Tag: Technology

Singapore – Location Media Xchange (LMX), the supply-side technology arm of the Moving Walls Group, has announced the launch of a complete Revenue Management suite for Out of Home (OOH) media owners. The product revelation happened as the industry’s leading stakeholders converged at The World Out of Home Congress Toronto 2022. The company is offering a no-obligation 90-day trial for media owners to experience the platform.

OOH’s global renaissance has continued into 2022 after sharp drops during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Several factors, including increased travel activity, and the growing interest in Programmatic Digital OOH advertising, contribute to this.

OOH media owners now handle multiple sales channels – direct brand relationships, agency-managed spends, programmatic or automated media buys, and even online campaign bookings. Allocating inventory in an efficient manner is critical because unlike digital publishers who own virtual space, OOH media owners own physical assets that consume fixed costs like electricity, internet fees, maintenance, and more.

The expansion of OOH buying methods also means that the inventory is now consumed in a variety of ways – loop based, event based, audience based, impression-based, and so on. Maintaining up to minute availability information, understanding utilisation, and prioritising sales channels is just not scalable if done manually.

According to Mandakini Negi, co-founder of Moving walls and global head of LMX, “It is difficult to improve what you cannot measure. OOH media today is bought and sold in several ways and media owners who have a handle on inventory utilisation and demand trends across all their media sites in real time will be able to make decisions that improve their revenues.’’

The LMX Revenue management suite solves this by providing an online platform that connects traditional, programmatic, and other forms of campaign booking information in one place. The platform seamlessly connects to native and third party applications like the content management system or the accounting system by the media owner.

Gautam Bhirani, MD of Eyetalk Media Ventures India, commented, “Our network of screens spans across multiple locations. Just as the content on these screens is managed centrally, we require a system to understand live availability, build proposals, and accept campaign requests in an automated manner. The LMX suite does all of this from one application.”

Meanwhile, Eddie Song, MD of Laguna De Bay Malaysia, says that Integrating DOOH screens into the programmatic ecosystem is just the first step. He adds that just like digital, they need to make sure their inventory is visible and accessible to multiple demand partners. LMX Connect provides its network with the ability to transact with omnichannel and specialist Demand Side Platforms locally and globally.

LMX already works with more than 200 media owners across the globe including Southeast Asian markets namely Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam. The platform supports all kinds of media owners who use it to manage different parts of their business.

Manila, Philippines — The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has approved the registration of Starlink – a low latency, broadband internet system of tech multi-billionaire Elon Musk. The approval means the Philipines will be the pioneering country in Southeast Asia to experience the service.

Starlink Internet Services Philippines Inc. is registered as a Value-Added Service (VAS). The unit will facilitate its operations in the country bringing the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet technology into a nation fraught with unstable internet connections.

The LEO satellite technology is touted to serve up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 200 Mbps of internet speed even in remote areas. Starlink is a subsidiary of Musk’s aerospace transportation, manufacturer, and designer company -SpaceX. Starlink commands over 1,600 LEO satellites that provide satellite internet access to its customers.

NTC approved Starlink’s registration only after 30 minutes when the company submitted their application alongside the complete required documents. NTC said that the swift processing of the VAS provider registration was meant to expedite the service’s immediate roll-out.

Gamaliel Cordoba, NTC Commissioner, commented, “The NTC is steadfast in helping ensure that roll-out of Starlink’s internet access services will be done expeditiously and professionally.”

Meanwhile, Bien Marquez, counsel for SpaceX, shared, “We would like to thank the NTC for issuing Starlink’s VAS license 30 minutes after we submitted our application with complete requirements. This shows the government’s seriousness in addressing the connectivity needs of our countrymen in unserved and underserved areas.”

Previously, Ramon Lopez, DTI secretary, said, “Their system will augment as well as complement existing broadband capacities. This will further capacitate micro, small, and medium enterprises, facilitate online learning, e-commerce and fintech.”

Singapore – Digital optimization software Amplitude, Inc, announced new campaign reporting tools with self-service insights into digital marketing investments. 

With the use of Amplitude Analytics, marketing and product teams can measure campaign and channel performance alongside downstream product metrics like user engagement and retention. Campaign reporting gives teams unprecedented visibility into metrics across the entire funnel, all in a single system. Additional new features include outcome-focused Metrics and Data Tables that empower teams to discover how their marketing programs and product usage meaningfully affect key business outcomes such as sales and revenue. Together, these tools empower cross-functional teams to quickly close the insights-to-action loop and make better business decisions.

Traditionally, there’s been a disconnect between product and campaign data. Organisations leverage product analytics for visibility into customer behaviours and product changes, but struggle to connect marketing performance metrics like attributing user growth to specific channels. According to Gartner, “digital analytics markets are colliding and converging as vendors blur the lines between categories such as product analytics and digital experience analytics (DXA) and branch into adjacent markets such as customer journey analytics.” 

Justin Bauer, chief product officer at Amplitude, said, “With these customer needs in mind, we’re doubling down on digital analytics and investing in new tools that will provide holistic product insights faster. The introduction of campaign reporting, outcome metrics, and data tables make it easier for teams to consolidate their analytics solutions while expanding the types of metrics they can track across the end-to-end customer journey.”

New York, USA — Yahoo and Hivestack, the independent programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) ad tech company, has announced a global strategic partnership to connect their industry-leading technologies, and enable premium, programmatic DOOH cross-channel media campaigns on a worldwide scale.

Via the partnership, Yahoo’s omnichannel demand side platform (DSP), will be integrated into the Hivestack supply side platform (SSP), which will allow Yahoo and its clients to access Hivestack’s premium global DOOH inventory through real-time bidding (RTB) transactions via open exchange and private marketplace (PMP) deals.

Bruno Guerrero, COO at Hivestack, said, “The evolving programmatic DOOH landscape has created numerous opportunities for brands, agencies and media owners to leverage the channel to drive meaningful and measurable connections with audiences across the globe.”

Guerrero adds, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to integrate with the Yahoo DSP to facilitate seamless, efficient experiences for omnichannel marketers to transact across DOOH programmatically, providing access to premium global DOOH inventory and data.”

Interested advertisers and agencies can immediately access Hivestack’s global DOOH inventory through the Yahoo demand side platform.

Iván Markman, chief business officer at Yahoo, commented, “Early in the space, Yahoo has helped advertisers maximise DOOH screens throughout the consumer journey and foster meaningful and memorable connections. This partnership amplifies that ability and provides Yahoo DSP advertisers with the diverse, global and premium OOH inventory Hivestack affords.”

Meanwhile, Barry Frey, president and CEO of DPAA, shared that the out-of-home sector has seen a resurgence in the last year, fueled by innovative creative execution, digital facilitation and a return to ‘normal’. Frey says that they are thrilled to see major players and DPAA Board Members like Yahoo and Hivestack connect to facilitate these interactions between consumers and brands.

Singapore — Adzymic, a dynamic creative platform, has announced the launch of its Smart Templates solution. The new tool enables advertisers to automate creative production and adaptation across multiple formats and sizes quickly and easily, without compromising on quality and brand consistency.

Smart Templates enables the process of developing customized templates according to the desired interactive functions and layouts required by corporate guidelines. A single master template is first built in HTML5 using third-party tools such as Google Web Designer, where various formats such as static or animated images and videos are supported. The master template is then propagated into multiple sizes with optimized banner layouts using automation, and these can subsequently be reused for different campaigns for the brand. Smart Templates essentially serve as a tool for executing multi-market campaigns or for brands with high campaign turnover.

Bybit, a fast-growing cryptocurrency exchange, is one such early adopter. Since 2021, Bybit has seen a fivefold increase in its user base across more than 160 countries. Today, the exchange serves more than 6 million registered users worldwide and offers them 24/7 support in 16 languages.

By leveraging Adzymic’s Smart Templates, Bybit was able to streamline and shorten production time by managing its marketing assets centrally, ensuring consistency in brand messaging while adhering to the varying creative specifications across media channels.

Additionally, Bybit also tapped on Adzymic’s dynamic creative optimization capabilities to incorporate live data such as cryptocurrency prices within banner ads, thus enabling Bybit with rapid go-to-market deployments essential to its business.

Travis Teo, co-founder and executive director of Adzymic, said, “Smart Templates is the next step in our mission to help brands automate their marketing operations. The emergence of various channels has resulted in the exponential growth of creative formats and sizes required for campaign executions.”

Teo adds, “Our new solution gives brands and agencies the power to transform their existing creative process, ensuring brand consistency while allowing creative variants to be generated for different types of channels – from display banners, videos and social posts to emails and websites.

The Smart Templates solution is now available to all agencies and advertisers in scalable packages, with self-serve options, creative supported packages, or managed services.

Bangkok, Thailand – Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has launched its first data centre in Thailand to bolster local businesses’ digital innovation capabilities. The move is also in line with the Thailand government’s 20 year National Strategic Plan to provide security, prosperity and sustainability to the nation.

With Thailand Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) coming into force in June, the launch of Alibaba Cloud’s first data centre in Thailand further reiterates the company’s commitment to comply with Thai regulations when operating locally, and to bring secure and innovative technology to the country. The data centre has secured ISO27001 and ISO20000 certificates and is compliant with Thailand PDPA regulations, as well as the financial regulatory guideline issued by The Bank of Thailand (BOT).

Tyler Qiu, country manager for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Thailand, said, “Data security and protection remains our top priority as we continue to expand. With the establishment of our new data centre, we are committed to being compliant with Thailand’s rules and regulations.

“In addition, we want to bring our best technology offerings, as well as our vertical know-how to Thailand. With Alibaba Cloud’s successful track record supporting global businesses, we hope to create an inclusive digital ecosystem to power Thailand’s vision as ASEAN’s digital hub,” Qiu said.

The security offerings that have been brought to Thailand include anti-DDoS service, WAF, security centre, action trail, and more. These security services can boost platform security protection, proactive defence, threat detection, and investigation and response, such as protecting software, app or websites against ransomware, mining and backdoor, and trojan programs to reduce operational issues. Architecturally, Alibaba Cloud’s security centre is also able to provide compliance assessments for businesses, in order to protect online and offline servers to meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Other key products and solutions that the company have officially launched in Thailand together with the data centre include elastic computing, database, network, storage, developer services, content delivery and enterprise applications.

Alibaba Cloud has also been enhancing its local technology implementation and migration capabilities through the support of its partners. Since the launch of its Thailand Partner Alliance 100 program last October, more than 40 partners such as National Telecom, Thailand Fintech Association, HiCloud, TMES, to name a few, have embarked on the growth journey with Alibaba Cloud. Besides direct sales, Alibaba Cloud will also work with partners to innovate new solutions to support Thai businesses.

Diego Ma, CEO of HiCloud, shared, “Together with Alibaba Cloud, we are bringing world-leading solutions to Thai customers to increase cloud adoption for their businesses.”

Singapore – Digital commerce enabler in SEA, Synagie, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Singapore Management University (SMU), aimed at co-developing digital education and training programmes. 

The programmes are specially designed to address the specific talent and skills shortages faced by the technology and e-commerce sector in the region. It seeks to upskill over 3,000 sector professionals by 2025. 

More than 60 SMU-certified programmes across seven areas of focus will be co-developed by SMU Academy (SMUA), the professional training arm of SMU and Synagie Commerce Academy (SCA). These include personal development, customer business development, channel development management, marketing and creative services, and supply chain operations, as well as customer engagement solutions, and business analytics solutions.

Complemented by SMUA’s highly interactive, collaborative, and project-based approach to learning, the modules delivered at SMUA will be taught by leading e-commerce and tech experts with industry experience. The programmes will be launched progressively in the latter part of this year. Participants, who will successfully complete the programme, will receive a certificate jointly issued by SMU and SCA.

Jack Lim, Singapore Management University Academy’s executive director, shared that the partnership with Synagie signifies their commitment to deepening collaboration and engagement with the industry to create practical learning programmes for adult learners who are looking to upskill and reskill. 

“Drawing from the proven andragogy expertise of SMU Academy and industry knowledge from Synagie, these programmes will serve to better equip the workforce with in-demand digital skills, eCommerce experience and bridge talent and skill gaps in this era of disruption,” said Lim.

Meanwhile, Olive Tai, Synagie’s managing director and co-founder, believes that to truly maintain their position as global leaders of the e-commerce sector, SEA’s e-commerce and tech players must come together to inspire and build the next generation of talent. 

“Synagie’s partnership with SMU marks significant milestones for two of the company’s stategic schemes – Synagie Commerce Academy (SCA) and Synagie Partner and Network (SPAN) – roadmapped to propel and future proof the Company position as Digitial Commerce’s leader and change agent for good,” said Tai.

Singapore — Integral Ad Science (IAS), a digital media company, has launched Control Panel, a suite of reporting and planning tools that Context Control customers can use as an added value. The new capabilities will enable customers to more clearly understand the value and return on investment that IAS’s contextual targeting solution delivers.

The Control Panel suite offers the following new tools namely Context Control Segment Catalog, which provides easy discovery of all Context Control Avoidance and Targeting off-the-shelf segments all in one place; and Contextual Segment Reach Calculator, which advises on the prospective reach of IAS contextual targeting segments to appropriately plan campaigns.

There is also the Contextual Targeting Reporting tool that offers insights into targeting segment performance, specifically focusing on viewability, reach, and programmatic dimensions. The last tool is Contextual Targeting Profiles which enables clients to bundle all of their desired targeting segments into one profile with a single segment ID for easy activation in their demand side platforms (DSP).

Tom Sharma, chief product officer of IAS, said, “Using our new Control Panel, advertisers will gain the ability to strategically plan, activate, and optimize their targeting campaigns all within the IAS Signal platform. This is yet another example of our ongoing efforts to empower our customer organizations and clients to confidently lean into our contextual targeting solution while hitting campaign KPIs.”

Advertisers can average more than 400 contextual segments from IAS on a pre-bid basis to avoid undesirable content or target content that is suitable for their campaigns. Major DSPs including Adelphic, Adform, Amobee, MediaMath, Xandr, Yahoo, and others have integrated Context Control, making these tools readily available for advertisers wherever they choose to buy.

Austin, Texas – Global technology company Zoho has announced the launch of ‘Zoho Marketing Plus’, a unified platform that brings together marketing activities across campaign ideation, creation, execution, management, and measurement, providing stakeholders across the entire marketing organisation with a single, shared view of critical information for improved collaboration and results.

The new marketing platform increases the effectiveness of digital marketing strategies by giving marketing leaders a deeper understanding of customer preferences and behaviours so they can deliver dynamic, high-value customer experiences that drive brand affinity and customer happiness.

According to Zoho, CMOs require their teams to leverage technology solutions that capture customer insights in ways that add value both to the business and customers. Through automation and business intelligence, the platform synchronises engagement data to help marketing teams better understand customers, make more informed decisions, and ultimately drive better results, growth, and revenue.

Mani Vembu, chief operating officer at Zoho, said, “Consumers and digital marketing continue to evolve at warp-speed, and marketers are struggling to keep up. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to properly manage multiple campaigns, channels, customer profiles, data, and ROI.”

He added, “The complexity of data and personalization at-scale only raises pressure on marketers and CMOs to deliver effective campaigns and revenue. By eliminating redundancies and confusion arising from multiple siloed solutions, Zoho Marketing Plus maximises productivity and teamwork, allowing marketers to stay nimble and collaborative amid evolving customer needs. When marketers aren’t bogged down by operations, they can deliver creative campaigns that promote meaningful relationships between the brand and customers.”

The unified platform includes a vast array of integrated capabilities aimed at helping digital marketers achieve greater results through simplified processes, tighter collaboration, shared assets, and consistent data.

Singapore — Oddle, an omnichannel food and beverage technology company headquartered in Singapore, has announced the launch of a new booking option for its customers, following integration with Reserve with Google. This new offering enables bookings with participating businesses directly through Google products including Search, Maps, and Google Assistant.

The company operates in four countries namely in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan. Oddle Reserve is one of the four core solutions within Oddle’s omnichannel ecosystem that aims to connect restaurants and their customers through first-class experiences and engagements. Through the collaboration, Oddle’s restaurant partners now experience higher search visibility and new reservation avenues across Google’s products.

The modern reservation and guest experience management solution is first of its kind to drive restaurant profitability by empowering restaurants to own direct reservations channels without per cover charge or subscription fee.

The Reserve with Google and Oddle Reserve integration will provide Oddle’s users a seamless opportunity to attract and retain customers that are using Google to search for restaurant reservations.