Publicis Groupe Acquires Longtuo, Aiming for a Dominant Role in China’s Booming e-Commerce Market
Publicis Groupe announced this week it has acquired Beijing-based Longtuo, a digital marketing company with strong eCommerce expertise in creative, customer acquisition, marketing solutions and measurement tools. Longtuo will be part of the Groupe-owned Razorfish network and will be named Razorfish Longtuo China.
Founded in 2000, Longtuo employs 200 people throughout its Beijing headquarters and Shanghai and Guangzhou offices. The addition of Longtuo will more than double the size of Razorfish in China, which currently employs 130 people and provides e-Commerce services to clients such as Converse, Hertz, and GM Onstar.
Longtuo serves a prestigious roster of Chinese marketers, including 360buy, Kohler, Masamaso, Taobao (the country’s two largest B2C e-Commerce portals) and Yves Rocher. Longtuo also contracts work for Renault, providing website development and content management, as well as traffic measurement and analysis.
ATS Sydney was the first full day conference on the evolving data-driven ad market in the Southern Hemisphere. The event was attended by over three hundred C-level regional digital media execs. One of the keynotes on the day was delivered by Julian Tol, CEO at Brandscreen, a leading DSP in the APAC market. You can watch the highlights of Tol’s keynote below. We will be uploading more video footage from the ATS Sydney event in the coming weeks.
DSPs are gaining traction in India with Neo@Ogilvy, the digital media planning and buying arm of OgilvyOne, and Marmalade Digital, a digital media trading technology and services provider, announcing the launch of their new DSPs in India. The model has been established globally for a few years, but is now finally gaining acceptance among advertisers India.
Neo@Ogilvy launched its DSP last week in partnership with Brandscreen, a leading DSP in the Asia-Pacific region, and has already done a couple of pilot campaigns for two of its clients in New Delhi and Mumbai, according to R. P. Singh, Vice President, Neo@Ogilvy.
Marmalade Digital, a relatively new digital technology company established in 2011, will launch its DSP on May 15.
Robbie Hills is Head of Media Technology Solutions SEA/India and Head of Rich Media APAC at Google. Here he discusses the recent launch of Adx in China, and the growth of programmatic buying in other APAC markets.
Can you give some overview of the launch of AdX in China?
We officially launched our AdX in China on April 10. We’d already been testing the system with several key publishers and buyers for some time; we see the shift in programmatic buying happening at an increasing speed across the APAC region and China is growing at even faster pace and a key part of our strategy. We already have a number of large buyers actively buying on AdX in China.
How developed is the RTB market in China? Are there big volumes being sold via RTB?
In short – yes! As with many other markets, there are large volumes of display inventory in China that are not and have never been effectively monetised: given the multitude of display ad formats and thousands of websites, it often takes thousands of hours for advertisers to plan and manage their display ad campaigns, and many don’t bother. On the other side of the equation, some publishers are left with up to 80% of their ad space unsold. It’s like airlines flying with their planes mostly empty.
Based in Singapore, Pestano will report to Brandscreen CEO Julian Tol and have worldwide responsibility for product innovation and delivery.
Pestano was most recently the Director, Platform Services – APAC working on the trading desk solutions with The MIG (WPP) in Singapore. He is a dynamic digital marketing and technology executive with a decade of progressive experience in digital media, including five years at Microsoft Advertising in the US.
Julian Tol, Brandscreen CEO, comments: “Appointing Ryan is a coup for Brandscreen and he will be pivotal to our expansion across Asia. Brandscreen is in a major growth phase with 35 staff and growing almost daily, with new offices opening imminently.”
Stuart Spiteri is Chief Operating Officer at News Digital Media – and worked previously at Google as the head of platforms for Japan and Asia-Pacific. Here he discusses his new role at one of Australia’s biggest publishers, the challenges/ opportunities that lie ahead and some wider trends from the greater APAC market.
Can you give some overview on the new role at News Digital Media – and some background on your experience in the APAC region?
I joined NDM in December 2011 from Google in Singapore where I was head of platforms across the Japan and Asia-Pac region, looking after the display business including DoubleClick suite of products including Ad Exchange, plus Invite Media.
Prior to Google, I was with Akamai Technologies as MD of their Asia-Pac business for seven years, providing platform-led technological solutions to a broad range of blue chip organisations that included working closely with all major Australian publishers.
MediaMath, a leading DSP, announced last week that it has expanded into Australia via a partnership with Australian technology company, Kinected Corp.
As part of the move, Kinected has struck a licensing agreement with MediaMath to oversee the management of bids for advertising inventory. The partnership will be managed from their offices in Sydney, Australia by the founders of Kinected, Gary Hardwick, Mick O’Brien and Ross McNab.
Mike Peralta, MediaMath CRO, comments: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Kinected to bring MediaMath’s TerminalOne technology to the Australian market. As the market expands in APAC, we are able to help brands and agencies trade in the new data-driven advertising marketplace, empowering them to deliver results and focus on strategy instead of performance optimization. This is a very exciting time for the sector and we’re excited to be at the forefront of these developments”
Executive Board Member and President of Gruner + Jahr International, Torsten-Jörn Klein, comments: “The expansion of our activities in India is clearly in line with the strategic priorities of Gruner + Jahr. After the acquisition of MaXposure in the print space, G+J is now acquiring Networkplay, one of the fastest growing digital companies in India and follows its strategy to build a combined portfolio of print and digital media activities.”
Reza Behnam is CEO & Founder at ADZ. Here he discusses the ADZ DSP solution, and trends in the SE Asian market.
Can you give an overview of the ADZ solution in the APAC region?
We are a regional demand side platform (DSP) with self-service, managed-service and enterprise versions available to agencies and clients. We have access to over 600bn impressions/month globally. We offer easy-to-use programmatic media buying for agencies, brands, advertising networks and SME’s who want to access a large volume of publisher inventory.
Vicki Lyon is Managing Director SpotXchange Asia-Pacific. Here she gives her synopsis on the recent ATS Sydney event.
The inaugural ATS conference here in Sydney was a resounding success, with several hundred attendees and a great cross-section of industry commentary. From Star Wars analogies to resounding calls for more transparent data, it set the scene for an open and honest dialogue throughout the day.
Some of the liveliest discussions that took place revolved around Real-Time Bidding or RTB. Advertising agencies are increasingly embracing RTB as they reap the benefits of greater efficiencies and improved campaign results. Many advertising agencies viewed that demand for RTB, particularly in the online video space, will be high this year but more publishers need to come to the party and supply more inventory and transparency.
One of the key points that came out of these discussions was the need for more quality data. This was a concern for both publishers and advertisers, and one of the key questions raised was why 1st party data wasn’t being used by agencies and publishers, none of the 3rd party data providers offer enough to run a quality campaign.
Publicis Groupe Acquires Longtuo, Aiming for a Dominant Role in China’s Booming e-Commerce Market
Robbie Hills is Head of Media Technology Solutions SEA/India and Head of Rich Media APAC at Google. Here he discusses the recent launch of Adx in China, and the growth of programmatic buying in other APAC markets.
Stuart Spiteri is Chief Operating Officer at 
MediaMath Makes In-Roads Down Under
Germany’s Gruner + Jahr Acquires Majority Stake in NetworkPlay
Reza Behnam is CEO & Founder at 
Vicki Lyon is Managing Director 
