New York, USA – The United Nations (UN) has issued an urgent appeal to government, tech companies, advertisers and the PR industry to step up and take responsibility for the spread and monetisation of content that results in harm.

This plea was made by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres following the launch of the United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity.

This launch, done a year after the launch of his report into information integrity on digital platforms, has put forward a framework for coordinated international action to make information spaces safer and more humane, one of the most urgent tasks of our time.

These includes how misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and other risks to the information ecosystem are fueling conflict, threatening democracy and human rights, and undermining public health and climate action. 

Moreover, the UN notes that the proliferation is now being supercharged by the rapid rise of readily available artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, increasing the threat to groups often targeted in information spaces, including children.

“The United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity aim to empower people to demand their rights. At a time when billions of people are exposed to false narratives, distortions and lies, these principles lay out a clear path forward, firmly rooted in human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and opinion,” UN Secretary Guterres said.

UN notes that advertisers should demand transparency in digital advertising processes from the tech sector to help ensure that ad budgets do not inadvertently fund disinformation or hate or undermine human rights.

Moreover, tech companies should scope business models that do not rely on programmatic advertising and do not prioritise engagement above human rights, privacy, and safety, allowing users greater choice and control over their online experience and personal data.

Lastly, UN states that all stakeholders involved in the development of AI technologies should take urgent, immediate, inclusive and transparent measures to ensure that all AI applications are designed, deployed and used safely, securely, responsibly and ethically, and uphold human rights.

Singapore – Yahoo has recently announced its new offering “Yahoo Backstage” which will provide Yahoo DSP advertisers with a direct path to curated, premium publisher inventory. The move also supports transparency and supply path optimisation (SPO), while maximising media spend and ROI for advertisers.

In addition to Yahoo-owned and operated properties, over 100 publishers have signed on to ‘Yahoo Backstage’, including A+E Networks, Dotdash Meredith, Newsweek, Raptive, and The Arena Group.

The new offering enables publishers to integrate directly with the Yahoo DSP, enhancing scale and increasing win rates on valuable and trusted inventory, which results in a greater share of working media dollars to publishers and improved performance for advertisers. 

Moreover, ‘Yahoo Backstage’ supply will be fully transparent to Yahoo DSP customers and offered alongside continued access to the industry’s top Exchanges, giving advertisers the control to make their own buying choices. 

In addition to the benefits for advertisers, this new offering will present significant value to Yahoo Advertising’s publisher partners. Publishers will gain direct access to quality demand through a streamlined pipeline, enhancing their existing buying paths. Publishers will also receive dedicated support from Yahoo Advertising’s experienced team, ensuring their business needs are managed.

Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, chief revenue officer at Yahoo, said, “We are laser-focused on meeting the evolving industry need, and are excited to offer advertisers a direct line to our premium publisher partners. With trusted publisher relationships and Yahoo’s owned and operated content, we are best positioned to provide advertisers with the most unobstructed supply path, ensuring they achieve the greatest possible results.”

Singapore – A sharp uptick in the adoption of mobile gaming ads since the pandemic began, and about six in 10 advertisers only started to leverage mobile in-game advertising in the last two years, but 90% of respondents have now advertised for at least a year or longer, according to a report by independent marketing cloud company InMobi.

The report also found that as much as 98% of advertisers reported increasing their spends on mobile gaming in the past year – double last year’s figure year-on-year – underscoring the potential of mobile games as an emerging marketing channel.

Additionally, the same report revealed that the unique ad formats in mobile game advertising enable higher audience attention and engagement, thus drawing strong interest from advertisers. The most explored mobile gaming ad formats are rewarded video, playables, and interstitials. But blended in-game ads are also increasing in popularity as advertisers seek to explore advanced native experiences. 

InMobi said that the report also indicates differences in success parameters between respondents at varying stages of the adoption of gaming advertising. Mature advertisers tend to view brand awareness and attention as the primary success metric for their campaigns. On the other hand, relative newcomers that have adopted gaming advertising for less than a year tend to often evaluate multiple aspects including reach, brand safety, and sales lift. 

Rishi Bedi, managing director at InMobi, shared that with rapid smartphone adoption and increased internet connectivity further contributing to the mobile gaming growth in SEA, there is no surprise that advertisers have increasingly integrated digital advertising with mobile games to tap into the region’s vast market potential.

“We look forward to helping this space grow as it creates more opportunities for brands to capitalise and expand how they engage their audiences,” said Bedi.

The report also shared that over 50% of respondents label programmatic buying as their most preferred mode of media buying on mobile gaming apps, and the top three mobile gaming app formats listed by respondents are ‘rewarded videos’, ‘playable ads’, and ‘interstitials’.

Moreover, almost 90% of respondents deem the suitability of game content to their brands’ values as a major factor when adopting mobile gaming ads, and about 70% of respondents who are mature advertisers label higher audience attention and engagement as the most important drive for their gaming ad investments. And lastly, over 50% of respondents leverage brand awareness levels as a benchmark parameter for campaign success of gaming ads.

San Francisco, USA InMobi, an established provider of content, marketing, and monetization tech that help businesses fuel growth, has announced a direct integration of its InMobi Exchange supply-side side platform (SSP) into Yahoo’s demand-side platform (DSP), giving advertisers, brands and media buyers across Yahoo’s extensive global portfolio of clients direct access to premium in-app supply and global user base, at scale.

Prior to this collaboration, InMobi’s substantial supply of international audiences was only accessible through third-party exchanges; now, this collaboration provides SDK-powered direct inventory, creating smooth supply path optimization for advertisers around the world and establishing increased transparency and efficiency for buyers. For InMobi’s wide stable of publisher partners, being plugged directly into Yahoo’s DSP means increased monetization capability and higher coverage with premium Fortune 500.

Yahoo’s omnichannel DSP is fueled by more than 200 billion data signals, enabling optimized and efficient reach and relevance. Yahoo partners with the industry’s premier supply, including its own SSP, to bring advertisers and brands robust inventory opportunities, while driving supply optimization.

Kunal Nagpal, SVP and general manager, publisher platform and exchange at InMobi, said supply path optimization is an important element that many are focused on throughout the industry.

“This partnership gives advertisers a straight line to the Yahoo DSP with greater efficiencies in setting-up and optimizing campaigns to better reach target audiences,” Nagpal said.

 Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, VP of global revenue and client solutions at Yahoo, shared, “Yahoo cultivates robust, diverse premium supply.” 

Herbst-Brady added, “In partnering with InMobi, we’re creating a more direct line of sight for advertisers and boosting transparency and optimization opportunities.”

Singapore – Yahoo has announced its latest offering in Southeast Asia, Yahoo Stories Ad, an innovative solution that enables a dynamic and interactive storytelling experience. A mobile-web-first solution, Yahoo Stories Ad brings one of social media’s most popular formats to premium environments on the open web, offering advertisers the ability to deliver a more seamless storytelling experience on a larger scale and with greater reach. 

Yahoo said, stories are one of the fastest-growing formats to engage audiences, with over one billion users daily exposed to the format across social media platforms. Among the reasons for the meteoric rise in the appeal of stories is its ability to offer snackable content that favours audiences’ attention investment. Another factor is the nature of stories which empowers consumers with the option to select the content they would like to see. 

Bringing together the popularity of social stories, the seamless browsing experience of native ads, and the power of programmatic advertising, Yahoo Stories Ad delivers rich, full-screen brand narratives in premium, trusted environments. Utilising a range of creative tools, brands and advertisers can now leverage synergistic capabilities to include a combination of static visuals and videos in different panels, and allow users to interact and rewatch content with left and right navigation clicks.

Carol Tay, senior director sales Southeast Asia at Yahoo, shared, “Yahoo Stories Ad is a self-contained brand experience formatted for action. With the ability to customise functionality and provide an elegant and highly visual framework within premium environments, Yahoo’s latest native format will enable brands to not only focus on ad performance but also build brand image and awareness through experiences that consumers know, want and love.”

In addition, primed to take advantage of smartphone features that appeal to consumers, the solution enables advertisers greater flexibility to tailor audience journeys towards consideration and response. Advertisers can directly integrate CTA buttons into Yahoo Stories Ad that bring users to brand and ecommerce websites, booking engines, maps, coupons, discount codes, or shopping carts for consumer action.

Yahoo Stories Ad is now available in markets across Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and is delivered via native mobile ads.

Singapore – Global digital ad verification company Integral Ad Science (IAS) has expanded its partnership with short-video sharing platform TikTok to add new services, which will allow IAS to measure viewability, invalid traffic (IVT), and app-level brand safety, allowing brands and agencies globally to effectively monitor the quality of their media buys on TikTok’s platform.

Through this, IAS will now be providing advertisers with trusted, third-party measurement powered by the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK), giving marketers ultimate transparency and confidence around campaign performance. Governed by the IAB with IAS being a founding member, the OM SDK is designed to facilitate transparent third-party viewability and verification measurement for ads served to mobile apps and open web environments. 

Moreover, the offering will be providing granular reporting with 24/7 access to the IAS Signal UI, allowing advertisers to take action and stay informed on campaigns. By partnering with IAS, marketers will now have access to an increasingly comprehensive set of solutions to manage their advertising campaigns on TikTok.

Lisa Utzschneider, IAS’ CEO, commented that they are excited to offer marketers an increasingly comprehensive set of IAS Media Quality Solutions to manage their advertising campaigns on TikTok.

“It is more important than ever for marketers to engage with users on social platforms and ensure that their ads appear next to brand safe & suitable content on a global scale. We are thrilled to deliver a holistic solution on TikTok and provide new levels of transparency and precision for these campaigns,” said Utzschneider.

Meanwhile, Melissa Yang, TikTok’s head of ecosystem partnerships, shared that they are thrilled to build on their partnership with IAS and introduce new solutions that give brands the confidence to scale their businesses and audiences on TikTok.

“Through this expansion, brands and advertisers around the world will have access to IAS viewability measurement to monitor the quality of their campaigns on our platform. We’re excited to see how this will usher in new levels of transparency and success for our clients,” said Yang.

Singapore – Global web recommendation platform Outbrain has expanded its global partnership with tech giant Microsoft, to utilise cloud computing service Microsoft Azure and encompass business, technology, and services.

Outbrain has been a long-standing Microsoft partner, through technology and advertising integrations that span MSN, Microsoft 365, Xbox, gaming, and Microsoft Bing. The expansion of the partnership will entail a multi-year Azure engagement to further enable the fast-paced innovation of Outbrain’s media platform. 

Through this, Outbrain aims to leverage Azure to further its global expansion, accelerate development cycles, and improve connectivity between advertisers and publishers, particularly with Outbrain’s programmatic bidders. This will also continue to drive forward the partnership through continuous innovation, enhancing Outbrain’s extensive data estate with a rich set of tools and services, ultimately helping Outbrain’s customers improve their business outcomes.

David Kostman, Outbrain’s co-CEO, commented that they are excited to further expand their strategic partnership with Microsoft, as they both share the mission of supporting independent journalism and the open web.

“Over the course of the last decade, we have worked together to serve publishers and advertisers with high-quality solutions across the globe. Extending our partnership with Microsoft to include Microsoft Azure technology as part of our hybrid cloud platform will drive innovation and deepen the relationship between our companies,” said Kostman.

Meanwhile, Andrew Burke, Outbrain’s managing director for APAC and growth markets, namely India, China, and Brazil, said, “This partnership represents another significant milestone in our efforts to provide innovative solutions to publishers and advertisers in our local markets”

Tara Brady, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of strategic partnerships, said, “We are pleased to expand our established partnership and look forward to partnering with Outbrain’s technology teams as they leverage Microsoft Azure’s most advanced technologies to service their customers.”

Rob Wilk, Microsoft’s vice president of advertising, commented, “We’ve been impressed by Outbrain’s platform, scale, and technology and are pleased to see Outbrain embrace Microsoft Azure and look forward to how it will improve performance for advertisers in Microsoft’s growing advertising ecosystem and on the open web.”

Singapore – Marketing and advertising solutions Rakuten Advertising has launched Accelerate, a fully-managed, affiliate marketing program led by experienced analysts leveraging unique data insights, competitive intelligence, custom campaign modelling, and publisher matchmaking to optimise performance marketing spend with unprecedented speed.

The new affiliate program assumes the financial risk of testing new publishers, meaning advertisers are guaranteed to only pay for performance. By tapping into the company’s network of 150,000 publishers in North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM, Accelerate makes it simple and profitable for brands to expand into new markets and drive incremental sales.

The solution offers guaranteed performance-based costs, which allow brands to pay exclusively for performance via a fixed percentage of revenue, while Rakuten Advertising takes on the risks of up-front publisher investments. It also provides first-party data and insights, where the program taps into Rakuten Advertising’s data network.

Moreover, the solution has real-time analysis and optimisation, where all campaigns have a dedicated analyst who draws on data from Rakuten Advertising’s network to constantly improve performance by recommending new publishers, optimising commission payments, identifying paid-placement opportunities, and customising offers and performance incentives.

It also provides publisher matchmaking, where data-led AI matchmaking identifies the best partners from Rakuten Advertising’s network of global publishers to drive optimal growth for each campaign. And lastly, it also offers a fully managed program, allowing Rakuten Advertising’s analysts and account teams to manage every aspect of a campaign, from publisher recruitment and communication to IO execution and paid placement negotiations.

Jeff Wender, Rakuten Advertising’s chief revenue officer, shared that Accelerate allows advertisers to enjoy the benefits of affiliate marketing in a way that only a network of their scale and experience can deliver.

“We’re committed to helping brands capitalise on this period of economic recovery. Accelerate is a valuable addition to our suite of solutions that create innovative, more customised ways for advertisers to interact with consumers, so they can scale quickly and recover their positions while reducing the risk of their digital advertising investment,” said Wender. 

Rakuten Advertising said that Accelerate can be tailored for brands with a range of goals – whether it’s international expansion, launching a new business or product, enhancing an existing affiliate program, or re-focusing in-house talent. By leveraging Rakuten Advertising’s dynamic commissioning rules, Accelerate account teams reward publishers for delivering targeted brand goals, and personalise campaigns to align with consumer interests and publisher content to create a more positive ad experience.

Australia – In-game advertising platform Anzu has partnered with global gametech company Livewire to help APAC advertisers reach Roblox players through blended in-game ad placements.

Roblox is a global metaverse where players gather to create, share, and play together in immersive worlds. Currently, the platform has over 40 million games covering every genre imaginable.

The partnership will allow advertisers to run non-disruptive ads within many of Roblox’s most popular titles, namely All Star Tower Defense, Speed Run 4, Wacky Wizards, and Weight Lifting Simulator. Advertisers working with Anzu also benefit from guaranteed viewable impressions, brand safety, detailed campaign reporting, and brand lift measurement. 

According to Top Down Games, the studio behind Roblox hit ‘All Star Tower Defense’ which is one of Roblox’s most-played titles, Anzu’s solution allows brands to become part of the game, with their ads appearing on in-game objects that naturally feel part of the gameplay. At the same time, they can reach millions of players within an environment where they are fully engaged and feel comfortable.

Indy Khabra and Brad Manuel, Livewire’s co-founders, commented that they are thrilled to partner with Anzu and extremely excited to bring the Roblox platform exclusively to marketers and agencies in APAC. 

“Livewire’s vision to be the leading gaming marketing and gametech company takes another leap forward with the immersive virtual world of Roblox. The platform is also fully GDPR and COPPA compliant highlighting their dedication to kidsafe gaming,” said Khabra and Manuel. 

Itamar Benedy, Anzu’s co-founder and CEO, noted that some of the world’s biggest brands are using Roblox’s popularity and global reach to access previously hard-to-reach audiences, who are increasingly spending more time on the platform. 

“Thanks to our exclusive partnership with Livewire, advertisers in APAC can now reach an engaged and diverse audience through our non-disruptive in-game ads that add to the gameplay, making experiences more realistic,” said Benedy.

Singapore – As the gaming scene in the Asia-Pacific region continues to flourish, their activity gives marketers and advertisers the opportunity to expand their demographic base, evident with the latest partnership of media investment company GroupM and global interactive live streaming service Twitch, which aims to give advertisers access to the large gamer base in the region.

Through the partnership, GroupM’s clients will enjoy access to insights on Twitch audiences in a fragmented Asia-Pacific region that stream Alpha, Beta, and Early Access games, as well as access to Twitch CTV (connected TV) inventory.

Furthermore, it also gives GroupM’s clients access to Twitch’s innovative solutions, which offers a full suite of services from ideation to production, for bespoke ads and experiences. Additionally, GroupM and Twitch will co-author a playbook that is designed to help FMCG advertisers target gaming audiences across Asia-Pacific, to be launched this year.

As the platform provides content options beyond gaming, Twitch is at the forefront of live entertainment and features content that is relevant to audiences in this region, such as music and art, which allows GroupM not only with in-depth streaming knowledge and tools to help brands but will also enable a seamless experience working with Twitch as a platform to reach millions of gaming, music and art audiences.

“At GroupM, we are focused on building our gaming expertise. Asia-Pacific is made of vibrant communities – especially gaming communities, and Twitch continues to be the leading service that cultivates today’s most sought-after audiences. We’re excited to collaborate with Twitch, and we are committed to making smarter gaming decisions for our clients based on Twitch’s unique audience insights,” said John Miskelly, APAC investment director at GroupM.

Meanwhile, Sunil Yadav, head of agency development at Twitch, commented, “Twitch is excited to partner with institutions that create significant impact and GroupM’s razor focus on high-quality engagement for brands makes them an ideal partner for us.”

He added, “With Twitch’s unique advertising solutions to help brands build closer relationships with consumers and co-create shared live experiences, we are confident that GroupM will be able to deliver strong consumer experiences with our insights.”

GroupM had previously worked with a gaming-related partnership with Philippine-based esports talent agency Tier One in a bid to make advertising more inclusive in the esports community in the region, including opening it up to more mainstream brands.