This week, Singapore electronics retailer Audio House has rolled out a new payment system that lets customers scan QR codes to complete their purchases; and they can do so using their own banking apps. Audio House said it had adopted NETS QR payment platform, enabling shoppers to select the payment mode at the cashier and scan the QR code displayed on the terminal to initiate the payment process. Developed by payments vendor Network for Electronic Transfers of Singapore (NETS), the QR platform [...]

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At first glance, programmatic holds a dominant position in the advertising ecosystem, with escalating spend expected to reach £4.5 bn in the UK next year, representing almost 85% of digital display. In this piece for ExchangeWire, Tim Webster, CSO and co-founder, The Exchange Lab, explores why, despite programmatic investment consistently increasing, it’s still being held back from fully dominating ad spend. Taking into account digital advertising as a whole, programmatic plays a far less significant role, with just 28% of global [...]

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Lazada is banking on data to help retailers offer better a shopping experience on its e-commerce platforms and, hence, drive sales of their products. In this aspect, the Southeast Asian online marketplace already has been tapping the industry knowhow and technologies of its majority shareholder, Alibaba. Such sharing has included the Chinese e-commerce giant’s search algorithm and deep-learning technologies, Jing Yin, Lazada’s co-president of commercial, said in an interview. The executive himself had spent five years based out of Alibaba’s [...]

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This week, JD.com has teamed up with several hotels to showcase its technologies and marketplace products, enabling guests to purchase items they find in their rooms. Selected rooms at these partner hotels including Wanda, Sheraton, Beijing 5L, and Greenland, would be suited up with products identified to be popular amongst travellers, such as power banks to charge their devices, a Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, and JD.com’s smart speaker cum personal assistant device. The Chinese e-commerce giant said it introduced the programme [...]

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Despite a monumental build up, the EU GDPR may not have made quite the splash the industry expected – it rather depends on who you ask. However, what it has done, is set the wheels in motion for other countries, such as Brazil, to adopt similar legislation. One in particular, which is starting to take data privacy very seriously, is the U.S. Multiple states have started updating their consumer privacy acts, and the state of California, the home of [...]

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Data science has increasingly been at the forefront of developments in advertising and marketing technology; and with very good reason. In the video space, data science is a crucial element for ensuring brand objectives are met against billions of data signals. In this piece for ExchangeWire, Dr Jon Morra, vice president, data science, Zefr, details the three components of data science in delivering those objectives for brands advertising on YouTube. We believe that advertisers and brands should be able [...]

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QR codes have emerged as a popular tool to facilitate mobile payments, but their potential goes beyond enabling transactions and should be tapped to help retailers build brand equity. In fact, the matrix barcode and other visual-recognition technology can provide a way for businesses to bridge the gap between offline and online realms, according to Marcus Tan, CEO of AIQ, a Singapore startup that develops artificial intelligence (AI) software capable of mining images and visual data. Founded in 2014, the [...]

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ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: Brand Safety Study Reveals Carelessness of Marketers; Sublime Skinz Expands European operations; mediasmart & Brave Partner; Additional Funding for Drawbridge; and Partnership for Eyeota & TwentyCi. Brand Safety Study Reveals Carelessness of Marketers A new study by Sizmek on brand safety reveals that 38% of marketers are aware of having delivered adverts on harmful or unsafe web pages. At the same time, only 61% [...]

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Retailers looking to understand why customers choose not to purchase certain products should analyse in-store data to identify potential association and tap analytics to complement their own experience. Consumers today have more options and means to get what they need, so businesses have to get better at knowing what their customers want, said Jeremy Sim, global director of manufacturing and high tech at Qlik, which develops data intelligence and visualisation software. Retailers in Asia-Pacific are starting to recognise the importance of doing [...]

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Following a lively on-stage discussion about the new era in the convergence of ad tech and martech at ATS Singapore in June, ExchangeWire speaks with panelists Yiorgos Hadjiandrea, head of media buying solutions, Southeast Asia, Google; and Jess O’Reilly, regional sales director, marketing cloud, Asia, Salesforce (both pictured below) about why the quest for customer centricity is one of the major driving factors of this convergence. ExchangeWire: What do we mean by ‘customer-centric’ marketing? Yiorgos Hadjiandrea, Google: Customer-centric marketing [...]

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