Tag: Advertising

Sydney, Australia – Contextual advertising company Seedtag has announced two senior leadership hires for its ANZ market, namely Mark Brownie as commercial director and Daniel Macinante as trading director. The new leadership appointments follows Seedtag’s entry into the ANZ market earlier this year with the acquisition of JustEggs.

In their new roles, Brownie will focus on launching and growing the Seedtag business in ANZ while Macinante will lead and develop trading strategies across ANZ, focusing on optimising contextual advertising solutions.

Brownie brings 20 years of media experience and long-standing industry relationships. He has a deep understanding of the evolving digital landscape and recognises the vital role of contextual advertising in client addressability, especially with the increasing focus on privacy compliance. 

Before this role, he spent 3 years as general manager of digital revenue at News Corp Australia and 4 years in New York as global VP of commercial strategy for Storyful, a News Corp business. He also has extensive experience in startups and scaling businesses in digital media.

Meanwhile, Macinante brings a deep understanding of media sales and programmatic advertising, along with a proven track record of success. With over 9 years of experience in the media industry, he has built a reputation for driving results and innovation. Macinante swiftly progressed to leadership roles at News Corp Australia, where he held the position of group sales director for independent agencies. 

His passion for independent agencies is well-known across the industry, and he has consistently championed their value. As a dedicated member of the Independent Media Agencies of Australia (IMAA), Daniel has played an active role in advocating for these agencies.

Speaking on his new role, Mark said, “Contextual advertising has never been more important for marketers. In a time where privacy-centric strategies aren’t just innovative, they’re necessary, Seedtag brings the most sophisticated and effective contextual advertising platform to Australia. To be a part of such an incredible and established global company, and being trusted to launch and scale it in the Australian market is both humbling and exciting,”

Meanwhile, Daniel also commented in his new role, stating, “Contextual advertising is rapidly becoming a cornerstone of the digital marketing ecosystem, and I’m eager to bring my expertise to Seedtag to help shape the future of this space in Australia. With the increasing importance of privacy-first solutions, contextual advertising will be crucial in providing brands with the tools they need to connect with audiences in a meaningful, non-intrusive way.”

Meanwhile, Dal Gill, VP of new markets at Seedtag, said, “As we aim to scale and enhance our privacy-first solutions across APAC, the invaluable expertise of Mark and Daniel will be essential. I’m confident that our unique contextual advertising solutions are significantly helping ANZ brands and publishers achieve their advertising goals while addressing the need for privacy-first, scalable targeting.”

Singapore – Global adtech company PubMatic has been selected by social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as its supply side platform (SSP), which has been announced by PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel during the company’s latest earnings call for its third quarter.

“We are particularly excited to launch advertising with X, formerly known as Twitter, which serves more than 335 million users. Historically, X had only accessed social media ad budgets. They selected PubMatic as an SSP partner, opening up their traditionally closed ecosystem to tap into the 26 billion in open internet native display and video ad spend,” Goel said during the earnings call.

It is worth noting that prior to Musk’s takeover of the company, the social media platform never opened up its ad inventory to outside vendors, and instead brokered deals with advertisers directly.

Goel remarked during the earnings call that there is an increasing trend amongst social media companies to extend their offerings outside of their traditional ones.

“Another vector for our long-term growth includes social media companies entering the open internet arena, as they expand their ad businesses outside of their own walled gardens. To do this, they need solutions to help them monetise their audiences, curate their inventory, and access open internet ad budgets,” he said.

The announcement signals Elon Musk’s objective to woo advertisers back into the platform. Earlier this year, X had reached an agreement with Unilever regarding partnership in the platform. It should be noted that Unilever was one of the companies included in X’s advertising boycott lawsuit back in August that also included the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), Mars, CVS Health, and Ørsted.

Elon Musk has a complicated history with advertisers, as he once told them to “go f— yourselves” back in November 2023, citing that advertisers are blackmailing him with advertiser money. 

This tone changed when he was confronted by WPP CEO Mark Read Theatre during a discussion at Cannes Lions 2024. In it, he clarified that his previous remarks weren’t targeted to advertisers as a whole and also agreed that advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands.

New York, USA – Getty Images has announced an integration with TikTok to meet the diverse creative needs of marketers and advertisers. The integration allows advertisers and businesses direct access to Getty Images’ vast library of creative imagery and video content through TikTok’s AI-powered video generation tool, Symphony Creative Studio.

By integrating Getty Images’ premium creative content directly into TikTok’s Symphony Creative Studio, users can effortlessly craft TikTok-first ads and organic content that feels native to the platform and increases performance.

The integration with Getty Images is part of a wider expansion of TikTok’s tools, including Symphony Creative Studio, which aims to support advertisers and content creators with capabilities to make the TikTok creative production process easier and more efficient, bridging the gap between ideation and production.

With Getty Images’ unparalleled creative library at their fingertips, TikTok advertisers can push creative boundaries and deliver content that captivates and inspires, enhancing the overall impact of their advertising campaigns. As a result, businesses can achieve greater visibility, foster deeper connections with viewers, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates.

Peter Orlowsky, SVP of global strategic partnerships at Getty Images, said, “With the surge in demand for authentic storytelling in advertising, the need for captivating, high-quality content to convey these stories effectively to audiences has never been greater. At Getty Images, we take pride in empowering advertisers to streamline their creative processes.”

He added, “This collaboration offers seamless integration into TikTok’s Symphony Creative Studio, giving brands and businesses direct access to our vast library of millions of premium images and videos, ensuring they can create powerful, engaging TikTok-first content with ease.”

Andy Yang, head of monetization creative product at TikTok, commented, “At TikTok, we aim to empower advertisers and help them connect with their communities with the power of generative AI. Partnering with Getty Images unlocks a new avenue for marketers to scale their content and drive performance with commercially safe content globally. We are continuously building creative solutions that spark joy, imagination and action.”

United States – TikTok has announced that it is making its ‘Symphony Creative Studio’ tool available to all advertisers. Said tool is an AI-powered video-generation tool that can generate a video in minutes from minimal user input. 

With ‘Symphony Creative Studio,’ advertisers can turn their product information or URL into a video, add a digital avatar to narrate their video script, or localise existing videos into new languages using translation and dubbing capabilities.

Part of TikTok’s Symphony creative AI suite, ‘Symphony Creative Studio’ aims to support advertisers and content creators with free tools to make the creative production process easier and more efficient, bridging the gap between ideation and production.

TikTok’s Symphony Creative Studio introduces a range of powerful features to simplify and enhance ad creation. The Generate & Remix Videos tool allows marketers to turn product details or URLs into engaging TikTok-ready videos in minutes, drawing inspiration from top-performing content.

Meanwhile, the studio’s Avatar Videos feature uses AI-driven avatars to personalize content, offering diverse options in terms of gestures, languages, and demographics. For businesses targeting international audiences, the Translate & Dub Videos tool provides seamless language translation and dubbing, ensuring wider accessibility.

Lastly, the studio also includes a Video Editor that optimises existing content with TikTok-style elements such as captions, stickers, and transitions, ensuring alignment with platform trends. To streamline content creation further, Your Daily Video Generations delivers daily, auto-generated videos customized to a brand’s needs, leveraging insights from TikTok’s top-performing content and past activity.

All content created through Symphony Creative Studio is transparently labeled as “AI-generated,” reflecting TikTok’s commitment to innovation, efficiency, and ethical AI practices.

Singapore – Haleon has chosen Vistar Media as its preferred partner for programmatic OOH across all key markets. Through this partnership, Vistar will collaborate with Publicis, Haleon’s media agency, to power OOH campaigns worldwide—leveraging Vistar’s advanced technology to maximise impact and media efficiency.

Haleon’s decision to select Vistar as their preferred partner underscores the strategic importance of DOOH in their media strategy. By leveraging Vistar’s industry-leading demand-side platform (DSP), Haleon can execute data-driven, highly personalised DOOH campaigns at scale, ensuring their commitment to quality, transparency and sustainability is reflected in every market. 

This partnership marks a significant milestone in Haleon’s continued investment in premium, impactful media channels.

This collaboration reflects Haleon’s ongoing efforts to ensure greater control over its media investments, aligning with its quality media initiative. Vistar’s programmatic OOH capabilities, combined with Publicis’ global success, enable Haleon to deliver impactful campaigns while maintaining its sustainability goals. With OOH recognised as one of the most carbon-efficient media channels, this partnership supports Haleon’s drive to reduce the environmental footprint of its advertising efforts.

This partnership also allows Haleon to elevate their global media presence, ensuring their brands connect with consumers across a dynamic and premium OOH environment, powered by Vistar Media’s programmatic capabilities.

Brook Minto, global investment director of marketing edge at Haleon, said, “Haleon is always seeking the best ways to connect with consumers while staying true to our sustainability mission. Partnering with Vistar Media lets us push boundaries in digital out-of-home advertising, combining innovation with purpose. Their expertise and cutting-edge technology empower us to elevate the quality of our media investments globally, in a way that truly aligns with our values.”

Meanwhile, Ben Baker, managing director for APAC at Vistar Media, commented, “We’re incredibly proud to be selected as Haleon’s global partner for programmatic OOH. It’s exciting to see this partnership amplify the impact of iconic brands like Panadol and Voltaren, both essentials in our lives. At Vistar, we’re all about leveraging technology to connect brands with people in meaningful ways, at the right moment and in the right place. Working alongside Haleon and Publicis, we’re ready to deliver campaigns that are not only innovative but also resonate deeply with consumers across Southeast Asia and the globe.”

New York, USA – Nexxen has announced the launch of ‘Deal Marketplace,’ the company’s latest feature within its demand-side platform, Nexxen DSP. With a centralized interface, Deal Marketplace is built to enable advertisers to better discover, visualise and activate preferred deals across connected TV (CTV), online video (OLV) and display, reducing overall time spent planning and executing campaigns.

The marketplace was designed to improve efficiency while also empowering advertisers to make data-backed decisions. Through Nexxen’s Deal Marketplace, advertisers gain transparency into a wide range of premium supply inventory, leveraging advanced audience-targeting capabilities.

These deals include TV Audiences – custom audience segments accessible via Nexxen’s proprietary TV intelligence solution, which combines both linear and streaming viewership data – as well as content-level targeting and first-to-market CTV high-attention and green media options. 

‘Deal Marketplace’ also offers inventory through contextually curated private marketplace (PMP) deals, crafted using a blend of content and audience-layered data.

David Roman, senior vice president at Nexxen DSP, said, “Deal Marketplace is a further example of Nexxen’s commitment to addressing key industry challenges in premium video and streaming. Through Deal Marketplace, we are reducing the time it takes buyers to discover and activate high-quality deals, so they can get back to what matters. Alongside the streamlined system, Deal Marketplace offers flexible technology, unique packages and differentiated targeting solutions and data sources.”

Singapore – Teads has introduced its new Contextual Commerce solution powered by Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), making the company one of the largest DPA open internet platforms. 

As personalised shopping demand grows, this innovation — currently in beta with plans to scale in early 2025— enhances shopper relevance by tailoring ads based on factors like price, stock, and delivery options within premium, contextually relevant environments.

Teads’ Contextual Commerce formats connect consumers with relevant products at key moments, delivering native ads that align with shopper behavior and context. This results in measurable business outcomes, driving core performance metrics like CTR, CPC, CPVisit, CPA, and ROAS across trusted editorial content.

Designed for sectors like fashion, electronics, and home goods, the solution is set to expand in 2025 to other industries. Fpr this solution, Teads has tapped Adidas as it first partner to leverage this solution with more than a dozen brands across multiple verticals from retail and technology to beauty and luxury in the queue to leverage during the busy shopping season ahead.

With the implementation of DPA, brands can upload or connect their product feed to Teads Ad Manager (TAM), enabling the curation of product sets based on top-selling items, popular categories, or custom criteria. The ads are automatically updated with real-time product data, including pricing, availability, and discounts, ensuring maximum relevance for always-on campaigns. With a few clicks, clients can launch campaigns using Teads’ Single Product ad format, seamlessly aligning with their campaign objectives and targeting strategies.

Jeremy Arditi, co-CEO of Teads, said, “Teads Contextual Commerce offers our growing Retail and Commerce brands an opportunity to deliver real-time, contextually relevant ads in premium environments while balancing performance with brand experience.”

United Kingdom – Global consumer healthcare company Haleon has developed an AI-powered tool aimed at improving inclusivity and representation across its digital advertising content.

According to Haleon, its ‘Health Inclusivity Screener’ is the only data driven tool of its kind to analyse digital advertising content for both readability and inclusivity metrics. 

The tool assesses creative content for the criterias health literacy (how easy it is for consumers to understand and interpret Haleon’s healthcare messaging), accessibility (how accessible Haleon’s advertising is for people who have visual or hearing impairments), and representation (to allow Haleon to understand whether its casting choices are representative of all consumers).

Moreover, Haleon will use the new tool to enhance its digital advertising through greater accessibility, simpler messaging and content which better represents the diverse range of consumers it serves globally. 

It will also drive improved brand performance and ROI through campaigns which resonate more strongly with consumers, including those who are more vulnerable to exclusion – while supporting Haleon’s ambition to achieve greater health inclusivity for all.

Working with its Panadol pain relief brand, Haleon has piloted the tool in nine markets, including Australia, Colombia, Egypt, Malaysia, Saudia Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, UAE and UK. The company intends to extend the tool to other markets and global brands over time, allowing it to deliver more inclusive advertising at scale.

For this tool, Haleon has tapped CreativeX, a technology company that helps brands power their creative decisions with data. By using AI and machinelearning, CreativeX can extract creative data from individual assets, assessing the age, gender, skintone, and situation of individual characters. 

This data is combined with an AI application and analysed to provide data on message comprehension. All components are combined to create a user-friendly health inclusivity performance dashboard.

Tamara Rogers, chief marketing officer at Haleon, said, “While many brands have taken positive steps in inclusive advertising, we see a huge opportunity for Haleon to set the standard in the consumer health sector. We’ve already taken action to improve the accessibility of all our marketing assets, but we know that we can go further.”

She added, “Message comprehension has a key role to play in improving the performance of our campaigns and building greater health literacy, helping people take better care of their everyday health. This tool is truly unique in measuring this alongside other inclusivity metrics, allowing us to enhance our advertising to make sure it’s seen, heard, and understood by all consumers.”

Meanwhile, Anastasia Leng, founder and CEO at CreativeX, commented, “The launch of Haleon’s Health Inclusivity Screener sets a new standard for how brands can systematically improve inclusivity in their creative work through always-on measurement. This ushers in a new era for creative data, demonstrating its ability to help brands not only lift the floor of creative quality but raise the ceiling to creative excellence. Thank you to Haleon for being brave and curious enough to continuously push the boundaries of how data can enhance creative execution and effectiveness.”

United States – Spotify has been reported to launch its own ad exchange, known internally as Spotify Ad Exchange or SAX, as first reported by Axios. For this, the popular audio streaming service has tapped The Trade Desk as its first demand-side platform (DSP) partner.

According to media reports, this ad exchange will allow Spotify to capture more ad revenue from small and medium-sized businesses and make it easier for existing clients, including big brands, to spend more efficiently with the platform.

It will also allow Spotify to compete against bigger platforms like Meta and Google for ad dollars.

Moreover, it has been reported that Spotify began testing its SSP plugin with The Trade Desk last week. For now, the partnership is focused on connecting The Trade Desk’s North American advertising clients to Spotify’s video ad inventory. Audio ad inventory will soon follow.

A Spotify spokesperson has confirmed it was testing its new SSP with The Trade Desk, stating, “We routinely conduct pilots before launching products for our users, creators and advertisers.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for The Trade Desk commented, “We are excited to extend our partnership with Spotify on this pilot to help advertisers have direct access to high-quality inventory with as much signal and transparency as possible.”

New York, USA – Magnite and Disney have announced a two-year deal extension. As the relationship grows into its sixth year, Magnite continues to be Disney’s preferred supply-side technology partner. Disney leverages Magnite’s technology to monetise its ad-supported inventory across the company’s entire portfolio. Magnite facilitates transactions for all more than 30 DSPs that Disney works with.

With the expanded relationship, Disney will also leverage Magnite to, execute one-to-one deals with key buyers through Magnite’s ClearLine offering; monetise College Football games on live streams on ESPN; support LATAM expansion in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina; and offer podcast inventory via PMPs, including ESPN and ABC News podcasts.

Sean Buckley, chief revenue officer at Magnite, said, “We appreciate Disney’s confidence in our long-standing relationship and look forward to working with their team to deliver exceptional advertising experiences across every consumer touchpoint.”

He added, “In addition to our role in enabling Disney’s programmatic transactions, we’re actively innovating in new areas like live streaming to bring added value to our partnership.”

Meanwhile, Jamie Power, SVP of addressable sales at Disney, commented, “Disney is committed to driving automation and executional ease for our clients. With all our streaming inventory available programmatically, Magnite remains a key technology partner supporting Disney’s advertising business.”

He added, “Magnite plays a critical role in allowing buyers to access Disney’s inventory by connecting to more than 30 demand-side platforms in the US and starting to expand globally. In this rapidly evolving marketplace, Magnite consistently scales its capabilities to meet client needs, helping us stay ahead of emerging market trends.”