Tag: Digital Advertising

Sydney, Australia – The digital advertising market in Australia has been estimated to be valued at reaching US$3.232b for September quarter this year, or up 42.1% year on year. This is according to the latest data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia, in association with consulting firm PwC. 

According to the data, search and directory ads increased by 41%, while general display increased by 45.6% and classifieds up 37.3%. 

Meanwhile, retail advertising again held the number one advertiser category share of display advertising investment, now representing 14.4% of display investment and leading video advertising investment. Technology sector in advertising experienced the largest increase in share to reach 7.8%, while automotive advertising’s share of total spend continued to retract, reflecting the supply challenges. Meanwhile, the travel sector saw the largest decrease in share thanks to lockdowns reversing the increases experienced by travel in the June quarter.

In other sectors, video advertising’s share of general display advertising peaked this quarter at 62%, an increase of 72% year-on-year to reach US$784.1m. In addition, native advertising grew 30% year on year, while standard display advertising fell 21% year on year. 

Meanwhile, programmatic trading of content publishers inventory again increased in September quarter this year, delivering 45% of the total expenditure, versus 40% bought through agency insertion orders. Programmatic continues to dominate as the preferred buying method for content publishers’ video inventory.

Speaking about the state of the ad industry in Australia, Gai Le Roy, CEO at IAB Australia commented, “The September quarter had a mix of highs and lows with Olympics activity encouraging investment but the travel market pulling back again with local lockdowns. Overall though investment in [the] digital advertising market continued to impress, with the September quarter increasing 42% on the COVID impacted September 2020, but also increasing 36% compared to the 2019 September quarter.”

Jakarta, Indonesia – Digital Telco Indosat Ooredoo in Indonesia has partnered with Out There Media (OTM), the mobile advertising and data monetization firm, to adopt its proprietary mobile engagement technology platform, Mobucks. The telco will be leveraging OTM’s network of brands and brand agencies to strengthen its digital advertising strategy.

With OTM’s Mobucks technology, Indosat Ooredoo aims to bring subscribers targeted and interactive messaging campaigns from its chosen brand and agency partners. Mobucks will be leveraging Indosat Ooredoo’s analytics and understanding of the market, allowing its platform to combine precise targeting and personalization with reach, enabling ‘micro-targeting at scale’ for its future brand clients for better engagement, response, and conversion, as well as ROI. 

Ritesh Kumar Singh, Indosat Ooredoo’s chief commercial officer, said that they are looking forward to delivering interactive mobile advertising campaigns that go beyond the reach of traditional advertising channels available today. 

“This is an exciting time for Indosat Ooredoo, and we look forward to announcing our initial campaigns in due course,” said Singh.

Michael Jahotsen, Out There Media’s sales director for Indonesia, commented that brands today are always looking at new ways to engage with their customers, while at the same time, operators want to keep offering relevant products and offer to their subscribers from brands they love.

“We’re looking forward to launching some exciting campaigns with Indosat Ooredoo’s brand partners to demonstrate just how transformative and powerful Mobucks can be for the operator and brand world,” said Jahotsen.

Indosat Ooredoo has also joined the humanitarian initiative led by Out There Impact, OTM’s impact division committed to using the power of mobile technology for the greater good.

Together with several other global mobile operators, Indosat Ooredoo will take part in an educational mobile campaign launched by Out There Impact on behalf of the World Health Organization, to help contain the ongoing spread of COVID-19. The campaign is being distributed to more than 300 million global citizens via OTM’s global network of mobile operators.

Singapore – While a privacy-first internet is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, advertisers and companies are not withheld from disclosing the real pains of transitioning and adapting to a cookieless digital space when Google dropped the news of cookie deprecation in 2020. 

Advertisers were, however, granted a breather, when the cookies phase-out, originally eyed by the tech giant in 2022 had been delayed a bit further into 2022.

Shortly after the announcement, data solutions provider Lotame released a poll among 200 Singapore-based senior decision-makers in digital media and marketing to further learn their sentiments on the future of cookieless internet. 

First off, half, or 55%, said they were happy with Google’s decision to delay citing that they needed “more time to prepare.” 

A top concern among digital media professionals is losing revenue amid weakened ad-targeting opportunities, where about 57% of marketers believe in reduced ad-targeting opportunities, with over two-thirds (66%) expecting a 10% to 25% drop in revenues as a result of the loss of third-party cookies. Meanwhile, almost 60% (57%) of publishers anticipate a reduction in the workforce brought by revenue loss. 

In adopting new identity solutions, the primary reason for Singapore-based marketers is to support audience targeting (59%), while among publishers, 64% would foremost adopt identity solutions for data privacy. 

With the optimal number of ID solutions, 36% of Singapore marketers were open to using any number, while 35% of publishers cited two, with 30% saying three.

“A cookieless future is closer on the horizon and whether or not the industry ‘feels prepared,’ the end result is inevitable,” said Luke Dickens, Lotame’s managing director for ANZ.

Dickens adds, “Digital advertising is changing, and identity solutions will be part of that new future. Addressability and connectivity are at greatest threat in the post-cookie world.”

With a stronger call for privacy, Apple, aside from Google, had digital media players also rethinking their ad strategies with an update on its privacy features earlier this year.

Apple’s new iCloud Private Relay has been designed to protect users’ privacy by ensuring that when browsing the web in Safari, no single party, including Apple itself, can see a user’s identity and the sites he or she is visiting.

The same survey found that 53% of Singapore-based respondents are concerned about their ability to monetize the email channel amid Apple’s new privacy feature, while 46% said they are concerned for the impact on email hash identifiers.

Relatedly, email-based identity solutions (69%) were the most popular choice when asked what types of ID solutions marketers and publishers were planning to test in the next six months to one year. Contextual (44%) was in second place, followed by cohorts (33%) and probabilistic (27%).

The current report ‘Beyond the Cookie: Identity Solution Adoption & Testing Among Marketers and Publishers’ is part two of Lotame’s cookie-focused study, where the pilot study was released in February and examined how organizations are beginning to plan for the phase-out of third-party cookies.

Sydney, Australia – Global firm Integral Ad Science (IAS), which delivers ad fraud solutions to brands and publishers, has announced the expansion of its ‘Center of Excellence’ in Pune, India with a new office facility, and plans to hire top engineering talent locally. 

The IAS Center of Excellence (COE) was established in 2020 to focus on expanding the company’s engineering and operations talent and develop innovative digital ad verification technology, drive critical partner integrations, and ultimately to provide excellent customer experience support.

IAS aims to be the global benchmark when it comes to trust and transparency in digital media quality for brands, publishers, and platforms. It offers solutions in ad fraud, brand safe and suitability, contextual targeting.

IAS said that the extended office of the COE will be housed in a world-class facility, located in the heart of Pune’s IT business district. The COE and the local engineering team will be led by Mehul Desai, IAS’ country manager in India, and VP of engineering & operations. 

IAS further shared that the team in Pune will collaborate closely with the company’s global data science, data analytics, and product teams to drive innovation and operational excellence. IAS will continue to expand its team in Pune and will be hiring for several key roles. 

“With our Center of Excellence in India and talented local team, we’ve developed cutting-edge technology and established the latest data and analytics capabilities at IAS. We’re growing rapidly, as IAS delivers excellent digital media quality solutions for advertisers and publishers while establishing a great place for top talent to work,” said Desai. 

Desai will be reporting to Tony Lucia, IAS’ chief technology officer. 

Lucia commented, “Expanding our Center of Excellence is a key part of our global strategy to drive continued technology innovation and operational excellence at IAS, backed by the highest caliber of engineering talent. As we grow our engineering team around the world, our team in Pune brings exceptional talent, cross-collaboration, and technological expertise as we build the future of digital media quality at IAS.”

Similarly within this month, IAS has announced the appointment of Saurabh Khattar as the commercial lead for IAS India. Khattar is charged with leading sales operations of the company in India, to work with brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms in the region.

New Zealand – As expected, digital advertising, in the middle of the pandemic, is forecast to comprise the larger fraction of ad spend by New Zealand advertisers in 2021 with 59% to comprise their overall media budget, according to a new global report by global media investment and intelligence company MAGNA. 

Although New Zealand, being primarily an island, has been successful in containing Covid-19, advertisers are still inclined to put their dollars into digital channels, which can be mainly attributed to how the media practices have evolved to leverage the appeal and impact of digital formats, whether lifestyles are hindered by the virus or not. 

The projected growth in digital follows 2020’s 3.3% growth rate. According to the report, most of the digital growth will come from spending on mobile devices, which will see specifically an 18% increase and to represent 67% of total revenues within digital advertising. 

Overall, the advertising economy in New Zealand is seen to increase by 7.6% in 2021 to reach NZD 2.8b ($1.8b).

Still in line with changing preferences of audiences, the report said that linear advertising revenues will see an uptick of 2.9% to represent 41% of total budgets, an actual down from taking 49% of budgets as recently seen in 2019. 

Meanwhile, in terms of specific mediums, television spending is forecast to grow by 5.6%, to represent one-fourth of total budgets. The report said that this will bring total spending levels back to 92% of their 2019 levels. On the other hand, radio and OOH are seen to fare slightly worse with a 2% growth to reach 86% of 2019 spending levels, and a 5% growth to reach 68% of 2019 spending levels, respectively. 

Globally, as the economy recovers faster than expected with a GDP of 6%, marketing activity, and advertising spending are likewise projected to demonstrate the same upward growth. With the added driver of rescheduled international sports events, the report forecasts global all-media advertising spending to grow by $78b, a 14% increase, to ultimately register an estimated $657b in 2021, a new all-time high, said MAGNA. 

Meanwhile, in the Asia Pacific, while the rollout of COVID vaccines has not been as aggressive as many Western markets, there were still fewer cases and deaths as well as fewer shutdowns vs. those markets in the west. This has not stopped consumers in the region from changing their behavior in the same ways as in heavily COVID-impacted markets, which meant more indulgence to stream, more adoption of e-commerce, and more integration of digital platforms into their daily lives. As a result, economic recovery and organic digital growth will power APAC’s total advertising spending to a 12.8% increase in 2021, following 2020’s 3.3% growth. This will see total advertising budgets in APAC reach $203b, significantly ahead of 2019’s $186b total.

According to Gurpreet Singh, managing director at MAGNA APAC, digital will continue to be the biggest growth driver across most markets fueling a faster recovery. Singh also said that since linear media was the most affected last year, its recovery back to pre-covid levels is going to remain a big challenge across the majority of APAC markets for the next few years.

“2021 will see higher than usual growth in ad spend bouncing off of the reduced spend we saw in most of the APAC markets last year. This will largely result in regaining lost ground, however, some markets will take more than a single year for their ad spend to recover from the impact left by covid,” Singh said.

APAC remains the second largest global advertising region, behind North America but $59b ahead of EMEA. 

Digital ad fraud encompasses any activity that deliberately impedes the delivery of ads to an intended audience. Most commonly, fraudsters use bots or domain spoofing to falsely represent online advertisement impressions, clicks, and conversions. These techniques are continually evolving – most fraudsters can now effectively mimic human behavior, making it easy for them to avoid detection.

Pleasingly, overall global ad fraud declined slightly in 2020, according to Integral Ad Science’s most recent Media Quality Report. Unfortunately, the report also noted that countries in the APAC region continue to have some of the world’s worst ad fraud rates. For instance, Japan and Australia were the only countries worldwide that saw significant increases in ad fraud last year. For marketers, ad fraud remains a continuing bugbear, leading them to waste valuable digital advertising budget and miss important opportunities to connect with target audiences. So, what can they do to protect themselves?

Fighting ad fraud with online data collection platforms

The only way for brands to effectively fight fraud is to closely monitor their ads for any signs of suspicious activity. To do this, they need a way of viewing the internet from the perspective of their target audience, to basically see the internet through the eyes of their own consumers. Enter ethically sourced residential IP proxy networks. These networks enable marketers to openly surf the internet with complete transparency. In fact, they are already being used by thousands of global brands, including in the e-commerce, travel and financial services sectors – and, of course, by marketing agencies, too.

Every digital ad campaign is built around demographic targeting that is based on an individual’s online behavior. By using online points that match their target audience, marketers can test their ads and verify that they are being deployed correctly, rather than fraudulently.

But why can’t marketers simply use their own IP addresses to monitor ads? Regrettably, smart fraudsters can easily spot and identify non-consumer IP addresses originating from brands or data centers. When they know they are being monitored, they will quickly respond by showing brands false information, all the while covering their tracks, so they can continue their malicious activities undetected.

Gaining insight into the competition

In addition to employing residential IP proxy networks in the fight against fraudsters, there are two important ways in which marketers are harnessing this tool to gain unfiltered tactical insights. Firstly, using residential IP addresses to split user sessions allows marketers to accurately see all the ads that are competing for their specific target audience’s attention. This enables them to make smarter decisions when it comes to campaign planning.

Secondly, in many sectors, marketers who monitor the activities of competitor brands are now obliged to use residential IP proxy networks to see an accurate or realistic picture. This is because it’s becoming increasingly commonplace for brands to identify when they are being viewed by a possible competitor and to consequently serve them decoy content. This happens even though the web-information being viewed is publicly available and can be freely accessed by any other consumer around the world. This can have serious implications for marketing teams if, for instance, they are fed incorrect information about a competitor’s upcoming product launch, promotion, or other activation.

Globally, the use of digital advertising by brands is continuing to skyrocket, spurred on by consumer lifestyle changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to market intelligence provider Beroe Inc., global spend on digital marketing reached US$330-US$340b in 2020 – an annual growth rate of almost 13%. In this environment, revenue generation opportunities for ad fraudsters will only increase, so they won’t be disappearing anytime soon. As such, brands have no option but to take advantage of all technology at their disposal in the fight against ad fraud. Currently, leveraging residential IP proxy networks is by far the most effective tool to stop ad fraud at its core. Doing so will enable marketers to maximize their budgets by ensuring that their ads are seen by the right people, in the right places, and at the right times.

This article was written by Tamir Roter, APAC and EMEA VP of online data collection platform Bright Data.

Singapore – Recognizing the need for brands to transition from the traditional dependence on ‘cookies’ for their digital advertising to a privacy-centric method, MARKETECH APAC, the news content platform dedicated to the advertising and marketing industry in the APAC region, has recently conducted its webinar last 2 June to spur the dialogue on the topic. It provided marketers and advertisers in Asia a view of the best practices they can adopt for their transition to a new internet landscape that is fast putting the premium on consumer privacy. The virtual event on Wednesday also uncovered firsthand insights from marketing professionals in Asia with a panel that saw the gathering of esteemed leaders from the industries of insurance, digital payments and fast food. 

In the first half of the webinar, Creative & Media Innovation in Asia | Preparing your brand for a cookieless world, Travis Teo, co-founder and executive director of Adzymic, presented a discussion on the status quo of third-party cookie usage in marketing and the challenges and opportunities it would leave once they are finally phased out in 2022. 

Meanwhile, in the said panel discussion, industry practitioners shared their experiences as they shift away from cookie targeting techniques. Marketing leaders from Payoneer, Burger King, and Income discussed the strategies they are employing to get ready for the not-so-distant future. 

Privacy-centricity and creative technology: modern marketing techniques for the new cookieless era

In the first presentation, Teo discussed a three-pronged approach that brands can follow to continue driving campaign performance in the post-cookie world: how to sustain accurate audience targeting, where should the ads appear, and how creative messaging strategies should shift to adapt to the new targeting methods. 

He discussed in detail the key alternatives to third-party cookies, sharing the pros and cons of Google’s cohort-based interest targeting, and first-party data targeting methods through hashed/anonymized email addresses or first-party cookie collection. Other considerations discussed were the scale of universal ID adoption of online publishers, accessibility of second-party data from publishers and leveraging adtech to scale up on creative testing and performance. 

Round table discussion on how brands are preparing for transition

The panelists included Tanushri Rastogi, brand and media lead at Burger King Indonesia; Anny Huang, head of digital business at Income; and Eileen Borromeo, head of marketing for Southeast Asia & Pakistan at Payoneer; with the session moderated by Peggy Koh, head of growth and client success at Adzymic. 

Through the lens of the panelists’ unique business environments, the group discussed how they are sharpening focus on capturing quality first-party customer data via consumer mobile apps or BTL events, and investing in martech stacks that include data management platforms to run campaigns. They concluded by sharing client perspectives on the expectations they had of media agency or martech partners to be knowledgeable and proactive in making recommendations for future-ready methods of running campaigns.

The webinar was conducted under MARKETECH APAC’s webinar series Inside Innovation, in partnership with Adzymic, which attracted a total of 396 registrations across Asia and ANZ.

On-demand access to the webinar is now available. Register here to get your access.

Sydney, Australia – Lendlease, the integrated real estate and investment group, is expanding its advertising platform and will bring in-house the management of its small-format digital advertising across its shopping centers and urban retail precincts.

Up until now, Lendlease has outsourced its small-format digital advertising in its shopping centers to out-of-home advertising agencies. With this new change in management, it is going to be one of the few shopping center landlords to take this platform in-house.

Lendlease’s internal sales team will now oversee content for local and direct campaigns, while its partners, oOh!media and Shopper Media Group will manage content for national agency campaigns.

By the middle of this year, in collaboration with its technology partner SureVision, Lendlease will have rolled out 107 small formal digital panels across six shopping centers including the following: 

  • Erina Fair, Erina NSW (National sales partner, oOh!media)
  • Macarthur Square. Campbelltown NSW (National sales partner, oOh!media)
  • Southlands Boulevard, Willerton WA (National sales partner, oOh!media)
  • Northgate Shopping Centre, Geraldton WA (National sales partner, Shopper Media Group)
  • Menai Marketplace, Menai NSW (National sales partner, Shopper Media Group)
  • Settlement City, Port Macquarie NSW (National sales partner, Shopper Media Group)

Lendlease will roll out a further 270 panels across its other shopping centers and urban retail precincts by 2023.

The company said that the new panels will provide it with added benefit of valuable data analytics using facial recognition technology to measure metrics including age, gender and customer dwell time.

The expansion of its media operations follows the successful rollout of Lendlease’s large-format network across its retail assets, which in 2016 started with just 10 screens and have now grown to 22.

Sally Harding, the general Manager of pop up & media commercialization at lendlease, said that retailers in its shopping centers will benefit from working with the company directly on their campaigns, instead of going through an external advertising agency since retailers already know them and that they understand their business needs. On the customer side, meanwhile, they will be benefitting from having more content that’s relevant to them and their local community.

“As shopping centers evolve to meet the changing needs of consumers, we’re looking for opportunities to grow our revenue streams. We’ve had such success with our large-format network, it made sense to expand our in-house advertising platform to include small-format advertising,” commented Harding. 

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, the APAC-wide news outlet dedicated to the marketing and advertising industry in the region, is launching a webinar that aims to prepare brands for the impending change in digital advertising: audience retargeting in a cookieless and privacy-first world. 

Cookies have long stood as the cornerstone for brands’ advertising efforts, and now that the industry is gearing up to foray into a privacy-first digital space, brands and companies remain in the dark on how they can achieve the best of both worlds – keeping consumers’ privacy intact while attaining campaign performance and driving conversions. 

Leading web browser Google Chrome has already announced its intentions to block third-party cookies by 2022, joining the pack, Firefox and Safari; and with this on the horizon, MARKETECH APAC aims to create a dialogue that would open the floor for brands and advertisers in Asia to discuss the best practices and approaches in maintaining creativity and innovation all the while adhering to safe measures in monitoring audiences’ browsing behavior and preferences. 

Titled ‘Creative & Media Innovation in Asia: Preparing your brand for a cookieless world’, MARKETECH APAC has roped in esteemed marketing leaders from various industries for a panel that would discuss the importance of first-party data and how brands in Asia are doing their share of adapting to the emerging privacy-first internet, and how tech agencies and brands can best navigate this new type of digital environment. 

The panel includes Eileen Borromeo, head of marketing of financial services company Payoneer for Southeast Asia and Pakistan, and Anny Huang, head of digital business of Singapore-based insurance company Income. Joining them is Travis Teo, executive director of Asia-wide ad tech Adzymic. 

Within the webinar, Teo will also be delivering a presentation that aims to dig deep on the landscape of programmatic advertising amid a new cookieless digital space. The presentation also aims to shed light on how programmatic creatives can fit into overall media strategy and process and will explore the topic of ‘Hacking programmatic display’, exploring how creative innovation and variation drive performance. 

Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, commented, “Just like ‘old habits’, we need to make way for new ones, especially if it has stopped serving peoples’ best interests, and this has been the case for digital advertising. For a long time, the use of cookies has only been benefitting best the brands and companies in hitting their campaign and sales objectives and it is time to draw the line. This webinar is positioned to help advertisers to take the necessary first step – and that is to recognize the problem and immerse in the conversation of how we can not only learn to adapt to a privacy-first digital advertising but the ways brands can be the very agents of the transformation into using first-party cookies.”

Meanwhile, Teo, who will be one of the speakers in the webinar, said, “Every change in the digital advertising landscape brings new opportunities and innovation to the space, despite the challenges and unknowns. While moving to a cookieless world remains an uncharted territory for most brands, it provides a great opportunity to reboot old practices and move to a more sustainable and responsible way of audience targeting, and re-focus on how creatives can help provide the necessary cut-through. I’m also keen to discuss with brands the practices and approaches they can adopt to best transit to a cookieless digital environment.” 

The webinar will be held on 2 June at 2 pm SGT. You can register for the event here.

Singapore – Sell-side advertising platform Magnite has announced the launch of a new data center in Singapore, which accompanies the company’s continuous growth in APAC.

The new data center is designed to support the rapid growth in digital advertising services across the region and reinforce Magnite’s global leadership in CTV and omnichannel digital advertising.

As Magnite co-locates its digital television plus (DV+) and connected television (CTV) platforms in Singapore, the new data center will help standardize the company’s operations and provide maximum efficiency for buyers and publishers. The investment also allows Magnite to provide the robust technical capabilities necessary to support increased traffic.

Furthermore, the larger unified data center in Singapore will enable Magnite to better service clients across APAC from India to Australia and Japan. With this step, publishers can expect better performance and new monetization opportunities, as well as increased capacity for inventory. The company expects buyers to see better campaign performance and delivery, and have increased access to new supply.

“Preparing our technological infrastructure in APAC will give Magnite a clear competitive advantage in better servicing our clients and ultimately improve results. By unifying and standardizing our omnichannel platform, we’ll be more agile, proactive, and efficient. Our tech stack needs to evolve with the demands of the industry and we have greater flexibility to scale our infrastructure in real-time as the business scales,” said Tom Kershaw, CTO of Magnite.

Meanwhile, Juliette Stead, head of APAC at Magnite commented the new Magnite data center is a response to the company’s expectation from the entire APAC region to enjoy continued growth and recognizing the importance of investing in the region for the benefit of their clients.

“Investing at scale to optimize our capabilities ensures we will be well-positioned to respond to change. We are also building out our Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in Singapore to further support CTV growth – including live streaming. Now more than ever, we intend to be at the forefront of the strongest segment of industry growth for the foreseeable future, and ensure our infrastructure is equipped to accommodate these developments,” Stead stated.