Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Singapore – Yahoo Advertising has just recently launched ‘Yahoo Blueprint’, its latest central AI suite that powers performance-based solutions within the Yahoo DSP.

Fueled by over 335 million logged in Yahoo users globally, Yahoo Blueprint enhances decisioning, makes AI more accessible, and serves as a results-driven guide throughout the campaign lifecycle to deliver better outcomes for advertisers.

With Yahoo Blueprint, Yahoo DSP clients are promised with acquiring stronger results through performance that leverages years of AI to bid on the right impressions, optimisation through AI co-pilot that provides recommendations for campaign improvements and auto-optimises, as well as a simple and enhanced UI that guides advertisers and offers more efficiency.

Since Yahoo Blueprint is said to be an evolving AI ecosystem, it will be adopting more enhancements in the future. As of now, other notable features of Yahoo Blueprint include new data visualisation layouts, bidding and forecasting precision through the Omniscope tool, an AI-powered insights tool, a predictive audience feature, and customer value optimization. 

Commenting on Yahoo Blueprint, Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, chief revenue officer at Yahoo, said, “What sets our AI suite apart is the vast scale of proprietary data we tap into before considering third-party or customer first-party data. In introducing Yahoo Blueprint, we are now allowing advertisers to capitalise on Yahoo’s extensive history of machine learning and data-driven decision-making in a new and accessible way.”

“With Yahoo Blueprint, advertisers always hold the reins. Yahoo Blueprint not only focuses on enhancing performance, but also aims to reduce friction and maintain transparency, ensuring both ease of use and advertiser control,” she added.

Singapore – In pursuit of bringing a hyper-personalised digital experience in the market, the Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI) has announced its recent affiliation with Personetics, a global leader in financial data-driven personalisation and customer engagement. With this joint effort, the two are set to improve the customer’s financial well-being including financial literacy using the latest introduction of BPI’s AI-powered track and plan app. 

This new app utilises self-services options for depositing funds, paying bills and other transactions. It also generates personalised recommendations for active digital users based on their unique financial transactional data. 

Furthermore, the collaboration with Personetics plays an essential role in enriching personal savings and debit card data for BPI customers. It categorises them and offers value-added advisory services and 20 out-of-the-box hyper-personalised insights, aiding customers in managing cash flows, making informed financial decisions, and saving.

Following this endeavour, Fitzgerald Chee, head of consumer platforms at BPI said, “As the first bank in the Philippines, BPI has a long history of industry leadership, and today, it provides the most advanced digital capabilities of any bank in the country. We are proud to be the first to empower our customers with rich, personalised recommendations and insights.” 

“Personetics is an ideal partner in providing our customers with the tools and direction they need to become more involved and active in shaping their own financial future,” he added.

Meanwhile, David Sosna, CEO and co-founder at Personetics remarked “We are delighted that BPI, the pioneer in providing advanced PFM for banking customers in the Philippine market, has chosen Personetics as its partner in this exciting endeavour. As a bank with a long and illustrious history of providing innovative services for both consumers and businesses, BPI is an ideal partner in ensuring that Personetics is spot on in addressing consumers’ unique banking issues and financial concerns. 

“We are fully committed to supporting the bank in its effort to advance financial literacy and well-being and welcome the opportunity to work closely with BPI to create even more value for the customers it serves,” he added. 

Future plans including integration of credit card data will also allow BPI to provide clients with more tools to improve personal financial management and wellbeing. By incorporating ACT auto-savings and sustainability analytics, the company looks forward to assisting more clients in creating and reaching savings goals, as well as connecting the back-office to Salesforce.

Singapore – As workforces change along with the dynamic state of industries, global communications platform Slack has unveiled its new global research via YouGov designed to explore the different approaches and personalities in the workplace, and the impact of those differences on desk worker preferences and the adoption of technology and AI.

Data from Slack and YouGov mainly suggests that Singapore has the second highest number of individuals who thrive on virtual connectivity, mobility and adaptability, whilst Singapore workers are also ranked second in terms of leveraging AI at work. 

Going into specifics, the study revealed five dominant types of workplace personas in a Singapore workplace namely, ‘The Road Warrior’, ‘The Detective’, ‘The Networker’, ‘The Problem Solver’, and ‘The Expressionist’.

According to the survey of over 15,000 desk workers across nine markets, Singapore ranks high globally for its workforce’s comfort in building virtual connections and thriving in varied work locations. This type of worker, dubbed The ‘Road Warrior’, makes up 26% of the Singapore workforce and prioritises flexibility over all else.

The most common traits of Singapore ‘Road Warriors’ include working away from their desk (91%) and working wherever they want in a way that fits their schedule is the most important to them (46%). They describe themselves as adaptable (85%) and colleagues describe them as being most likely to work from a new location (26%).

In contrast, Singapore reports fewer ‘Detectives’ (21% compared to 30% globally)—those with a knack for seeking and sharing information—compared to other regions. Singapore’s comparatively younger workforce is a factor here, with Detectives found to be most common amongst older workforces. 

Singaporeans classified as ‘Detectives’ are best described as organised (94%), with a preference for figuring things out on their own (85%), sharing information with others on the team, and finding the right information as quickly as possible. Colleagues describe this persona as the best at digging up information (42%), and most likely to know everything going on at the company (52%).

With this in mind, the research also revealed that one in four desk workers globally are currently working with AI (26%), with the highest usage being in Singapore (34%) and India (54%). 

Notably, the personas identified in the research showed differences in how they approach the adoption of new technology, such as AI, in the workplace. Detectives and Road Warriors feel the least supported with the introduction of new technology, with 15% of each group globally feeling their company provides little or no training or information. 

This highlights the importance for  Singapore businesses to better understand the training and skills gaps that workers need the most support with, especially in getting a better handle on how to best introduce AI.   

Talking about the findings, Derek Laney, Slack technology evangelist, APAC, Salesforce, commented, “Whether you have five or 5,000 people, every workplace has a unique ecosystem of personalities, skill sets and working styles.

“With Singapore’s culturally diverse workforce, recognising these differences is vital for businesses that want to provide a truly empowering environment for their staff. No two employees work exactly alike, leaders must embrace a flexible management approach and versatile technologies so people can play to their unique strengths at work,” he added.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Data and AI company Axiata Digital & Analytics Sdn Bhd (ADA), has recently announced international trade and development company Mitsui’s investment of US$58m, facilitated through ADA’s holding company, Axiata Digital Services Sdn Bhd (ADS).

Mitsui’s additional investment has established a watermark valuation of US$550m for ADA, reflecting the company’s continued growth and innovation in the digital and data transformation domain.

On the strength of the investment, ADA is set to broaden its digital reach and reinforce its commitment to advancing digital and data transformation in the region. Mitsui has also been working closely with ADS and ADA since their initial investment in 2019, and is now intensifying its efforts to deliver data and AI solutions to partners and clients in the APAC region.

Talking about the investment, Srinivas Gattamneni, chief executive officer of ADA, said, “Mitsui’s strong endorsement highlights our extraordinary growth story. We are excited about the prospect of deepening our collaboration with Mitsui to empower their partners with cutting-edge data, AI, and technology solutions.”

Vivek Sood, group chief executive officer and managing director of Axiata, added, “Mitsui has a strong and proven track record of bolstering innovative businesses in the fields of AI, data analytics and digital transformation. We are confident that broadening our strategic partnership will further enhance ADA’s expertise in AI and data analytics with Mitsui’s substantial business capabilities derived from a global portfolio.”

Meanwhile, Toru Matsui, representative director, senior executive managing officer of Mitsui & Co. Ltd, commented, “We look forward to collaborating closely with Axiata Group and ADS/ADA in order to contribute to the growth of ADA by accelerating the provision of its digital marketing solutions and data analysis services to our partners throughout the region.”

Sydney, Australia – Digital experience platform Optimizely has announced the launch of Optimizely One, its new operating system for marketing practitioners built on their previously established platform.

Composed of Optimizely’s integrated capabilities built on a modern SaaS, Optimizely One offers a highly composable architecture, giving teams the flexibility to choose what they need in their marketing ecosystem.

Optimizely One is enriched through a single, unified workflow accelerated by AI, making it simple for marketers to create, manage, deliver, and optimise content all in one place. Secure and scalable, Optimizely One provides teams with the future-proof stack they need to create and optimise digital experiences for their customers.

With the new operating system, users can design entire web experiences with a low/no-code interface, benefit from automatic upgrades, aggregate, manage, and deliver content efficiently, from any source, and apply pre-built templates and customer data to create engaging experiences via an all-new, user-friendly editor. 

Optimizely One also aims to connect teams through a unified workflow based on a single integrated platform that allows you to log in once and seamlessly navigate across all Optimizely applications. New capabilities include experiment collaboration through a purpose built tool, and an omnichannel authoring feature. 

Taking an ecosystem approach, Optimizely One embeds their own Opal AI with their newly announced solution partner, Writer, helping teams work faster and make better decisions through business-focused language learning models (LLMs) to create enhanced AI-generated content that includes specific industry knowledge.

Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely, said, “Optimizely One provides exactly what marketers need to orchestrate their content, monetize experiences and experiment across all touchpoints – all enriched through smart workflows and accelerated by AI. The time is now for companies to seize the opportunity to reinvent how marketing, product and growth teams work together to create content-driven digital experiences.”

Meanwhile, Rupali Jain, chief product officer at Optimizely, commented, “Optimizely One is a shared operating system that gives teams unprecedented levels of transparency, flexibility and simplicity to manage their entire marketing lifecycle. With the guidance of Opal and the power of experimentation data, every part of the lifecycle is rooted in science.”

Singapore – Data and AI company Databricks announced that it has agreed to acquire Arcion, a Databricks Ventures portfolio company that helps enterprises quickly and reliably replicate data across on-prem, cloud databases and data platforms. 

This acquisition of Arcion will enable Databricks to provide native solutions to ingest data from various databases and SaaS applications into the Databricks Lakehouse platform, with a transaction valued at over $100 million, inclusive of incentives.

In turn, the acquisition will enable Databricks to natively provide a scalable, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solution to ingest data from various enterprise data sources. Building on a scalable change data capture (CDC) engine, Arcion offers connectors for over 20 enterprise databases and data warehouses. 

Furthermore, the integration will simplify ingesting such data either continuously or on-demand into the lakehouse, fully integrated with the enterprise security, governance, and compliance capabilities of the platform.

Talking about the agreement, Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO at Databricks, said, “Arcion’s highly reliable and easy-to-use solution will enable our customers to make that data available almost instantly for faster and more informed decision-making. Arcion will be a great asset to Databricks, and we are excited to welcome the team and work with them to further develop solutions to help our customers accelerate their data and AI journeys.”

Meanwhile, Gary Hagmueller, CEO of Arcion, commented, ”Arcion’s real-time, large-scale CDC data pipeline technology extends Databricks’ market-leading ETL solution to include replication of operational data in real-time. Databricks has been a great partner and investor in Arcion, and we are very excited to join forces to help companies simplify and accelerate their data and AI business momentum.”

Singapore – Integral Ad Science has revealed ‘Made for Advertising; (MFA), an AI-powered site detection and avoidance product. The company’s MFA site technology is aimed at increasing transparency about advertiser campaign quality, pinpointing ad expenditure allocation, and providing insights for optimising campaigns to reduce inefficiencies on MFA sites.

When used for advertising purposes, MFA sites, which are web pages designed to display advertisements alongside poor content and frequently tuned for conventional metrics like viewability, frequently fail to deliver significant results, such as conversions or brand enhancement.

IAS’s latest product, which makes use of AI technology, efficiently identifies MFA sites on a large scale, allowing advertisers to regain control over their media quality and reduce inefficient spending. IAS provided extensive campaign analysis during alpha testing, demonstrating exceptional MFA site recognition for some of the global advertisers and agencies.

IAS’s product is in line with the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) most recent definition of an MFA site, which uses factors like ad-to-content ratio, ad refresh frequency, and traffic source to identify MFA sites. 21% of all measured advertising impressions were found to be delivered on MFA sites, according to the ANA’s Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study.

Speaking about the launch, Yannis Dosios, chief commercial officer, Integral Ad Science, said, “Our MFA product was built to deliver unprecedented transparency to advertisers and provide them with the ability to both detect and avoid MFA sites in order to redirect their ad spend to publishers that drive a return. The industry faces a significant challenge in combating MFA sites. By leveraging AI, we have developed a scalable way to identify these low quality sources of inventory and improve overall campaign performance.”

Meanwhile, Bill Duggan, executive vice president of ANA group, commented, “Advertisers should recognize that MFA websites can account for a significant portion of their overall campaign and should determine, independently, if MFA sites fit with their brand suitability standards for content and user experience. We applaud IAS for taking action after we released the findings from our programmatic transparency report and for supporting our definition of MFA.” 

He added, “We have found that awareness of MFA sites among the ANA community of media professionals to be limited – which is surprising. We look forward to further developments from IAS around MFA site identification and ad spend optimization to help better educate and inform buyers.”

Singapore – Marketing and monetisation technologies provider InMobi, unveiled InMobi Addressability Gradient, a platform designed to support marketers throughout the transition from identity-centric targeting to new solutions that have limited consumer identity signals.

InMobi’s AI-powered platform aims to mark a significant stride forward in addressing the challenges posed by the ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising through its personalisation and other campaign enhancing features.

Delving into said features, the Gradient enables advertisers to navigate the evolving complexities of data privacy, user consent and personalised targeting. Fueled by InMobi’s ID Graph, the Gradient provides advertisers with an adaptable playbook and visual roadmap for addressability, offering a wide spectrum of options that seamlessly align with changing consumer behaviours.

From precise ID-based targeting to privacy-conscious ID-less approaches, the Gradient also empowers advertisers to personalise content while upholding data privacy and user content. Spanning from personalised 1:1 targeting and household amplification to inventive privacy-compliant techniques like cohort audiences, modelled audiences, contextual targeting and bidstream amplification.

Lastly, the Gradient can enhance campaigns by integrating a variety of identifiers like mobile advertising identifiers (MAIDs) and interoperability with people-based identifiers including LiveRamp’s RampID. By leveraging the ID Graph, this bid augmentation strategy ensures precise targeting, boosted further by the ID Graph’s connections between users with shared interests. For ID-less solutions, InMobi leverages SDK and contextual signals to broaden addressability without compromising consumer privacy.

Todd Rose, senior vice president of addressability at InMobi, said, “In the evolving landscape of ad tech, the ability to understand audience signals and use them to enhance media strategies and creative executions has become increasingly refined; by embracing the Gradient, advertisers can continue to deliver relevant, effective, and privacy-conscious advertising experiences to consumers.”

“The Gradient empowers advertisers to optimise their campaigns, achieve unparalleled precision, and unlock the full potential of addressability in the ever-changing world of digital advertising,” he added. 

Singapore – In today’s dynamic business landscape, the ability to deliver exceptional customer experience (CX) has become a critical differentiator. Customers, now more than ever, demand exceptional service and are even willing to pay a premium for it. And so, with growing customer needs and demands, businesses must learn how to leverage technology to deliver a truly seamless customer experience that will set them apart from the rest.

In this journey towards revolutionising CX, the capabilities brought about by artificial intelligence (AI) serve as a powerful ally. With AI technology’s ability to process huge volumes of data and predict customer behaviour, it can address customer needs and resolve issues more efficiently for businesses. 

For Admir Mašin, head of platforms in Asia-Pacific at Infobip, businesses must develop strong omnichannel CX strategies to drive growth while providing a favourable customer journey across all channels. He further highlighted the power of conversations in elevating businesses, advising brands and platform businesses to engage with customers in real-time in their preferred channels and to be present when and where their customers expect them to be.

Mašin also talked about CPaaS X, a set of modular and flexible APIs that is made to eliminate the complexities brought about by CPaaS integration for platform businesses. He highlighted how Infobip’s CPaaS X speeds up onboarding and time to market, reduces operational load, and streamlines engineering efforts, thus simplifying a customer’s workload and giving them more space to focus on scaling their business.

Meanwhile, industry leaders Lisa Collins, director of experience platforms at Accenture; James McIntyre, customer experience lead at Cashrewards; Prerna Pant, co-founder of Radarr; as well as Mašin, also provided their industry insights on how brands can revolutionise their current customer experiences to become more future-proof and efficient. 

The industry experts in Asia-Pacific shared their advice on what are the best practices in establishing the best CX strategy for brands and businesses aiming to revolutionise their customer experience strategies by utilising cutting-edge technologies.

Collins shared how important it is for brands to employ a life-centric approach when assessing and dealing with customers. She emphasised how brands that are thriving are those that focus more on how they can help people with their needs, personalising what they can offer, and improving the customer’s journey with the brand.

In addition, Pant also discussed the relevance of understanding customers at each stage of their journey. By using advanced technologies like social media listening tools, brands can track and understand what’s driving customers in each stage of their journey, helping them solve problems and anticipate trends in the future.

Meanwhile, McIntyre pointed out the importance of having the right measurement in a brand’s CX programme. Businesses must learn how to choose the right metrics and visualise data so that it measures what matters for the customer and business.

Mašin also suggested investing in conversational technologies, leveraging AI capabilities to increase efficiency while also fostering interactions with audiences to create satisfaction and drive success.

The webinar, titled CX Revolution: Leveraging AI Tech for Seamless Customer Experience, is made in partnership with omnichannel communications platform Infobip. It was attended by industry experts and marketing representatives from countries inside and outside of APAC.

If you missed going to the event, you may register HERE to obtain your on-demand access.

Singapore – According to recent Adobe research, Singaporean brands are attempting to improve operational efficiency through the implementation of technology solutions, with 70% focusing on improving workflow efficiency and 59% implementing generative AI. This is despite the fact that there has been an evident lag of firms adopting it not just in Singapore but also in the region.

In Southeast Asia (SEA), only 64% of brands prioritise technologies that improve workflows, and 56% incorporate generative AI into their operations in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. However, the research shows that Singaporean brands’ formal integration of generative AI into their business processes lags behind both consumer demand and employee utilisation.

Consumers in Singapore are positive about how generative AI can improve products and services (33%), as well as improve the customer experience (37%). Notably, 39% of Singaporean consumers believe that adopting generative AI is critical for businesses to remain competitive, outpacing the 35% figure in the rest of Southeast Asia (SEA).

In work settings, 94% of Singaporean employees have already used generative AI in marketing and customer experience campaigns, while only 31% report that their employers are currently using generative AI tools. Text-to-image generators are used by 58% of these employees to create promotional brand materials and content, and 55% use them to develop campaign concepts and mock-ups. Furthermore, half of the workforce (50%) uses conversational AI for tasks like copy generation, research, and insight gathering.

In Southeast Asia (SEA), 95% of employees use generative AI tools for marketing campaigns, while only 42% of SEA respondents say their companies are currently implementing generative AI tools.

Simon Dale, vice president and managing director, Southeast Asia & Korea, Adobe, said, “A large majority of employees across SEA are incorporating generative AI tools at work, underscoring an urgent need for organisations to get ahead of the curve in AI usage regulations and policies. As generative AI technologies continue to evolve, an absence of a set of strong guardrails and AI ethics principles can pose risks to the organisation and even erode consumer trust.”