All the latest partnerships, products and purchases in APAC: September

As APAC is becoming a critical growth engine and innovation hub for a wider range of businesses, Campaign Asia-Pacific has witnessed a surge in acquisition activity, product launches and partnerships in recent months. Since it is hard for everyone to keep track of all the movements happening in the region, we have decided to curate the most interesting ones into a monthly running blog. We hope this provides a useful resource and source of inspiration for your own growth plans. If you have news and would like to be featured, reach out to [email protected].

September 28: Newgen Gaming has launched a platform for its esports brand, Penta Esports. The platform will house match schedules, match results, VODs of tournaments and leagues, content, news and announcements. The platform will allow users to discover and register for tournaments and also allow teams to create recruitment posts and players to find teams. To mark the launch, the company has also launched a tournament titled, Penta Challenge - Valorant, supported by Facebook Gaming and Trinity Gaming. This tournament will be a part of Penta Esports’ newly launched IP, Penta Challenge. 

September 28: Chinese martech company, Joy Spreader Group, has tied up with Poly Film Investment at the 11th Beijing International Film Festival to collaborate  in several areas across the creative industries, including content production, online publicity, marketing, and industry consulting. The companies will continue to proactively explore different models for cooperation, from partnerships to joint ventures.

September 28: Dentsu Malaysia, and Netccentric's subsidiary focussed on enabling live commerce, Nuffnang Live Commerce, have aligned their marketing solutions to drive Live Commerce on social spaces for ecommerce growth. As part of Dentsu's Total Commerce solutions for brands, this partnership will bring Live Video Commerce service integration which will enable advertisers to rapidly drive traffic to their brand's social pages and create two-way, personalised engagements between brand influencers and followers to drive on-the-spot sales.

September 22:  CX platform MoEngage announced new AI capabilities and upgrades to its engagement plaftorm for marketers. These include affinity segments to let marketers group their customers based on interests, preferences, affinities, and lifestyle; predictive insights to let them identify which customers are likely to churn, become inactive, or purchase more; and identifiers of each individual's "Most Preferred Channel” and “Best Time to Send” preferences. 

September 22: Singapore multi-currency fintech startup YouTrip, has announced a new brand refresh and identity along with plans to set up an innovation lab in the country and double its local workforce with over 50 new hires in Singapore across engineering and product development by 2022. New products and features under development include YouTrip Business, a new multi-currency corporate credit card aimed at cross-border payments while streamlining employee expenses. 

September 21: Ecommerce platform Shopee and fintech company Futu Singapore (Futu SG) are teaming up for Shopee's 10.10 campaign by tapping each other’s customer base. Futu SG offers investment products via its moomoo trading platform. The 10.10 collaboration, running from 22 September to 10 October will give Shopee users a chance to win Tesla, Facebook or Coca-Cola stocks and be introduced to investing via the moomoo platform when they successfully redeem these free stocks won. 

September 21:  Software giant Oracle launched a new marketing automation solution called Oracle Fusion Marketing to help marketers easily create campaigns that span traditional marketing and advertising channels. The product is engineered to bypass the entire lead qualification and conversion process, using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically score leads at the account level, predict when consumers are ready to talk to a salesperson, and generate sales opportunities in any CRM system.

September 19: Marketing and communications IT services consultancy Tangram has a new global partnership with work OS provider monday.com to resell, consult and support monday.com within the creative and marketing space. Initially concentrating on APAC region, the partnership will expand into other regions as opportunities arise from 2022 and beyond.

September 17: Recommendated content provider Taboola is partnering with Xiaomi to integrate Taboola News recommendations on the lockscreen of its more than 100 million overseas smartphones.

September 16:  Adtech firm Quantcast revealed new cookieless solutions for publishers, advertisers, and brands to know and grow their audiences without a dependency on third-party cookies. A key feature these is cookieless conversion reporting for advertisers to measure cookieless environments and for publishers to quantify the customers whose browsing is not supported by third-party cookies today. The company also revealed a new contextual solution, Ara TopicMap which uses AI to link contextual signals to consumer intent.

September 16: Omnichannel ad platform Mediaocean will be partnering with TikTok to boost advertising capabilities. The new technology collaboration will see TikTok advertising integrated into Mediaocean’s closed ecosystems optimisation solution. The partnership will enable brands and agencies to plan, buy, measure, and optimize TikTok ads alongside other media channels in the Mediaocean platform.

September 15: BBC Studios will launch linear channels BBC Earth and BBC Lifestyle together with on-demand channels BBC First and BBC Brit via leading Malaysian content and entertainment company Astro, expanding their partnership. BBC Earth and BBC Lifestyle are available on the Astro platform from 15 September while BBC First and BBC Brit will be available from 15 October. 

September 14: CX platform Emplifi has launched Emplifi Social Commerce Cloud for CMOs, ecommerce leaders and social media teams charged with driving high conversion rates across social platforms. The platform synchronizes social commerce activities across platforms, provides automated and live assistance and also advanced analytics.   

September 13: Financial software company Intuit, which owns tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint and accounting program QuickBooks, has agreed to buy email marketing company Mailchimp for $12 billion in cash and stock.

September 13: The Out of Home Advertising Association of the Philippines (OHAAP) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Moving Walls Philippines. Under the agreement, OHAAP members who own billboard panels, LED screens, and other outdoor advertising platforms will have access to audience measurement under the Moving Audiences platform. Member companies will also be able to plan static and digital OOH (DOOH) across Moving Walls network of 35,000 global connected sites. The deal forms part of Media Specialists Association of the Philippines (MSAP) goal of establishing a common currency for OOH. 

September 10: Customer experience management solution InMoment has completed the acquisition of Lexalytics, a provider of cloud and on-premise natural language processing and machine learning that transforms structured and unstructured data into actionable intelligence. Hootsuite, Transcom Worldwide, Altair, Kaplan, and Biogen are among Lexalytics' clients. Lexalytics employees, including its founder Jeff Catlin, will continue in their roles.

September 9: Singapore-based technology services firm NCS has entered an agreement to acquire three companies in Singapore, Greater China and Australia, as part of its regional expansion strategy. The acquisitions include ClayOPS, a Singapore-based data analytics and consulting services firm; Velocity Business Solutions, a Hong Kong-based data analytics firm that provides a full suite of data analytics consulting and implementation services; and Riley, an Australian cloud-based solutions consultancy offering cloud-native transformation, data supply chain and cloud operations. ClayOPS, Velocity Business Solutions, and Riley will continue to run independently under NCS with their respective senior leadership continuing in their current roles.

September 9: Twitter is testing a new feature that allows users to more easily communicate in interest groups. The feature, called Communities, will allow users to invite people into a Community. Once in, users can compose Tweets for that Community and scroll through Tweets from other members. Community Tweets will be visible to the public, but only members can interact with them. The feature is being tested on iOS and Twitter.com. Twitter has built the feature to give a more permanent home to communities like Book Twitter, Crypto Twitter, Skincare Twitter, Archaeology Twitter, Swiftie Twitter.

when you join a Community, you’ll see an option in the Tweet composer to Tweet to that Community vs. your followers (4/7) pic.twitter.com/beLuL4cdE5

— Twitter Communities (@JoinCommunities) September 8, 2021

September 9: Grab's advertising unit GrabAds has become a partner to GroupM in a bid to grow its ecommerce revenue. The year-long partnership will see Grab encourage the media agency network's clients to leverage its ecommerce offerings, GrabFood and GrabMart, and first-party data capabilities. GrabAds will also provide GroupM’s clients with early access to its latest ad features and solutions, such as 'rank boosters' to help Grab’s merchant-partners increase their visibility through search ads and listings, as well as the new GrabAds masthead. GrabAds will also provide GroupM’s commerce teams with learning and development support, along with insights on consumer attitudes and behaviours, knowledge and tools.

September 9: Zalora has partnered with partnership management platform Impact to introduce a commission-based influencer model that invites more crowd participation. Impact will track and manage Zalora's new 'Community Influencer Program', which allows influencers and customers to endorse products via their social media platforms and be rewarded with commission on sales. Each person within the program will have a unique referral link, and Impact will track whether recommendations result in sales. For each sale, influencers can earn up to 15% commission in cash back or up to 10% in cash.

September 9: AnyMind Group has launched Story Engine, a feature on AnyManager that enables users to easily create, edit, manage and publish Web Stories, an open-source initiative by Google. Web Stories are a web-based version of the popular "Stories" format that combines video, audio, images, animation and text. These Web Stories can appear across a publisher’s own website, Google Search, Google Discover and Google Images. Online publishers and marketers for ecommerce and D2C brands can now use AnyMind's Story Engine feature to create and design Web Stories, edit existing Web Stories content, manage all draft and live Web Stories, and publish Web Stories in a single platform. AnyManager users can also connect Google Analytics to AnyManager and track the performance of their Web Stories.

September 9: Outdoor adtech company Moving Walls has powered the Philippines’ first programmatic campaign with a well-known Korean multinational electronics company as its first advertiser. Moving Walls integrated the campaign through Google DV360 supported by PMX Precision PH, and automated the planning and buying of on four screens in Metro Manila.

September 8: Identity solution ID5 has partnered with Japanese adtech consultancy Globalive to expand its portfolio of publisher and technology providers within the Japanese market. Globalive provides marketing, expansion and fundraising services to technology companies that want to successfully enter and grow their business in Japan.

September 8: Data and analytics company GfK has launched an integrated software platform, Gfknewron, enabling companies to access market, consumer and brand data from a single source. The platform will combine the company's retail panel data and consumer insight engine with AI-powered forecasts and recommendations.

September 2: Sitecore, which raised US$1.2 billion in January in one of the largest martech fund raises, has made its fourth acquisition this year, buying California-based Reflektion, an AI-powered digital search platform that understands and predicts patterns, context, and needs in order to convert shoppers into buyers. The acquisition is expected to close in September 2021. Sitecore has also purchased cloud data platform Boxever, ecommerce platform Four51 and email marketing platform Moosend this year.

September 2: Discovery has launched its Discovery+ streaming service in the Philippines in partnership with telco Globe. The service will be available first to select Globe customers before rolling out widely in October. Discovery+ provides a library of shows from Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, Food Network, Magnolia Network, Travel Channel, Animal Planet and Asian Food Network, as well as non-fiction content from the History Channel and natural history from the BBC.

September 1: Measurement and analytics firm NielsenIQ and experience management company Qualtrics have partnered on a joint solution to enable brands to capture key brand metrics, such as Brand Equity Index (a barometer of consumers’ purchase intent correlated with market share) on a single platform, aligning them with business outcomes including awareness, consideration, and usage. The joint solution will also provide pre-built analytics, automated workflows, and interactive dashboards from Qualtrics to help organisations simulate future scenarios.