Tag: Partnership

Sydney, Australia – Havas Media Group, the media arm of global marketing and communications group Havas, has become the first media agency in Australia to activate digital media measurement, data, and analytics platform DoubleVerify‘s (DV) Authentic Ad™ metric as the default measurement currency across client campaigns.

The DV Authentic Ad™ is a proprietary, MRC-accredited metric that ensures an ad is fully viewed, by a real person, in a brand-safe environment, within the intended geography. It gives advertisers clarity and confidence in their digital investments and creates actionable insights to drive performance optimisation.

The initiative is designed to maximise the cross-channel digital investments of the brands Havas serves and drive superior campaign outcomes. In order to support the activation of DV Authentic Ad™ as standard practice across the agency, the digital teams at Havas Media Group Australia are currently enrolled in DV University (DVU), with the aim of achieving agency-wide certification by the end of the first quarter in 2022. DVU is a self-guided online training and certification platform which includes standard onboarding training of the DV Advertiser’s Suite. 

This will empower the teams in Havas Media Group to leverage DV’s actionable insights to effectively achieve their digital campaign objectives, which is seeing Havas Media Group implementing DV Authentic Ad™ Measurement across every client, every campaign, and every channel by default, though clients may opt out if desired. 

Kevin Fernandes, Havas Media Group’s head of data solutions and adtech, shared that they have taken the unprecedented step to deploy DoubleVerify’s measurement solution as a standard to protect their clients’ investments, and also improve the media experience by actively driving media quality and effectiveness.

“We’ve already been able to use insights from DoubleVerify to make fundamental shifts to campaign variables, such as formats and publishers – which has significantly increased campaign outcomes,” said Fernandes. 

Meanwhile, Sophia Warren, DoubleVerify’s client strategy director for ANZ, noted that Havas Media Group’s clients will be protected from wasted investments and unsuitable content, while the agency will be able to optimise media spend using their campaign insights. 

“Effective optimisation of media is critical to address increased media fragmentation and a decline in consumer trust, resulting from concerns around data privacy, fake news and high-profile brand suitability incidents,” said Warren.

Singapore – Dentsu International in Singapore have teamed up with partnership management platform impact.com to enable and accelerate partnership opportunities for clients globally, and as a way to boost commercial offering of the agency.

Said alliance will enable dentsu to leverage impact.com’s purpose-built performance platform to manage its client partnership activity at considerable scale. Impact.com seeks to transform the way businesses create, manage, scale and optimise an ecosystem of partnerships.

These include traditional rewards affiliates, influencers, commerce content publishers, and B2B brands, and has been successfully activated for some of dentsu’s clients in the region.

In addition, dentsu is now fully certified by impact.com’s Partnerships Experience Academy (PXA).

Guillaume Legond, client partner and commerce lead for media group of dentsu Singapore, said that through the alliance, it puts them in an even better position to support their clients in expanding their performance marketing activities and generate significant incremental revenue.

“We are passionate about delivering a total commerce experience to help brands optimise their business performance. Our partnership with impact.com will now bring our commerce capabilities up a notch as we tap on its seamless partnership management platform at scale,” Legond said.

Meanwhile, Antoine Gross, general manager for SEA at impact.com, commented, “Partnerships are becoming an important customer acquisition channel for more and more brands and we’re thrilled that dentsu has selected impact.com as their preferred partnership management platform. We are looking forward to helping dentsu’s clients unlock the value that a performance partnership program can produce through a wide range of innovative partnership types.”

Singapore – Short-video sharing platform TikTok and Singapore’s national confederation of trade unions, National Trades Union Congress LearningHub (NTUC LHUB), have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), aimed at delivering quality training and resources in social media marketing and content creation for small businesses.

NTUC LHUB said that more small businesses turn to digital platforms to reach new audiences, and many are leveraging new age platforms such as TikTok which has exceeded 240 million users in SEA alone. From increasing brand awareness to extending their business reach, TikTok has played a key role in helping local micro-businesses to connect directly with their customers and grow their presence online.

The MOU will see NTUC LHUB leveraging its strong network within the Labour Movement and its associations such as the Freelancers and Self-Employed Unit (U FSE), Singapore National Co-Operative Federation (SNCF), and Young NTUC. In addition, NTUC LHUB will be working closely with TikTok to develop a suite of courses that empower content creators to grow their brand presence on social media platforms. 

To kick off the partnership, NTUC LHUB will begin running the TikTok-endorsed ‘Design Thinking for Social Media’ course in March 2022. The two-day course leverages design thinking concepts for social media content creation. Furthermore, the collaboration will translate into training courses that are applicable to all workers in due course.

Anthony Chew, NTUC LearningHub’s director of Infocomm Technology, commented that they are thrilled to be partnering with TikTok to empower Self-Employed Persons (SEPs) to navigate and keep pace with the rapidly changing social media landscape in order to create new business and employment opportunities. 

“Working closely with TikTok, NTUC LearningHub will be on the pulse of new trends and developments straight from the source, hence ensuring that our training in social media and digital marketing remains highly relevant, timely and spot-on for our learners. In addition, NTUC LearningHub is also uniquely placed within the Labour Movement ecosystem to support the outreach efforts to self-employed persons,” said Chew.

Meanwhile, David Jay Gomez, TikTok’s head of brand partnerships for SEA, noted that they are witnessing an increase in small businesses across SEA, leveraging their platform to drive tangible impact and they are deeply committed to using their platform to educate and equip their community with the relevant skills and training as they navigate the ever-evolving business landscape. 

“Through our partnership with NTUC LearningHub, we look forward to empowering more micro-businesses and freelancers to drive their business and Singapore’s digital economy forward,” said Gomez.

Jean See, the director of NTUC Freelancers and Self-Employed Unit (U FSE), said, “With continual learning support as a cornerstone of NTUC’s membership proposition, we are excited that U FSE and NTUC LearningHub will be jointly rolling out a ‘Community of Practice’ series to bridge classroom training with expert insights to empower members to stand out from the competition.”

Singapore citizens and permanent residents can enjoy 50% off the course fees, and are eligible for the utilisation of SkillsFuture credit and Post-Secondary Education Account (PSEA). Interested individuals can register for the ‘Design Thinking for Social Media’ course at NTUC LHUB website.

Malaysia – Financial institution HSBC has partnered with esports media company ONE Esports, aimed at changing the way players engage with esports.

ONE Esports said that in-game resource management is a crucial strategic aspect of esports, but there is little financial guidance on how to optimise these valuable assets. As part of the partnership, both HSBC and ONE Esports will be delivering tailor-made content to help players manage prized resources in multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games, with useful hints and tips. The expert advice will also be designed to be transferable to life outside of gaming.

Moreover, ONE’s Analytics and Insights team will also be conducting research and producing a report on the SEA esports community’s preferences and behaviour’s related to financial services.

Jonathan Castleman, HSBC’s global head of brand and brand partnerships, commented that they are excited to partner with ONE Esports and work together to help gamers, fans, and teams with their in-game and real-life financial fitness.

“Our wider partnership with ONE Esports will help us to learn about an industry that is growing fast, and that is increasingly important to many of our existing and future customers,” said Castleman.

Meanwhile, Carlos Alimurung, ONE Esports’ CEO, said, “Esports has already achieved huge growth, and its potential continues to soar. HSBC has a proven track record of helping individuals and businesses unlock opportunities, and this partnership can help us all reach new heights.”

The partnership, starting as a pilot in Malaysia and Indonesia, will also see HSBC partner with ONE Esports on 10 community tournaments and one major event this 2022.

Australia – Global provider of omniscreen advertising and analytics, Samba TV, has partnered with PubMatic, the programmatic digital advertising company, to bring programmatic omniscreen TV audience targeting to Australia. 

The partnership marks the expansion of Samba TV’s existing European partnership with PubMatic. Through this, Samba TV’s extensive first-party Connected TV (CTV) data will be integrated with PubMatic’s programmatic platform to provide media buyers with advanced omniscreen targeting capabilities across Australia.

The combination of Samba TV’s first-party TV data and PubMatic’s advanced programmatic targeting capabilities provides advertisers with the ability to reach audiences based on TV viewing behaviours and to drive incremental reach by targeting audiences that are not exposed to linear TV advertising. This new offering is an essential tool for global advertisers to optimise reach and frequency via a single, multi-market solution. In addition, advertisers will be able to deduplicate ad exposure data across linear, Connected TV, and digital channels.

Yasmin Sanders, Samba TV’s managing director, shared that the partnership between Samba TV and PubMatic is a game-changer for Australian marketers, providing advertisers with the opportunity to effectively reach TV audiences across every screen with confidence and scale. 

“By combining Samba TV’s proprietary audiences with PubMatic’s scale and inventory quality, we’re excited to now offer advertisers in Australia the opportunity to achieve true incremental reach by leveraging our comprehensive TV audiences,” said Sanders.

Meanwhile, Peter Barry, PubMatic’s vice president of addressability, commented that they are excited to partner with Samba TV to help their customers better reach these elusive audiences. 

“By targeting these high-value segments across PubMatic’s premium digital inventory at the supply side, buyers can deliver relevant ad experiences at scale, thereby optimising campaign performance,” said Barry.

Malaysia – Global advertising company Publicis Groupe in Malaysia has been appointed by automotive manufacturer BMW in Malaysia to handle its strategic planning, creative advertising, and digital for BMW passenger cars, Motorrad and MINI business units, which will take effect in April 2022.

During the pitch, Publicis Groupe has developed a compelling strategy and holistic ideas on how to lead, promote, and educate electric vehicle adopters for the BMW and MINI brands, as the automotive industry transitions to electric mobility.

The remit will see Publicis Groupe enhancing BMW Malaysia’s consumer journey, elevating their brand experiences, and crafting a sustainability narrative, as well as building brand relevance for each brand and their audiences. 

Through the remit, Publicis Groupe Malaysia is now setting up bespoke hybrid teams to manage the brands separately with domain experts and related automotive experience.

Neil Hudspeth, Publicis Groupe’s CEO for Malaysia, commented that they could not be happier and prouder to warmly welcome BMW and Motorrad, and of course continue their relationship with MINI, one of the world’s most recognisable car brands. 

“It is incredibly rewarding to see world-class work being recognised by world-class and storied brands, and we look forward to achieving great things together over the next five years, especially as together we can help shape the automotive narrative in Malaysia,” said Hudspeth.

Publicis Groupe Malaysia is also the incumbent agency for MINI Malaysia.

Philippines — Philippines-based customer loyalty program ZAP has partnered with algorithmic decisioning solutions Algonomy to adopt its customer data platform and customer journey orchestration solution, to provide ZAP merchants with customer insights and enabler better customer engagement. The agreement was assisted by True Digital Group (TDG), a digital transformation company that partnered with Algonomy to bring its solutions to the Philippines and the broader Southeast Asian market.

ZAP Philippines helps merchants launch their own customized loyalty program by offering merchants the option for a card or mobile-based loyalty program where they are able to customize their mechanics, build a database of members, and use data to create specific promotions for customers.

Through the new collaboration, ZAP will start offering customer-centric marketing campaigns across loyalty, CRM, on-demand & triggered journeys for their partner merchants. Through Algonomy’s machine learning algorithms and customer marketing automation, ZAP aims to bolster its capability to provide merchants with data-driven marketing campaigns that will drive brand loyalty, promo redemption rates, cross-sell conversion and ultimately increase revenue.

Dustin Cheng, CEO at ZAP Group Incorporated, said, “The investment in Algonomy’s Customer Data Platform and Customer Journey Orchestration gives us a strategic advantage in the market, helping our merchants launch data-driven marketing campaigns. Algonomy’s expertise in Algorithmic Decisioning Solutions and deep domain expertise played a key role in our decision to partner with them. We are excited about the possibilities this partnership brings in driving digital transformation for our clients.”

Amit Agarwal, senior vice president of sales for APAC and MEA at Algonomy, commented, “Creating customer loyalty is every retailer’s business objective. The one thing that can help retailers achieve this objective is insights-driven engagement across the customer journey. ZAP is evolving loyalty programs with deep customer insights and we are excited to help them help their merchants scale their business.”

Sulabh Dhanuka, head of International digital solutions at True Digital Group, said that bringing together ZAP’s innovative loyalty program with Algonomy’s world-class platforms highlights the power of the digital age in delivering greater value to retailers and their customers. Dhanuka added that TDG is committed to the Philippines market and that the company is excited to continue being at the forefront of Retail 4.0 in the country as highlighted by such deals and partnerships.

India – dentsuMB, the integrated communication agency under dentsu India, has been appointed for the digital creative mandate for Social Alpha, the multistage innovation curation and venture development platform for science and technology startups, which will be handled by the agency’s Bangalore office.

Social Alpha seeks to address the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges. It supports mission-aligned entrepreneurs through a network of innovation labs, startup incubators, accelerator programmes, and seed funds, as well as market access mechanisms. 

As part of the mandate, dentsuMB will be developing the communication framework and creating campaigns that showcase the initiatives across Social Alpha’s social media assets. The focus will be on the core mission of the brand, which is to create social, economic, and environmental impact through the power of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Manoj Kumar, Social Alpha’s co-founder and CEO, said, “While we take extreme pride in what our startups do, we needed help in communicating the inspiring work of our portfolio companies with an intent to attract more innovators and enablers to this emerging sector.”

Meanwhile, Indrajeet Mookherjee, dentsuMB’s managing partner, shared that this partnership will be a unique journey given the nature of services that Social Alpha provides and the divergent startup sectors it works with. 

“At the heart of Social Alpha, is a clearly defined purpose ‘of making a difference to the lives of millions’ and we hope to collaborate on bringing these beautiful stories of impact and change to a larger audience,” said Mookherjee.

Hong Kong – LINE Today Hong Kong, the news and content curation hub within social messaging app LINE, has partnered with digital advertising solutions company Innity to launch its new self-serve platform to streamline its ad operations and expand its ad offerings to advertisers. 

LINE Today curates and publishes over 1,000 news and content articles daily and has over two million monthly active users. The new custom platform enables LINE Today’s advertisers to set up orders, manage campaigns, and build their creatives. It also enables advertisers to run Innity’s high-impact mobile ad formats like Mobile Spin and Mobile Cards, amongst others. In addition, advertisers can set their own campaign budget and schedule, and then monitor results and adjust as needed in a real-time dashboard. 

Queenie Hung, LINE’s sales director for Hong Kong, commented, “We’re excited to enable advertisers to easily and quickly create and upload their own campaigns that they can push live to 2 million active users on LINE Today Hong Kong in an effective way.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Lim, Innity Hong Kong’s managing partner, shared that they are excited to be working with LINE Today Hong Kong who is an innovative publisher dedicated to discovering the best advertising technologies. 

“We’re excited to have become their partner and support and streamline their ad campaigns with our programmatic-driven self-serve solution, and we expect that it will create significant monetization opportunities for them,” said Lim.

Tel Aviv, Israel – In-game advertising company Anzu has partnered with Top Down Games, the Roblox game development group under Benoxa, to allow advertisers to run their campaigns within ‘All Star Tower Defense’, the hit experience on the Roblox platform, playable across mobile, PC, and console.

The experience, one of Roblox’s most-played titles, is a tower defense game where players equip and deploy towers to defend their base from incoming enemies for as many waves as possible. 

As part of the partnership, advertisers will be able to run their banner ads and gifs within ‘All Star Tower Defense’ via Anzu’s in-game ad placements, which put players first and blend into the gameplay, appearing on objects like billboards, banners, and buildings.

The team at Top Down Games believes that Anzu’s solution provides a reliable and consistent stream of advertising content without taking anything away from the gameplay. 

“This allows us to focus more time and resources on future updates and new experiences for our fans. The team was also great at helping us figure out exactly where the ad placements should sit to help us get the most out of them while ensuring they naturally feel part of the player experience,” the team said.

Alex Yerukhimovich, Anzu’s vice president of games, commented, “2022 will be a pivotal year in the construction of the metaverse, and we’re extremely excited about our role in shaping it through partnerships with fellow innovators such as the Top Down Games.”

In October 2021, Anzu has launched its global Roblox offering, partnering with creators and integrating in-game ad placements into their experiences to make it easier for advertisers to enter the platform.