Tag: Programmatic ads

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.

Tel Aviv, Israel – In-game advertising platform Anzu.io has announced the conclusion of its funding series, successfully raising US$9M to aid the company’s global expansion of its in-game advertising platform, with the help of venture capital groups BITKRAFT Ventures and HBSE Ventures, as well as marketing services organization WPP and Sony Innovation Fund, the corporate venture capital arm of multinational conglomerate Sony.

The funding series has also seen the participation of venture capitals Alumni Ventures Group and Goal Ventures, as well as angel investors Marc Merrill, co-founder, co-chairman, and former co-CEO of Riot Games, and Dylan Collins, co-founder and CEO of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe ad platform recently acquired by Epic Games.

Anzu.io’s funding series coincides with the increasing popularity and market ‘boom’ of the gaming industry. Statistics from market intelligence group Mordor Intelligence estimate that the gaming industry’s value is expected to be around US$257B by 2025.

“Gaming is one activity that has exploded over the past year and increasingly an important advertising channel. In partnership with Anzu, together with our agencies, we can make it simpler for them to reach the growing audience in the esports and gaming space,” said Mark Read, CEO of WPP.

Through the accumulated funding, Anzu.io will be pushing its presence globally starting with the United States, followed by Singapore and China, and other core locations to be announced. With partner brands including game publishers Ubisoft, Lion Castle, and Nacon and global brands Pepsico, Samsung, American Eagle, and Vodafone, Anzu.io will feature advertisements of partner brands through programmatic technology blending of real-world ads into video games, esports tournaments, and live streams, enhancing games’ realism and transforming game objects into valuable advertising opportunities.

“Anzu has been delivering the technology they promised and growing their industry footprint. We are excited to join this funding round and support Anzu, entering a new phase of growth in in-game advertising. The company’s gamer-first attitude will enable developers to access new business models and bring advertisers closer to gamer audiences without disturbing gameplay,” says Gen Tsuchikawa, CEO and chief investment officer at Innovation Growth Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund.

Meanwhile, Itamar Benedy, co-founder and CEO at Anzu commented, “We are proud to have global leaders in advertising, entertainment, gaming, esports, and venture capital invest in Anzu’s next stage of growth. These trailblazers are the perfect combination of strategic partners to help us maintain our dominating position as we enter 2021.”

For Jens Hilgers, founding general partner at BITKRAFT, their recent participation at Anzu.io’s funding series means redefining the aspect of modern in-game advertising.

“Since our initial investment, the Anzu team has built the most sophisticated platform to deliver blended in-game advertising at scale in the higher-end games segment. The impressive line up of game integrations combined with brands executing unique campaigns on the platform has validated Anzu’s market position and technology,” Hilgers commented.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Digital ad verification Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the acquisition of programmatic ad transparency provider Amino Payments in response to IAS’ expansion of solutions to the market.

Entailed in the new acquisition is the acquisition also of Total Visibility, an existing Amino Payments solution designed to provide insights into digital media quality and corresponding supply path costs. The product offers advertisers impression-level financial insights and media quality verification to optimize campaigns in real-time and helps advertisers determine media quality including viewability, fraud and brand safety, by offering critical insights and control to optimize campaigns toward supply paths that deliver cost-efficient and high-quality media.

In addition, Total Visibility can save advertisers up to 15 percent of their programmatic media spend by optimizing their advertising investments toward the most impactful placements through the most cost-efficient supply path.

“As even more digital media is transacted programmatically, the need for transparency will continue to be critical for advertisers. The Amino Payments team is thrilled to join IAS, the market leader in verification, to pursue a joint vision to bring unprecedented transparency into programmatic advertising.” said Will Luttrell, CEO of Amino Payments.

Hong Kong – With a greater focus on the Hong Kong and Thailand market, martech and adtech Maadtech is launching its Programmatic 2.0 solutions, featuring new  technology features and campaign performance optimization.

With the latest launch, Maadtech is integrating their data management platform-customer data platform (DMP-CDP) as well as media and campaign optimization tools made available through global partnerships with Adzymic Singapore, Sublime Paris, and others.

In a statement, Wilson Chan, executive director of Maadtech Programmatic, said that the latest product launch aligns with ‘the golden era for Programmatic trading’ as 5G connectivity will lift the programmatic ad spend in Asia from currently USD30Bto over USD50B. 

“Our solution is not only about technology and features. Our mission is to help Asian marketers and advertisers to adopt Programmatic best practices and remain competitive globally, which we are very much behind the western markets in this field,” Chan stated.

He added, “We are currently in development of a client CPD platform solution which will complement our existing products and offer marketers a truly data-driven Programmatic Marketing ‘end-to-end’ solution starting from zero base. We aim to launch this later in the year regionally across Asian markets.”

Founded in 2019, Maadtech integrates adtech and martech solutions under one platform in enabling effective adoption of programmatic advertising in display, social media, and other channels.

Singapore – Digital advertising solutions provider Innity has launched Shoppable Ads, a programmatic ad platform, as part of their Digital Commerce Advertising Partnership Program alongside premium publishers in the Southeast Asia region.

Through Shoppable Ads, Innity provides an end-to-end shopping experience for customers that streamlines the consumer purchases while providing businesses with insights to able reach purchase-ready customers easily. Furthermore, the platform also features a showcase of multiple products, complete with up-to date product details and pricing. When clicked, it takes them straight to the product’s checkout page.

“Shoppable Ads have the ability to reduce a user’s purchase journey substantially, taking them straight from awareness to purchase. The increase in efficiency will drive ROI and keep consumers coming back for more. With the rapid acceleration of e-commerce today, mastering the potential of digital commerce has become a core strategy that advertisers should no longer ignore,” said Phang Chee Leong, CEO and co-founder of Innity. 

With many marketing platforms using standard banners for advertising, little emphasis is shown on interaction. Hence, Innity’s existing supply side platform (SSP) allows marketeers greater viewability and engagement through programmatic and data-driven buys for high impact advertising.

“Since its inception, Innity has consistently led the industry with its commitment in developing high-impact, engaging ad experiences. Enhanced creativity is proven to drive impact and action. Our Shoppable Ads were developed to help solve the industry’s need for highly viewable, creative ad formats to break through the clutter to drive meaningful engagements,” Phang commented.

Australia – Australia-based cinema and outdoor advertising firm Val Morgan Outdoor (VMO) has evolved its audience measurement platform DART to determine hourly audience data at a screen level, across the locations at which it runs ads such as in retail, health club, and petro-convenience environments. The enhancement is in collaboration with independent marketing effectiveness consultancy Data2Decisions

VMO has already integrated promising features on the previous version of DART such as being able to track those viewing content based on age and gender and the ability to highlight facial features and determine moods. Dubbed as DART R&F, the newly improved platform combines VMO’s facial analytics data with third-party consumer data and machine learning, with its tech building impression scores as well.

“DART represents an enormous wealth of human interaction data that, when calibrated against third-party and independent data sources, it provides a highly accurate and scalable view of true audiences at VMO locations,” said Paul Butler, managing director at VMO.

Meanwhile, the partnership with Data2Decisions will see the consultancy building and verifying the platform’s audience reach methodology, which from today will apply to all campaigns.

Managing Partner of Data2Decisions John Price said, “Using the latest machine learning techniques to combine datasets, we were able to create a prediction model of specific audiences by the hour at an individual screen level. This has helped us, in partnership with VMO, to create reach and frequency calculations that provide the most robust measure of OOH audiences to date.”

Bangkok, Thailand – Bidmath, a global programmatic consultancy, has opened an academy for the special training of Display & Video 360 (DV360), Google’s unified platform for programmatic buying.

DV360 is an end-to-end campaign management tool, which aside from media planning and buying, enables advertisers to manage creative development and run measurement for campaigns across display, video, TV, and audio.

The training academy was put up with an aim to increase the adoption of programmatic industry knowledge in the country. According to Bidmath, despite the substantial growth of programmatic advertising in Thailand, there is a lack of deep technical knowledge.

A study by ad tech firm Rubicon Project reflects such observation, having found that 43% of advertisers in Asia are either extremely or somewhat hesitant to switch from the traditional way of media buying through an insertion order (IO) to the more automated mode of programmatic buying. The study also suggested that the single biggest challenge hindering further growth of programmatic advertising budgets is a lack of understanding and appropriate skills to effectively plan and execute programmatic ad campaigns.

Three courses will be initially offered, with each focusing on a specific topic within DV360: private marketplace buying, optimization best practices, and the fundamentals. Courses will be offered in Thai, Vietnamese, and English, and will be available both virtually and in-person.

Director of Bidmath Asia KK Sharma said that the lack of understanding and technical skills are slowing advertisers down when considering the adoption of programmatic guaranteed spends and the potential upside for local publishers such as Viu for example.

“By introducing courses in local languages, we hope to see increased adoption of programmatic advertising across Asia, but there is still a long way to go. Courses in Thai and Vietnamese were launched to accelerate growth and reach,” Sharma said.

Singapore – Pizza Hut Delivery (PHD) Indonesia has designated GroupM-owned companies, global media network MediaCom, and programmatic business Xaxis to handle all of its future programmatic campaigns.

According to a press release by Xaxis, PHD Indonesia pivoted to run more programmatic campaigns to ensure that its marketing efforts reached only the most relevant audiences.

Xaxis said that one of the weak links it targeted to fix for PHD is its disconnected online and offline customer data, which makes for a lack of visibility into the overlap and differences between its in-store and digital customers.

With such pain point, Mediacom will be taking over to consolidate audience insights with the use of Xaxis’ audience analysis solution Beyond.

Alfitrahmat Saputro, brand digital manager of PHD shared that unlike traditional panel-based market research, Beyond provided them with an audience analysis based entirely on the real-world behavior of their actual customers on both the website and physical stores.

Meanwhile, Yunnita Avreda, country head for Xaxis Indonesia said, “We were excited to work with a client so open to trying new innovations. With customers who can interact with the brand online through their delivery website, in-store, or through pick-up and take-out, Pizza Hut Delivery Indonesia was a perfect fit for Beyond and its capability to bridge online and offline consumer data.”

Xaxis Beyond will be made available across the APAC region.