SXSW London has announced 10 new partners for its inaugural European event, taking place across Shoreditch from 2-7 June 2025. Bellwethers Group has joined a ‘Major Sustainability Partner,’ which will see it host events in ‘Climate & Nature House’ at Shoreditch’s Bersey Warehouse. Notion, Sage & Jester,and TikTok each join as ‘Official Brand Partners,’ and will be stationed at the Truman Brewery, Ely’s Yard, and the Hoxton Hotel, respectively. Sony Music Publishing, an ‘Official Music Partner,’ will host a music showcase and main stage music programme. Additional track sponsorship has come from AVEVA, Frog, Globant, Sportico, and Supercell.
Music video network Vevo has announced a partnership with Experian as it looks to strengthen its targeting capabilities. Through the partnership, Vevo will utilise Experian’s Mosaic UK audience segments across YouTube and free ad-supported streaming TV services, such as Samsung TV Plus and Rakuten. Mosaic, Experian’s consumer segmentation framework, is said to group together audiences by a shared demographic, lifestyle, or behaviour down to a geographic level.
Content recommendations platform Taboola and experience management platform Qualtrics have conducted a survey that found that, though social media dominates performance advertising, nearly 75% of performance marketers have noticed diminishing returns from their social media ad investments. Most of these performance marketers indicated that diminishing returns impact over 30% of their spend. Over 80% of performance marketers use multiple tactics to combat diminishing returns, with more than half expanding into additional digital channels beyond social media ads.
Captivate, North America’s leading digital out of home (DOOH) video network, has announced a new partnership with VIOOH, a premium DOOH supply-side platform, expanding its footprint across the US and Canada. Through this partnership, advertisers worldwide can access Captivate’s inventory reaching millions of people in premium office towers and luxury residential properties, fostering powerful connections between brands and decision-makers.
Online tire retailer Tire Agent has partnered with adtech provider Quantcast to unlock previously unattainable audiences via a programmatic media mix campaign. Quantcast delivered through a media mix campaign, made up of native, video and display ads, and measured success through its real-time incrementality testing. By month two, Quantcast had more than doubled the target incremental return on ad spend, secured a 12% conversion lift across the entire campaign and a 26% lift from native ads.
SRMG, an integrated media group in the MENA region, has launched SRMG Media Solutions (SMS), a data-driven media solutions company. SMS will represent brands such as Asharq Al-Awsat, Asharq News, Asharq Business with Bloomberg, Al Eqtisadiah, Akhbaar24, Arab News, Hia, Sayidaty, Billboard Arabia, Manga Arabia, and Thmanyah, offering advertisers access to digital, social, TV, audio, print platforms, advertising models, storytelling, branded content, and experiential IPs, such as the Billboard Arabia Music Awards and Hia Hub.
The Brandtech Group, a digital-only marketing business, has announced a collaboration to integrate Google’s video generation model, Veo 2, into Brandtech’s generative AI marketing platform, Pencil. The integration enables brands to access Google’s AI models – including Gemini, Imagen 3, and Google Cloud’s ABCD framework – within a single interface.
Adtech platform Nexxen has announced the launch of its TV Intelligence solution in Germany. The solution aims to help advertisers to more effectively activate and optimise their campaigns across linear and digital channels. With the launch, automatic content recognition data has been made available outside of closed-loop platforms. An in-house measurement solution will be added to TV Intelligence later in 2025.
A new survey from mobile app development company Apadmi has found that 67% of businesses expect investment in digital loyalty to increase or significantly increase over the next 12 months. The second annual Digital Customer Loyalty report also revealed that 81% of respondents consider loyalty to have always been important or is now more important than ever, with the number one business challenge being solved by digital loyalty programmes being frequency of purchase. 33% of businesses said they are currently developing a digital loyalty programme, while 35% stated they already have a live programme in place. 13% said they plan to create one in the future, while less than 1% admitted they no longer use a loyalty programme.
Audion, an audio ad platform, has launched an AI-powered evaluation tool to enable pre-campaign analysis for audio creatives. ‘Sense’ combines KPIs into a single global impact score for audio spots to allow ads to be optimised before they go live.
Google Ads-focused automation platform Squared.io has launched a suite of features designed to give advertisers more control over their ad placements. ‘Protect’ uses AI technology to enable advertisers to identify and exclude fraudulent, low-quality, irrelevant, or harmful ad placements.
