APAC > Rich Media

Hidetaka Fukata is Executive Officer, Head of e-Business Group, at D.A. Consortium Inc. Here he discusses the launch of i-Effect, DAC’s new third-party ad server.

Can you give some background to “i-Effect(TM)” DAC’s new third party ad-serving technology?

Even though Third Party Ad-serving was introduced to Japan over a decade ago, Japanese Advertisers and Agencies have been reluctant to adopt it for a number of reasons, including the fact that the service models proposed by the non-Japanese vendors did not match local business practices; a perception of ad-serving fees being high and, perhaps most significantly, the fact that major Publishers disallow third party ad-serving. As such, the idea of Third Party Ad-serving until recently had largely yet to be accepted.

In recent years, however, Advertisers and Agencies have realized the necessity of allocating their spend on online advertising more effectively rather than just relying heavily on SEO and search ads. They have come to see Third Party Ad-serving as a valuable solution for measuring overall campaign effectiveness. As well, Japanese Publishers have become accustomed to the presence of third party ad-serving.

In line with these changes, DAC has released a third party ad-serving solution called i-Effect^TM, which meet the needs of Advertisers and Agencies in Japan with a flexible service model and pricing. As well as offering core features for managing, tracking and reporting on advertising campaigns, i-Effect^TM also enables auto-optimization of creative and copy. This auto-optimization feature, made possible by the latest ad-serving technology, is essential for maximizing advertising effectiveness resulting in higher conversion rates.

In summary, i-Effect^TM is a tool that can be used for not only evaluating campaign effectiveness, it also delivers the ability to deliver an increase in a campaign’s return on investment.

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Stephen Hunt TubeMogul’s Asia-Pacific Director talks candidly about the challenges the online video industry currently faces: demand outstripping supply; publishers holding on to unsold inventory to protect its value; and lack of transparency in video advertising and the industry’s absence of regulation e.g ‘fake pre-rolls’. But Hunt argues that the opportunity in online video advertising is huge, and is poised to attract huge amounts of brand budget in the coming years.

If the latest PwC figures are accurate, 2014 will be the year online advertising will surpass TV to become the biggest segment of the media pie in Australia.  A major driver of future growth is forecasted to be brand dollars flowing away from traditional TV into online video and connected TV.

With great power comes great responsibility, however, and the industry needs to create a quality ecosystem worthy of TV’s mantle.  We have the opportunity to be good, but we should strive to be great!

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Carolyn Bollaci, Country Manager for MediaMind Australia & New Zealand shares some case studies on the effectiveness of data optimisation – a critical, but less known, factor behind the success of display ads. She also highlights how using data has shown an average lift in CTRs of 73%.

After years in the advertising doldrums, pulling meagre average click through rates (CTRs) of around 0.06 percent, it’s interesting to see certain digital ads now regularly storming CTRs in primary and even double digits.

Data optimisation is a critical, but less known, factor behind the rebound of display ads. From our benchmarks as a global ad server, we regularly see that data usage for targeting and retargeting lift CTRs by an average of 73 per cent. Actual conversions increase by an average of 40 per cent, with as much as 389 per cent for some advertisers.

Data optimisation technologies work by calculating the many factors that determine a display ad’s success, or failure. Like a race car’s cockpit team, data optimisation technology can tinker and tweak with a live ad in order to nudge up its results, often significantly.

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Q1: What trends are we seeing in the SE Asian mobile market?

The mobile market is particularly exciting at the moment with the development of mobile Internet devices and its spread across South East Asia. In the month ending October alone, we recorded over 22.2 million Internet users in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand on mobile devices. Apple holds majority market share in the region with 53% share of the online mobile population.

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Bharad Ramesh is the Regional Executive Director, Strategic Operations & Trading, Asia for Starcom Mediavest Group. Here he discusses how the online media landscape is evolving in Asia. He talks about how digital is still not mainstream, how it sucks up a tremendous amount of client and staff bandwidth and explains why ad exchanges and DSPs will bring efficiency and scalability to media buying.

Can you give an overview of Starcom MediaVest Group’s offering in the APAC region?

Starcom MediaVest Group specializes in media planning and buying, communication strategy, consumer research, digital, branded entertainment and other diversified services.

What is your role and remit for SMG across the region respectively?

As Regional Executive Director, Strategic Operations & Trading for Asia, I oversee both the enhancement of SMG’s working processes on multinational clients as well as trading opportunities in the marketplace across our spectrum of clients in the region.

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Alex Littlejohn is President APAC of Adconion Media Group. Here he discusses how the recent smartclip acquisition puts the Adconion Media Group in a strong position globally to provide branding, direct response and video solutions. Littlejohn also provides insight into the growth of the online video and connected TV in Australia and APAC regions and predicts the smartclip acquisition will help accelerate the growth of the emerging Connected TV segment.

You recently announced the acquisition of smartclip. Who is smartclip and what does this mean for Adconion Media Group’s offering? Will this significantly widen your current competitive set in Australia and APAC?

Adconion Media Group has acquired 100% of smartclip, Europe´s leader in digital video advertising and a pioneer in monetizing multiscreen content advertising solutions. The company works with publishers, media agencies and advertisers, enabling all parties to benefit from the distribution of online video advertising. smartclip helps media agencies and advertisers deliver their campaigns on a number of different devices (tablet PCs, Connected TV sets, gaming consoles, desktops or laptops and smartphones) and allows publishers to benefit from proprietary and innovative technology solutions. This acquisition means together, smartclip and Adconion Media Group create the largest independent digital monetization platform and the only true global player who covers all relevant markets, including North America, EU, Russia and APAC, delivering both branding and video solutions as well as direct response marketing.

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Carolyn Bollaci is MediaMind’s Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand. Here she discusses why it’s key for advertisers to deliver rich, engaging and optimised ad experiences to consumers, wherever they are in the digital space.

Bollaci also talks on ad relevancy and data privacy being paramount to MediaMind and how 2012 will bring the real start of ‘infinite advertising’ – where an ad is only a window into other brand experiences the consumer might want to explore.

Bollaci highlights mobile as the second most important screen in the home after television and predicts when IPTV takes off we’ll start to see the replacement of traditional TV all together.

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Wout Van Damme is the CEO of Funbox, a multi-channel performance trading desk and here he talks about the Funbox offering of a performance based media buying service across display, mobile, video, social, search and affiliate channels. He discusses how being platform agnostic allows continuous innovation, the ability to split test across exchanges and DSPs for the most effective inventory source and how advertisers work with them on a CPC, CPL, revenue share or CPW (Cost-Per-Whatever) basis.

Can you give an overview of Funbox exchange offering in the Australian and international markets?

We see there is a gap between advertisers who have a growing appetite for performance traffic and publishers who still want get paid on an impression basis. We bridge that gap, by buying traffic on a CPM basis and selling it to our clients on a performance basis, which can be CPC, CPL, CPA or revenue share, essentially we’re happy to run on a CPW (Cost – Per – Whatever) basis. While doing this we take away or reduce the media buying risk for advertisers. Funbox was founded in Sydney in 2004 as a direct response advertiser and started to use its knowledge and expertise to help other organizations succeed online 2 years ago. Funbox is based in Australia were the majority of the 25 employees reside, but operates globally and generates most of its revenue outside of the home market.

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