Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

New Business Bulletin: Peak, Modo25, VIOOH and more

E-commerce marketplace, Wowcher, has launched a new retail media platform from CitrusAd, which gives its network of merchants greater control and more involvement in managing and measuring their sponsored ad campaigns. The self-serve platform is designed to streamline processes so merchants can log in, select the deals they want to advertise and the search terms to target when setting up sponsored ad campaigns. They can also track their campaign successes via a live reporting dashboard that delivers real-time performance metrics and campaign optimisation. For customers searching the Wowcher website, the deals displayed will change dynamically depending on the search criteria, making the overall shopping experience quicker, more efficient, and more relevant to the individual.

Siemens Digital Industries Software has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire TimeSeries, a leading Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and Mendix partner. TimeSeries has significant expertise in the development of vertical apps built on the Mendix™ low-code platform, which will help Siemens accelerate digital transformation by increasing adoption of low-code and offering new apps including smart warehousing, predictive maintenance, energy management, remote inspections and more. TimeSeries will expand capabilities that can help enterprises and ISVs everywhere accelerate their digitalization efforts using the Mendix platform. Through bespoke industry apps and best practices, templates and re-useable components that leverage advanced technologies — including AI, intelligent process automation, multiexperience, state-of-the-art UI design, multi-cloud, and more — Siemens will be able to deliver better experiences to customers, employees, and suppliers.

Hotel Week London has welcomed another 10 of the Capital’s leading hotels to the initiative, following a successful launch earlier this month. Hotel Week London which will take place from 28th May to 6th June 2021, now brings together 45 diverse and exciting London hotels from all corners of the capital. Each of the new hotels are offering discounted room rates of up to 25% off their best available rates, coupled with exciting value-added packages including afternoon tea, guaranteed room upgrades, bottles of Champagne on arrival, 3rd night free offers and complimentary private chauffeured Maserati or Mercedes drop-offs in London. The 10 hotels joining Hotel Week London this week are Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Flemings Mayfair, COMO Metropolitan London, Baglioni Hotel London, The Goring, Meliá London Kensington, citizenM Tower of London, The Langham London, The Rubens and The Mayfair Townhouse.

Acoustic, an open and independent marketing cloud and analytics provider, has chosen Neo PR as its UK PR Agency with immediate effect. Acoustic has selected Neo PR based on its unique, outcomes-based approach to deliver and bolster a bespoke thought leadership campaign, whilst also creating crucial media relationships to establish Acoustic at the forefront of the industry. Norman Guadagno, CMO at Acoustic comments: “We needed an agency team who really understood our efforts to bring humanity back to marketing and could amplify our message in the UK, celebrating our unique value proposition in a vast market. Neo PR’s knowledge and experience in our industry, combined with the team’s unique deliverables-based engagement model, make them the perfect partner to help us to get heard above the background noise.”

BidCore, the new customizable DSP developed by programmatic and real-time advertising technology company IPONWEB, has been selected by Egami.tv and Speakable as both companies look to expand their programmatic media buying operations to support their business growth objectives. BidCore acts as a ‘nimble’ DSP by enabling media buyers to tailor their ad bidding strategies to fit their specific business goals and measure against the metrics that are relevant for their individual operations.

Lucid, the programmatic research technology company, has announced its partnership with independent demand-side platform The Trade Desk to introduce the availability of Brand Lift. The new offering helps current and future clients of The Trade Desk in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia to measure the impact of digital campaigns on key brand metrics using brand lift studies. Brand Lift is powered by Lucid’s publicly available Impact Measurement APIs. It enables The Trade Desk clients to set up surveys and view in-flight brand lift reporting for the brand metrics that matter most to them, directly in The Trade Desk platform.

TrueCue, the analytics products and service brand, has announced its collaboration with the Institute of Directors (IoD) in a bid to upskill the UK director workforce in data and analytics so they are able to more effectively manage the challenging year ahead. TrueCue and the IoD will provide members with an annual industry benchmarking report: ‘The Data Driven Director’, along with access to a series of CPD sessions on data and analytics for the first time ever. By collaborating with TrueCue, the IoD will enhance its proposition to members by offering free learning opportunities on data and analytics, alongside annual participation in ‘The Data Driven Director’ report. The report will enable business leaders to understand their organisation’s level of data and analytics maturity, as well as compare this against industry peers annually.

ISAWITFIRST has joined forces with the live-streaming shopping app OOOOO to launch a dedicated live-streamed, shoppable channel. Inspired by the mega-trend for live-streaming commerce in China, OOOOO launched in the UK in November 2020 and has already bagged the top spot in the UK shopping charts. This partnership will see customers gain access to the latest trends and styles live and direct from the rails in ISAWITFIRST HQ, and open up the opportunity for the ecommerce brand to tap into OOOOO’s rapidly growing, engaged community and engage new audiences.

KFC UK & Ireland has selected Peak, a Decision Intelligence company to optimise menu performance. The project will utilise Peak’s pioneering Artificial Intelligence (AI) System to unlock value from its restaurant and core menu data, to enhance the guest experience and operational efficiency. With more than 15m people visiting KFC every year, across 960 plus restaurants in the UK and Ireland, improving the guest experience is a key business objective. Leveraging rich data sources from across the business will help build a holistic, predictive view of each item, enabling KFC to make faster, more consistent decisions, supported by data. 

Osu, a new invoicing and payment-app for the self-employed, has announced its partnership with leading Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily. The partnership will see Osu provide self-employed professionals with a way to receive payments without fees or settlement delays. Through harnessing Yapily’s Open Banking infrastructure, Osu is enabling a seamless payments experience for its customers. By building its payment request flow on top of Yapily’s API infrastructure, rather than integrating with a card-based payment service provider, Osu removes traditional pain points affecting the self-employed when it comes to payments, such as high fees, settlement delays, and error-prone bank transfers. 

The Worshipful Company of Marketors, also known as the Marketors’ Company, has announced that S4 Capital, the new age/new era digital advertising and marketing services company founded by Sir Martin Sorrell, has become a member of the livery company’s Corporate Supporters programme. Participation in the programme will enable S4 Capital to nominate five of its ambitious young executives to enjoy the full range of benefits of one of the City’s most forward-looking livery companies, with a membership that encapsulates both the experience of hugely successful marketers and ‘digital native’ future industry leaders.

Braze, the comprehensive customer engagement platform, has announced new product features and a new integration that help brands navigate the “next normal” in customer engagement. With the world evolving to a new post pandemic business landscape, Braze’s new offerings include a Shopify integration, updates to Braze Predictive Suite and Report Builder, and a new lineup of easy, flexible tools that empower companies to build campaigns with greater speed and accuracy. “While consumer spending is predicted to recover, preferences and behaviours have evolved and form the foundation of the ‘next normal,’” said Kevin Wang, Senior Vice President of Product at Braze. “Consumers will expect companies to be able to adjust quickly to these shifting behaviours, and the introduction of these new features, enhancements, and integrations will enable brands to evolve their customer engagement programs to meet expectations.”

Matterport, Inc., the spatial data company driving the digital transformation of the built world, has announced that it has expanded the capabilities of Matterport Capture Services™. Matterport Capture Services capabilities now include a user-friendly online scheduling and job management service that deploys Capture Technicians on-demand to digitize any number of spaces, from anywhere with a simple point-and-click interface, expansive coverage capabilities in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, and intelligent logic that makes scheduling the capture of a space, or a global portfolio of spaces, quick and easy. Additionally, dedicated Matterport Capture Coordinators are always available through the platform to tailor a capture solution based on specific property requirements and manage all the logistics and promises the delivery of digital twins in as quickly as 48 hours of an order submission.

Perfect Channel Limited has announced a new name for the company and a rebrand to reflect their ambition and commitment to developing new digital markets. The NovaFori name represents the company’s commitment to develop new markets, as analogue to digital transformation gathers pace across all global industries. The new management’s philosophy includes an innovative product strategy to move more quickly to market, and ambitious plans for scaling the business. Leading this exciting new chapter of the company is CEO Garry Jones, who joined the business in January 2020, following 35 years of experience working in finance and applied technology. 

Atedra, a global provider of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising solutions, has announced its partnership with VIOOH, a global digital OOH marketplace. This partnership gives agencies and advertisers access to inventory on the VIOOH marketplace, including US inventory from JCDecaux North America, and enables them to activate campaigns utilising Atedra data and insights. The addition of VIOOH’s supply-side platform (SSP) to Atedra’s demand-side platform (DSP), gives advertisers immediate access to JCDecaux’s premium digital billboards and street furniture inventory, allowing them to plan and execute more contextual and robust media campaigns. The programmatic OOH inventory delivers transparency across all transactions and is set to expand to include airport inventory later this year.

Leeds-based global digital marketing provider and MarTech SaaS firm, Modo25, has added another new growth client to its portfolio with a new brief from sustainable fashion retailer, House of Baukjen. Modo25 are providing ongoing PPC management and SEO strategy to support House of Baukjen’s existing inhouse team. As part of the collaboration, Modo25 are also hosting regular training sessions to ensure the House of Baukjen team are implementing digital marketing best practice methods and tactics. Additionally, Modo25 is providing the experienced retailer with 24/7 access to its market-leading indexing dashboard and forecasting technology, BOSCO™.