Tag: Programmatic

Auckland, New Zealand – The programmatic DOOH steering committee of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in New Zealand has agreed on a new industry benchmark impression called the ‘Impression Multiplier’ formula, in a bid to be used by New Zealand-based DOOH suppliers activating inventory programmatically.

The formula is commonly referred to as the value of impressions delivered by a single ad play, appropriate to the hour of the day, day of the week and the screen on which the ad is served. Arriving at this value requires the application of an Impression Multiplier formula.

The agreed formula consists of several variables; these include the cumulative data, pertaining to the hourly audience exposed at a screen level; the ad play duration and dwell time in front of each screen which used to determine a probable number of ad play exposures, and lastly, the number of ad plays within the hour on the screen being measured. Hourly audience volume and dwell time lengths are determined by each supplier’s respective measurement methodologies.

Said agreement follows last year’s announcement of the IAB Programmatic Steering committee, an initiative from the IAB to accelerate the adoption and revenue growth of programmatic digital out of home in New Zealand, through a program of thought leadership, education, inspiration and awareness.

LUMO’s Jack Plowright, who leads the committee’s Measurement workstream, said, “For a market in its formative period, this is a significant achievement. What we identified early on was a desire amongst members to find consistencies where practical for our respective networks. Having one recipe we can all follow.”

Meanwhile, Kurt Malcolm, committee member and trading and innovations director at JCDecaux New Zealand, commented, “’This piece of work was only possible because we acknowledged our responsibility as an industry body to provide clarity in an emerging marketplace. A robust and representative Impression Multiplier formula is a leap towards that.”

Hong Kong – Independent programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) adtech Hivestack has been tapped by Hong Kong-based healthcare DOOH media network Alfaxmedia to offer brands, agencies and omnichannel demand side platform (DSP’s) the opportunity to purchase and activate Alfaxmedia’s DOOH inventory programmatically across Hong Kong. This will be done exclusively via the Hivestack supply side platform (SSP) platform.

Through the partnership, advertisers seeking to reach targeted audiences visiting or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities will be able to leverage Hivestack’s suite of planning, targeting and measurement capabilities to effectively deliver their campaigns and truly connect with their audiences.

Said partnership comes after Alfaxmedia’s plans to grow its network coverage by 20% in 2022, and make its healthcare media available exclusively via the Hivestack SSP.

For Lydia Yang, founder and managing director at Alfaxmedia, they believe that with Hivestack’s technology, its solution can offer significant value enhancements for both publishers and advertisers.

“Programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is undoubtedly the next big step in the evolution of the OOH media industry, as there is an increasing urgency to meet the demands of advertisers who seek data-driven ad solutions. We are very excited to be part of this game-changing development in the pDOOH industry by partnering with Hivestack, the global leader and pioneer in pDOOH,” Yang stated.

Meanwhile, Troy Yang, managing director for North Asia at Hivestack, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with Alfaxmedia who will exclusively use the Hivestack SSP to connect to our worldwide network of advertisers, especially within China, to drive new revenue from their DOOH inventory. Brands inside and outside of Hong Kong will now be able to use the Hivestack DSP to advertise their campaigns across Alfaxmedia’s premium healthcare screens.”

Singapore – Carousell Media Group, the advertising arm of Carousell Group, which holds recommerce platforms or marketplaces for pre-loved items such as Carousell, Mudah.my, ChoTot, OneKyat and Ox Street, has launched a first-of-its-kind recommerce programmatic buying platform. 

Called ‘Connect’, the tech is launched via the group’s advertising arm Carousell Media. The platform will deploy DSP ad technology and will be powered by the buying, selling, and search data signals generated from Carousell Media Group’s wide monthly user count across Greater Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

JJ Eastwood, managing director of Carousell Media Group, shared that the Connect platform was launched to allow brands to reach buyers and sellers both on and off Carousell’s marketplaces since “inspiration, discovery, and purchase can happen anywhere.” 

“We have witnessed unprecedented growth in recommerce over the last 12 months, that’s being propelled by consumer demand for sustainability as well as e-commerce, and it’s quickly becoming an important component of the consumer-brand relationship,” said Eastwood. 

The group said the Connect platform will give advertisers a viable alternative to the closed environments like Google and Facebook, by providing them with full-funnel marketing solutions and enabling them to engage with Carousell Media Group’s audiences on every ad format, such as video, display, audio, and Connected TV. Furthermore, Carousell Media Group says that the integration of first-party and third-party data sets is what sets the Connect offering apart from others. 

The platform was initially offered to selected advertisers, with Decathlon being a prominent one. The parent group said that as part of 2022’s rollout under Connect, its ad arm will be launching new ad products, such as Carousell Search Ads which will enable advertisers to fully leverage real-time keyword searches. 

As a parent company to classifieds platforms, Carousell Group has been shaping its capabilities to help entities in its advertising efforts. In November 2021, it launched for the second time its ‘Free Ads for Charities’ initiative, an advertising support program for non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. 

London, United Kingdom – Smartly.io, a global social advertising software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, has announced the acquisition of creative optimization platform Ad-Lib.io. Said acquisition advances Smartly.io’s cross-channel reach from social to now include dynamic creative optimization across programmatic, CTV and the entire Google ecosystem.

In addition, Smartly.io’s SaaS solution for social advertising will now be augmented by Ad-Lib.io’s enterprise suite of creative tools for YouTube, DV360 and Google Ads campaigns. The industry is seeing a growing demand for solutions that bring creative and media closer together across all channels.

Kristo Ovaska, CEO and co-founder at Smartly.io, said that the past two years have proven that creative technology has become the most important lever for driving digital advertising performance.

“Ad-Lib.io is a clear leader in the creative space by innovating on the mission-critical dimensions of workflow, automation, brand governance, personalization and insight. Their knowledge of the Google stack is unmatched in the industry and combining that with Smartly.io’s deep understanding of Facebook and the social stack across creative, media and data allows us to now serve customers across all major digital channels,” Kristo said.

Meanwhile, Oli Marlow-Thomas, founder and president at Ad-Lib.io, commented, “Smartly.io is the preeminent leader in delivering creative and media effectiveness for social. With brand marketers and agencies increasingly uniting their social and programmatic teams into integrated digital creative and media investment teams, this is a natural next step for both companies.”

In addition, Adit Abhyankar, CEO at Ad-Lib.io, added, “These teams are currently using multiple technologies or software partners, but going forward they won’t have to. The Smartly.io and Ad-Lib.io solution will provide the connective tissue to maximize creative effectiveness, media buying and creative intelligence.”

Smartly.io has its Asia-Pacific headquarters located in Singapore, while Ad-Lib.io has a presence in Hong Kong.

Singapore – Adzymic, the adtech company that provides AI-driven creative personalization, has announced the launch of their Smart Survey solution. The new survey-based display ad format allows marketers to capture customer insights or take a pulse check on campaigns within a matter of days.

The solution is easily set up on the Adzymic platform and banner ads containing the survey will run on programmatic display inventory, targeting specific audience groups. Results are tracked on the Adzymic dashboard giving insights to advertisers in real-time.

The company said pilot use cases of Smart Survey have included advertisers seeking to measure full-funnel campaign effectiveness, brand lift, third-party audience validation, and audience insights. Adzymic shared media agency Mindshare in India has been one of its early adopters who used the solution for its client, PepsiCo.

“As brands continue to increase investments in programmatic media to drive awareness and purchase intent, we seek to provide a more cost-effective method to measure campaign performance beyond basic metrics like clicks and impressions,” said Travis Teo, co-founder and executive director of Adzymic. 

“Smart Survey offers the added advantages of allowing brands to run anonymous surveys that contain 2-3 multiple-choice questions. The ads appear as native content on web pages and are relatively less intrusive,” added Teo.

The Smart Survey solution is now available to advertisers in scalable packages, with self-serve options, creative supported packages, or managed services. Adzymic said Smart Surveys executed under managed services come with a guaranteed number of respondents to give significant results for advertisers.

Earlier in October, Adzymic, which has a major presence in Asia, announced that it has expanded to Latin America (LATAM) through strategic partnerships with consultant for programmatic media, Grupo Digital Soul, and marketing solution for digital advertising, Latin Interactive. 

Auckland, New Zealand – Out-of-home media company JCDecaux in New Zealand and global digital out-of-home marketplace VIOOH have launched their programmatic offering in partnership with Air New Zealand.

Said campaign is the first to run programmatically across JCDecaux New Zealand’s airport portfolio. Additionally, it is the first campaign in New Zealand to leverage the global integration between VIOOH’s supply-side platform and Yahoo’s demand-side platform.

The offering, called as ‘JCDecaux PROGRAMMATIC’, is now available to all advertisers interested in booking digital inventory in and around Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown Airports, and offers the benefit of short-booking lead times and the ability to ‘switch on, switch off and pause’ a campaign. Programmatic digital out-of-home also provides the ability to buy inventory on specific days or during selected dayparts, and based on specific triggers, such as the weather. 

“The launch of JCDecaux PROGRAMMATIC in airports is an important first step towards the wider launch, which will include all JCDecaux roadside Digital Large Format locations, planned for early 2022. Programmatic buying is set to transform the industry in New Zealand, offering advertisers access to high-quality out-of-home inventory with true control and even greater flexibility,” said Mike Watkins, country head at JCDecaux New Zealand.

JCDecaux New Zealand’s exclusive global supply-side platform VIOOH, automates the planning and trading of digital out-of-home. Globally, VIOOH is connected with over 34 DSPs, including foundation partners for the New Zealand market Yahoo and Vistar. In New Zealand, JCDecaux’s programmatic offering will be DSP agnostic, with more integrations planned in the coming months.

“I’m delighted to be announcing our first programmatic out-of-home campaign in New Zealand. New Zealand is a new and growing market for VIOOH, so I’m excited to see how our programmatic out-of-home offerings will enable more advertisers in this market to have access to high quality, targeted media activations for their digital out-of-home campaigns, and therefore drive more efficacy and optimized results,” said Jean-Christophe Conti, chief executive officer at VIOOH.

The campaign is also made possible by dentsu and Yahoo’s omnichannel demand-side platform (DSP).

“Yahoo’s omnichannel DSP makes it easy for advertisers to connect to consumers no matter where they are. To have JCDecaux, a leading out-of-home player, plugged in and trading programmatically on the platform opens up a new world of possibilities. This is only the start of our very exciting global partnership with VIOOH and JCDecaux,” said John McNerney, director of platforms for ANZ at Yahoo.

Meanwhile, Richard Pook, GM for products and partnerships at dentsu, commented, “It’s great to see JCDecaux launching programmatic outdoor with Air New Zealand, offering them flexibility, superior efficiency and audience buying capability. As we fully scale inventory availability in New Zealand over the next few months, I am sure that clients and agencies will rapidly embrace this new and exciting way of buying out-of-home audiences.”

Singapore – Digital advertising solutions company Innity has made its latest feature, Shoppable QuickBuy, available on their enhanced Innity Shoppable Solutions service, allowing online shoppers to now add items directly to their online cart from the ads they see online.

With Innity’s Shoppable QuickBuy tech, users are able to browse and add products to the retailers’ cart all from within the ad format, retailers’ landing pages, blog posts, or apps. Once shoppers click on the ‘Buy Now’ button, they will be led straight to the ‘Add to Cart’ page or checkout page on the retailers’ site. 

Innity’s in-house creative team custom designs each creative experience so that it is unique to each brand.

“Innity Shoppable Ads solution was designed to effectively shorten and streamline the traditional consumer purchase journey, allowing users to go from discovery to purchase in an instantaneous and engaging experience, leading to greater profits for brands,” the company said in a press statement.

The shoppable platform is also equipped with advanced data feed management to allow retailers to synchronize product feed across multiple sales and marketing channels to monitor, enrich and update product info or pricing simultaneously.

In addition, retailers can also create custom segments from their product catalogs to run dynamic ads that can highlight personalized products to shoppers who have already shown interest in the brand.

Speaking about the feature launch, Phang Chee Leong, co-founder and CEO at Innity, said, “We’re thrilled to be rolling out Shoppable QuickBuy to help more brands adopt and maximize the power of discovery commerce; to turn interests into purchases, and content into conversions more seamlessly. As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, consumer behavior towards online shopping has shifted for good, and we believe this change will continue beyond the pandemic.”

He added, “We’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to improve and expand our Innity Shoppable Media platform, with the goal to make the online shopping experience more interactive, personalized, and instantaneous for everyone.”

Singapore – Bench, a programmatic solutions provider, has announced that it is extending the market offering of Bench Connect, its very own marketing intelligence platform, to clients in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, which was designed to address ad ‘murkiness’ and media inefficiencies that have plagued the industry.

Founded by programmatic media veterans Gil Snir, Shai Luft and Ori Gold, Bench Connect is designed to speed up and scale end-to-end digital media planning, team management and analytics in record time. Bench Connect integrates agencies and advertisers’ existing ad platforms into one seamless dashboard, enabling unrivalled transparency, efficiencies and ROI. 

For Gold, their aim is to help today’s busy digital marketers and advertisers save time and reap the rewards of more holistic and scalable ad management.

“You don’t solve the inefficiencies of our industry with analytics alone. We are transforming the way media is managed from siloed workflows to a fully integrated ecosystem, by unlocking a new and exciting breed of marketing intelligence,” Gold stated.

By automating the manual processes that exist within programmatic media workflow, the Bench Connect platform enables data to be mapped from various platforms, visualized and actioned to speed up digital media management at an unprecedented rate. The end-to-end process on Bench Connect – from initiating the brief to launching a marketing campaign – takes about 30 minutes, significantly less than the industry average of 30 days of traditional legacy models of ad campaign management.

“Up to now, any offerings that promise to connect your media and teams in a seamless workflow could take years to implement, and often the project is left unfinished due to lack of team or technical resources. We are very excited about this launch, especially now with marketers under greater pressure than ever before to interpret data and make faster decisions,” Gold explains, adding that most competing solutions are either too slow or simply rely on manual inputs for the system to work.

Unlike competing marketing cloud providers in the market, Bench Connect removes slow set up times and high implementation martech and adtech costs. Gold says these efficiencies will flow directly to brands and agencies’ bottom line and enable them to take control over their media and transparency across the supply chain.

“We expect this number to more than double over the next five years, as the world moves further towards online transactions and realizes the rapid growth of digital spending across APAC. The time is now to say goodbye to legacy models of adtech and martech, and embrace smarter ways of transforming our industry globally,” Gold concludes.

Singapore – Global digital media measurement software platform DoubleVerify has announced that it is expanding its partnership with MoPub, a monetization solutions provider under Twitter, entailing DoubleVerify to expand its full fraud protection to MoPub Marketplace, which is MoPub’s programmatic exchange.

MoPub Exchange currently connects advertisers with more than two trillion ad requests from over 1.5 billion addressable users around the world.

Said expanded partnership stems from their original partnership in 2019 where DoubleVerify was the sole provider of fraud and invalid traffic detection (IVT) post-bid measurement for the MoPub Marketplace. 

This expanded partnership, which includes DoubleVerify’s pre-bid avoidance segments and post-bid monitoring and blocking, further extends quality coverage for global advertisers and publishers across one of the world’s premiere mobile app programmatic exchanges. With DoubleVerify’s technology, MoPub can continuously refine the quality of mobile inventory available through MoPub Marketplace.

“For advertising to perform, it must be seen by real people. Unfortunately, fraud follows the money — and as ad investments have shifted to mobile, bad actors are working hard to take advantage. For that reason, it’s imperative that brands have clarity into the quality of in-app inventory they buy,” said Matt McLaughlin, COO at DoubleVerify.

He also added that they are excited to expand their partnership with MoPub to promote transparency, support mobile ad quality and performance, and empower marketers to reach their consumers wherever they are.

Meanwhile, Michal Jacobsberg-Reiss, head of ecosystem Partnerships at MoPub noted that ad fraud is an industry-wide challenge, impacting publishers, advertisers and SSPs, which pushes MoPub continuously invests in keeping their Marketplace fraud-free, and having the right partnership in place is paramount for this effort.

“DoubleVerify has been a strong partner for combatting new and emerging types of ad fraud. This expanded partnership supports our comprehensive, multi-step approach to ensure MoPub Marketplace is thoroughly vetted and monitored to uphold our already stringent, high standards of traffic quality,” he said.

As part of its mobile in-app fraud solution, DoubleVerify identifies and screens the most significant types of in-app fraud, including background ad activity, hidden ads, app misrepresentation (spoofing), and measurement manipulation.

Singapore – Programmatic investment and spend is growing at a rapid rate across the Japan and Asia-Pacific (JAPAC) region despite a hugely challenging 12 months in terms of both the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the deprecation of third-party identifiers, which is now 30% higher compared to pre-pandemic levels, a new research from adtech OpenX and market intelligence news site ExchangeWire shows.

According to their latest report, around 64% of agencies, publishers, and brands are increasing programmatic spend or revenue, an evident growth in the sector driven by a surge in digital transformation across agencies, publishers, and brands.

The report highlights as well that 31% of publishers are generating over 40% of their revenue via programmatic. On the buy side, 21% are allocating over 40% of their spend on the channel. 

With that in mind, there has been an observation as well that publishers have matured in their strategic selection of header bidding partners, while the use of unified auction solution Prebid has increased by over 10% market-wide. Compared to 2020, publishers are using relatively fewer providers than in 2020, and prioritizing ease of setup for when existing providers are not meeting expectations.

Such behavior is prevalent in the Indian market, where 32% are now using one to four partners, compared to just 7% last year, and 13% are using 15 or more partners, which has more than halved from the 29% recorded in 2020.

“The programmatic industry in JAPAC is displaying a remarkably strong recovery. We see newly-forged programmatic expertise across both buy and sell sides driven by rapid digital transformation. Agencies, publishers and brands are demonstrating greater confidence in managing their own programmatic activities. As a result, the ecosystem is directing more revenues and spend through the medium compared to other marketing streams,” said Andrew Tu, managing director for APAC at OpenX.

There have been rising concerns within the region over the deprecation of Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and the third-party cookie. Two-thirds (67%) are concerned about the effect of IDFA and cookie deprecation, with 29% very concerned about these changes. India displayed the most concern, with 87% disclosing some level of concern, followed by Indonesia (71%) and Australia (62%). In Japan, only 49% are concerned, while 50% are not perturbed about the upcoming changes.

Furthermore, brands and agencies are not funnelling money to ‘walled gardens’, and instead favor independent ad tech.

A ‘walled garden’ refers to a limited set of technology or media information provided to users with the intention of creating a monopoly or secure information system.

Only 16% of buyers are increasing walled garden ad spend in response to IDFA and third-party cookie deprecation, whereas 27% are investing in exchange, supply-side platform (SSP), and demand-side platform (DSP) partnerships.

In India, only 2.5% are funneling spend away from independent ad tech towards the walled gardens.

“Despite some fears around the impact of IDFA deprecation and the eventual removal of cookies in Chrome, a majority of brands are maintaining or increasing spend on the independent web and not towards the walled gardens. Instead, they are working together with their tech partners to navigate the nascent privacy-first environment,” Tu added.

In terms of investment, India is more heavily invested in programmatic than its peers. Only 2% are not using the channel, compared to 33% in Japan, 9% in Australia and 6% in Indonesia. Moreover, 12% of respondents within India are generating over 75% of their spend in programmatic, double that of both Australia and Indonesia.