Tag: Asia Pacific

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Digital entertainment and media platform Azerion has acquired programmatic agency and trading desk Hybrid Theory, which specialises in mid and lower funnel campaigns.

The acquisition allows Azerion to open a new footprint for the company in the US, and the broader APAC market.

Hybrid Theory’s technology delivers a hybrid approach that connects data intelligence with human nuance, understanding, and creativity, to power smarter advertising across the full customer journey.

Through the acquisition, Azerion will integrate Hybrid Theory’s custom-built technology offering of solutions, hands-on support and independent managed execution. Hybrid Theory’s strength in data will allow Azerion to build and target detailed audience segments, proving effective for brands at acquiring new customers.

In addition, Azerion will strengthen its position in the UK, US, and the broader APAC market to deliver and work with their advertisers and publishers in collaborative and hybrid ways, bridging the gap between in-housing and outsourcing for brands and agencies. 

Umut Akpinaar, co-CEO of Azerion, said, “I am pleased to announce the acquisition of Hybrid Theory by Azerion. This acquisition will provide Azerion with enhanced skills and capabilities to manage advertiser campaign performance. We are confident that Hybrid Theory’s market-leading data capabilities will provide Azerion with the best-in-class technology to power better and smarter data-driven advertising potential to our advertisers and publishers.” 

He added, “As such, this acquisition is a perfect fit to our growing portfolio and we are excited to harness the power of data and create tailored ads to give our audiences the best experience on our platform.”

Meanwhile, Patrick Johnson, CEO of Hybrid Theory, said, “Joining the Azerion Group allows us to continue to deliver on our ambitions through far greater global scale and linkages between our technology and the Azerion platform. Hybrid Theory’s unique capabilities in data now have the addition of proprietary first party data at scale, which coupled with Azerion’s branding capabilities provide an unparalleled linkage with our performance heritage.” 

He added, “At the same time, Azerion’s culture is also a fantastic match of client-focused entrepreneurial thinking to deliver industry-leading results. We are thrilled to be joining the Azerion team.”

Azerion recently announced a tie-up with advertising platform Right Thing Media to allow advertisers to deliver campaigns with social impact messaging inside its portfolio of in-game advertising and high-impact inventory across APAC. 

Singapore – Around 74% of C-suite executives in the Asia-Pacific region are under pressure to prove greater short-term return of investment (ROI) on their marketing campaigns amidst times of uncertainty, according to data from social media platform LinkedIn.

According to the data, almost 98% of B2B marketing leaders in APAC said that improving the chief financial officer’s awareness and understanding of B2B marketing ROI will be vital for strengthening future marketing budgets.

The data also finds that 40% of businesses in APAC are financially preparing for tough times ahead, which is putting heightened pressure on marketers to prove business impact. 

At a global level, a third of CMOs globally are concerned that uncertainty will force them to operate more reactively (30%) and curb creative campaigns (31%).

In terms of marketing spending, around 58% of B2B marketing leaders in APAC are planning to maintain or increase spend in this area over the next six months. Furthermore, 82% of marketers in APAC believe companies that increase or maintain their marketing spend throughout economic uncertainty recover faster.

“With CFOs facing incredibly hard choices in the coming months, they will naturally be a critical stakeholder for CMOs and their marketing teams. Maintaining existing budgets and strengthening future ones is dependent on marketers’ ability to speak the language of the CFO and now, more than ever, marketers need to master the language of effectiveness.” the research stated.

Prue Cox, director of enterprise for SEA & ANZ marketing solutions at LinkedIn said, “While we know the economy is in a state of flux, it’s important that marketers continue to invest in marketing as by pulling back investment, they risk long term damage to their brand. As marketing budgets are often the first to be scrutinised and tightened in times of uncertainty, it’s important that senior leaders can show ROI to their stakeholders.”

She added, “Speaking the language of the CFO, to demonstrate an alignment of marketing metrics to business metrics, and pulling the right strategic levers, will help maintain existing budgets and strengthen future ones. By nurturing key relationships with important leaders, like the CFO, and using data as information, can demonstrate business impact and will put brands in a much stronger position now and in the future.”

Shenzhen, China – China’s tech behemoth Tencent has announced a new wave of layoffs, affecting teams on its video streaming, gaming, and cloud businesses.

Sources told Reuters that it spread across three out of six of Tencent’s business divisions. They include platform and content (PCG); the gaming-focused interactive entertainment department (IEG), and the cloud and smart industries group (CSIG).

There is no exact figure how many Tencent employees were laid off.

Tencent previously announced a wave of job cuts in September this year, affecting around 5,000 people or 5% of the company’s workforce. Some of the companies under the conglomerate which underwent downsizing include gaming publication Fanbyte and short-video platform Xiaohongshu.

The firm has a stake in numerous social media platforms and gaming companies;including Riot Games, Epic Games, Roblox, Discord, Pocket Gems, amongst others.

Tencent’s latest update follows a massive wave of tech layoffs globally, including Meta, Salesforce, Shopee, Netflix, Snap, and Oracle.

Sydney, Australia – Integrated communications network Havas Group has recently announced its acquisition of Bastion Brands, one of Australia’s leading independent communications agencies focusing on the health vertical. The buy-out is said to be in line with the group’s continuation of its plans for the APAC expansion.

Newly acquired Bastion Brands is no stranger to Havas. The group’s health-focused division, Havas Health & You (HH&Y), has, in fact, been working with the latter since 2019. 

Bastion Brands will now be integrated into HH&Y and will work closely with partners across the network to integrate its business into projects across the region.

Simon Davies, Bastion Brands’ founder & CEO said, “We are delighted to be joining the Havas family. The strength and momentum within Havas Health & You will help us accelerate our strong growth in Australia. Now with access to and support from the Havas network, we will be able to offer deeper and broader services to clients, globally developed insights and specialised health products, and even more exciting learning and growth opportunities for our staff.”

Yannick Bolloré, chairman and CEO of Havas Group also commented, “Bastion Brands is recognized for delivering significant and meaningful results for its strong client base of leading pharmaceutical companies across the world. Adding its capabilities to our global Havas Health & You network will provide specialised health communications for both that region and our clients globally. Bastion Brands also complements fast growth within our health PR business Red Havas in Australia, and we’re thrilled to officially welcome the Bastion Brands team to our Group.”

“Continuing our work with Bastion Brands is a perfect fit for our expansion in Australia and Asia Pacific – a region where our clients have many strategic opportunities. We have partnered with Simon Davies and his team on meaningful, high-profile client assignments for several years, and have built a strong and effective relationship to deliver outstanding outcomes. This more formal relationship is a natural progression and I know it will be a successful one – for our clients, for Bastion Brands and for Havas Health & You,” added Charles Houdoux, CEO of APAC & LATAM at Havas Health & You. 

According to Havas, HH&Y has grown at a rate of more than 20% per year in Asia, and the acquisition of Bastion Brands is aimed at strengthening its position in APAC. 

In addition, as a response to rapid regional growth spurred by increased awareness of health and wellness, the network has made significant investments in its Villages and senior leadership to foster growth across the region. This includes the establishment of a regional hub for Southeast Asia and the strengthening of new talent in Japan and China.

Bastion Brands follows companies like Front Networks in China and Frontier Australia, both have been acquired by Havas Group this year together with many business wins by their specialist entertainment communications agency, Organic Pacific, and partnership with Invictus Blue in Malaysia.

Singapore – The massive layoffs by social media giant Twitter has finally reached the Asia-Pacific region, affecting a large chunk of employees across various teams, including communications, marketing, engineering, and sales.

A report from The Straits Times notes that while the number of laid-off employees are unknown, it is understood that employees who were laid off receive said notice on their private emails, while those who have kept their jobs received an email on their corporate one.

Internal email from Twitter states that the lay-offs were part of “an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path.”

Cipluk Carlita, who served as the head of communications for Twitter in Southeast Asia, was one of the people who bore the shocking corporate decision by the social media platform.

“While this is not how I would’ve wanted my journey to end, Twitter will always have a special place in my heart. It’s not just a place to work, but also to learn something new every single day and create lifelong friendships. Twitter is not a place. It’s the people,” she said on her LinkedIn.

The massive Twitter layoffs follow days after billionaire Elon Musk completed the social media giant’s acquisition. It should be noted that key C-Suite executives from Twitter’s global team have been fired, including CEO Parag Agarwal.

Musk’s takeover of Twitter has also caused a massive wave of advertising exodus, with large brands such as Mondelez, General Motors, and Pfizer announcing they have halted advertising on Twitter. In addition, advertising giant Interpublic Group (IPG) has also advised its clients to halt Twitter advertising for the meantime.

Despite Musk trying to appease advertisers to stay and initial reports saying that Twitter has approached several fired employees to come back, Musk’s Twitter takeover has had a rocky start, with rocky issues including the introduction of paid verification status, as well as lessened restrictions on controversial and far-right content.

Singapore – BeingIconic, an Australian consultancy centred around strategic marketing, commercial and operational expertise–is opening in Asia with backing from Singapore-based Avyan Holdings. It has also appointed Jack Lim as its principal for BeingIconic’s Asia operations based in Singapore.

Lim was previously the partner and chief growth officer at Avyan Global and former chief commercial and partnerships officer at ONE Championship and chief commercial officer at Mediacorp.

Following successful collaborations with over 50 scale-ups in Australia, BeingIconic has closed a pre-seed friends and family capital raise to expand operations in Asia and the UK, build out strategy and client services teams as well as investing in marketing and business development.

BeingIconic supports companies to scale outside of existing internal capabilities through flexible delivery of strategic marketing, network expansion, commercial and operational expertise. It has closed a A$1m pre-seed round with investment from Avyan Holdings, founded by former Havas chairman and CEO for South East Asia, Japan and Korea, Vishnu Mohan.

Peter Brocklebank, partner and managing director at BeingIconic said, “Since launching two years ago, we have taken a deliberate and staged approach to validate the proposition to ensure it delivers for companies ready for their scale-up journey. Scale-ups typically don’t fail because they don’t have a good product, they fail because they only have a great product. BeingIconic brings deep insights, expertise and networks to fuel the next phase of growth by becoming an integral part of their teams through expert guidance across marketing, operations and finance functions.”

Meanwhile, Ian Bell, partner and chief innovation officer at BeingIconic, commented, “There are significant opportunities to take the product and service innovations of Asian businesses and expand them out to new markets. BeingIconic’s mission is to grow these entrepreneurial scale-ups beyond their internal potential, be a trusted partner and help them realise their ambitions. The founders  together with our new shareholders are experienced in doing just that and now we are bringing this combined experience, and that of our wider team to scale-ups in Asia.”

Singapore – Yahoo has announced key appointments in its APAC team to bolster its adtech business in the region. They include Matt Farringtona as APAC head of partnerships and investment, Sandra Lin as APAC head of DSP strategy, Kenneth Koh as head of DSP for SEA, Terence Lim as business lead for SEA, and Natalie Phang as data and insights strategist for SEA.

Farrington will drive Yahoo’s investment strategy in the region and oversee commercial trading relationships with agencies and clients. He will lead the development and delivery of Yahoo’s trading deal models in APAC, generating value for agencies and clients across Yahoo’s best-in-class unified ad tech stack and omnichannel platforms.

Meanwhile, Lin will oversee the strategy for Yahoo’s ad platforms and unified ad tech stack, focusing on growing product adoption across the region. She will lead regional multi-discipline initiatives across product, positioning, and partnerships.

Koh will lead the demand-side Platform (DSP) team for SEA. His remit will include managing Yahoo’s growing platform specialist team that helps partners in Singapore and SEA realise their full potential through Yahoo’s buying solutions powered by its omnichannel, unified ad tech stack.

On the other hand, Lim will work closely with partners and agencies to help brands future-proof their marketing strategies and achieve their business goals through Yahoo’s unified ad tech stack.

Lastly, Phang will leverage her data strategy experience built across APAC and the EU, to help Yahoo’s agency and brand clients in SEA maximise their marketing investment for the cookieless world.

Paul Sigaloff, vice president and head of APAC at Yahoo, commented, “We are pleased to welcome these new talents to the Yahoo APAC team as we enter a phase of accelerated growth for Yahoo’s ad tech business in the region. Their collective expertise and experience will be invaluable to help create value for our clients and partners in APAC.” 

He added, “With a high-performance team and our market-leading ad tech capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to help brands solve their business objectives and take advantage of new opportunities in APAC’s dynamic digital landscape.”

The slew of appointments follows a series of appointments done this year, including Sebastian Graham as director of native, as well as John McNerneypromoted to senior director of platforms for APAC and Dan Richardson promoted to head of data for APAC.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Global creator company Jellysmack has recently inked a deal with creator economy company WebTVAsia to allot US$30m of investment across content creators in the Asia-Pacific region to accelerate their growth.

The funding means WebTVAsia’s content creators can propel growth forward with capital to take their businesses to the next level through hiring teams, building new studio space, launching products, increasing quality content creation, and more.

Said deal also marks one of Jellysmack’s significant investments in the region.

In addition, the new partnership further strengthens Jellysmack’s support of top global creators and aligns with WebTVAsia’s mission to empower Asian Pacific creators with opportunities and resources to maximise the return on the investment of their content.

Ezechiel Ritchie, general manager for APAC, at Jellysmack, said, “Partnering with WebTVAsia to deploy capital to APAC creators is a unique opportunity. They are a key partner that understands the pulse of Asia and can foster creators’ growth via our creator financing program.”

He added, “This initiative is going to have a huge impact on content creators in the region enabling them to scale up through a variety of new financial technology solutions personalised to their unique needs, and I can’t wait to see the results.”

Meanwhile, Fred Chong, group CEO and founder at WebTVAsia, commented, “WebTVAsia was one of the first to invest into the creator economy of Asia since 2013. In the past 3-year pandemic-hit period alone, we have generated over US$100m in direct income for creators. Our long term relationship is built on 3 ‘F’ values that creators desire most: Fame, Fortune and Freedom (to create).”

He added, “As a creator myself, I see this partnership with Jellysmack as a game-changer that will open up new possibilities for creators to bridge the Web 2.0 and 3.0 worlds. The next 6-12 months will see us launching exciting new creator tools and solutions including content NFTs, digital wallet, virtual identity for metaverse, fan community, and Web 2.5 monetization models.”

Jellysmack, whose roster includes major creators like MrBeast, How Ridiculous, JianHao Tan, Food Kingdom, Junya, and PewDiePie, uses artificial intelligence to detect promising creators and helps skyrocket their social growth with multi-platform content optimization and distribution. To date, Jellysmack has earned over US$175m for creators. 

The partnership is a part of Jellysmack’s newly established creator finance division, JellyFi, which is a US$500m initiative to help creators achieve their boldest ambitions, as well as nine-figure Series C investment from SoftBank.

Singapore – Warren Fernandez, formerly an editor affiliated with The Straits Times, has been named the new chief executive officer of Edelman in Asia-Pacific, effective October 25 this year.

Fernandez will join the firm’s global executive leadership team and report to global president and chief operating officer Matthew Harrington. He replaces Stephen Kehoe, who left Edelman in June. Dave Samson, global vice chairman of corporate affairs, has served as interim CEO since Kehoe’s departure.

His appointment also follows several key appointments for Edelman’s health arm in APAC, in Singapore, and the appointment of Melvin Goo as new chief operating officer for Indonesia.

He joins from English/Malay/Tamil Media Group in SPH Media, where he was the editor-in-chief. He simultaneously served as the editor of The Straits Times. He joined The Straits Times as a political reporter in 1990 and would go on to serve as news editor as well as foreign editor and deputy editor. 

In 2008, Fernandez left to join Royal Dutch Shell as a global manager for its Future Energy project, working with its scenario planning and communications teams in London and the Hague. He returned to the paper in 2012 as its senior-most editor.

Speaking on his appointment, he said, “I’m very excited to join a firm that I have admired and worked with, as a client and partner, over the years. Edelman continues to drive the conversation on Trust and shape the future of the communications industry. I believe there is enormous potential to continue to expand upon the vital thought leadership, as well as media, brand and strategic communications advice we provide to our clients. I look forward to leading the team in Asia Pacific and working with the industry-leading talent across its global network.”

Meanwhile, Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, commented, “Asia is one of the most important markets to Edelman’s future. We have purposely built a communications advisory firm to help Asian companies step onto the global stage, while also supporting other companies as they seek to expand into the diverse markets of Asia. Our ability to help companies navigate the complexities across this vast and dynamic region have never been more critical to businesses and we are the right firm to help them succeed in doing so.”

Singapore – Initiative, the media agency under IPG Mediabrands, has appointed Niranjan Singh as its new head of communications in Asia-Pacific. In his new role, he will champion the application of best-practice approaches, techniques and solutions for modern experience design.

In addition, he will drive the connected communications design practice across key clients and sectors for Initiative APAC.

Singh will report to James Smyllie, president of Initiative APAC and is currently based in Mumbai, India prior to transitioning to the Initiative APAC regional headquarters in Singapore. His appointment is effective immediately. 

He has more than 16 years industry experience in strategic media planning and buying, and was previously the head of AOR at Mediacom Indonesia, leading the P&G business for three years.

Prior to that, he spent six years at GroupM, working across leading brands such as Colgate Palmolive, GSK and FrieslandCampina in India and Vietnam.

Speaking on his appointment, Singh said, “I’m thrilled to join Initiative APAC. Initiative’s unique proposition of achieving Cultural Velocity™ in the media-fragmented world to deliver real business growth and success for brands, was the big pull factor for me. I’m super excited to become a part of the team that has been winning Global businesses back-to-back.”

Meanwhile, Smyllie commented, “We are delighted to be attracting talent like Niran to Initiative. This hire reinforces our key focus on enhancing our Craft capabilities across APAC, and driving a consistently world class product throughout the region.”

The new Initiative appointment follows a slew of appointments made by agencies under the IPG Mediabrands company in APAC, namely the appointment of MBCS’ Olivia Warren to its Australia executive team, as well as of Sarah O’Leary and Tom Cumberworth for Initiative’s Rufus, the dedicated media and communications for Amazon.