who place ads. The demand for increasingly user-centric services has grown'.

Advice Group represents the natural evolution of this process, turning behavioural data and user loyalty into tangible value for companies. With EBITDA growing 30% year-to-year and over 70% recurring revenue, the company has proven the robustness of its proprietary data-driven model. Wekit-2, the most advanced version of the Advice platform, which extends Advice's microservices offering with a fully cloud-based and scalable system that companies can flexibly and customise, drives the company's revenue. The Advice Group's approach confirms that huge amounts of data are not needed: what is needed are systems that catalogue them and make them smart. The platform is adopted by more than 50 national and international brands. The recent acquisition of Leevia and E-leads has created a new Performance Engagement Business Unit, fully focused on building proprietary databases for companies. The launch of the 'Interista' programme for FC Internazionale Milano marks a turning point in the fan economy: the first behavioural loyalty programme in sport, an industry with a significant growth rate in terms of digital transformation. In a market where cookies are increasingly restricted and controlled, community loyalty and proprietary fan communities - more active, responsive and linked to the brands they already love - represent an opportunity.

While Bakeca.it consolidates its position as a leader in job advertisements abroad and prepares to create a system of vertical satellite sites, the first dedicated to pet products and services, Advice Group develops solutions that allow companies to build proprietary databases, reducing dependence on international giants.

These two stories tell a distinctive approach to digital business, where technology is at the service of people. Bakeca.it maintains a corporate culture based on flexibility and work-life balance, while Advice Group has adopted full remote and short week working hours for its 70 employees. The Turin experience shows that the Italian data economy has found its own distinctive path.