Tag: Programmatic

Marilyn Monroe once said that “within crisis are the seeds of opportunity.” These words of wisdom are particularly relevant today as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt and change business across industries. The pandemic has changed consumer behaviour, and advertising has needed to stay nimble and adjust to these behavioural changes, but these changes also present smart advertisers with great opportunities.

A surge in digital transformation is shifting more ad dollars to the digital realm, and as marketers look to get extra bang for their increasingly valued buck, they are turning to channels like programmatic. Results from the recent OpenX & ExchangeWire report on ‘The State of Programmatic in JAPAC – 2021’ show that 30% of surveyed media professionals reported a higher programmatic spend (or higher programmatic revenue for publishers) when compared to pre-pandemic figures.

In fact, nearly 60% of the firms surveyed for the OpenX report are either generating at least 40% of their revenue from programmatic or spending 40% of their media investment on it, highlighting that programmatic has reached a new maturity level in JAPAC, where overall programmatic knowledge, understanding, and appreciation have significantly advanced across all markets.

While this all paints a positive picture for programmatic, the market still has a lot of room to grow, and there are still lingering challenges such as fraud and replacing the third-party cookie that must be addressed to help convince more agencies and brands to shift more dollars into the space.

Avoiding fraud and embracing SPO in programmatic

It’s only natural that programmatic’s rapid growth has spurred fraud and quality control concerns among brands. According to Integral Ad Science, Singapore and Japan reported the world’s highest fraud rates on desktop display and mobile web environments respectively in H1 2021. In our report, almost 90% of publishers express at least some concern about fraud.

This is an issue that will require a multi-faceted solution, but one approach that the buy-side can take is supply path optimisation (SPO), which is a process that lets advertisers reduce their supply-side ad tech partners and create a preferred list of trusted companies that meet their various needs and can deliver the best results.

Undertaking the SPO process is an ideal way for a marketer to figure out which partners are driving the most value, and at the same time, it will decrease the chances of marketers working with lower quality partners that may have fraudulent practices. A staggering 84% of brands say they have run an SPO review in the past 18 months, or plan to do so within the next six months.

Beyond utilising SPO, brands can also fight fraud by working with partners that are compliant with industry-wide standards created by industry watchdogs like the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG).

First-party data and third-party cookie concerns

When looking at macro trends in the industry, the eventual removal of third-party cookies is another concern, particularly in India, Indonesia, and Australia. More than 65% of brands say they are uneasy about eventual cookie depreciation and the effect of Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), with publishers reporting even more trepidation than buyers.

Going into 2022, the solution that the industry seems most excited about is first-party data. 80% of the surveyed JAPAC agency and brand professionals confirmed having access to first-party data, and more than 30% of publishers are spending more to obtain first-party data. Having access to first-party data is only part of the battle though, and marketers and publishers need help activating it. 

This is an area where ad-tech can step in, and marketers are increasingly relying on supply-side platforms (SSP), ad exchanges, and DSPs to help them make the most of their first-party data, and use it to run effective audience targeting.

A smarter way to advertise

Programmatic advertising is not just a way of the future, but it is the reality of our present as digital ad spend continues to expand. APAC digital spend is forecasted to expand 12.8% this year, reaching USD124.5 billion, 54% of total spending.

Marketers today have a tough challenge – how to navigate the ever-changing digital media landscape, in the middle of a pandemic, while also planning for the future. Programmatic advertising is proving to be the channel that lets them do both, as they can drive successful campaigns today, while also experimenting with new formats, new ways to use data and other advances in programmatic that seem to be happening almost daily.

This article is written by Andrew Tu, managing director of OpenX for APAC.

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.