Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

New Business Bulletin: Headspace, Superdrug, Peach and many more

England international footballer, Raheem Sterling, continues his ongoing partnership with meditation app, Headspace, revealing a new first-of-its-kind in-app content collection titled, ‘Power of Mind with Raheem’. The collection of videos and meditations, led by Headspace meditation teacher, Dora Kamau addresses the stigma of mental health amongst the youth. Headspace’s collection can be found in-app, titled ‘Power of Mind with Raheem’.

High street health and beauty retailer, Superdrug, has launched its new ‘Where you can be you’ employer brand to highlight the vibrancy and diversity of a career in retail. Putting current Superdrug employees centre stage, the campaign has been created to showcase the benefits of a career at Superdrug and raise awareness of the varied roles available in retail – from the fast pace of the shop floor and behind the scenes at the Distribution Centres, to roles in our healthcare teams, to an award-winning apprenticeship scheme and a variety of head office roles – the campaign focuses on the fact that whatever your role, all that matters is that you can just be you.

Peach has announced the acquisition of Cape, a SaaS creative and campaign automation platform allowing teams to collaborate and efficiently publish to digital and social destinations. The advertising ecosystem has become deeply complex over the last 20 years, with demand for ever more content, leading to highly time-consuming workflows. Digital campaigns take weeks to activate, yet run routinely late, leading to high costs — additional fees, failed media plans and delayed campaigns, to name a few. Peach aims to fix these issues through product innovation while the acquisitions of Cape and of Advalidation last year will accelerate this mission.

Azerion, the digital entertainment and media platform, has announced an expanded collaboration with Oracle with the addition of Oracle Advertising Bot Filtration. Oracle Advertising Bot Filtration helps marketers and media professionals reduce losses related to invalid traffic by supplying customers with the most up-to-date bot-related invalid traffic data. Implementing Oracle Advertising Bot Filtration helps support Azerion in its objective to bring clean supply to marketers, through its proprietary SSP, Improve Digital. Over the past year, Azerion has successfully integrated two other Oracle Advertising solutions: Oracle Moat Analytics for viewability and Oracle Contextual Intelligence for brand safety.

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, has announced that all of its global data centres are now powered by 100% renewable energy. The company achieved this significant milestone as it embarks on a comprehensive, multi-pronged sustainability plan by the end of 2022.

Global marketing technology company, The Brandtech Group has acquired a majority stake in e-commerce SaaS platform, Acorn-i. The acquisition was led by The Brandtech Group partner, Virginie Douin, former head of Amazon’s global partner program. Acorn-i is an e-commerce platform that helps brands and sellers grow and scale their business across direct-to-consumer channels and digital marketplaces. It provides self-service technology, Ignite, which offers a suite of e-commerce analytics and insights products combined with AI-powered retail media capabilities. In addition, the company has a team of accredited experts able to provide services across all digital channels. Its integrations include Amazon and all the major digital and e-commerce channels such as Shopify, Google, Facebook, TikTok, Walmart and Instacart. 

Sourcepoint, the data privacy software company of record for the digital marketing ecosystem, has integrated its privacy safety data with MediaMath, in order to provide MediaMath customers with pre-bid access to inventory segments that meet their privacy compliance standards. The integration helps responsible advertisers easily reach consumers in environments they have deemed compliant, brand safe, and suitable. The first privacy measurement and analytics platform in the market, Sourcepoint’s Privacy Lens provides the world’s leading advertisers with privacy safety data to inform their media buys. This new integration allows MediaMath customers to apply their privacy standards to the buying stream, gaining access to contextual inventory segments that demonstrate a strong, direct relationship with consumers. 

Irish start-up Webio has announced a series A funding round led by Finch Capital. Webio is primed to scale-up following the  digital shift during the pandemic and the uncertain economic climate to make difficult conversations about payments easy through their Conversation AI. Webio’s technology has enabled leading UK and European companies to communicate conversationally with customers throughout their credit and collections journey. Customers can ask questions, change payment dates, or organise a new repayment schedule, all tailored to their circumstances, all done through Conversational AI and automation.

Spinview, the visual intelligence start-up, has announced a partnership with Integrity Aerospace Group (IAG), the North American reseller and holding group for first class technology, equipment and services, as part of Spinview’s global expansion and representation in the US and Canada to drive sales and support North American customers. Initially, IAG will act as a Spinview reseller in the USA and Canada, using its divisions and trained sales team while operating under the Spinview North America brand name. As the market develops, so too will the partnership, evolving the complete range of Spinview products and capabilities with the potential for IAG to take on a greater role in managing and processing materials and data for Spinview customers.

Wrike, the work management platform, has announced the launch of AI Subtask Creation, a new feature in the Work Intelligence™ suite designed to help teams turn meeting notes and other forms of unstructured work into concise, actionable subtasks. Utilising artificial intelligence (AI) technology, AI Subtask Creation extracts key action items from user-selected text and turns them into subtasks that can be assigned and distributed into a team’s workflow.

Kindred, a tech for good revenue and loyalty solution for app publishers, has joined forces with Virgin Media O2, to help customers save money and support eco-projects while online shopping. The exclusive ‘Feel Good Shopping’ feature is now live in the ‘My O2’ app giving customers discounts and deals at over 70% of the top UK online retailers and more than 20,000 retailers in total. In addition a donation for reforestation, carbon offsetting or digital inclusion initiatives will be automatically generated  with every purchase. O2 Customers can also view their ‘wallet’ in the My O2 app to see how many trees they have planted, or how much carbon they have offset — all powered by Kindred and its partners. Partners involved are Ecologi, which manages the carbon off-setting and reforestation programmes, and environmental charity, Hubbub, which will use the donations to support the Community Calling initiative to rehome used smartphones with people who need them.    

Corel has announced it has acquired Awingu, a provider of secure remote access technology, for an undisclosed amount. Awingu will become a part of the Parallels brand portfolio. The combination of Awingu and the Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) platform will give end users added flexibility and freedom they need to securely work from anywhere, at any time, on any device, or OS. Parallels, part of the Corel group, is an all-in-one application delivery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that provides remote access to virtual applications and desktops delivered through on-premises, hybrid, or cloud-based environments. 

Out-of-home and eCommerce delivery company InPost has announced a new partnership with UK retailer WHSmith, a staple of British high streets. The partnership — which marks InPost’s first national indoor proposition — will see InPost Lockers deployed in WHSmith High Street stores across the UK, complementing the brand’s existing range of services on offer to customers. Lockers provide customers with the ultimate choice and convenience; InPost’s own research finds that 64% of its customers use lockers as part of another journey. WHSmith customers will now be able to “trip-twin”, combining collecting, sending, or returning parcels with shopping for bestselling books, stocking up on stationery or home office essentials, or picking up a newspaper or magazine.

myenergi, pioneer of the world’s first eco-smart EV charger, is delighted to be partnering with Grimsby Town FC as the Official Club Shirt Sponsor for the 2022/23 season. As part of the agreement, the myenergi logo will feature across the Mariners’ first team, academy and women’s team kit. myenergi will also be a key partner to the Club in community and culture-focussed projects, driving social change to build a stronger community with a more positive cultural perception.