Tag: Acquisition

Australia – CSM, the global integrated marketing and brand experience firm for sports and entertainment, has acquired its long-time digital marketing and communications agency partner, Greenroom Digital, to bolster its digital offering in the sports marketing landscape.

For three years, CSM and Greenroom Digital have been working together to deliver digital and data strategies for a range of clients globally, including HSBC, AIA, and Alpine F1, among others.

The acquisition includes all Greenroom Digital operating markets, with the exclusion of business operations in Australia and New Zealand. This will continue to be headed up by Greenroom Digital’s co-founder, Nick Biggin. 

Biggin commented that the acquisition is an exciting step between the relationship of Greenroom Digital and CSM, and he looks forward to focusing on the continued growth and expansion of their businesses in APAC.

“It enables us to leverage the scale and strengths of the CSM business internationally while maintaining independence and flexibility in the developing Australia and New Zealand markets,” he said.

Meanwhile, Matt Vandrau, CSM’s group CEO, shared that CSM’s digital offering is a key differentiator for them in the marketplace and they are proud to deliver exponential commercial growth for their clients through their performance marketing platform. 

“We are committed to continued investment in our digital offering to provide the very best results for our clients,” said Vandrau.

Greenroom Digital’s Co-Founder, Tom Huggins, who will also become the group digital and data director, commented that he sees this enhanced relationship accelerating Greenroom Digital’s growth in the coming months and beyond. 

“This acquisition is the culmination of years of hard work and delivering results for clients in partnership with CSM and we are delighted to formalize our relationship,” said Huggins.

New York, USA – Global adtech Criteo has entered into an exclusive negotiation to acquire IPONWEB, an adtech company for US$380m in a combination of cash and CRTO treasury shares. 

Through this acquisition, Criteo accelerates its strategic plans to shape the future of commerce media and deliver ideal commerce audiences at scale to both marketers and media owners across the open internet. 

The acquisition merges Criteo’s Commerce Media Platform that is designed to provide marketers and media owners direct access to commerce audiences across the open internet, and IPONWEB’s established demand side platforms (DSPs) and supply side platforms (SSPs) solutions that has helped to power an open and diverse advertising ecosystem by building enterprise solutions for media owners.

Together with IPONWEB’s large media trading marketplace, DSPs and SSPs, Criteo would be able to bring media owners a much larger scale of media spend and first-party data access, a critical component of its product strategy.

“Together with IPONWEB, Criteo will distinguish itself as the commerce media partner of choice on the open internet for the post third-party cookie and identifier world. IPONWEB’s open technology and culture are perfectly aligned with Criteo’s purpose to support a fair and open internet where technology enables discovery, innovation and choice for consumers, marketers and media owners,” Criteo said in a press statement.

Megan Clarken, chief executive officer at Criteo, said that the acquisition is considered a defining moment in the company’s transformation to drive sustainable growth and revenue diversification, adding this will create value for all stakeholders.

“Criteo’s customers would benefit from enhanced full-funnel capabilities with even more flexible self-service tools, while continuing to leverage Criteo’s unique commerce data for targeting, measurement and superior outcomes,” Clarken said.

Meanwhile, Boris Mouzykantskii, founder, CEO and chief scientist at IPONWEB, commented, “Criteo’s proven excellence in AI and unparalleled focus on performance at scale have long been highly respected in the industry. We look forward to joining Criteo and together seize the vast opportunities in our fast-changing ecosystem, bringing enhanced value for our customers, employees and partners.”

Singapore – Digital experience platform (DXP) provider Optimizely has entered into an agreement to acquire Welcome, a marketing platform that carries capabilities in content marketing platforms (CMP), marketing resource management (MRM), and digital asset management (DAM) in a single solution. The combined company will empower marketing teams of brands across the globe to drive real business value through better customer experiences.

Through the combined services of the company, clients can now grow their end-to-end marketing lifecycle from concept to execution, gain control and transparency to manage content, and grow revenue by scaling adoption of in-class optimization.

Alex Atzberger, CEO at Optimizely, said, “We believe a world-class customer experience starts with an outstanding marketer experience. By combining Welcome’s campaign planning, content production, and asset management capabilities with Optimizely’s existing breadth of digital experience solutions, we empower marketers to rapidly launch campaigns and control the optimization of every digital touchpoint which results in growth for the business.”

Following Optimizely’s acquisition of customer data platform Zaius earlier this year, the addition of Welcome further solidifies Optimizely’s mission to empower digital teams to unlock their digital potential.

Meanwhile, Shafqat Islam, CEO and co-founder at Welcome, commented, “We could not be more excited to be joining the Optimizely family. We’ve made it our mission to transform the way marketers work, by delivering a purpose-built solution to orchestrate all of marketing. Now, together with Optimizely, we believe we are unifying two category-leading solutions to see that mission through.”

Until the closing of the acquisition deal, the companies will continue to operate independently. Over time, Welcome will be integrated with Optimizely’s existing stack to create a complete end-to-end portfolio to manage the full content lifecycle.

Sydney, Australia – Global web recommendation platform, Outbrain, has acquired video intelligence AG (vi), the Swiss-based contextual video technology platform, to strengthen its video offering for media owners and advertisers.

vi’s contextual and machine learning technology enables media owners to enhance user engagement and monetization by adding relevant video content to articles. It also provides advertisers with video ad inventory that drives awareness and user engagement.

Yaron Galai, Outbrain’s co-Founder and co-CEO, said the combination will allow Outbrain to deepen its partnership with media owners, providing mid- and top-of-article video solutions. 

“It will also expand our addressable market, introducing high-quality in-stream video inventory to support our brand advertisers. We see significant synergies between our companies and we are very excited to welcome the incredibly talented and experienced vi team to Outbrain,” said Galai.

Kai Henniges, the co-Founder and CEO of vi, believes that their years of video expertise and unique offering for publishers and CTV providers are a perfect addition to Outbrain’s market position and premium global media owner partnerships. 

“Together we will accelerate our mission to inspire, inform and entertain users by putting video in context. We believe we have found a great match between our companies’ cultures and we share the same vision of the future of media,” said Henniges.

According to Outbrain, the acquisition of vi is worth the purchase price of approximately US$55m, funded by US$46.75 million of balance sheet cash and 412,500 Outbrain shares. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022 and is expected to be accretive in the first year.

Sydney, Australia – Following the company’s recent global rebranding from Bastion Collective, independent agency Bastion has recently acquired New Zealand-based agency Shine, a fifty-member team––now being added to Bastion’s team, accounting to more than 300-count workforce across offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Los Angeles, and New York.

Bastion’s acquisition of Shine sets it to become one of the largest independent communications agencies across Australia and Asia.

Through the acquisition, Shine will be rebranded as Bastion Shine, consisting of clients such as Air New Zealand, telecom Spark, energy company Genesis and Tip Top. Together, they will be joining Bastion’s global roster of clients, including Microsoft, Google, KFC, AIA, L’Oreal, and Carl’s Jr. 

According to Simon Curran, co-founder and CEO at Shine, they were looking for a partner that can help them scale their business more quickly than they can alone. Curran also noted that Bastion had given them the opportunity to not only access global markets in Australia and the US, but also to bring new capabilities into the New Zealand market.

“We weren’t really interested in being swallowed up by a global network, and after a meeting of minds and philosophy with Jack and the Bastion team, we knew we had found the right partners. They’re building a global independent model that has all the benefits of being part of a group, with the advantages of being independently run. For Shine, it’s an ideal scenario and we’re hugely excited about the opportunities this presents,” said Curran. 

Meanwhile, Jack Watts, founder and global CEO at Bastion, commented that their recent acquisition of Shine reflects their recent move of making a ‘New World Agency’, where they look for a partner who thinks wide across the breadth of communications disciplines, and believes that the future of agencies is independence at scale.

“In the team at Shine, not only did we find this, but we also we found a shared set of values and principles that I have rarely experienced. For more than a decade we have both built similar businesses on either sides of the Tasman and to unite now is beyond exciting for our business, our people and our clients. It felt right from the first meeting,” he added.

He also stated that creating the largest independent communications agency in Australasia mirrors the fact that more clients want independence after being under-serviced by multinational agencies.

“Looking back, March of 2020 was one of the defining moments in the 12 year history of Bastion. We quickly set in place a plan and we have stuck to it ever since. That plan was to make difficult decisions early, and then accelerate out hard as the multinational agencies were still waiting for someone in London or Paris to tell them what to do,” he stated.

Watts further added, “And that is exactly how it has played out. Since June of 2020 our business has been experiencing unparalleled growth as we continue to grow existing, and win major new accounts by providing clients access to wide thinking across the breadth of communications services, combined with deep expertise.”

United States – Global software company Zendesk, which provides software-as-a-service products related to customer support, sales, and other customer communications, has acquired Momentive, the America-based experience management firm, including its survey platform SurveyMonkey, with the aim to create a new powerful customer intelligence company.

The newly integrated customer intelligence company aims to bolster businesses’ efforts in connecting customers’ actions with how they “think and feel.” The company said the holistic view will give them the ability to truly listen to customers and develop a rich picture of the consumer.

Mikkel Svane, Zendesk’s CEO and founder, commented that they are excited to have SurveyMonkey join the Zendesk mission along with Momentive’s market research and insights products and together create a powerful new Customer Intelligence company. 

“We will deliver a rich, colorful picture of every customer so businesses really understand their customers and can build more authentic relationships,” said Svane.

Zander Lurie, Momentive’s CEO, said that they look forward to combining with Zendesk to advance their mission and accelerate their long-term growth strategy.

“Zendesk and Momentive share a culture centered around our people, our communities, and the customers we serve. The synergies between our companies are proximate and compelling. We are uniquely positioned to make Customer Intelligence a reality ​​while delivering significant value for our shareholders,” said Lurie.

Zendesk said the acquisition will see Momentive stockholders receiving 0.225 shares of Zendesk stock for each share of Momentive stock, a ratio which represents an implied value of approximately US$28 per outstanding share of Momentive stock based on the 15-day volume-weighted average price of Zendesk common stock up to and including October 26, 2021.

Through this move, Zendesk expects the combination to be growth accretive in its first full operating year and accelerate its revenue plan to US$3.5b in 2024, one year ahead of its previous target. Both companies’ respective sizable customer bases and complementary capabilities are also expected to provide significant opportunities for joint product adoption and increase Momentive’s enterprise traction, while Zendesk will reinvest savings from scale efficiencies into compelling growth opportunities to support the combination.

Sydney, Australia – Talkwalker, a consumer intelligence company, has recently acquired consumer and cultural insight platform discover.ai in order to boost its consumer intelligence offering to businesses who need actionable intelligence to drive business impact.

With discover.ai’s unique combination of machine learning and human insights, Talkwalker can now build into their services a deeper reading into the human stories and emotive human drivers that lie beneath and behind the intelligence they provide through data.

Integrating discover.ai’s capabilities is now part of the new offering from the Talkwalker Activate professional services team, which will now provide a range of go live, operational, and strategic consultancy services to enable businesses to identify, analyze, and act on presented relevant consumer insights across their organizations.

For Tod Nielsen, CEO at Talkwalker, they are not just providing brands and agencies with powerful consumer intelligence from a multitude of data sources, adding that they have learned from their clients, and the wider industry, that there is a need for professional services to help make this intelligence more actionable.

“With the addition of discover.ai to our already fast developing Talkwalker Activate professional services, we can provide a high-level consultancy layer on top of our powerful platform, that explores and discovers, at scale and at human scale, with rigour but also with resonance. Inspiring brands with rich human stories and cultural insights, and getting them closer to their customers,” Nielsen stated.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Williams, founder at discover.ai, commented that there has already been a very natural alliance between the two businesses, adding that they have been working for many of the same clients, even on the very same projects.

“Bringing our two businesses together will help our clients to further benefit from this powerful combination, with Talkwalker providing consumer intelligence and discover.ai bringing deeper human insight and cultural context, together inspiring brands to better unlock future growth opportunities. There is just so much exciting white space where our complementary cultures and collective capability across people and platforms can create some really exciting new developments,” Williams explained.

Talkwalker has also recently acquired Nielsen Social Content Ratings, now called Social Content Ratings, and Reviewbox, to provide additional insights and intelligence for all their clients.

We know that the consumer is ever-changing but the fluidity of their behavior has taken an entirely different meaning this pandemic – with unprecedented changes that unfolded such as the constraint on physical interactions and the economic plunge of markets, this completely overhauled how brands and businesses engaged with their target consumers. 

Last September 21, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with CleverTap, gathered marketing leaders from all over the APAC region representing different industries, for the roundtable “Business Growth Levers from Acquisition to Retention” to discuss how the pandemic has shaken brands’ current playbook on consumer acquisition and retention strategies. 

Growth and marketing heads from the edtech, grocery, TV, airline, fitness, fintech, fast food, and publication sectors each shared their unique challenges and how their teams adapted to emerging brand new cohorts, shifting priorities among consumers, with new desires and motivations at the front. 

Watch live the highlights of the roundtable and hear straight from APAC’s marketing heads the notable changes this pandemic on consumer acquisition and retention.

The rise of new consumer segments amid the pandemic

The areas of educational platform, publication, and fitness witnessed the arrival of new consumer personas borne out of the heightened digital lifestyle. 

Marisha Lakhiani, CMO of Mindvalley, a learning platform for self-help and entrepreneurship, shared that during the period, the platform suddenly attracted younger users, a group it didn’t predominantly draw in before. 

Meanwhile, for global fitness brand Les Mills International, it found that its main fitness consumer now favors a split between in-gym and home digital workouts.

“The consumer’s new normal is 60:40 in terms of live and digital fitness; so if they’re doing 5 workouts in a week, 3 of them they want to do it in a club, in a live environment, and 2 they want to do as a digital workout,” shared Anna Henwood, CMO of Les Mills International. 

As for publications, Philippines’ Summit Media saw these changes most evidently on how consumers shifted their patterns in finding and consuming content. Specifically for its parenting brand, Smart Parenting, Facebook used to be its biggest acquisition channel, but over the current period, the channel has not been giving the volatility that’s expected, according to its Growth Lead Iza Santos-Cuyos.

During the roundtable, David Lim, the vice president for marketing of grocery platform HappyFresh, pointed out that whatever strategies that may have served marketing teams pre-pandemic can now be officially considered bygones.

“As a marketer, whatever we have learned in textbooks, on websites, [and] on webinars can be forgotten in the past 18 months…because if you just look at acquisition, everything has changed,” said Lim. 

Lim adds, “I think when it comes to the topic of acquisition, everything has to be extremely localized. We have to look at each market on its own, we have to look at each cohort on its own, and then link it back to how they retain, how they come back month after month in a very granular [manner], much more granular than before.” 

For acquiring consumers, improving SEO and search strategies have been the common thread, while forging strategic partnerships showed itself to be the redeeming factor among marketing teams to both acquire and retain consumers in the current market climate. At the roundtable, marketing leaders also emphasized the importance of first-party data.

For Mindvalley and Summit Media, it has been the same go-to response – focusing and investing more in search and SEO. 

“We identified the customers that we are actually retaining and try to acquire them, so like micro-acquiring a particular audience,” said Mindvalley’s Marisha Lakhiani. 

Summit Media’s Iza Santos-Cuyos shared that as they bolster their search strategies, the publication realized that it is in fact attracting a different set of cohorts on search versus those coming from Facebook, bringing them to conclude that they cannot now discount Facebook altogether while focusing on search.

“What we learned from doing that is to devise a separate strategy for audiences acquired on Facebook versus those acquired on search,” said Santos-Cuyos. 

Brands forming strategic partnerships to cushion drastic market changes

The fast-food industry took one of the biggest hits during the pandemic, with the phased-out in-person interactions blowing the footfall for dine-in. 

In the roundtable, KFC Malaysia’s CMO May Ling Chan shared that partnering with food delivery platforms acted as a safety net, where within the e-commerce scene, the QSR sector has not been the fastest in adoption. 

“I think what happened during the pandemic was [the] growth of food aggregators. For us, I think that’s the biggest part of acquisition that we see,” said Chan. 

Online food delivery has seen an unprecedented rise in adoption by both brands and consumers. According to a report by Statista, in Asia, revenue in the online food delivery segment has been projected to reach US$223,372m this year. 

Singapore’s supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice echoes the same gameplan, where its convenience store Cheers inked a tie-up with top delivery platforms GrabFood and foodpanda in order to answer to the surge in need for on-demand and fast delivery of food products. 

Vivek Kumar, NTUC FairPrice Group’s director for strategic marketing & omnichannel monetization, cited ‘Supper moments’ which Cheers aimed to create through the partnership, where consumers can not only see product offerings in a snap but to “go ahead” and complete their transaction in real-time.

“Supper moments on food delivery platforms is quite a unique opportunity. [When] restaurants are closed and you [still] want your beer and your nachos and your croissants, and stuff like that, this is the place to go to.” Kumar said.

He adds, “We can’t wait for the customers to come to us. We can create the right occasion [as long as] we understand the customer’s needs. We must give them very friction-free shopping experiences where they can complete their mission – you can’t leave it midway.”

The fast-changing consumer patterns pressing the importance of first-party data

Global cross-border payments platform OFX was also one of the brands that participated in the roundtable and its Global Head of Digital Acquisition Shad Haehae shared that as the pandemic pushed the stronger need for brands to know their customers a lot more, this made the platform re-evaluate the quality of data it obtains.

“We’re a money business, and people send money for particular reasons, so those reasons have changed,” said Haehae. 

OFX previously relied on third-party data for insights, but Haehae shares that as a business, OFX figured that it needed to be smarter on this front.

“We adopted new partnerships, new types of technologies [not just] from [a] martech [and] adtech perspective, even from a data perspective. We’ve done a lot of consolidation on platforms and data.” 

The same is the case for TV and radio operator giant, Astro, in Malaysia. 

“So it’s a balance between providing value to the customers to [keep] them from churning [and] aggregating our first-party data with social data, and with data that we have in the network to go after customers a lot more aggressively than we have in the past,” said Norsiah Juriani Johari, Astro’s vice president of marketing. 

For Les Mills International, they eventually leveraged first-party data which it successfully included in its marketing strategy because of the direct-to-consumer journey it now has via its own fitness app. Predominantly, its consumer was a gym member which Henwood admits the brand had no prior visible data of as well as on how its products looked like. 

With digital fitness now ingrained in people’s exercise routines, Henwood shared that content has become its differentiator, which is what makes “people stay.”

“So how we film our content [in] the lockdown, how we do that more and more so it’s really engaging with the customer, and how we [connect with] different personalities through [our] content – that’s been a big part of our retention strategy,” Henwood shares. 

For Cebu Pacific Air, meanwhile, one of the Philippines’ leading airlines, answering to pandemic-induced shifts meant working inward and letting the team adapt to new ways of implementing marketing strategies. 

Alongside relying on new consumer segments during this period, Michelle De Guzman, the airline’s marketing director, said, “Even the ways of working that we have as a marketing team, it has changed as well when it comes to user acquisition and retention.”

She shares, “We have also developed agile marketing sprints – and that was not something that was done before, but [has become] very important on what we do now.” 

Consumer acquisition & retention in 2022 and beyond

While overcoming each of the hurdles in their industries, marketing leaders agree that staying on top of the game is all about being continuously aligned to the shifts – from the minute to the massive transitions – in consumer and market behavior. 

HappyFresh’s David Lim believes that we cannot apply the same methods of acquisition anymore, and in 2022, one of the beliefs and assumptions that their team has is things would not be the same as pre-covid.

“Every country has [its] own announcement, every country has [its] own waves of covid with different government announcements. I think when it comes to the topic of acquisition, everything has to be extremely localized,” said Lim. 

Building trust among consumers also remains a vital factor in the consumer engagement journey, says Katherine Cheung, CMO of edtech Snapask. 

“One key factor that we have in Snapask on user retention and how to retain customers to our platform is of course by building trust. We have to bear in mind that since the pandemic, people have so much more free time, as most of the regions are still experiencing lockdown and they are not allowed to go out from time to time. We have to bear in mind that users have so much more time to invest in your product,” Cheung said.

FairPrice’s Vivek Kumar’s advice to leaders, “As a marketing leader, we need to create that vision and then keep people involved in the journey, so that becomes their objective and their mission and not just [acting according to] marketing teams’ wishlist – the moment that silo happens, we have lost the battle.”

Australia – Marketing agency IVE Group has announced its acquisition of Active Display Group (ADG), the display and signage unit of creative transformation company WPP, and AFI Branding Solutions (AFI), the Melbourne-based fabric signage innovation firm.

Through the acquisition, ADG will further strengthen IVE’s retail display and 3PL offerings in Australia, while AFI will help in adding events, exhibition, and fabric printing, as well as signage capabilities to the agency’s offerings for the first time.

IVE said that the integration will commence in November 2021.

Matt Aitken, IVE Group’s CEO, shared that the acquisitions aim to strengthen their offer as an industry leader in the design and production of temporary, semi-permanent, and permanent retail display solutions to leading Australian and global brands. 

“ADG’s comprehensive 3PL division is also a seamless fit for IVE’s already extensive logistics and fulfillment operations. We look forward to welcoming the ADG and AFI staff to our business, and showcasing IVE’s diverse value proposition to their customers,” said Aitken.

Meanwhile, Steve Voorma, the CEO of Active Display Group, stated that the combination of ADG and IVE’s existing capabilities will create by far the most sophisticated and advanced retail display offering in the country. 

“From the breadth and depth of our combined capability, right through to our impeccable environmental and sustainability credentials, this new retail offering will be unmatched in Australia,” said Voorma.

Glenn Watson, AFI’s managing director, commented that this is an exciting new chapter for AFI Branding and they look forward to joining the talented team at IVE. 

He said, “AFI brings complementary services to IVE’s already extensive offering, presenting a compelling proposition to its existing 2,800 clients and the wider market.”

Singapore – Carousell Group, the classifieds group in Greater Southeast Asia, has announced its acquisition of Ox Street, the end-to-end marketplace for authenticated sneakers and streetwear, in the aim to deepen its reach and scale to become a market leader for fashion and luxury goods in the region.

Ox Street will continue to operate as its own brand, retaining its name, platform, and team. The acquisition will be driving a synergistic partnership between the marketplaces.

The group said the acquisition reflects Carousell’s deep commitment to reimagining the classifieds experience, with a focus on trust and convenience, to make secondhand the first choice. The Ox Street team inspects and authenticates every pair of sneakers before it reaches its buyers. Carousell’s advanced and intuitive technology, extensive reach, and marketplace liquidity across a wide range of categories, combined with Ox Street’s authentication capabilities will further propel the mutual goal of creating an experience where transacting secondhand is as convenient and trusted as buying first hand.

Quek Siu Rui, the co-founder and CEO of Carousell, commented they are excited to acquire Ox Street in their mission to inspire the world to start selling, and they share common values in being user-first and in building communities, as evidenced by the brand love they have created among their dedicated community of sneakerheads and fashion enthusiasts, especially among the Gen Z.

“They have also built trust by authenticating every pair of sneakers that gets transacted on the Ox Street marketplace. We see immense opportunity in bringing that capability and their learnings to double down on our recommerce efforts. Most of all, we see this acquisition as joining forces to accelerate our shared vision of making second hand the first choice,” said Rui.

Meanwhile, Gijs Verheijke, Ox Street’s founder and CEO, shared that they initially started a conversation with Carousell on partnering up to provide authentication as a service for sneakers, but as discussions progressed they found so much common ground in how they see the future, that they decided it would be much more powerful for Ox Street to fully join the Carousell group.

“With Carousell’s reach and technological capabilities, we can supercharge Ox Street’s ability to innovate and reach more buyers and sellers. Last but not least, we have a lot of shared values and found a very strong cultural fit, and I cannot be more excited to partner with Siu Rui, Marcus, Lucas, and the entire Carousell team,” said Verheijke.