Tag: Technology

Toronto – Quickplay, a cloud transformations platform, has announced the availability of its solutions portfolio in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, an online software store. 

The initiative grants AWS customers with accessibility to Quickplay’s cloud-native platform, including its content management system, end-to-end orchestration offerings, generative artificial intelligence tools, and more.  

Quickplay provides over-the-top (OTT) product solutions for sports, operators, and media companies. With its availability in AWS Marketplace, it will allow OTT providers to adapt with changes in technology and consumer demand. 

“The fierce competition for streaming audiences is amplifying the need for the smartest, fastest, most effective ways to engage and monetize viewers,” Paul Pastor, chief business officer at Quickplay, said. 

“Our AWS Marketplace availability is turbocharging the industry’s CMS, Orchestration and AI capabilities, all of which are essential to creating value for streaming services and their customers,” Pastor added.

Since 2004, Quickplay has been powering the delivery of sports, live experiences, and entertainment.

Singapore – The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is among the top three business priorities for 87% of Singapore C-suite executives, new Salesforce research reveals.

According to a survey of 221 large business leaders in Singapore, 48% report employing a well-defined generative AI strategy in their businesses, while 47% have begun working on a generative AI strategy. The study suggests that companies that are not implementing AI may fall behind competitors. 

Key motivations for using generative AI strategies in their team include the companies’ goals to be perceived as up-to-date in technology adoption (43%), remaining competitive (42%), and ensuring innovative customer and employee experiences (42%).

The research reveals that generative AI is expected to have the most significant impact on information technology (40%), operations (33%), finance (29%), and customer service (28%).

However, C-suite executives also identified hindrances to adopting generative AI, including lack of accessibility, lack of skill-building, incomplete customer or company data to train AI, lack of governance, and inaccurate outputs from generative AI.

“As CEOs look at AI to deliver measurable value and remain competitive, their first step should be unifying their data. Every conversation I have with business leaders about AI inevitably comes back to data and overcoming silos to increase the impact and accuracy of AI. Without building a cohesive view of the customer, Generative AI initiatives will fall short,” Sujith Abraham, senior vice president and general manager of ASEAN at Salesforce, said.

“The good news is that it’s possible to bring your data together, efficiently, without actually moving it through innovations like zero-copy.  Innovations like this will differentiate each organisation’s ecosystem of autonomous agents, humans and AI and how well they drive customer success at scale,” Abraham added.

Australia – UM Australia has partnered with MMM provider Mutinex to launch a first-of-its-kind real-time media data integration in Australia.

This initiative automates the data sharing between UM’s systems and Mutinex’s GrowthOS platform, offering significant time savings and improved data accuracy for UM’s clients, starting with foundation client Optus.

Adam Krass, chief digital, data, and tech officer at UM, said, “As we move towards a future dominated by data-driven strategies, this collaboration underscores UM’s commitment to innovation, privacy, and security. The seamless and secure data transfer process aligns with the highest standards of data protection, ensuring client information is handled in compliance with government regulation and leading encryption solutions.”

The media data integration is set to greatly benefit UM’s foundational client Optus by facilitating faster and more precise data-driven decision-making. Automating data transfer enhances efficiency, allowing UM’s team to focus on creativity and strategic growth. Real-time updates improve data accuracy for Optus’ MMM, ensuring better channel optimisation and more frequent tactical reviews. The integration also accelerates decision-making with immediate access to updated data and adheres to strict security standards to protect Optus’ information.

Mutinex and UM’s integration will be extended to other shared clients, with the partnership committed to delivering exceptional value and enhanced marketing and business outcomes.

Commenting on the integration, Mat Baxter, CEO for APAC at Mutinex, shared, “UM and Optus deserve congratulations for pioneering the way media data is supplied for MMM. Let’s be frank: the more fluid the data supply, the more valuable the insight. It’s as simple as that.”

Meanwhile, Cam Luby, head of consumer marketing at Optus, said, “This collaboration marks a significant leap forward in how we leverage data to drive growth and innovation at Optus. By automating the flow of data between UM and Optus technology, we are not just improving our decision-making speed but also elevating the precision and impact of our marketing strategy.” 

Canada – Advertising platform StackAdapt has partnered with DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement, data, and analytics software platform. The collaboration aims to improve post-impression measurement tracking of StackAdapt, enabling its clients to access accurate viewability and traffic authenticity.

DoubleVerify will replace the external viewability metrics of MOAT, an analytics platform set to shut down on Sept. 30. While ensuring user continuity, DoubleVerify also leverages its technology to boost StackAdapt’s internal tools for invalid traffic and brand safety protection. 

“At StackAdapt, our priority has always been to stay ahead of the curve and provide our customers with the best tools and technologies available,” Michael Shang, StackAdapt senior vice president of advertising technologies, said.

“We knew we had to align with a partner that not only matches but exceeds our high standards for reliability and accuracy in post-impression measurement. DoubleVerify was the clear choice, given their proven track record and market leadership,” Shang added.

“We’re excited to partner with StackAdapt to enhance their post-impression measurement capabilities,”  Steve Woolway, executive vice president of business development at DoubleVerify, said.

“As the digital advertising landscape becomes increasingly complex, it’s crucial that advertisers have access to reliable, real-time metrics that ensure transparency and drive better outcomes. Our collaboration with StackAdapt underscores our shared commitment to delivering the highest standards of measurement, helping advertisers confidently navigate challenges and optimize their campaign performance,” Woolway said. 

StackAdapt’s integration with DoubleVerify ensures that its clients continue to benefit from advanced measurement tools that adapt to the needs of advertisers amid the dynamic industry.

Australia – Perceptive, Australasia’s technology-driven customer insights agency, has announced a strategic partnership with Qualtrics. This collaboration will empower Perceptive’s clients with advanced experience management solutions. 

Through this new partnership, Perceptive will standardise its existing programs using Qualtrics’ platform. This integration will provide Perceptive’s clients with direct access to Qualtrics’ advanced market research and experience management technologies, services, and expertise, empowering them to gain reliable insights into market trends, customer behaviour, and brand performance.

Perceptive will also join the global Qualtrics Partner Network, enhancing its capacity to support clients in managing their market research, customer experience, and brand experience programs. This partnership will enable Perceptive to offer a comprehensive, end-to-end technology platform optimised with expert program support and consulting services.

Dan Shaw, managing director of Perceptive, said, “Perceptive’s partnership with Qualtrics has been met with huge enthusiasm among our clients. It will take our industry capabilities to the next level to deliver more value and innovation to the 150+ clients we support while unlocking significant efficiencies across our business.” 

Meanwhile, Zoe Nicholson, head of ecosystems for Asia Pacific and Japan at Qualtrics, commented, “Qualtrics is at the centre of the experience management ecosystem, and key to this is our deep focus and investment to continually build and cultivate a community of trusted, expert partners—including Perceptive—that help organisations unlock significant value and drive meaningful innovation with experience management.”

Hong Kong – SAP has officially launched its ‘Business AI Experience Center’ at its Hong Kong office, aimed at empowering enterprises to capitalise on AI opportunities and drive innovation.

The centre is designed to highlight the advanced capabilities of integrated Business AI, demonstrating its role in driving innovation, improving efficiency, and accelerating business growth through live use cases and success stories. It aims to guide enterprises from initial AI understanding to practical implementation, facilitating their digital transformation and helping them unlock the full potential of Business AI.

The Business AI Experience Center features four live demonstrations showcasing SAP Business AI technology across key functions. These include: Joule in ERP, which automates sales orders to boost performance; Just Ask, a conversational AI for deep sales insights; Talent Writing Assistant, which streamlines HR tasks like performance reviews; and Joule in Customer Experience, enhancing engagement and brand visibility through social media and interactive queries.

Esmond Tong, managing director of SAP Hong Kong and Macau, said, ” With the Business AI Experience Center, SAP aims to create a platform for enterprises and partners to exchange ideas and gain valuable insights that will enhance their agility and creativity. Enterprises can harness SAP’s cloud platform to unlock AI’s potential and achieve business benefits. With over 50 years of extensive expertise, SAP offers cloud solutions tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses across industries, regardless of size or development stage, helping them accelerate business growth and development.”

Earlier this year, SAP fully integrated business AI into its cloud portfolios and began rolling out the generative AI copilot, Joule, which will handle 80% of common tasks. SAP is also strengthening partnerships with Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, and NVIDIA to advance generative AI in enterprises.

Singapore – Web advertising company Taboola has announced the launch of its ‘Taboola for Audience’, a new AI-powered technology that empowers publishers to drive significantly more traffic. 

Taboola for Audience enables publishers to future-proof their audience development goals and navigate significant changes impacting referral traffic from search and social media. This industry-first offering empowers publishers with advanced personalisation and insights from Taboola’s nearly 600 million daily active users and extensive distribution network, including top mobile device manufacturers worldwide.

As a unified audience development platform, Taboola for Audience features exclusive acquisition channels like Android OEM relationships, news aggregators, and personalised notifications to reach users. 

The platform also offers personalised reader experiences, blending editorial voice and AI across the site. It also provides real-time audience insights for editorial and commercial teams to enhance content strategies and attract loyal audiences.

Adam Singolda, CEO at Taboola, explained, “Publishers are facing a new era in which sudden decisions by big tech and changes in consumer behaviour are making it harder to survive. Industry giants like Google are changing rules for search, making it harder for publishers to surface content through organic rankings while adding another barrier to site traffic in the form of generative AI search.”

“Social platforms like Meta have closed dedicated ‘news’ portals from their apps. Today, publishers need the right technologies to adapt to these changes and to find, grow, and keep audiences. Taboola for Audience gives publishers a single solution, with AI built  from years of our successful publisher relationships to thrive in this new era,” he added. 

Mike Braun, senior managing VP and chief digital officer at Gray Media, also shared, “Delivering more personalised and relevant experiences across all of our sites is critical. With Taboola, we have been able to take a truly reader-first approach to personalising our sites, delivering more of what resonates with readers, thereby increasing engagement. Taboola’s audience technologies are allowing us to connect with readers in a more meaningful way.” 

Meanwhile, Christian Broughton, CEO of The Independent, said, “Taboola has been a true strategic partner in helping us grow. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to audience engagement, and Taboola’s ability to power key areas of our homepage, recirculation from within articles, and other sections of our site, their huge amounts of readership data that provide actionable insights, and their valued partnership in working side-by-side with our own editorial team are the unique building blocks of our shared success.”

Sydney, Australia – KINESSO Commerce, IPG Mediabrands’ technology-driven commerce subsidiary, announced a global partnership with Vudoo, a technology company and content commerce expert. As part of this partnership, KINESSO Commerce’s activated media and Vudoo’s innovative shoppable ad technology have joined forces to offer an always-on commerce media solution that makes content shoppable 24/7 on the open web. 

KINESSO Commerce has created an end-to-end solution called “ShopNow,” which includes Vudoo technology, KINESSO’s activation and performance capabilities, and creative solutions from IPG Mediabrands. 

The partnership offers KINESSO clients increased transparency and visibility into the consumer journey, including whether or not a customer completes a purchase after adding items to their basket. It is a first-to-market worldwide solution across commerce partners, including Amazon. With a number of Australian retailers, the worldwide alliance will debut in the Australian market. Additional rollouts are planned for the UK, US, and APAC, as well as a wider range of clients. 

The combination of Vudoo’s real-time first-party data capture and KINESSO Commerce’s measurement and analytics expertise will improve KINESSO Commerce’s optimization capabilities and increase conversions for the agency’s clients. For the benefit of the larger IPG Mediabrands network, KINESSO Commerce will now be able to improve its off-retailer website and content creation services. Vudoo’s interactive video capabilities will allow digital advertisers to access customer intent signals that are now unavailable in traditional video formats, providing consumers the ability to choose what they want to view and how their user journey unfolds.

Speaking about the partnership, Hope Williams, KINESSO Australia’s head of Commerce, said, “Vudoo’s vision aligns perfectly with ours at KINESSO Commerce—we believe every story we tell needs a ‘buy button’ to ensure a seamless consumer experience, which has become a fundamental expectation for brands today, especially with younger digital-native audiences. We are confident this partnership will redefine how our global brands engage with consumers on the open web.” 

He added, “Our commitment to providing a globally scalable, end-to-end solution—including creative production, activation and insights, paired with Vudoo’s world-class commerce technology —is a testament to our dedication to client growth and success in the face of digital disruption.” 

Meanwhile, Nick Morgan, Vudoo’s CEO and Founder, commented, “We’re thrilled to announce our alliance with KINESSO Commerce, enabling consumers to shop directly from ads and content, and helping retailers achieve greater reach. This partnership is a testament to Vudoo’s commitment to innovation and our vision for a future where shopping everywhere becomes a seamless reality for consumers worldwide. Together, we hope to set a global precedent of transforming traditional advertising by making every piece of content shoppable directly on the open web.” 

Lastly, Amie Owen, KINESSO Commerce’s global chief growth officer, said, “The content commerce space is rapidly evolving and expectations from consumers online are high, particularly when it comes to the checkout process. We’re excited to partner with the team at Vudoo to make content shoppable and streamline the user experience as we believe that everything should be shoppable all the time. The 360-degree view of customer purchasing journeys and real-time analytics available on Vudoo’s platform will enable our marketers to enhance customer engagement and drive actionable insights for brands.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Local telco player CelcomDigi has recently launched its CelcomDigi AI Experience Centre (AiX) – a one-stop immersive innovation and collaboration hub to lead, inspire, and advance the creation of world-class digital solutions across a range of sectors and verticals.

Supported by a wide ecosystem of leading global technology players and local partners, AiX will serve as a focal point for cross-industry collaborations, leveraging emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), robotics, analytics and metaverse. 

Moreover, this collaborative facility is designed to spur rapid technology advancements and growth of new digital start-ups, enterprises, and future skills to build a flourishing innovation ecosystem and fuel Malaysia’s digital transformation.

Build on a partnership model, AiX is powered by a strong, extensive and growing ecosystem of 40 global technology leaders, local partners and solution providers, from core partners Huawei and ZTE, to other collaborative partners AWS, Digital Nasional Berhad, Ericsson, Microsoft, SK Telecom, Softbank, Sumitomo, and Yinson, amongst others.

Launched by the Minister of Communications YB Fahmi Fadzil, AiX provides an immersive experience combining sight, sound, and touch, and features real-world solutions ready for immediate deployment. 

Built on a model of constant evolution and partnership, the technology and showcases will be refreshed periodically to bring new experiences to visitors and is set to be the epicentre of co-creation to enable rapid experimentation and development of new technology solutions for the market.

For Datuk Idham Nawawi, CEO at CelcomDigi, emerging technologies such as AI are revolutionising the world, and Malaysia must keep pace with this progress to build a flourishing digital nation. He also added that over 1.5 years ago, they have made a strong commitment to play a pivotal role to realise this ambition, leveraging their greater combined capabilities as a merged company to invest and drive digitalisation, innovation and sustainable growth for the nation.

“The AI Experience Centre is a realisation of the national benefit of the merger, where CelcomDigi’s scale and capabilities are able to attract and partner global and regional digital tech giants to accelerate the development of cutting-edge digital solutions – positioning us a strong ally to the nation’s digital aspirations,” Nawawi said.

He also added that AiX emphasises the significance of a thriving innovation ecosystem to develop a robust digital society. For him, in the fast-paced era of digital everything, speed and ferocity of innovation is essential, and therefore have designed AiX on a model of strong partnerships and constant evolution, enabling them to co-create use cases with great potential at an accelerated speed for Malaysia.

“Building with some of the most notable global tech and local ecosystem players, together we have invested RM55 million to support this ambition. We will continue to invest in the infrastructure, partnerships, and competencies needed to support Malaysia through the rapid tech changes around us. We are determined to spur digital transformations across industries and ensure the benefits of 5G, AI, and emerging technologies are realised for all Malaysians,” he concluded.

Australia – Amperity, an AI-powered Lakehouse customer data platform (CDP), and Microsoft Azure collaborate to help businesses change customer interactions via data-driven insights and personalisation. 

Retailers may use first-party data to develop loyalty, reduce turnover, and maximise lifetime value, while also shaping future omnichannel experiences and fostering pre- and post-purchase interaction and brand advocacy.

The innovative cooperation recently received recognition at the Microsoft Retail & Consumer Goods 2024 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award, where Amperity was named a finalist. The organisation was named to a global list of notable Microsoft partners for its achievements in designing and executing customer solutions using Microsoft technology.

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards honour Microsoft partners who, during the course of the previous year, have excelled in the creation and delivery of Microsoft Cloud apps, services, hardware, and artificial intelligence advancements. These are multi-category awards, and the winners are chosen from more than 4,700 nominations that come from more than 100 different countries.

Speaking about the partnership, Curt Lockton, SVP of strategic partnerships at Amperity, said, “The synergy between Amperity and Microsoft is pushing the boundaries of AI-driven customer experiences, and empowering brands to harness the full potential of their data to understand their customers, deliver personalised experiences and drive revenue. We are incredibly honoured and grateful to be named a finalist for the Retail & Consumer Goods Partner of the Year by Microsoft. This award is a reflection of the transformative impact our partnership has had on our mutual customers.” 

Meanwhile, Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer and corporate vice president at Microsoft, said, “Congratulations to the winners and finalists of the 2024 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards! The momentum generated by numerous AI & Copilot announcements this year fueled innovation from our partners, enabling groundbreaking services and solutions to customers. I am inspired by the capability and creativity in our partner ecosystem and this year’s winners beautifully demonstrate the best of what’s possible with AI and the Microsoft Cloud.”