Tag: Technology

Manila, Philippines –  Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) has partnered up with Philippine Blockchain Week to create limited edition digital collectibles that pay tribute to PAL history while showcasing the airline’s dedication to embracing the future.

These digital collectibles mark the first time for Philippine Airlines to enter the blockchain industry, with these digital collectibles possessing customer benefits as well as access to the Philippine Blockchain Week event.  

Each PAL collectible, which consists of eight distinct images created by artist Trace Orozco and produced on the Ethereum blockchain network, is a well crafted work of art aimed at discerning collectors. Each collectible has artwork in addition to being encoded with $1,500 worth of consumable Mabuhay Miles that can be redeemed at the owner’s discretion.

Upon purchase collectors would also receive a Philippine Blockchain Week VVIP ticket every year for the next three years, granting them premium access to global thought leaders in a currently emerging technological landscape.

In a statement from Philippine Blockchain Week, they said, “As Philippine Airlines continues to soar to greater heights by growing its global network of nonstop flights, so does Philippine Blockchain Week work to elevate Philippine society by motivating Filipinos to embrace the infinite possibilities of Web3 and beyond.”

Kuala Lumpur – The shift in customer communication preferences has been found to lean noticeably towards conversational interactions, making more companies expand and invest towards conversational commerce. This was according to the latest data from an InfoBrief provided by global cloud communications platform Infobip, and IT market research and advisory firm IDC. 

The InfoBrief by Infobip and IDC suggested that the potential of conversational commerce is now being employed and recognized, with tools such as CPaaS and SaaS enabling businesses to provide a seamless, customer journey that’s visible across multiple touchpoints.

The increasing popularity of customer-centric business strategies among brands in the Asia Pacific region reflects consumers’ present attitudes and expectations. 70% of organisations in the region plan to increase communication platform spending in 2023–2024, despite the fact that only a few countries use CPaaS on average at 50%–59%, in order to offer distinctive customer experiences to the region’s expanding social media users, who are primarily young, active, and conscious of the power of their own influence.

All nations intend to spend money on CPaaS and SaaS solutions in the near future, but their reasons are claimed to be very different. Businesses in Indonesia and Singapore strive to improve customer experiences and develop new revenue streams, while those in China, Thailand, and the Philippines are driven to expand their domestic and global markets as well as improve and mobilise their business operations. This is probably owing to the latter countries’ booming retail and e-commerce sectors and overall greater adoption rate of CPaaS solutions, which is around 60% and above.

Nikhil Batra, research director of telecommunication for IDC Asia/Pacific, said that CPaaS solutions are increasingly recognized as crucial catalysts for enabling conversational commerce experiences.

“In fact, 27% of businesses in Asia Pacific are actively partnering with CPaaS platform providers to deliver contextualised customer interactions that not only boost profitability but also foster emotionally fulfilling engagements. This trend highlights the increasing importance of leveraging these technologies to meet customer demands and achieve business success,” he added.

Meanwhile, Velid Begovic, vice president of revenue at Infobip, commented, “Businesses position themselves to forge ahead, leveraging AI technology to create connections and unlock new growth opportunities, whilst organisations need an actionable, customer-centric strategy and the ability to invest in the right tools to grow the business and keep customers happy. By aligning their strategies with conversational commerce, businesses can proactively meet customer expectations, enhance engagement, and establish long-lasting relationships.”

Montreal, Canada – Global independent programmatic DOOH adtech Hivestack, has introduced a solution called the ‘Verified Impression Multiplier’ for digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising in specific regions across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

For media owners in APAC, Hivestack’s impression multiplier technique provides a turnkey, reliable solution that meets the region’s growing need for measurement consistency and uniform methodology. 

This technique, which is supported by Nielsen, enables media owners to calculate reach, frequency, and impressions accurately. It also generates interaction with key buy-side partners and gives advertisers reliable data to help them make decisions and gauge the impact of DOOH.

Hivestack’s distinctive proprietary technique combines anonymized mobile device data received from top telco carriers with circulation data from emerging market media owners, including traffic, dwell duration, and visibility assumptions, to enable real-time measurement of ad plays at the screen level.

As a result, an impression multiplier that complies with industry standards is created, enabling programmatic transactions to support media owners’ growth in sales, inventory management, and business development initiatives.

Troy Yang, managing director North Asia at Hivestack, said, “There has been one common challenge in outdoor advertising for many markets across APAC, the need for a credible and unified measurement for outdoor impressions across all media owners. As one of the world’s largest programmatic DOOH platforms, integrated across 12 APAC markets, we are proud to provide this important solution to all existing and new publishers integrated on our platform.”

He added, “Hivestack has a longstanding commitment to ensuring our inventory is of the highest standard and this is another offering that ensures the quality of supply remains top priority. This is a huge step forward for the industry as more DOOH buyers grow accustomed to impression-based buys in OOH.”

Australia – Sound experience company Sonos has teamed up with global creative agency, Amplify and award-winning producer Eric J Dubowsky to create a brand new immersive listening experience.  

Aiming to bring Sonos’ brand platform, “nothing feels like Sonos,” to Australia, Amplify’s creative theme employed the concept of ‘frisson’ which translates to goosebumps in French, defining the immersive sound’s ability to evoke deep emotions and elicit physical sensations.

With award winning producer, sound engineer, and songwriter Eric J Dubowsky at the helm, the result is ‘Frisson Trigger’, an original track intentionally crafted to cause psychophysiological responses within listeners such as an elevated heart rate and dilated pupils. 

Amplify was responsible for the concept, overseeing the production of the track, online film content and the design and production of a launch event that provided Australian media and music industry personalities with the listening experience of Frisson Trigger on the Sonos Era 300.

Pete Pedersen, VP for marketing communication at Sonos, commented that frisson is the ideal concept for them to establish their presence in the market as something cultural in connection to the music industry. 

“The creation of ‘Frisson Trigger’ underscores Sonos’ sound innovation with listening experiences that help people feel more from the music they love – we couldn’t be more excited to share it with the world,” he added. 

Meanwhile, Tim Baggott, executive creative director at Amplify, said, “We’re very grateful to have had the opportunity to bring art and science together to create an extraordinary, permanent cultural artefact in the form of ‘Frisson Trigger’. Developing this campaign with Sonos and Eric J was a truly fascinating experience and we commend the bravery of our Sonos client to pursue such an innovative, experimental idea. It feels like we’ve opened Pandora’s box with this one.”

Hong Kong – Sanrio Hong Kong, a lifestyle company featuring the pop icon Hello Kitty and other well-known characters, partners up with MetaGaia, an AI-enhanced open metaverse, to unveil a new metaverse destination known as ‘Hello Kitty Seven Wonders’.

Through this, Hello Kitty fans will have the opportunity to create their own communities and connect with their favourite characters in a brand-new virtual world by visiting the digital destination within the MetaGaia app.

Additionally, outdoor installations to promote Hello Kitty Seven Wonders were opened last week at Citygate Outlets, an outlet mall in Hong Kong. This temporary pop-up event enables visitors to enjoy augmented reality experiences through the MetaGaia app as well as to browse Hello Kitty merchandise and participate in mini-games. The pop-up event is scheduled to run until August 31, providing an exciting opportunity for fans to immerse themselves in the Hello Kitty universe.

Commenting on the partnership, Gordon Kwok, CEO of MetaGaia, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Sanrio Hong Kong and bring the beloved characters of Hello Kitty and her friends into the world of MetaGaia. The MetaGaia metaverse offers endless possibilities for exploration and socialisation, and the addition of Hello Kitty will enhance that experience for our users.”

Singapore – With brands nowadays catering more and more to the trend of digital ads, digital ad spend waste in the April to June quarter is down more than $30m on the first quarter of 2023, but advertisers still continue wasting nearly half of their advertising dollars each quarter, according to data revealed by independent digital media agency Next & Co.

Last quarter, advertisers threw away $77.1m from their ad spend budgets, which represents an average of 40% wastage across total audited media spend, compared to more than $104 million between January and March 2023.

The report found that retail brands were responsible for wasting the most in digital ad expenditure, with a figure of $25.4m. It was followed by finance at $22.3m, insurance at $12.3m and health at $7.7m. Education and real estate brands had the least waste at $5.3m and $3.8m respectively.

Across digital media channels over the last quarter, most digital ad spend was wasted on Google at $33.9m, followed by Facebook at $31m, LinkedIn at $7.7m and Bing at $3.8m.

John Vlasakakis, co-founder at Next&Co, said, “As we enter the new financial year, many brands will be taking stock of their advertising budgets, particularly amid ever-increasing economic and inflationary pressures. The latest data shows there is still plenty of room for improvement in terms of how brands are spending their advertising dollars. As we head into campaign planning for the biggest retail events of the year, with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, businesses need to get a sound understanding of the efficacy of their digital ad spend, and a better measure of return on investment.”

He added, “An independent audit of overall planned spend and past spend can reveal insights into where wastage is occurring, how to get better campaign optimisation and results, and how dollars can be best spent. The new financial year will be about businesses working smarter, not harder, particularly as budgets come under pressure, making every ad dollar count in the coming months.” 

Manila, Philippines – Security Bank Corporation, a universal bank in the Philippines, has signed a contract with real-time payment software company ACI Worldwide in order to improve on the bank’s real-time payment hub. 

ACI will be providing their cloud-native ‘Enterprise Payments Platform’ solution for Security Bank to be able to unify its payments platform and facilitate the interactions between payment services and gateways for high and low-value payments such as InstaPay, Philippine Domestic Dollar Transfer Service System or PDDTS, PESONet, Swift, and PhilPaSSplus on ISO2022 standards.

This modernised payment hub allows Security Bank to roll out products and services to customers faster and add new payment types seamlessly and cost-effectively to its core infrastructure.

Leslie Choo, senior vice president and managing director of ACI Worldwide-APAC, says,”Security Bank is at the forefront of driving customer centricity and redefining the digital real-time payments landscape in the country, and ACI is proud to support the Bank with cutting-edge payment hub technologies in leading this transformation.” 

He added, “Our robust solutions go from powering country-wide real-time payment ecosystems to interconnecting cross-border real-time payment networks and enabling the integration of different types of payments, such as the convergence of high-value and low-value payments into a single, unified, intelligent, cloud-native payment hub. “

Meanwhile, Stephen John Bell, senior vice president and channels network group head at Security Bank, said “Digital real-time payments are becoming ubiquitous, with today’s customers looking for a hyper-connected, frictionless customer experience. ACI’s modern, scalable, and cloud-native architecture will power real-time payments to meet the dynamic demands of our customers in the digital era. This initiative and our investment in innovative payment technology are testament to our unwavering commitment to customer-centricity.” 

Lastly, John Cary L. Ong, external vice president and transaction banking, group head at Security Bank, also supports the enhancing transition into real time payment in the Philippines, saying,”A modernised real-time payment solution offers financial resiliency and agility for businesses in the Philippines through enhanced cash flow management and improved business liquidity. For Filipino consumers, they can look forward to a fast and seamless customer experience through secure digital channels. As Security Bank celebrates 72 years of enriching lives and empowering businesses, the partnership with ACI signifies our commitment to deliver a BetterBanking eXperience.”

Singapore – Consultancy firm Human8 has recently unveiled its employee AI prompt school, accompanied by its own AI research assistant. 

To address concerns regarding data ownership and the impact on confidential research data and PI information, earlier this year OpenAI developed a proprietary AI research assistant utilising the ChatGPT algorithm, enabling them to conduct real research data experiments and evaluate the capabilities of generative AI.

Annelies Verhaeghe, chief platform officer of Human8, said, “Just like with the internet and social media revolution, as an agency we’ve always embraced tech and innovation, investing in discovery to accelerate success. However, to safely and creatively experiment with AI, we first needed to overcome the data privacy obstacle.”

Meanwhile, Maz Amirahmadi, Managing Director, APAC, said, “In Asia Pacific, AI adoption has taken off in 2023 across various verticals and markets. According to an IDC report, a top adoption driver is improving employee productivity. The tool will enable our team of consultants in APAC to keep pace with the acceleration, and we are already seeing strong appetite among colleagues and clients to collaborate with AI.” 

Human8’s trials show that using generative AI as an analytical tool with thick data from primary research produces far more actionable research results. This emphasises the significance of using up-to-date data.

Verhaeghe added, “With our proprietary AI tech at hand, we defined a series of A/B experiments to gain a better understanding of the potential and implications of generative AI systems for our business and the industry at large. Our experiments were designed to explore well-known challenges related to AI data quality, data sampling and even data hallucination.”

Human8 has incorporated its personal AI research assistant across its global operations. By utilising AI automation for more analysis of unstructured data, this has opened up more opportunities for human interpretation and consulting. 

Singapore – Eagle Eye, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology company, has secured a multi-year partnership with FairPrice, the largest retail provider in Singapore. This was done through Eagle Eye’s Untie Nots, the personalised promotions business unit which Eagle Eye acquired in January this year.

Through the contract, Untie Nots is expected to deliver loyalty challenges within FairPrice’s existing Linkpoints loyalty programme. Moreover, it will allow FairPrice to offer its customers highly personalised, gamified promotions at scale and to expand its digital customer base.

The multi-year contract covers FairPrice’s entire digital ecosystem of grocery, convenience, and food courts across Singapore, totalling over 2,000 touchpoints across individual food stalls across more than 70 food courts, supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores. FairPrice customers will be able to benefit from hyper-personalised offers from early third quarter of 2023.

Tim Mason, CEO of Eagle Eye, said, “We are delighted to have facilitated Untie Nots’ entry into the Singapore market, just a few months’ post the acquisition, confirming our view that Untie Nots’ AI-powered challenges solution will resonate with retailers globally. With a growing pipeline, we are focused on unlocking further opportunities alongside the Untie Nots team, supporting retailers in accelerating their digital promotions activities to retain and grow their customer bases.”

Meanwhile, Zyed Jamoussi and Cédric Chéreau, Untie Nots’ Group Managing Directors commented, “We’re excited to celebrate our partnership with Eagle Eye through our contract with FairPrice Group. It evidences the increased recognition of our solutions and the new opportunities available to Untie Nots by leveraging Eagle Eye’s international presence.”

The new contract is testimony to the benefit of Eagle Eye‘s investment into international expansion and the initial marketing activities being carried out with Untie Nots, which are building a promising international sales pipeline.

San Francisco, California – Global digital experience management platform Sitecore has announced the release of new component capabilities in its cloud-native modern CMS, the Experience Manager (XM) Cloud, which will empower brands to deliver seamless and personalised customer experiences across all digital touchpoints.

XM Cloud Components is a Front End as a Service (FEaaS) composer for marketers to create their brand’s digital style guide and build visual components. With this, components can be created from scratch or can be styled by importing existing HTML, and data sources can be mapped to components to enable dynamic and responsive components that may be reused across digital properties, saving time and creating brand consistency.

With XM Cloud Components, content authors, UX designers, and marketers can likewise work in parallel to speed up the process of creating on-brand digital experiences for their customers. It is fully integrated with XM Cloud Pages, which will create an end-to-end next-generation authoring experience.

“We’re thrilled to introduce this new component capability to our XM Cloud platform, designed to enable marketers, designers and developers to work in harmony,” said Dave O’Flanagan, chief product officer of Sitecore. 

He added, “With the ability to compose on-brand, dynamic page components, brands can remain agile and responsive to customer needs in real-time, which is essential in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. Our modern SaaS-based DXP provides limitless opportunities for brands to plug and play new technologies such as ChatGPT, introducing a new level of flexibility to adapt and respond to technology innovations and the ever-changing customer needs.”

Commenting on their new journey with Sitecore, Amy Kolzow, VP of global digital marketing at Wolters Kluwer, said, “We are proud to provide a unified and modern online experience that brings dynamic thought leadership to our customers and showcases our vast product portfolio. When we embarked on our digital transformation journey, we found it challenging to create web experiences that cater for every marketer, regardless of how mature they were in their use of technology.”

She added, “It’s that balance we found with Sitecore that we couldn’t find elsewhere. Since beginning our partnership, we built 30,000 pages, and now we publish about 100 pages a day, all thanks to the drag-and-drop components capability.”

At DX Europe, the company also announced it has signed over twenty new customers to its XM Cloud platform since Sitecore Symposium, which took place in Chicago in October 2022.

In addition to XM Cloud Components, Sitecore also unveiled a number of other updates to its CX offerings, including improvements in Content Hub One’s user interface, preview capabilities, better content modelling, and developer experience, new AI capabilities for Sitecore Connect and Sitecore Search, as well as new automation and personalisation features for its email marketing solution Sitecore Send.

Hannah Grap, VP of corporate marketing at Sitecore also shared that their integration of Sitecore Search on Sitecore.com to revamp the search experience on their own website saw a 25% increase in click-through rate and doubled the amount of relevant content to its visitors within a month of implementation.