Singapore – As the pandemic has halted major events such as live entertainment and spectator sports, global live entertainment company AEG Sports has marked the use of advanced analytics to measure fan sentiments online and to encourage frequent engagement, through global analytics company SAS.

The analytics utilization uses SAS’ Viya via Microsoft Azure, which uses online models to gauge fan perspectives toward such things as returning to in-person games. By continuously analyzing fan sentiment during the pandemic, AEG Sports has been able to personalize messages based on interest and feelings on personal safety, and identify which fans needed targeted retention efforts. Using these tactics AEG Sports has kept fans happy and boosted the ROI of marketing campaigns.

“Times are unpredictable – but with SAS and Microsoft, we have two key partners that we feel confident can help us adapt and thrive under any circumstances. We might not know what’s going to happen, but we know SAS and Microsoft have our goals in mind and will enable us to respond to any challenge we may face,” said Aaron LeValley, senior vice president of business operations and strategy at AEG Sports.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Rocha, general manager cloud solutions and ISV alliances at Microsoft, commented that more than ever, digital transformation is critical as organizations learn to adapt to new customer behaviors. He also added that SAS Viya on Azure helps make that transformation easier and faster, providing much-needed, immediate actionable insights.

The company also uses the embedded capabilities in SAS Viya for contingency planning. The ability to quickly ingest and model data from multiple sources – including ticketing, partnerships, marketing, weather reports and health experts – helps AEG Sports reduce pandemic-driven uncertainty.

Jennifer Chase, senior vice president and head of marketing at SAS states that she is a strong proponent for customer-centricity – or in this case fan-centricity, adding that sports teams have a unique relationship with their ‘customers’, and AEG Sports’ passion for their fans has been evident during the pandemic.

“They [sports teams] use analytics to really understand fan reaction to the disruptions and determine how best to support them through it all. A fan experience with heart and humanity will inevitably lead to stronger fan connections, especially when fans recognize that their team understands their needs – in good or bad times,” Chase stated.

AI technology is at the heart of AEG Sports’ drive to continually increase the efficiency of its modeling efforts. The output of these models often become data visualizations, which AEG Sports uses to chart its day-to-day operations.

“Data visualization is critical to our business. Most people are visual learners, so being able to show a visual representation of data has been extremely beneficial in gaining buy-in. Right now, almost every department in our company uses data visualizations to make decisions and operate more efficiently,” John D’Onofrio, business analyst at AEG Sports, said.

He also added that they needed to turn data around quickly for games, so having daily reports with visualizations that sales leadership can look at and immediately understand is essential, especially when there’s a new game every two days.

Singapore – Media measurement and data analytics platform DoubleVerify has announced Doug Campbell, former chief strategy officer at video management platform Telaria, as its new chief strategy officer, where he will be responsible for the company’s global strategy and corporate development.

Campbell brings into the company more than two decades of experience successfully growing public and private companies in the arenas of advertising technology, connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) video, digital measurement, data analytics, and software-as-a-service (SaaS). 

At Telaria, he oversaw the successful merger with digital advertising infrastructure company Rubicon Project and the acquisition of video advertising platform SpotX to form Magnite, an independent sell-side platform.

Furthermore, he was formerly the chief operating officer at data management platform eXelate where he led the sale of the company to data and market measurement firm Nielsen and went on to serve as Nielsen’s senior vice president of global strategy and corporate development, where he oversaw strategic acquisitions in digital media and consumer measurement. Prior to eXelate, he was an entrepreneur and held various leadership positions at local digital media company, WorldNow. Campbell began his career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. 

“DoubleVerify has taken the lead in providing sophisticated measurement solutions that power media quality and performance in virtually every media environment – including priority, high growth channels like CTV. I look forward to leveraging my industry experience to help strengthen our leadership position globally and accelerate company growth,” Campbell said, regarding his appointment.

He will report to Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify.

“From Magnite to Nielsen, he has demonstrated a track record of success and achievement, and brings exceptional experience and knowledge to the Chief Strategy Officer role. I look forward to Doug’s leadership as we continue to build momentum, expand globally and deliver on our mission to build a stronger, safer and more secure digital advertising ecosystem,” Zagorski stated.

Singapore – Data and artificial intelligence (AI) company ADA and growth management platform Insider have announced a new partnership to aid enterprises in achieving a greater return on multichannel personalization and marketing campaigns through AI and data analytics.

The partnership entails unifying ADA’s newly formed MarTech-as-a-Service offering and Insider’s AI-powered Growth Management Platform (GMP) which will empower enterprises to scale up and predict customer behavior in real time. Marketers can also seamlessly personalize and streamline campaigns to acquire, activate, and retain customers.

“We’re really excited to be working with Insider. We believe this partnership will help our clients realise more value by allowing us to offer an end-to-end solution that covers the full marketing and sales funnel. We have big goals to continue to expand our business in Asia; so, ADA and Insider’s strong MarTech proposition will help us achieve our ambitious targets,” said Chris Wiseman, head of marketing technology at ADA.

For Patrick Steinbrenner, managing director for APAC at Insider, he believes that with the right recommendation algorithms powered by AI, enterprises can deliver precise individualized cross-channel recommendations and uncover full revenue potential. 

“ADA’s digital and data maturity models’ expertise combined with Insider’s platform capabilities will take marketing to the next level. We’ve enjoyed collaborating with the team at ADA to bring more value to our end customers,” Steinbrenner stated.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Annalect, the data technology, and analytics division of Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has promoted Daler Kendzhaev as the head of Annalect Malaysia, following the network’s commitment to bolstering its data and technological capabilities to deliver effective, efficient, and differentiated marketing solutions for its clients

Through his new role, Kendzhaev will be responsible for Annalect’s growth in the market as well as building the division’s new capabilities in Malaysia by overseeing the increased adoption of Omni, OMG’s people-based marketing and insights platform, across OMG Malaysia and its agency brands. He will also spearhead advanced tech initiatives and build on global and regional partnerships while unlocking new local opportunities.

Prior to his new position, he joined media buying company PHD in Malaysia as business director, where he manages portfolios of local, regional, and global brands including HSBC, Volkswagen, LG, Warner Bros and Singapore Airlines. 

“I am truly excited for the opportunity to lead Annalect and to support both PHD and OMD in driving our client’s businesses via advanced data, analytics and tech solutions. With current complexity and changes in the digital media ecosystem, now, more than ever, brands in Malaysia are looking for digital transformation and consultation, and I am thrilled to be part of this journey in helping brands with their digital acceleration,” Kendzhaev said, regarding his appointment.

He will report to Eileen Ooi, chief operating officer at OMG Malaysia.

“Daler has played a critical role in building PHD’s data and technology ambition as well as elevating our clients’ digital maturity. “I am excited to have Daler lead OMG’s Annalect division in Malaysia as we continue providing holistic data-driven solutions for our clients’ marketing needs,” Ooi stated.

Sydney, Australia – Data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar in Australia has announced the launch of a new cookie-less brand efficiency measurement solution catered to connected television (CTV) and podcast brands.

The brand measurement tool was unveiled under Kantar’s Project Moonshot initiative, which establishes direct data integrations with global digital publishers and apps and provides advertisers with cookieless and privacy-centric methodologies to measure ad effectiveness. 

The tool, aside from being integrated into Kantar’s Brand Lift study which measures impact of media content based on consumer perception, allows publishers and advertisers to gather insights based on exposure data from permitted panelists in an anonymized and privacy-compliant way. Kantar’s proprietary approach uses deterministic exposure data from partner publishers combined with probabilistic approaches to convert household data like from a CTV to an individual person exposure.

According to Mark Henning, Kantar Australia’s executive director of media and digital, Kantar’s innovative new solution is playing a vital and leading role in ensuring continuity of measurement services in the impending post-cookie world. 

“This all shows that the digital ad world is getting tougher to target and measure. In the cookieless world, passive and deterministic data alone are no longer sufficiently comprehensive for effectiveness measurement across all digital platforms. Leveraging both permitted deterministic and probabilistic approaches in a hybrid capacity provides the most reliable and cost-effective way to capture a complete picture of campaign performance and a deeper well for divining useful insights,” Henning stated.

He also notes that using a range of integration approaches depending on publisher capabilities, brands can match the Kantar Profiles Network panelists directly with publisher ecosystem users in a privacy-compliant way.

“This enables us to ingest campaign level exposure data for matched panelists/publisher users without cookies, then consolidate and reconcile exposure data across publishers and platforms to provide a holistic picture of Brand Lift performance. It gives us something powerful to connect with technology back to individuals in a faster, more scalable, and streamlined way,” Henning concluded.

Sydney, Australia – Data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar in Australia and New Zealand has recently appointed Jon Foged to the newly-created position of managing director for Kantar ANZ’s Insights division.

Prior to his new role, Foged had a 17-year tenure with Kantar and is renowned for his strategic, commercial, and people-focused leadership across APAC. He has been CEO of the company’s Insights division in Australia since 2018 and was previously chief strategic and business development officer for the APAC region and CEO for Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia. He has also held managing director roles for Kantar in Singapore and Malaysia.

Wayne Levings, APAC president for Kantar’s insights division, said the newly-created managing director position is the company’s culmination of a multi-year transformation of its presence in the region.

“Kantar is at the intersection of brand building and technology, enabling our clients to deliver growth in a fast-changing environment. Jon and his leadership teams have a clear history of building strong performing businesses across APAC. He has a core mantra focused on our people, our culture and our clients and we are looking forward to his leadership to continue the growth of our businesses in Australia and New Zealand,” Levings stated.

Foged’s new position comes after former CEO of Kantar New Zealand Jason Shoebridge sets to leave the business in April, after more than a decade with Kantar and its predecessors. 

“I am really excited about working with our New Zealand team and extending the outstanding legacy of Jason [Shoebridge]. I would like to personally thank Jason for his leadership and the role model behaviors he has demonstrated over his many years at Kantar. He has always been a strong and vocal supporter of the New Zealand business and as an outcome, Kantar has the market leadership position and reputation,” Foged commented.

Meanwhile, speaking on his departure, Jason Shoebridge commented that Kantar New Zealand is in good hands with Jon, a fellow New Zealander.

“I leave Kantar in a good heart. I believe the people at Kantar are among some of the best in the business and are incredibly adept at providing our valued clients with quality insights to drive growth and success,” Shoebridge stated.

Singapore – Data and artificial intelligence company ADA has announced the launch of its new martech-as-a-service offering across Asia-Pacific to help clients optimize end-to-end sales and marketing efforts.

Through the new service, users can analyze a client’s business operations across the sales and marketing funnel by consulting and matching with ADA’s existing expertise to grow and scale. The new service can also help clients choose the right Martech solutions that match the business maturity level and to optimize current stacks.

“ADA has continuously evolved to create new ways for businesses to adopt data-driven marketing. We are excited to offer these new MarTech services that complete the circle for our clients by allowing them to look at their full sales and marketing funnel with an always-on approach,” said Srinivas Gattamneni, CEO of ADA.

Furthermore, ADA’s new solution can act as an extended arm of the client to enable, train, and scale in-house talent to ensure continuity of strategy and execution. Clients will benefit from this new addition to the current suite of products and services, as ADA continues to use existing data analytics skill sets to drive impactful business outcomes.

The new martech solution responds to the greater need of businesses for updated marketing measures. According to Gartner, some 80% of organizations feel they are sitting on an outdated MarTech roadmap, and 67% think their existing technology is not useful. Meanwhile, a study by Harvard Business Review found that 80% of marketers want better tools to measure return on investment.

“ADA’s MarTech services exist to support businesses in unlocking the full potential of their MarTech investments and to drive growth across all their sales and marketing channels. We believe business growth is not driven by one solution, but many tactics and approaches. We want to be there to collaborate with our clients through the entire journey and to grow together,” said Chris Wiseman, head of marketing technology at ADA.

Virginia, USA – dentsu Media has expanded its existing partnership with media analytics company Comscore which will add dentsu’s M1 advanced audiences platform to its local market agreement.

One of Comscore’s services is instigating change in television measurement by enabling the adoption of advanced audiences and the move to impressions, which allow the industry to go beyond age and gender and evaluate based on consumer behaviors, interests and lifestyles.

“We believe in the meaningful progress that our agencies can deliver for our clients through the use of M1’s advanced audience capabilities for local investment, and Comscore’s transformative approach to data and currency makes us even stronger,” said Jennifer Hungerbuhler, EVP, managing director, local video and audio investment at dentsu Media

She added, “Furthermore, the integration of over 10 million additional households into Comscore’s measurement footprint was a real driver for us, and we look forward to transacting on the audience-based data in 2021.”

Meanwhile, Carol Hinnant, chief revenue officer at Comscore commented, “We are excited to continue our partnership with dentsu Media. They are forward thinkers and we are proud to expand our efforts with them.”

Toronto, Canada – Customer experience (CX) management and customer insights platform Alida has recently announced a new slew of products and services, developed with direct feedback from their customers.

Alida’s initial product release for their Winter 2021 release is the Alida Video, which helps brands harness video to amplify their customers’ voices. Through Alida Video, brands can easily capture customer-recorded video feedback, uncover authentic, deep insights, and inform stakeholders and decision makers at the speed of business, all in a unified platform.

Meanwhile, enhancements to existing features include improvement to the platform’s deep insight feature Alida Sparq and broad feedback feature Alida Surveys.

With the improvements on the Alida CXM & Insights Platform, users can expect the following:

  • Hub Newsletter Redesign for brands to better engage their Alida Sparq insight community members and stakeholders with more visual and content-rich newsletters
  • Quotas for administrators to control the number of responses to a survey or a set of questions
  • Mobile Survey Image Enhancements to improve the respondent experience
  • Recodes & Rollups as an Early Access Program (EAP) for users to create new custom variables based on a dataset and analyze data from a different view

Included in the CXM & Insights Platform are also updates on Alida Touchpoint, including NPS® via Quick Polls, that enable organizations to keep a pulse check on brand perception. Brands can now place activities in mobile applications to engage customers with on-brand micro-surveys designed to collect contextual feedback.

“In today’s global climate, video has become an integral mode of communication to engage and connect with people. It is imperative that brands use it to humanize their customers’ emotions and glean accurate context, to put insights into action and build a great customer experience,” said Riaz Raihan, president of products and engineering at Alida

He added, “We are thrilled to provide our clients with the added value of video to deeply understand and analyze their customers by hearing and seeing them talk directly.”

Alida has also launched its FS Industry solution, specifically catered for the benefit of financial services clients. It has enhanced its CXM framework, with features such as ‘Case Management’ for case creation on the platform for customer follow up, ‘Data Lake’ for accumulating various organizational data sources in one platform, ‘Crosstab Analysis’ for checking survey data by various categories like demographic, and ‘Configurable Dashboards for Alida Surveys’ for creating a dashboard for Alida Surveys.

Alida, formerly known as Vision Critical, and headquartered in Toronto, Canada; has recently expanded its presence in the Asia Pacific

Jakarta, Indonesia – Digital ad verification Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the acquisition of programmatic ad transparency provider Amino Payments in response to IAS’ expansion of solutions to the market.

Entailed in the new acquisition is the acquisition also of Total Visibility, an existing Amino Payments solution designed to provide insights into digital media quality and corresponding supply path costs. The product offers advertisers impression-level financial insights and media quality verification to optimize campaigns in real-time and helps advertisers determine media quality including viewability, fraud and brand safety, by offering critical insights and control to optimize campaigns toward supply paths that deliver cost-efficient and high-quality media.

In addition, Total Visibility can save advertisers up to 15 percent of their programmatic media spend by optimizing their advertising investments toward the most impactful placements through the most cost-efficient supply path.

“As even more digital media is transacted programmatically, the need for transparency will continue to be critical for advertisers. The Amino Payments team is thrilled to join IAS, the market leader in verification, to pursue a joint vision to bring unprecedented transparency into programmatic advertising.” said Will Luttrell, CEO of Amino Payments.