Tag: Programmatic ads

Singapore – Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the launch of IAS Curation with Google Ad Manager. IAS will now offer programmatic buyers a deal-based enrichment pathway designed to curate inventory at the source that meets the benchmarks for advertisers across context, brand safety and viewability while driving better performance, at scale. 

IAS Curation empowers advertisers with actionable data to activate avoidance and contextual targeting strategies across media buys at scale for Google Ad Manager. To maximise brand suitability, advertisers are able to consolidate bidding on high quality inventory and precisely target contextually relevant content to drive efficiency for their ad buys. 

IAS’s predictive science pre-screens pages and categorises them, enabling brands to seamlessly identify inventory most desirable while avoiding content that is unsuitable. 

With IAS Curation, advertisers running programmatic campaigns can now incorporate IAS enrichment to tailor supply before it reaches their buying platform. Moreover, IAS’s natural language processing-powered contextual classification enables advertisers to target only relevant, quality content so advertisers can avoid content their brand does not align with. 

Lastly, with contextual avoidance, brand safety & suitability, and MFA filtration available before it reaches a bidder, advertisers can reduce waste and maximise ROI using AI-driven measurement & optimisation.

Srishti Gupta, chief product officer at IAS, said, “Brand suitability and contextual relevance are top priorities for programmatic buyers who are looking to avoid wasting ad spend on poor quality inventory such as MFA or ad clutter. IAS Curation gives programmatic buyers on Google Ad Manager a way to elevate their supply strategy and efficiently maximise returns on their media investments through AI-driven optimisation.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Global sell-side advertising company Magnite hhas announced that REV Media Group has selected their full product suite to help streamline their programmatic capabilities across display and video. 

Through the partnership, SpringServe will be the primary ad server connected to its video inventory, including Tonton and its news portals, helping to deliver a great user experience across the platform, while the Magnite Streaming and Magnite DV+ SSPs will help monetise display and video inventory programmatically. 

By leveraging Magnite’s full product suite, this will help REV Media Group maintain a high quality user experience on their Tonton platforms, enable them to more effectively monetise their inventory, and grow programmatic activation through unified demand. Moreover, SpringServe’s ad podding capabilities together with robust creative controls help ensure high quality and relevant ad delivery, preserving a premium experience for the user.

Nicholas Sagau, COO at REV Media Group, said, “Our inventory on Tonton has grown considerably since its launch. With the rise of short-form video content for news consumption on our news portal, it’s imperative that we align ourselves with partners who can support us in monetising it effectively. We’ve been impressed by what Magnite has been able to deliver for us so far, particularly in a live environment, and look forward to what we can accomplish together as Tonton continues to scale.”

Meanwhile, Leon Siotis, senior vice president for SpringServe International at Magnite, commented, “With viewers increasingly turning to ad-supported streaming as their primary way to watch television, it’s important for publishers to have all the tools they need to effectively monetise their content. REV Media Group is in an important phase of growth and we’re looking forward to helping support this with the right tools and technology.” 

Sydney, Australia – Cake.Shop, an adtech startup, has officially launched in Australia, offering brands and agencies innovative programmatic ad buying services that emphasise transparency and rich media creative ad targeting.

Founded by former AdLudio and Mindshare Australia programmatic executive Luke Hills and former Azerion JAPAC managing director Georgia Woodburne, Cake.Shop draws its name from the proverb “to have your cake and eat it,” reflecting the company’s commitment to delivering the best of both worlds in media buying.

Hills is the former VP of growth at AdLudio in London and was previously head of programmatic at Mindshare Australia. Woodburne was responsible for driving Azerion’s expansion in the JAPAC region and played a key role in rich media creative company Inskin’s expansion in the Asia Pacific region, where she held the role of GM, APAC.

Cake.Shop aims to provide agencies and brands with a trusted solution to address the industry’s biggest challenges: easy access to programmatic advertising, creative excellence, and precise measurement. By offering a unique experience, Cake.Shop helps brands and agencies achieve strong performance from their programmatic ad spend.

The company stated that it aims to disrupt the media buying process through a four-pronged approach: creative-led, with attention-grabbing ads designed to engage rather than annoy; sustainable marketing, by measuring, reducing, and optimising to meet sustainable goals; technology ownership, by eliminating intermediaries for greater control and transparency over marketing technology; and commercial flexibility, which allows businesses to grow sustainably.

For Hills, traditional managed service options are not working, and agencies and brands need control over their technology choices and must work transparently with their partners. 

Meanwhile, Woodburne believes that transparency is at the core of Cake.Shop’s ethos. 

“We believe this should be reflected in fee structures and solutions,” said Woodburne.

Speaking more about the launch, Hills shared, “We’re thrilled to introduce Cake Shop to the world. Our mission is to support agencies and brands in achieving sustainable growth both commercially and environmentally. We aim to make effective advertising more accessible for brands of all sizes. Cake.Shop is designed to lower the barrier to entry, providing market-leading solutions that enable agencies to deliver world-class services to their clients. By stepping into the gap left by larger technology companies, Cake.Shop offers a local and global, client-focused alternative for businesses.”

“Our flexible approach means clients can reduce spending without the pressure of restrictive contracts. We’re possibly the only business in the market advocating for clients to spend less, focusing instead on quality, ownership, and transparency for long-term brand growth. With significant headwinds in marketing through privacy, compliance, and sustainability, we believe legacy solutions in the market will struggle to meet the demands of local businesses. We’re here to help companies navigate these pressures with solutions that complement our sustainable vision,” Hills added.

Hong Kong – Blue Insurance Limited has tapped Omnicom Media Group (OMG) Hong Kong for its latest programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign that featured a retargeting strategy plan to achieve high accuracy and audience engagement. 

For this campaign, Blue Insurance aimed to boost awareness and consideration for its ‘Term Life Insurance (TL3)’ offering. To achieve this, OMG HK recognised the need for an innovative strategy to enhance the campaign’s effectiveness and introduced an advertising opportunity through clinic TVs.

The OMG HK team capitalised on using clinic TVs and strategically selected MTR stations near residential areas to raise awareness of life insurance among target audiences.

Blue Insurance and OMG HK placed digital ads on TV screens in clinic waiting rooms to educate patients on the importance of life insurance while they waited for consultations. This approach utilised a smaller, more targeted setting to engage consumers who might be considering insurance options. The campaign focused on approximately 60 clinics to effectively reach the intended audience.

The team also strategically chose MTR stations near 14 residential areas in Kowloon and the New Territories for ad placements. The ads were displayed on JC Decaux’s (JCD) trackside TVs and new 98-inch Ultra Digital Panels, making Blue Insurance the first client to utilise this cutting-edge technology. These panels represent JCD’s inaugural digital, 4K screens within their transport advertising network.

Unlike traditional OOH advertising, programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) placements deliver contextually relevant ads to individuals in the vicinity and enable retargeting on desktop or mobile devices, providing Blue Insurance with greater precision in their advertising efforts. The accuracy and effectiveness of this retargeting strategy revealed that over 90% of the retargeted audience, who were near the pDOOH ads, expressed interest in insurance products, with 68% specifically showing a keen interest in life insurance.

Jacky Wong, senior performance manager at OMG Hong Kong, said, “While OOH focuses on reaching a large audience, DOOH prioritises targeting quality. Our goal is to optimise ad spend for our clients by accurately retargeting users on mobile and desktop, ensuring every dollar is spent wisely for maximum impact.” 

Joanne Choy, senior manager of brand, distribution, and marketing at Blue Insurance Limited, also said, “The campaign has enabled us to successfully raise awareness of term life insurance and refundable critical illness insurance among our desired consumer groups. OMG Hong Kong is working with us to review the campaign and offer ways to better utilise retargeting for future initiatives. We are glad to have a partner that understands the importance of innovation and one that equips us with the knowledge and strategies to constantly enhance our marketing efforts.”

Singapore – Programmatic company Crimtan has announced a partnership with automotive digital publishers Autovia and Haymarket Automotive to power digital advertising solutions using their pooled first party audience data.

Through the partnership, the three companies will combine their unique data sets to offer clients best-in-class data-driven advertising solutions on the open web and other digitised channels.

In addition, the partnership will also leverage Crimtan’s dynamic connected media delivery against highly targeted audience signals from the publishers’ data in real-time, advertisers will be able to precisely target active in-market buyers. They will be offered cross-channel opportunities using newly digitised platforms in new advertising formats. These will include geo-location technology delivering relevancy through digital out of home (DOOH), as well as connected televisions (CTV).

Paul Goad, CEO at Crimtan, said, “This deal puts us – and therefore our clients – on the front foot, ready for when the Google third party changes come into force next year. By working together with Autovia and Haymarket Automotive, we are ensuring that we have a future-proofed first party audience offering ready-for-market.”

Meanwhile, Chris Daniels, chief revenue officer of Haymarket Automotive, commented, “Our first party publishing data is unique as it understands every user’s journey and we are able to share this insight and service with prospective advertisers. As a result, our customers can take advantage of a simple and effective way to deliver timely and relevant messaging to their target audience as they take their next steps in the car purchase journey.”

London, United Kingdom – With the eventual ‘death’ of third-party data in favor of privacy-centric advertising strategies, global location-based programmatic advertising company Blis puts focus on this dilemma businesses in the future may face by launching a global campaign that likens this ‘data drought’ to an actual drought in real life.

The campaign, which features Blis’ CEO Gregor Isbister, demonstrates the metaphor of being alone in the desert during a drought is aligned with the fact that businesses should migrate as soon as possible with advertising strategies with privacy at its core, unless they wait to be affected by the changes on data-centric advertising.

Furthermore, Blis demonstrates that businesses can ‘escape’ this ‘drought’ by implying privacy-centric ad strategies, including their commercial message of location-powered behavioral data that can provide marketers and media planners with real-world behavior data.

Other messages include location data that can help brands understand the real purchase journey and through an interactive and visual tool that combines data from the company’s global panel with precise location data and anonymized rich third-party signals, discovering and activating audiences is quick and easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya42f6Z3gtw&t=1s

“The scarcity of data in the post-cookie world does not remove the ability to engage and connect with your digital audience. Brands can still reach their online prospects at scale via privacy-compliant personalized advertising. Even though at Blis we work in the B2B space, we are still marketing to people, and especially during this exceptional time in history, we want to engage our audiences and leave them with a positive and memorable impression, by speaking to them not as robots, but as actual real humans with needs and wants,” Ed Burleigh, head of marketing for Asia at Blis shared to MARKETECH APAC.

When asked why they used the metaphor of a drought in the desert to represent the campaign, Burleigh stated that the desert is an ‘extreme metaphor’ for what may happen when cookies disappear entirely from the digital advertising ecosystem, adding also the new landscape where Apple’s ID for Advertisers (IDFA) update eliminates ad tracking.

“In the desert, there are limited options to survive. However, Blis believes by applying the power of location data, and a myriad of rich and anonymized data signals, brands can reach the right people at the right time. We know that marketers are concerned about the removal of the Chrome cookie. However, we believe a data drought can be avoided,” he stated.

Burleigh added, “We’ve done this by addressing a key industry issue – that is facing all of us – with a sense of clever playfulness. One way we’ve achieved this is by putting a face on the brand, which is a great way to humanize it. Our new company video features our CEO Greg as the lead ‘character’ on a personal journey to beat the data drought. It’s authentic, believable, and fun.”

Taipei, Taiwan – Asia-centric big data company Vpon has announced a new partnership with global adtech company Hivestack to amplify data-driven digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising across the markets of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Said partnership merges Vpon’s extensive mobile location data enables precise audience targeting X Hivestack’s programmatic digital out-of-home technology. Furthermore, said partnership brings together Vpon’s extensive location data with the targeting and measurement capabilities of Hivestack’s demand-side platform (DSP).

This then allows Hivestack’s advertising clients to deliver contextually relevant out-of-home messaging to different segments of consumers in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Hivestack’s DSP creates accurate custom segments by geofencing places of interest frequented by a brand’s target audience. The data will be leveraged to build hourly device concentration scores for each DOOH asset and activate screens where a high concentration of devices has been previously observed. Hivestack’s platform uses market-leading technology to activate the right DOOH screens at the right time, using billions of anonymous data points from mobile location ID’s. 

Arthur Chan, COO of Vpon, comments that their company’s effective and customizable data products are the ‘perfect accompaniment’ to Hivestack’s unique programmatic technology, which uses location data to activate digital screens in real-time based on behavioral patterns and movement.

“The partnership presents an exciting opportunity for marketers in Hong Kong and Taiwan to combine our far-reaching data sets and expert analytics with Hivestack’s market leading DSP to identify and reach the most relevant audience for their campaigns with high impact out-of-home advertising,” Chan stated.

Meanwhile, Troy Yang, MD for North Asia at Hivestack, describes that Hong Kong and Taiwan are key markets for Hivestack and they are excited to partner with an innovative big-data company that is prominent in these countries.

“Vpon’s unrivaled mobile location data and capabilities will be a valuable addition to the Hivestack offering, enabling marketers to serve timely and compelling advertising to the right audiences at the right moment and in the right place, as well as to continually measure and optimize their out of home campaigns to maximize conversions,” Yang stated.

Singapore – As cities went into lockdown and public gatherings grounded to a halt, mobile device usage has been the daily centerpiece of people’s lifestyle last year, evident with the latest statistics from independent marketing cloud company InMobi that video streaming in the Southeast Asian region has clocked in around 657 billion minutes of views during the second quarter last year.

In its latest report on programmatic video advertising, InMobi reveals that 93.5 million of those views originate from Indonesia, signifying a 57% increase in video streaming in the country, and a 65% growth in mobile video ad spend.

The report also notes that the industries of retail andfast moving consumer goods (FMCG), shopping, e-commerce, gaming, banking and other financial services dominate the mobile video advertising scene in SEA, thanks to fueled growth by advertisers in this sector. Said industries are also benefiting high video ad engagement.

On a general note, the report also found that that 36% of all in-app programmatic spends is accounted for by video, and that 179% of higher click-through rate (CTR) are driven by video compared to other formats.

In terms of video advertising format, the report states that there has been a 47% higher CTR driven by landscape video compared to other formats. Yet this still doesn’t fare well to the vertical format, which has seen an impressive growth of 196% year on year, which is 2x higher CTR driven on vertical video compared to other formats. Vertical videos are the preferred format for marketers from the shopping, social, and gaming industry.

According to Rishi Bedi, vice president of Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea at InMobi, mobile devices are now able to deliver a near-seamless video experience to users, which is especially significant in Southeast Asia due to the size of the market in the region.

“Brands are realizing the inherent potential of video marketing in creating real connections with their customers. From screen orientation and precision targeting to the best time of day and placement, adopting the right programmatic video ad strategy will be crucial for companies to stand out in the eyes of the mobile-first consumer,” Bedi stated.

Singapore – SQREEM, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence company, has announced that it has acquired programmatic advertising platform Gamma SSP to augment the company’s plans to expand their services and clientele reach in Southeast Asia.

The acquisition entails that Gamma SSP will become a fully-owned subsidiary of SQREEM in the short term, with SSP eventually merging into SQREEM’s tech stack to unlock 97% of the world’s programmatic inventory and eventually expanding the offering to include digital out of home (DOOH) and connected TV (CTV) – forming a complete dynamic digital ecosystem. 

In addition, the acquisition will enable a global supply integration for SQREEM by combining its proprietary AI technology with Gamma’s integrations in the region and globally to bolster behavioral targeting solutions, at a landing page level, to brands and media agencies.

Gamma will still be led by its managing director, Matt Robinson, and the current management team. The combined entity plans to expand its headcount and geographical footprint by as much as 25% over the next year.

Ian Chapman-Banks, CEO of SQREEM Technologies explains that their AI technology allows them to convert online human behavior into anonymized data points to help out their clients reach the right people at the right place and time. 

“Gamma’s integrations will provide us a gateway to massively accelerate our access to any inventory around the world, and combining it with SQREEM’s AI will enable us to get even better and faster access towards delivering the first true cookie-free media buying platform. This will expand our offering as a one-stop solution that covers the entire gamut of programmatic advertising,” he said.

Founded in 2014, Gamma is a supply side platform (SSP) focused on representing Southeast Asian publishers, covering the key markets across the region. 

The company has already helped advertisers programmatically target audiences across an ecosystem of more than 1700 publishers, including major premium publishers in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Gamma also has the ability to support connected TV ad spots and will be adding DOOH in the next 6 months.

“SQREEM’s strong presence across APAC and their experience in working with brands globally makes it an ideal match to further develop our SSP and we are thrilled about becoming part of such an exciting company,” said Robinson.

He added, “I believe the technology we offer is hugely complementary and that together, we can utilise both the Gamma and SQREEM platforms to realise their full potential.”

Classified as a ‘behavioral pattern data aggregator’, SQREEM collects, analyses, and creates a database of open data on the Internet using its own AI technology. The Singapore-based tech company provides data analysis and precision targeting services to more than 100 companies and government agencies across various industries.

Israel – Anzu.io, the global in-game advertising platform, has partnered with the full-stack programmatic and data platform Eskimi, to increase opportunities for brands to access the exploding gaming market through in-game advertising.

Anzu provides fully blended in-game ads in recognized IAB standards, making the platform fully aligned with the programmatic standards and bringing scale to in-game advertising, while Eskimi is a full-stack programmatic platform that helps advertisers reach global online users utilizing innovative and creative solutions.

Through OpenRTB integration, the partnership aims to create opportunities for brands to programmatically reach diverse, engaged, and lucrative gaming audiences via display and video ads across mobile, PC, and console platforms. The targeted regions of the partnership are Africa, Asia, and CIS, as well as Europe, and MENA.

Yaniv Rozencweig, the director of business operations at Anzu, said, “Anzu’s blended ads enhance games’ realism and transform game objects into valuable advertising opportunities, all while respecting gamers by not disrupting the gaming experience – crucial for game developers and brands alike. We are pleased to partner with Eskimi to reach even more advertisers across hot gaming geographies who are excited about the potential of in-game advertising.”

Meanwhile, Monika Poškutė, the head of marketing at Eskimi, shared that they are constantly working on improving their services and innovation, as well as the user experience in the world of digital advertising. 

“Our partnership with Anzu brings the best of in-game advertising solutions to our clients across the globe. We look forward to working with Anzu to educate clients about the capabilities and benefits of gaming as a mainstream digital advertising medium,” added Poškutė.