Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Marketing technology consultancy, admiral.digital, has acquired Fresh Sports Group (FSG), strengthening its consultancy offering across the entire digital spectrum, and rebranding FSG as admiral.sports.
Under the acquisition, admiral.digital will bring expertise in brand creation, content development, campaign execution, and business strategy. The uniting of the two companies enables admiral.digital to enhance its executive team, strengthen its marketing technology consultancy offering and expand into an exciting new sales channel – sports.
For Pieter Van den Eynde, founder of admiral.digital, the recent acquisition is in line with their company mission of making them thrive in the digital world. As such, being digitally-inclined is especially relevant for businesses to innovate aggressively, therefore, the deal will further enhance their digital capabilities to service clients better.
“We see this as a natural move in the right direction. Even prior to the deal, we found the FSG team to be a strong ally, having worked closely with them on multiple collaborations over a number of years. We also recognize that sports technology is an exciting market to dive into with tremendous potential. Moving forward, admiral.sports will play a highly integrated and complementary role, creating a dynamic synergy, thereby fortifying our core business where the end result is truly greater than the sum of its parts,” he stated.
Furthermore, the acquisition will have Van den Eynde lead the Group’s aggressive growth agenda, with co-founder Alec Van Noten focused on building the company’s ‘Technology as a Service’ proposition in the role of chief product officer.
Other leadership movements include FSG’s co-founder Sam Middlehurst taking up the role of chief executive officer and is tasked with setting the strategic direction and assembling the building blocks for the next stage of growth. Completing the impressive executive team as chief marketing officer is fellow FSG co-founder Tim Johnston, who brings with him a wealth of brand creation, marketing, and managerial expertise.
“We collectively share a vision to make marketing technology more accessible to more brands. By joining forces, we now cover the entire digital spectrum, from strategy to technology to creative; enabling us to service a broad spectrum of cross-industry and cross-category clients,” Middlehurst commented.
The acquisition will serve as an opportunity to launch a new ‘go-to-market’ execution framework for clients; connecting technology, data, and marketing to drive better customer experiences and deliver results for clients. This new strategy has been supported by a refreshed brand identity, which projects a shared passion for marketing and technology.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Mimpikita, a local-based modest fashion label, has appointed martech company elfo in elevating its digital advertising and performance marketing initiatives.
Through the one-year partnership, elfo will be executing year-long bite-sized campaigns for Mimpikita to streamline and amplify its brand identity, as well as to align with the modest fashion label’s goals to be inclusive and provide meaningful experiences to its community known as #KitaGirls.
Furthermore, elfo will be running campaigns hand-in-hand with Mimpikita’s planned collections for the year. The campaigns, which will be deployed across all digital touchpoints – website, social media, email, conversational bot – are expected to build and uplift a Mimpikita community built on inclusivity, empowerment, and universal acceptance.
Mimpikita, originally founded by three sisters – Nurul, Amirah, and Syahira Zulkifli – has been in the fashion industry for more than 12 years, and has since then garnered a ‘local cult based on bespoke ready-to-wear pieces’, according to Rose Maria Bague, senior account manager at elfo.
“What we can bring to the table is our expertise in helping brands and businesses establish a solid brand identity and increase overall share of voice (SOV), by providing Mimpikita with brand consulting, performance optimization across all of its digital channels, and lead-generation campaigns,” Bague stated.
Meanwhile, Sri Yosephin, head at elfo, stated that their contribution to Mimpikita is part of the fashion brand’s aspiration to expand globally, as their fashion pieces have been prominently featured at the Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week and had intimate collaborations with other local designers.
From left to right – Syahira, Nurul, Amirah Zulkifli, Co-Founders of Mimpikita
“Our service offerings for Mimpikita are part of a bigger plan for this modest fashion label to go global. Besides harnessing our digital marketing expertise, we are also utilizing elfo’s proprietary digital platforms such as elfoMAP (an email marketing automation platform), elfoA2P (an application-to-person messaging platform), and soon, elfoBOT (an intuitive chatbot), to complement and enable our strategic campaigns for Mimpikita,” Yosephin explained.
For one of the founders, Nurul Zulkifli, their recent partnership with elfo will center on keeping their values with the #KitaGirls community, regardless of progress and expansion.
“As we continue to evolve and expand with the help of elfo, designing carefully crafted pieces for the everyday woman will still be at the heart of Mimpikita. Our wish is to build an inclusive community, to inspire women all over the world with our casualwear,” she added.
Bengaluru, India – Local-based mobile marketing startup Whistle has announced the launch of its PIN code feature in its platform to target hyper-localized marketing strategies for locals.
The feature, which utilizes the country’s Postal Index Number (PIN), allows marketers to specifically target local audiences that may be interested in a marketing campaign using data sets catered to the endpoint PIN code.
This allows marketers to directly promote their campaign to consumers in the form of promotions like deals, discounts & Diwali bumper offers, introducing new goods & products, offering home delivery service, special opening hours during festivals & occasions, and many others.
“With most businesses being severely impacted by the pandemic across the country, small size firms, entrepreneurs and shop keepers are particularly struggling to stay afloat. Our aim is to empower these enterprises digitally through MarTech; help them overcome such obstacles and grow their businesses by making marketing technology tools available at an affordable cost,” Satya Kiran, CEO of Whistle said.
Launched in 2019, the company has since then ventured into providing martech solutions for its clients.
Singapore – India-headquartered IT and consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with global technology company Zoho to adopt its solutions in customer relationship management, IT service management, and e-commerce for its global-wide businesses.
Within the partnership, TCS will utilize Zoho’s technological application stack in data analytics, AI business leverage, and unified search to help improve their clients’ approach to CX strategy, design, and customer insights as well as in marketing, sales, and service transformation.
“TCS has a business-led approach to consulting and enterprise transformation. Zoho takes the same approach to its technology, offering a vertically integrated platform of leading business applications and services. We are confident that through TCS’ reach and influence in the market across 46 countries, more enterprise organizations globally will experience the benefits of Zoho’s deep technology stack and world-class applications,” said Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation.
Furthermore, the alliance will allow future business clients to explore new revenue opportunities and gain operational efficiency, whether from remote or in-office locations.
“Enterprises are adopting best-of-breed product suites for customer service functions, because they provide the digital power and flexibility required to create the right engaging customer experience at the right moment,” said Aarti Devi, global head of customer experience management and enterprise application services at TCS.
Taiwan – Global mobile ad tech company Adludio has announced that it has pivoted to tap into Taiwan’s rapidly-growing mobile gaming fanbase with the expansion of its operations to the region.
Adludio is a mobile advertising platform for delivering interactive creatives using gaming engine and artificial intelligence technologies. Following its launch in 2015, it has grown its presence across US, Europe, and Asia.
According to Adludio’s data, Taiwan is an emerging key market for mobile advertisers as the count of mobile phone connections in the country total 28.43 million, equating to 1.19 connections per person. Similarly, its gaming market shows great potential as it is expected to grow to $2.8 billion by 2021, with mobile games accounting for 60% of the revenue.
Benjamin Pavanetto, managing director for Asia commented on the growth opportunity the expansion offers, “Taiwan’s high internet penetration and fast-growing economic development makes it an ideal market for brands to effectively reach audiences digitally. The projected growth in Taiwan’s gaming industry also shows potential to create effective consumer engagement through gamified advertising.”
Meanwhile, Adludio’s Founder and CEO Paul Coggins said, “It is truly an exciting opportunity for us to expand into Taiwan. Taiwan is a market with extremely active mobile users, and Adludio’s mobile-first offering will bode well with creative and bold clients looking to increase their mobile performance and engagement.”
According to Coggins, the company is already working with clients such as LG, Audi and Cartier in Taiwan.
The Taiwan team will be led by Pavanetto who relocated from Singapore this year, alongside Adludio’s sales manager in Taiwan Clayton Chao.
If you’re in the business of social media marketing, whether independently or as a profession where you are one of the people responsible for a company’s online marketing, it is imperative that you dig deep into what your customers are thinking, where they gather to converse online and what they are talking about because knowing such insights will help build up your social media game and in turn, create a competitive following that could drives sales for your brand.
The thing with extracting audience insights online is that they are only made possible and efficient with the presence of sophisticated martech or social tools. The good news is, a lot of free and affordable analytic tools have continuously been on the rise, making it a sin not to utilize and maximize such tools that are just waiting to be used for the best of your brand. Here are a few reasons why you should start finding the tool of your choice and start leveraging:
1. No technical skills required This is by far the biggest advantage offered by analytical tools available. You do not need to be a data wizard to use social analytics tools. Commercially-marketed social tools are created to garner buy-ins, thus they are made to become user-friendly.
2. Budget friendly – won’t break the bank Whether you are a brand marketer just launching a campaign or an agency about to go into a pitch, you don’t need to spend a hefty amount to get the best of analytics tech. Most of the introductory packages of marketing tech provide you with the base level of data for a fraction of the cost. The good thing about the variety of subscriber packages, one can opt to upgrade to more sophisticated versions of tools as one further becomes seasoned on the basics of social data.
3. Relevant sentiment trendline The best social tools are built on hyperlocal infrastructures with enhanced machine learning to more precisely capture sentiments. Mass market tools that are not optimized for local sources and context will provide you a higher rate of inaccuracy which compromises the quality of your data, so it is important to find a localized source if accuracy is important to you.
4. Trend tracking made easy Brands can observe trends, track hashtag movement, and measure performance based on interest of the social chatter, engagements and sentiments. Apart from hashtags, keywords are also trackable to measure the popularity of brands and products. Using social tools, you are able to identify the most active channels related to specific brands, products or topics of interest and craft marketing strategies that resonate.
5. Identify your brand’s advocates, influencers and micro-KOL Correctly identifying top users based on the channels is a nifty feature in some social listening tools. It is an undeniable fact that influencers will make use of their platforms to share thoughts and opinions. When an influencer mentions your brand, don’t gloss over the fact that they’ve mentioned your brand, instead, take some notes and study them. Collaborating with the right influencers or micro KOLs can greatly boost your brand image and reputation.
6. Heat map Some tools also have heat maps which helps you to visualize which geographical area gets the most attention from users using channels with location tracking enabled such as Twitter. It highlights the areas and locations to display contents relevant to your searched keywords or hashtags. Heat maps enable brands to expand the market by inferring analysis on audience based on geographic segmentation which helps to identify potential locations for new outlets
7. Knowing which third party pages you can leverage amplifies your marketing Most social tools can assist in identifying top websites that have been promoted and advertised in relation to the topic of your query. Since audiences already engage with these third party channels, you may collaborate for beneficial growth and advertise to leverage them for more exposure. For this purpose, having the local sources where natives are active will improve your results even more.
According to the Research and Market Report, Southeast Asia digital advertising market is expected to grow by 13.93% and reach $15.35 billion by 2026, representing the fastest growing regional market in the world. But ad fraud remains a major challenge in the sector — even among social apps. In fact, in 2019, Adjust found that around 11% of all social installs were fraudulent.
Despite all its challenges, 2020 is undeniably proving to be a year of growth, but that can easily be undermined by ad fraud. Fast-growing regions like Southeast Asia can be especially attractive to fraudsters, as fraud prevention tools aren’t as commonplace. The losses aren’t just monetary — fraud also skews the accuracy of datasets, drives bad user acquisition decisions, and hides the best-performing channels. To make the most of 2020’s opportunities, fraud prevention needs to remain a key priority for growth marketers.
So how do we prevent fraud? First, we have to understand it.
Ad fraud, simplified
Mobile ad fraud describes the actions that fraudsters take to siphon off advertisers’ budgets by exploiting mobile advertising technology. Fraudsters use four main methods to commit their crimes: Click Injection, SDK Spoofing, Click Spam and Fake Users. Ultimately, you can distinguish between two types of fraud — those that spoof ad engagements (like views or clicks) and those that spoof app activities (like installs, sessions and events). The former is known as Spoofed Attribution. The latter is called Spoofed Users.
Fraudsters are also incredibly resourceful, and once they realize fraud filters are blocking a certain type of fraud, they will try and find a workaround or move on to those that are not protected.
But the ripple effects of fraud, the ones which aren’t talked about, are how marketers are affected by fraud-filled datasets which influence their marketing decisions.
What fraud means for your metrics
Ad fraud doesn’t just steal from advertising budgets — it also interferes with user acquisition decisions.
For instance, a partner might look like it’s bringing tons of new installs, but there’s a chance these attributions are fraudulent. If marketers can’t tell the difference between fake and real users, they’re likely to spend more money with the networks that appear to be yielding more or better users — effectively opening themselves up to further fraud. Marketers get caught in a feedback loop, directing money away from those sources that bring them real, high-quality users.
We also haven’t considered the domino effect fake users have on in-app activity and purchase data. Some marketers may not be too concerned about fake installs: in some instances, they may even view it as a good thing as their user acquisition numbers look great on paper. But other valuable metrics, such as retention and lifetime value, won’t match up, and that’ll become a serious problem down the line.
Dishonest industry players could also attempt to poach organics by using Click Spam and Click Injection methods. The table below shows an example of the extent to which these methods of fraud could be affecting your metrics — just take a look at the difference in returns and ROI.
While most ad networks are reputable and have their clients’ best interest in mind, sources further down the chain may be taking advantage of advertisers without the network’s knowledge. In an ideal, fraud-free world, a marketer could be working with a network that brings them 500 installs at a CPI of $5, the total profit of which could stand at $1,000. Alongside this, they may also gain 1,000 organic installs, from which they profit $10,000. That’s a pretty considerable ROI.
But let’s say the network now brings 800 installs at a CPI of $5. That’s a big increase, which looks great at first glance. At the same time, the number of organic installs drops to 700. While it’s not impossible, it’s more likely that this particular source of traffic is using Click Spam or Click Injection to poach organic users and users from other networks in order to pass them off as their own. Marketers waste their budgets on paying for them, and their ROI drops significantly.
What’s the solution to ad fraud?
While the industry may never be able to get rid of ad fraud completely, there are many approaches marketers can take to protect themselves. The most important step is understanding the problem, and then taking fraud seriously. Set up a clear process and internal point person to handle the issue. Growth marketers are in the perfect position to look at the numbers, see where they don’t add up, and then escalate the issue.
It’s also important to work with your partners towards transparency, so that you know where exactly your ads are displayed. Fraudsters thrive off black-box models, so mobile marketers need to evaluate who they partner with and ask them how they’re fighting ad fraud.
Ad fraud evolves fast, so stay educated. By joining summits and workshops, keeping up to date with the news, and opening up the conversation with networks and MMPs, UA managers can gain a better understanding of potential new threats and solutions. After all, bringing better education and awareness of the issue can help flush out fraudsters and keep your mobile marketing activities on track.
The author is April Tayson, Director, Southeast Asia at Adjust. Adjust is a global app marketing platform. Born at the heart of the mobile app economy and grown out of a passion for technology, the company now has 16 offices around the world.
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Singapore – Magnolia announces the appointment of industry veterans Vincent Jiang (pictured left) and Matthew Zhang (pictured right) to strengthen its footprint in the APAC market.
Vincent Jiang joins the company as the Head of Business and Alliances for Magnolia Asia Pacific, who previously worked on complex solution portfolios at Salesforce, Brandwatch and Smartly.io, said, “Joining Magnolia presents a great opportunity for me to work with a tremendous team to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation, leveraging our market-leading content management system.”
Jiang will be responsible for providing customers with insights on how to build a modern, adaptable and experience-focused MarTech stack in the constantly evolving technology landscape.
Matthew Zhang joins Magnolia as Technical Operations Leader for Magnolia Asia Pacific. Previously, Zhang worked at Accenture, where she spent four years driving and delivering complex enterprise solutions for Accenture’s top strategic accounts and ensuring customer success. Zhang who will be responsible for engaging with all facets of IT, said, “Magnolia is a first-class content management platform, perfect for building best-of-breed marketing technology stacks. I am privileged to join in Magnolia to identify and orchestrate strategies to utilise market opportunities as well as establish systems/processes to drive growth and team building.”
The new hires will also support teams in recently opened offices in both Singapore and Shanghai.
Commenting on the new appointments, Don Lee, APAC Managing Director at Magnolia, said, “Both Jiang and Zhang have a wealth of experience across the digital landscape that will help to further strengthen our APAC teams and ability to support customers across the region.”
Lee added,
“In the age of omnichannel marketing and personalization, a flexible content management system is a powerful resource for marketers looking to deliver first-rate digital experiences.
As our business expands, these new appointments will help us to deliver those experiences, while also offering greater support and value for customers in the region.”
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) was announced on May 1st effective on Monday, May 4th. As Netizens raised concerns over the potential increase in infections, businesses are rushing to put safety measures in place and prepare for reopening over the short notice. Several states have taken a stance to either opt out entirely or revise the CMCO for tighter control. The 7th edition of this study covers chatter about the CMCO, reactions and stances taken by individual states, compulsory screening for all foreign workers, highlights on four selected industries, and top trending topics among Netizens during this period.
With an estimated loss of RM 2.4 billion per day of MCO, the government announced the CMCO effective May 4th to reopen most businesses. The rushed announcement was made on Friday, May 1st with only three days for businesses and workers to prepare. The movement restrictions have also been eased with conditions, allowing two people in a car, travel distance more than 10km, allowing stranded Malaysians to return to their home or workplaces, and limited sports activities. The reopening of businesses also highlighted another concern over the finances of affected citizens.
The gap between the public’s spending capacity becomes apparent when we look into social chatter, typically industries that are considered as non-essential or a luxury. This edition’s study covers the Telco, Local Fashion, Gold Jewellery, and Beer industries, angled to derive insights from trends of chatter among consumers when it comes to non-essentials and luxuries. Providing insights into the proportion of Netizens who are financially comfortable during the MCO, and indirectly indicate the proportion of those who are not.
While communications are a necessity, multiple telco packages were offered in line with Stay Home campaigns during the lockdown, providing greater access and bandwidth to users but what of users who now will spend more time at work and dread the additional expense. On the other hand, the local fashion and gold jewelry guys who were pretty stagnant during lockdown have seen increasing interest as the festive season draws near. With hope for the MCO to conclude before Hari Raya, a considerable portion of Netizens including non-Muslims are preparing to celebrate the festive season in the new norm.
Wisesight’s Founder and Regional Director of APAC, Shakthi DC said, “Engagement data in relation to these industries can be used to assess the economic impact on target markets. After almost two months in lockdown, Netizens appear to have had a shift in priorities, where self-reflection has increased individuals’ needs towards personal well-being across the dimensions of physical, emotional, and financial health and security. This is indicated through the uptake of essential supplies while comfort and luxury were compromised during lockdown.
Depending on how quickly a vaccine is identified, when the economy picks up and People as individuals begin feeling secure again, it’s likely that the Luxury segment and Brands offering high-value assets will suffer as People make cutbacks due to the effects of Covid19 and are shaping up to be the last segments to recover.”
She added, “The reopening of the economy will unquestionably bring back some volume in traffic and transactions, albeit with changes in consumer buying behaviours. Businesses that have adapted and remained in touch with their audiences throughout the lockdown will find it easier to engage with their customers post-MCO. Purely because brand loyalty and affinity was actively maintained throughout the lockdown, and the results will show in the target audience’s response. Also considering the heightened fear of infection, organisations that create environments and processes with reduced physical contact, increased hygiene and safety measures will continue to gain public support as we embrace the new norm.”
Wisesight’s study details the events from 29th April – 5th May analysing the reactions and impact of these changes in comparison to findings from the previous weeks. The latest study includes:
Netizens reactions to the CMCO
Stances taken by individual states regarding the CMCO
Top Malaysian’s concerns over the past seven weeks
Current trending topics Malaysians shared online
Selected Industries’ performance during the MCO (Telco, Local Fashion, Gold Jewellery, and Beer)
Best practice recommendations for Brands content strategy
Case Study – Communications and strategies adopted by highlighted industries to retain market share during the MCO
Other stories of key interest among Malaysians during the period analysed
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