Inside Innovation Archives

Singapore – The immersive space of the metaverse is all the rage now, but the said virtual world with its inherent wellspring of innovation keeps surprising brands and marketers with its capabilities as an interactive platform. With this, it is vital that we keep delving into conversations that would help keep us up to speed and maintain our competence in the metaverse.

MARKETECH APAC, together with consumer intelligence platform Talkwalker, is proud to present the latest industry discussion on marketing in the metaverse. The expansive virtual world gives way for multiple and diverse iterations in the business of marketing, and through a gathering of expert minds in the field, MARKETECH APAC aims to help brands wade their way through the different challenges and opportunities that await them as we enter the new year filled with new trends.

What’s NEXT 2023: Metaverse Marketing Activations in APAC, which will be held this November 29, 2022, at 2 pm SGT, has roped in brand and marketing leaders that have walked the talk of marketing in the metaverse. Through the webinar, we are going to discuss what has been done, what was deemed effective and not, and what more can we do to keep our consumers engaged and be on top of our game as more players enter and amplify their presence in the metaverse.

This November, learn how you can future-proof your marketing strategies for the metaverse by hearing the insights of Benjamin Soubies, managing director of Talkwalker for JAPAC; Ramakrishnan C.N., managing director & metaverse lead of Accenture Song; Amrita Mallik, vice president of HSBC India; and Chris Gurney, group creative director of Virtue Worldwide.

Soubies will be giving a presentation on Metaverse & Social: How To Effectively Engage Communities where he will deep dive into the sentiment of consumers toward the metaverse: how they think, feel, and do in relation to the highly immersive space. Soubies will also be sharing the top metaverse activations by brands in APAC and how brands can make the best out of the fusion of the two most popular consumer spaces today: metaverse and gaming.

The panel discussion, The Metaverse – Leading The Charge For Metaverse Marketing Opportunities, will be graced by Ramakrishnan, Mallik, and Gurney. Moderated by Shaina Teope, MARKETECH APAC’s regional editor, the three leaders will be picking each other’s minds and imparting their top insights on how to best launch marketing campaigns in the metaverse. The group of industry leaders will also uncover what consumers have been saying about the most recent trends in the space, and most importantly, enlighten viewers on what brands can expect to see in the virtual ecosystem this 2023.

Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, commented, “MARKETECH APAC has been leading the conversation on the metaverse, and after our comprehensive 3-episode series on the space, we are proud to bring the discussion much further through this industry webinar with our partner, consumer intelligence platform Talkwalker.”

Meanwhile, Benjamin Soubies, managing director of Talkwalker for JAPAC, commented, “As featured in Talkwalker’s latest Social Media Trends 2023 report, the next year will be a critical time for the metaverse. The possibilities for brands are endless, with numerous opportunities to experiment and innovate in the space.”

He added, “To succeed, brands will need to fortify their tech stack and have a robust system in place to understand the aspirations of consumer communities and how they are engaging in the metaverse. With consumer intelligence, marketers will be able to create authentic and relevant experiences that resonate with their target communities in the virtual reality.”

Do not miss this very important discussion on one of the pillars of Web 3.0. Gear up for the future developments within the metaverse, and equip yourself with future-proof marketing strategies for 2023.

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, the digital media dedicated to the marketing and advertising industry in APAC, will be presenting a webinar this 6 April 2022, to discuss the latest trends in social advertising today.

Over the last two years, the social advertising landscape is transformed, giving birth to a new set of trends as well as forming new demands among consumers of social media. With this, MARKETECH APAC, in partnership with Smartly.io, aims to circle marketers back and uncover the present opportunities in social advertising in the region today through the webinar, ‘Social Advertising Trends in APAC 2022’, and identify the vital and proven strategies to recalibrate brands’ social advertising approaches to the current trends.

Participating in the panel discussion will be David Lim, VP of marketing of HappyFresh, and May Ling Chan, chief marketing officer of KFC Malaysia. Said marketing leaders will be discussing the focal points of the new social media advertising: what makes social media advertising fail, what are the pain points of delivering this type of advertising, and how important branding becomes in driving performance.

Meanwhile, Stewart Hunter, director for customer success for APAC at Smartly.io, will be presenting on the key trends in social advertising in the Asia-Pacific and how brands should respond to them.

“The social media landscape is ever-evolving, and what worked in 2021 may not work in 2022. From our annual survey with top CMOs, it’s clear that advertisers this year must juggle a constantly changing mix of social platforms, content formats and talent. Advertisers will need to embrace automation and new ways to communicate their message to consumers. Doing both will allow them to effectively drive multi-platform campaigns, with increased emphasis on video and UGC. We are excited to share some of these trends in our upcoming webinar, and provide some tips to help advertisers and brands in APAC get a head start and win in 2022, ” said Hunter.

Meanwhile, Shaina Teope, regional editor of MARKETECH APAC, said, “Social media pre-pandemic and now amid the pandemic have become two entirely different things, and in the most nuanced way. In these times, we need a consensus among marketing leaders on what has changed, on what has become the key opportunity and challenge, and how we can be further prepared on what’s to come next in this area.”

Join us in this webinar on 6 April 2022 at 11:00 am SGT. Secure your spot HERE.

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.

Australia – A lot of things changed when the pandemic marked its arrival, to say the least. One right off the bat, and probably the most important, is that everything has been transitioned to online, if it hasn’t already; switching workplaces to now take the form of our personal four corners, to making almost every human activity – from consumer purchases to travel – a feature of digitization. All had their own share of adjustments, and this is also very much true with the academic community.

In the recently concluded webinar by MARKETECH APAC’s Inside Innovation, ‘Asia-Pacific Outlook 2021: Reimagining your higher education web strategy’, speaker and digital marketing consultant for global SaaS solutions Siteimprove, Rick Elenbaas, shared the pivotal development in the education space, one that many may have been cognizant of for a while, but a topic that’s also equally begging of further attention – the increasing count of digital natives in the university.

In his presentation, Elenbaas shared that between the years of 2014 to 2018 – now considered to be a pre-pandemic period – the generation that birthed digital natives are growing up and are slowly taking space in educational institutions, outnumbering other students. Referencing a PwC study, Elenbaas said that there are three types of students today: the traditional, those that went through academic instruction before the emergence of the internet; the transitional, students that have experienced the internet at a young age but are still navigating school in a hybrid way, and lastly the digital natives, those that have had internet access right from their toddler years, and whose lifestyle has been deeply integrated with the internet.

Asia-Pacific Outlook 2021 Reimagining your higher education web strategy_3

“The rise and decline of the traditional student that is happening is what we call the ‘decade of change’, and currently we are now in a situation where we really are at that final cross-line where those traditional students are leaving the universities, and we’re only dealing with digital natives,” said Elenbaas.

The pandemic may have served as the ultimate push to finally pay close attention to the digital space in higher education, but digital natives have long been showing dominance even way before this massive disruption and it is now time to ramp up universities’ digital campus.

So what do this new group of individuals expect for the university online experience to be? First of all, Elenbaas said the student experience must be exactly what it promises – an end-to-end online experience – “they are expecting [that] everything happens online,” said Elenbaas.

“From the day they leave high school, the day they start searching for a study [program], and eventually [to] when they leave the university, [they expect] that they still have access to online resources, so everything in their student life, they expect to be online,” he added.

Furthermore, digital natives, having been innately accustomed to online – which lends closer lens to just about every entity and content – expect that the student journey is personalized. This means that every data point, from mobile, web, and social app access down to the basic emails sent to them, they expect to be tailored to their needs.

And lastly, Elenbaas said, this type of students would ask for online experience to be one thing – consistent. That means having a single customer view with consistent data across the entire student journey. This pertains to the type of data and quality presented. With the massive space in digital, a lot of touchpoints will be begging for their view and mind space and students would want an online experience that would help bring focus rather than add to the clutter.

Elenbaas said that in order for universities to meet these needs, they need to do three things: achieve a single and uninterrupted digital student journey, make their digital student journey accessible, and transform their strategies to become digital resilient and future-proof.

Elenbaas has shared in a more comprehensive view this topic on the webinar, which is now available on-demand. You may register here to get your access. In his presentation, he discussed in even greater detail the roadmap that universities can follow and apply to refresh and accelerate their digital campus in order to truly cater to the needs of digital natives in the new normal.

The webinar also presented an expert panel, comprising Paul Gower, deputy director for marketing & user experience at Curtin University, and Monica Hong, the digital marketing national manager of Australian Catholic University, and that which is moderated by Gabriel Ponzanelli, the vice president of Siteimprove for the Asia Pacific region and Japan, to discuss in depth the current challenges and opportunities of universities in their digital marketing strategies amid the surge in online activity.

Obtain access to the on-demand webinar here.

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 – MARKETECH APAC, the news content platform dedicated to the advertising and marketing industry in the APAC region, has recently concluded its webinar Tuesday, April 13, which tackled the changing education landscape amid the pandemic and how this has pushed the imperative for higher education institutions to recalibrate their current marketing roadmap, specifically schools’ digital marketing strategies.

Moderated by Gabriel Ponzanelli, the vice president of global SaaS solutions Siteimprove for the Asia Pacific region and Japan, the webinar, Asia-Pacific Outlook 2021: Reimagining your higher education web strategy, presented a panel of esteemed marketing leaders from Australian universities to discuss the current challenges and opportunities for universities in delivering a student experience now that the academic community has been thrust to completely navigate in a virtual environment.

A presentation has also been showcased by Siteimprove’s digital marketing consultant Rick Elenbaas, who discussed in detail the definitive changes in the student journey and how they have affected students’ expectations.

As the name of the virtual event promises, Elenbaas laid out the three core steps in delivering a converting and retaining web experience, namely: achieving an uninterrupted digital student journey, making your digital journey accessible, and becoming digital resilient and future proof. More details on this presentation to be found in the webinar’s on-demand access.

In addition, Elenbaas also covered a lot of ground on how digital natives are outnumbering other students and what vital characteristics a university’s student experience should embody in order to truly connect and resonate with this group of individuals. Furthermore, he also emphasized a strand of students’ navigation online that some universities fail to pay more attention to and that is, the accessibility of their campus websites, that goes beyond just addressing visual impairment.

Meanwhile, the panel discussion included panelists Paul Gower, deputy director for marketing & user experience at Curtin University, and Monica Hong, the digital marketing national manager of Australian Catholic University. The panel delved into the different points of the student journey and how each has been turned around by the absence of physical interactions. Gower and Hong, through the lens of their own universities, provided a picture of how the larger education space is changing – from delivering a seamless application process to conducting ‘open days’ and ‘student orientations’ at this new normal and to adapting the digital strategy for both the domestic and international markets.

The panelists also bared how each of their teams dealt with the challenge of moving into the unknown when the pandemic first struck, and how in such a massive environment and space as digital, they manage to prioritize which communication points are most important in user experience such as the accessibility of campus websites.

The webinar was conducted under MARKETECH APAC’s webinar series Inside Innovation, and is in collaboration with Siteimprove. Siteimprove is a global SaaS solutions that provides organizations with actionable insights to deliver an effective digital experience that drives growth.

You may register here to obtain access to the on-demand webinar.