Tag: Partnership

Singapore – Classifieds platform Carousell has launched anew its ‘Free Ads for Charities’ initiative, an advertising support program for non-profit organizations (NPOs) that helps various communities impacted by COVID-19.

In the previous ‘COVID-19 Free Ads for Charity’ in 2020, Carousell offered up to SG$2m fund of advertising support for NPOs in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines to help them replenish the supply of food and essential health products, donations for upkeep cost, call for volunteers and other initiatives caring for families-at-risk and seniors in need.

This year, the platform is doing the same by offering up to SG$250,000 to support any charities and non-profit organizations in Singapore impacted by COVID-19.

JJ Eastwood, the managing director of Carousell Media Group, commented, “We are very proud to bring back our Free Ads for Charities initiative and expand upon our commitment to uplift local communities in need. Charity donations have been impacted as fundraising events have had to be canceled due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Meanwhile, Carousell has also partnered with Singapore’s non-profit organization National Volunteer and Philanthropy Center (NVPC), to launch its annual ‘Blessings’ campaign, aimed at encouraging Singaporeans to share their blessings during this festive season.

The partnership will be supporting SG Cares Giving Week with their annual campaign, which is an expansion of the platform’s ‘#SayYesToBlessings’ initiative launched in August 2021 to help empower non-profit organizations in digitalizing and amplifying their causes online. 

For this year’s ‘#Blessings’ campaign, Carousell will be expanding its reach to bring greater awareness to the public to support local communities in need. Starting today until 31 December, interested donors can log on to Carousell and browse listings from over 20 charities and non-profit organizations, and give back to those who need it the most by donating essential items such as home appliances, COVID-19 test kits, clothes, and food, as well as make direct donations to their favorite causes via Carousell Protection.

In addition, users can list their usable items on Carousell under its Free Items category to help other individuals in need.

According to Carousell’s MD for Singapore Chee Soon Ng, the ‘#Blessings’ campaign originally started as a user-led initiative and has grown into one adopted by the wider Carousell community over the years.

“With every 1 in 3 Singaporeans using Carousell monthly, we are the perfect platform to connect charities with users who are looking to declutter their surplus purchases by giving back to those who need them the most. We are excited to partner with NVPC for SG Cares Giving Week and we encourage every donor to give generously and make a positive difference this festive season,” said Ng.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Natural bottled water brand, Spritzer, has appointed advertising agency FCB Malaysia to handle its creative duties.

Shiao Chan, Spritzer’s group marketing manager for Malaysia, believes that FCB is a masterful storyteller with an undeniable passion for building and enhancing the stature of local brands. 

“With their solid FMCG experience at our disposal, we’re confident that this partnership will bring to life the many tales that are waiting to be told for Spritzer,” said Chan.

Shaun Tay, FCB Malaysia’s co-owner and CEO, commented that winning over a major Malaysian brand like Spritzer has always been a dream. 

“What I personally appreciate is the clarity of vision that the Spritzer marketing team has for the brand, and we’re excited to be part of its continuous story of success,” said Tay.

FCB has already started work on several key 2022 campaigns for Spritzer.

Earlier this year, Spritzer has also announced the appointment of media company Trapper as its integrated media agency partner for all Spritzer brands.

Australia – Foxtel, Australia’s subscription TV company, has rebranded its loyalty program Foxtel First, to be now called Foxtel Reward.

Following this endeavor, the company has also partnered with live entertainment company, Live Nation Australia, to bring Foxtel Rewards members unmissable live music events.

Through the partnership, Foxtel Rewards will be rolling out entertainment experiences across the most anticipated Live Nation Australia tours. It will also enable members to experience VIP benefits, such as meet and greets with the stars, invitations to exclusive pre-show parties, and reserved ticket allocations.

Moreover, members will be able to enjoy a slate of huge local and global talent in the upcoming Live Nation tours, including Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Tim Minchin, and Alanis Morissette, as well as Backstreet Boys, and Rod Stewart, among others.

Greg Segal, Live Nation’s president of brand partnerships for Australia, commented, “We are looking forward to bringing Foxtel Rewards members deeper connections to their favorite artists and the music they love. We know the Foxtel Rewards program will make these experiences even more memorable for members.”

Foxtel Rewards will also bring an enhanced sport offering to their members with action-packed live sporting events, allowing them to meet sporting heroes and score tickets as part of regular giveaways. 

The program will deliver access to all areas to some of the biggest cricketing matches across the summer months including The Ashes, One Day International, T20 World Cup, and the Big Bash League, as well as NRL, and AFL, Supercars events across 2022. 

Lisa Cronin, Foxtel’s director of customer marketing and loyalty, said, “At a time where live experiences are more valued and sought after than ever before, we’re thrilled to be partnering with Live Nation Australia and rounding out our strong loyalty offering with the most exclusive money can’t buy experiences for our customers.”

Furthermore, the new rewards program will enable members to get their hands on premium movie tickets, bonus and exclusive content, and behind-the-scenes previews of their favorite shows, as well as attend VIP events.

Foxtel Rewards is free for all Foxtel residential customers with a set-top box only, which excludes Foxtel from Telstra customers.

Australia – Global in-game audio adtech company AudioMob has announced a new exclusive partnership deal with global gametech firm Livewire, aimed at launching APAC’s first in-game audio ad formats.

The partnership aims to leverage the power of in-game ads as an opportunity to reach players in a non-intrusive way within the game’s environment. Through the new platform, AudioMob will be serving in-game audio ads with an unobtrusive click-through banner. When users stream music or a podcast while playing a game, the in-game audio fades the stream before playing the ad.

According to research from AudioMob, about 61% of 18- to 24-year-olds listen to music when playing video games, while followed by 24- to 34-year-olds (49%), and 35- to 44-year-olds (44%).

Christian Facey, AudioMob’s CEO and co-founder, commented, “It’s amazing to see that we’re getting the same reception from the world’s largest advertising brands too.”

Indy Khabra, Livewire’s co-founder, believes that audio, in general, seems to be enjoying a renaissance with new formats, platforms, and reach.

“Brands in APAC are shifting budgets to target gaming audiences and including In-Game Audio ads delivers the non-intrusive experience players support,” said Khabra. 

Brad Manuel, Livewire’s co-founder, said, “More people in APAC play mobile games than any other digital medium, covering casual players in transit to deeply engaged daily players who experience integrated audio ads as a natural fit within gameplay.”

The in-game audio ad is live and available for all brands across the entire APAC region.

Sydney, Australia – First-party data provider Audience360 has announced that it has entered a partnership with financial comparison site Mozo, allowing brands to engage audiences currently looking for personal finance and retail energy products with a purchase intent on Mozo.

This means that any advertiser seeking to reach Mozo audiences will be able to access the complete suite of Audience360 media buying tools. Audience360, which has first-party data partnerships with carsales.com.au, Webjet, and the AFL.com.au said the importance of transparent, premium first-party audience data has ‘never been greater’.

Furthermore, the partnership which delivers audience extension capabilities across the wider Internet, will allow brands to be able to target users beyond the Mozo website. The core editorial finance areas on Mozo are banking, insurance, loans, and utilities, and provide advertisers with a strong ‘intention to buy’ audience.

“We believe that by partnering with Audience360 we’ll give advertisers better reach of audiences and brands will have the benefit of connecting with people that have the intention to soon buy retail finance, energy, and other services,” said Neville Daniels, managing director for APAC at Mozo.

Mozo compares more than 1,800 products from more than 200 banking, insurance and energy providers to help Australians find a better deal each month via its comparison tools and calculators, and is a trusted source of financial rates and information with Australian consumers, the media and industry. 

Meanwhile, Jenny Parkes, managing director at Audience360, commented, “Mozo’s website users are ready to transact and are actively looking for products and services. We are seeing first party data rise to the fore in digital advertising, and we are thrilled that Mozo has joined our growing stable of publisher and vertical brands.”

Parkes added that branded audiences enable advertisers to reduce media wastage and target users with more precision, as digital ad campaigns are based on first party deterministic data.

Australia – Swimming Australia, the governing body for swimming in Australia, has appointed Publicis Groupe’s global creative network Publicis Worldwide, as its new full-service agency partner.

As part of the mandate, Publicis Worldwide will be overseeing Swimming Australia’s marketing strategy, creative, media, and design, as well as social, and partnership development. 

Eugenie Buckley, Swimming Australia’s CEO, believes that they have created a strategy to expand from their platform engaging Australian swimmers and the sport’s wide fanbase.

“Publicis Worldwide has proven experience bringing together communications strategy, creativity, data, and technology to lead the change, and to shape the future of the sporting and entertainment experience in swimming,” said Buckley.

Meanwhile, Simone Waugh, Publicis Worldwide’s managing director, said, “Our expertise in building brands and now applying it to sports is timely for our agency – with the momentum and change evident as soon as the 2032 Olympic Bid was successful for Queensland.”

Singapore – foodpanda, which has been one of the leading platforms in food delivery in Asia, especially this pandemic, has unveiled a partnership that will see it innovating the core of its value proposition. 

Partnering with Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, the food delivery platform will now move to offer a wide range of consumer electronics and appliances for on-demand deliveries on foodpanda shops in Singapore and Thailand.

The partnership is Xiaomi’s first q-commerce in Asia outside of China. Foodpanda will be offering Xiaomi’s products ranging from smart devices, audio, and mobile accessories, to household appliances, and will be delivered to homes within 30 minutes.

Abhishek Sahay, foodpanda’s senior director of New Verticals, noted that beyond traditional e-commerce, brands are now already looking for the next phase of growth, and with q-commerce, foodpanda shops provide a new way for retailers to deliver their products to customers almost instantly. 

“We’re proud to be Xiaomi’s first quick commerce partner in Asia, helping them connect more instantaneously with their customers in the region,” said Sahay.

In July this year, foodpanda has entered MARKETECH APAC’s Top 5 Stories for its tie-up with Unilever. 

During the interview, Sahay shared how the platform has always been eyeing to be more than what it is through foraying to new verticals. 

“We are no longer just a food delivery company. We are expanding into new verticals. In terms of future plans, we definitely have a long way to go, specifically on quick commerce. And as we think of expansion, we have three different ways. One is we want more and more stores. Secondly, we think of new country expansion, launching in Japan, Cambodia, and Myanmar. And the third is category expansion.”

In addition to currently listing Xiaomi products on foodpanda shops in Singapore and Thailand, the foodpanda app is also pre-loaded in new Xiaomi mobile phones in 10 markets across Asia, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Bangladesh, Laos, as well as Cambodia, and Myanmar.

United States – DoubleVerify (DV), the digital media measurement, data, and analytics platform has extended its partnership with Innovid, the independent advertising delivery platform, to support the automation of DV’s Video OmniTag, a VAST tag that allows clients to utilize across CTV, mobile, and desktop environments.

The expanded integration aims to mitigate the risk of manual errors and delayed launches, across desktop, mobile, and CTV. By using the automated DV Video OmniTag integration, advertisers can shorten their overall speed-to-market for placements by 48 to 72 hours.

Moreover, the offering automatically activates one of DV’s video solutions for Innovid advertisers – DV Video Complete, which includes campaign monitoring, pre-bid avoidance, post-bid blocking, and MRC-accredited innovation – DV Video Filtering.

Jack Smith, DoubleVerify’s chief product officer, said that they continuously innovate with a focus on simplicity and workflow automation to maximize operational efficiency for advertisers.

“That’s why we’re excited to offer Innovid clients an even more seamless way to authenticate the quality of their video campaigns and protect brand equity across all digital screens, including CTV, by easily activating DV video solutions directly within the Innovid platform,” said Smith.

Meanwhile, Dale Older, Innovid’s chief product officer, believes that this expanded partnership further enhances their CTV ad serving and measurement platform, providing more value and efficiency to clients. 

“The integration gives brands and agencies the peace of mind that they have strong, seamless protection across their omnichannel initiatives, including CTV,” said Older.

India – Online parenting community platform, FirstCry Parenting, has partnered with programmatic digital ad company PubMatic, to make its audience data segments available across PubMatic’s premium inventory. This will be through PubMatic‘s audience data platform, Audience Encore.

FirstCry Parenting boasts a user base of 20 million and engages parents via a wide range of parenting content, from curated video and editorial articles on parenting, which is validated by medical experts, from tracker tools to meal plans and parent forums. Its audience is segmented into expecting parents, parents of infants, toddlers, and school-aged children, enabling advertisers across industries and sectors to connect with the relevant target demographic of their choosing.

Through the partnership, PubMatic will further expand its Audience Encore, which is designed to improve how marketers and data owners transact by aiming to give more control to the data owner and better ROI for the advertiser. Data providers and publishers with first-party data can upload their segments to the platform, generate a Deal ID for single, recurring, or customized use, and then transact programmatically, alongside premium PubMatic inventory in private or open marketplaces.

Moreover, the partnership will enable media buyers to leverage FirstCry Parenting’s rich audience segments across all digital screens and channels, including mobile, connected TV, and the open web on PubMatic’s premium inventory. The direct integration allows buyers to activate data at the supply level which can lead to increasing the campaign performance via improved scale, viewability, and click-through rate.

Supam Maheshwari, FirstCry’s founder and CEO, believes that the combination of PubMatic’s premium inventory and FirstCry’s valuable audience data is a real win for advertisers.

“FirstCry Parenting harnesses the accumulated knowledge and experience of parents on FirstCry for several years, making this a complete resource for new families embarking on their parenting journey. Engaging with young families is an opportunity for brands to introduce themselves to a generation of prospective new customers,” said Maheswari.

Amit Yadav, PubMatic’s country manager for South Asia, said that with the prevalence of third-party cookies continuing to decline and consumer privacy paramount, it is important for agencies to re-define audience addressability strategies to optimize reach. 

He further shared that poor cookie match rates can be addressed when data targeting is applied at the SSP level and passed via a deal ID, which typically represents a multitude of domains. 

“Media buyers who use Audience Encore to target high-value segments like FirstCry Parenting’s segments typically report increased efficiency, more control, better transparency, increased scale, higher quality buys, and greater efficacy,” said Yadav.

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.