AdParlor rebrands to Ada

Ada, an abbreviation for "analytics, data, advertising", is the new name for AdParlor.

"The Ada brand is a better reflection of all the services that we currently provide," said Matt Sutton, CEO of AdParlor in Asia and now chief strategy and operations officer for Ada.

As a joint venture between US-based digital marketing technology company Adknowledge and Axiata, a pan-Asian telecom and ecommerce company, Ada now incorporates a range of skills with more than 180 digital specialists across 10 markets.

"We were essentially known in the market as one of the things that we do, rather than having an umbrella brand that represented different business lines," said Sutton. The business struggled to offer strategy and creative services while being known as a platform provider.

"There was a big difference between the way we were engaging with different customers and actually the brand identity," said Sutton. "We were doing a lot of data work through a platform, an enterprise data business, we also have a supply-side business that has media representation which we have plugged into our trading desk. So we're doing a lot of things for agencies and advertisers across Asia, but we were only known as the platform."

On the strategy and consulting side of the rebrand, the business intends to provide its clients with a solution that is platform-agnostic.

"It's not always about AdParlor," said Elle von Dierer, VP of commercial at ada, adding that the focus is on the bigger picture that looks at what keeps CMOs up at night and the steps needed to be taken in order to transform a business from a digital perspective.

"The USP that we have is that our strategic consulting and insights is data-driven," said von Dierer. "We have access to telco data that gives us the rich and deep ability to give a customer journey mapping mechanism to our clients."

Doing all this under AdParlor was like being in a little room with large wings, she said.

The company's units include:

1. Ada Futures: Digital strategies, the starting point of a campaign and the team that oversees the strategic planning and project management of an IMC.
2. Ada Xchange: Programmatic media buying, the team tasked with the procurement of digital inventory that is best suited for the context of an ad and the target viewer.
3. Ada Reach: Mobile inventory, the team tasked with dealing with publishers that make up the reach and impression business of Ada.
4. Ada Acquire: Optimising between acquisition and risk, the team tasked with customer acquisition while improving the costs of services rendered.
5. Studio A: Creative production, the team charged with producing audio, video, and graphic creatives at the speed of the customer journey.

Note: Ada spells its name in all lowercase letters, but Campaign Asia-Pacific capitalises all proper nouns, for clarity.