Aberfield Communications has been appointed by the B2B diversity and inclusion organisation, WISE, which aims to empower more women to consider a career in STEM, to further its cause. The Leeds-based brand communications, PR and social media agency will provide PPC and social media support to help expand WISE’s reach and drive engagement. WISE provides B2B services to get more women into all levels of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles, helping to readdress the gender imbalance in these industries.
Following a comprehensive competitive tender process, Tourism Australia has confirmed the reappointment of UM Australia to handle its global media buying services across 15 key markets, including Australia. The appointment is for a five-year period from September 2021, structured as a three-year initial contract period with options for two further one-year extensions. Tourism Australia has also announced the reappointment of Beijing Gridsum Technology, Inc., trading as Gridsum, for search engine marketing and search engine optimisation in China. Gridsum has been appointed for a five-year period from September 2021, with the contract structured for an initial three-year period with options for two one-year extensions.
The NFL has reached an agreement with the Screach streaming platform to broadcast its 2021 season via a smart TV app to thousands of commercial venues across Poland. The partnership marks a decisive move by the NFL to expand its live game proposition for the enterprise market in Poland, which includes bars, cafes, hotels and restaurants. Screach’s cloud-based technology enables venues to stream the content they want in HD quality to their existing TVs, seamlessly via either an app or simple plug and play hardware, with no need for a satellite or cable TV connection.
Decision Intelligence company Peak is expanding its global network of customers by partnering with digital marketing agency First Internet. The Manchester digital marketing team has been appointed to support Peak as it launches in the US in Q3 2021 and recruits in India. First Internet will be serving localised versions of Peak’s website and building multi-lingual versions in 2022 and beyond. The appointment follows a three-phase project which has seen First Internet update the existing Peak website, develop the content hub and create new templates, designs, development and animations.
Quantcast, a global advertising technology company, has announced key innovations to the Quantcast Platform, which allows publishers, advertisers, and brands to know and grow their audiences. Quantcast revealed new cookieless solutions, available to users within the Quantcast Platform today, at its Fall Virtual NOVA Event. These new innovations help advertisers reach audiences without a dependency on third-party cookies. Also new to the platform, Quantcast Connect directly matches high-quality publisher supply with marketer demand through smarter insights, while Ara™ TopicMap uses AI to link contextual signals to consumer intent and provides greater accuracy for reaching audiences today and in a future, post-cookie world.
BOMBAY SAPPHIRE® Gin has announced the debut of its first campaign film dedicated to the BOMBAY & Tonic cocktail in Europe. Titled “Senses Stirred”, the film was brought to life by renowned director Alan Masferrer and shows viewers that the perfect gin and tonic goes far beyond being a cocktail – it is an experience for the senses. The media campaign will launch in Europe from the week of 6th September with the film spots on television, complemented with a range of digital and social-first assets. The campaign is supported by a media spend of over €8 million across the UK, Netherlands, and Germany. The media agency for this campaign is OMD.
VCCP Business, part of VCCP, the global challenger network for challenger brands, has acquired Sling & Stone, a multi-award winning PR and communications agency with offices in Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles. Sling & Stone will work in partnership with leading technology agencies Method in North America and Harvard in the UK, as well as advocacy specialist agency inEvidence. The combined global PR and communications group will help clients everywhere shape the future of how we live, work, and play. It will grow the group’s technology billings to $40/£30 million, with a 250+ strong team, cementing its global presence.
Anzu and HUMAN Security, Inc. (formerly White Ops) has announced a partnership that will safeguard the in-game advertising space by detecting invalid traffic (IVT), general invalid traffic (GIVT), and sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) among Anzu’s programmatic gaming inventory across mobile and PC. Losses due to ad fraud are expected to continue to cost the industry billions of dollars each year, and sophisticated bots pose a significantly increasing threat to the gaming world. By leveraging HUMAN’s pre-bid and post-bid solutions, MediaGuard, Anzu ensures that campaigns run across its inventory retain low fraud levels, allowing them to continue to harbour a safe space where both advertisers and publishers can feel confident working together to effectively reach gamers around the world.
Copy House has expanded to Europe with the launch of Copy House Europe. This is in addition to landing a new client with social media giant Facebook. As 38% of Copy House’s clients are based in Europe, Copy House has launched Copy House Europe. This will help the company better cater to all its European clients, reach new and fresh talent by hiring outside of the UK, expand its collective language pool, and further increase its European clientele.
Origin, the advertiser led cross media measurement initiative has chosen Kantar as its preferred supplier of its single source panel. The panel, that will measure TV, online video and digital display advertising, in a single source household panel, will act as the ‘source of truth’ for the deduplication model that will sit at the heart of the service. Origin and Kantar will work together to agree contracts with the intention of a full reporting sample to be built for Origin beta testing for the start of 2023. Kantar was selected following a rigorous and open four-month RfP process.
Lexus has been announced as the official automotive sponsor of the Davis Cup by Rakuten Finals 2021, which take place in Madrid from 25th November to 5th December. As part of the partnership, Lexus will be responsible for the official transportation of players and teams from the 18 competing nations to the tennis village. Ties will also be contested in Innsbruck, Austria and Turin, Italy. There is an authentic synergy between Lexus and the Davis Cup, with both striving for unparalleled luxury and offering unforgettable experiences for both customers and fans alike. The partnership also coincides with the launch of the all-new Lexus NX. The sponsorship was brokered and managed on behalf of Lexus by London based agencies m/SIX and The&Partnership.
Kryon®, the pioneers of full-cycle automation with an innovative approach to robotic process automation (RPA) and process discovery, has announced the launch of its free offering of its groundbreaking tool, Kryon Process Discovery™. The cloud-native Software-as-a-Service Process Discovery tool – now available for free – helps business teams automatically uncover blind spots and reveal hidden productivity bottlenecks. With this free version of Kryon Process Discovery, users can invite up to five team members, select the business apps they want to analyse, download a discovery bot and then just go about their daily tasks. The tool will seamlessly discover where and how repetitive work takes place and generate a detailed view of the team’s processes.
Nielsen and PubMatic has announced that Nielsen’s audience data is now available through PubMatic’s Audience Encore™, permitting advertisers to buy premium omnichannel inventory layered with quality data for precision targeting and better performance. Brands can benefit from PubMatic’s extensive reach, enabling advertisers to engage audiences wherever they may be across all digital channels. Through this collaboration, brands may now access Nielsen’s premium audience data, along with insights into consumer behaviour, preferences, and purchasing decisions.
TheFork, the leading online restaurant reservations platform from Tripadvisor group, today announced a strategic partnership with SevenRooms, a guest experience and retention platform for the hospitality industry. In an increasingly digital world on the path to recovery, TheFork and SevenRooms have joined forces to offer an exclusive and unique combination of services aimed at helping restaurants increase online reservations while seamlessly managing their front of house and guest experiences. The partnership spans Australia, the United Kingdom and European countries including Belgium, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
On the 14th of September, Headspace launches its latest international campaign Find Some Headspace, documenting the highs and lows of the last year whilst showcasing just how important it is to be in the right headspace. The campaign film reveals snippets of people’s personal lives over the past year with the voicing of real members who have written into Headspace to explain the joy that the app has given them in recent troubled times. The campaign references common scepticisms that people may face when thinking about how or why meditation could really help them. The voiceovers include references to the short space of time in which someone might meditate, or the lack of knowledge as to how meditation can provide comfort. However, the campaign highlights how even those who formerly might have been unsure, have found ‘joy’ through the app, or the ability to be kinder to themselves. The campaign will be rolled out across YouTube TrueView and BVOD with SkyAdsmart. Additional creative will also run in high-visibility OOH placements at major rail hubs in London and across digital channels.
Seedtag has announced that it has secured $40m in Series B funding. Led by Oakley Capital, the funding round – which was also participated in by Adara Ventures and All Iron Ventures – follows on from the $5.2m raise in Seedtag’s Series A funding round in 2017. Following the Series B funding round, Peter Dubens who is a Managing Partner at Oakley Capital, made the following statement: “Oakley’s investment in Seedtag demonstrates our continuing ability to source proprietary deals from across our network and in attractive sectors. An increasing focus on consumer privacy and brand safety is driving growth in contextual advertising, and we believe Seedtag is well-placed to harness this exciting opportunity thanks to a combination of best-in-class technology, strong commercial relationships and an impressive management team.”
