Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

New Business Bulletin: Vivaldi UK, Adverty and more

Orange, the multinational telecommunications corporation, and Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication provider, have announced a partnership to automate the verification process for Orange Flex, making it faster and easier than ever to sign up for a mobile plan. Onfido’s technology uses artificial intelligence and facial biometrics to verify users’ identities, providing more convenient user experience for customers while securely keeping fraudsters out. 

Argentinian international and Juventus icon, Paulo Dybala, has signed a new deal to represent digital payments brand Skrill. Dybala’s first appearance for Skrill will be in a TV, digital and PR campaign to promote the digital wallet’s Prepaid Mastercard®, available in the UK and Europe. The TV advert will air in Italy for the first time on Sunday, April 18. His debut campaign will promote the Skrill Prepaid Mastercard® that gives users flexibility, security and privacy when spending their money, as well as complete control via Skrill’s mobile app that allows 24/7 access to a free digital wallet holding their card balance and all transactions. The card can be used anywhere that Mastercard is accepted, including online and abroad, at ATMs and in store.

Electric car subscription service Onto and Renault have launched a ‘radically simple’ digital campaign featuring co-creators encouraging ZOE subscriptions and driving interest in Onto’s ‘radically simple’ proposition. The campaign, devised and executed by Vivaldi UK, goes live this week across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The campaign strapline is ‘Join the radically simple electric switch’ and to deliver the campaign Vivaldi has worked with a series of content creators to produce their own ‘radically simple reviews’ of the service. Content creators who have signed up to work on the campaign include @nickcarvell, @declutterdollies, @gadgetboy, @venetialamanna, @bodyposipanda. The campaign will run until May 2021. 

Technology-led marketing business, Team ITG, has acquired New York martech consulting firm MAD, further expanding the scale and range of its disruptive marketing technology and award-winning services in North America. The acquisition also sees MAD’s founder and marketing and technology entrepreneur, Ken Madsen, join Team ITG as Chief Marketing Technologist. Prior to MAD, Ken was co-founder of Graphic Systems Group (GSG) and over a 20-year period, built it into one of the world’s largest private marketing production agencies with 23 offices internationally.

GumGum, a global contextual advertising technology company, has announced a $75 million investment by Goldman Sachs Growth to accelerate the growth of its sophisticated contextual intelligence advertising product suite. GumGum will use the investment from Goldman Sachs Growth to make its proprietary contextual API & contextual powered Display, Native, Video (OTT & Web) products more broadly available. The company will also expand and accelerate investments in key international markets.

E-commerce fraud prevention company, Forter, has announced a partnership with Flutterwave, an African payments technology company. The partnership, the first of its kind in Africa, will enable merchants to accurately identify legitimate buyers from fraudsters, resulting in increased transaction approvals and reduced friction in the purchasing experience, all without the fear of fraud. Additionally, Flutterwave’s partnership with Forter provides merchants with the confidence to accept more transactions and online shoppers with the flexibility to use alternative payment methods as well as traditional options like credit cards.

In-game advertising platform, Adverty, has announced a collaboration with Oracle Moat, to provide enhanced measurement and verification for in-game ad traffic and impressions. Oracle Moat’s verification solution will give publishers, agencies and advertisers access to trusted third-party measurement for in-game ad campaigns. Tobias Knutsson, CEO of Adverty explains: “We are delighted to announce this collaboration with Oracle Moat at a time when third-party measurement is more essential than ever for building effective media strategies, growing industry confidence, and fostering trust and understanding when it comes to burgeoning in-game media environments.”

BJSS has announced its partnership with commercetools, the next-generation commerce software company, to empower B2B and B2C clients to create innovative e-commerce journeys. After a year of dramatic shifts in consumer shopping behaviours, the partnership means BJSS’ retail clients will be able to rapidly adopt industry leading digital commerce solutions that meet end-customers’ expectations. The partnership announcement comes after the reopening of non-essential retail in England on 12th April, a time when retailers are under pressure to provide consistent digital shopping experiences across online and instore. The Microservice, API-first, Cloud-based, Headless (MACH) architecture commercetools is built on enables retailers to overcome the rigidity of their existing technology stack. Thus they can support new omnichannel journeys more easily.

Digital experience company Acquia has announced that J.Crew is using Acquia’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), a customer insights and machine learning platform, to drive measurable performance improvements with the brand’s marketing campaigns. “We’re thrilled that one of the most iconic global retail brands trusts Acquia CDP to engage with customers online and in stores,” said Lynne Capozzi, CMO of Acquia. Acquia CDP was built to be a single source of truth, providing trustworthy data that drives real business results. As we say at Acquia, business decisions are only as good as the data that are informing them. We’re proud to help J.Crew achieve exceptional results with machine learning and advanced analytics.”

Conversational advertising cloud technology company, Cavai, has announced a new partnership with leading content provider, Orage Publishing. With more than 100 sites spanning technology, gaming, music, sports, home and lifestyle, Orage reaches more than 10 million unique users per month in the Nordic region. Thomas Bjällhag, Nordic Salesmanager at Orage, comments: “The ad formats that Cavai provides allow our clients to communicate with their audiences in a unique, interactive way while still on TechRadar. Visually, the ads are seamlessly integrated and almost native looking – they are clearly visible without blocking or disturbing our content interface.

Rhythm, a content management system for publishers, that combines Google translate API, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and human intervention, has announced its plans to expand the number of languages on its system including Italian, Russian and Chinese. Created by the team behind Pocket-lint, a global independent technology publication, the intelligent CMS system allows international users to read thousands of different articles in their fluent language at the click of a button. Launched at the start of 2020, Rhythm has since added Swedish, German and Dutch to its roster of supported international languages, allowing Pocket-lint to reach almost four million users (a month) in a language that isn’t English. The latest move to cover Italian, Russian and Chinese will not only help international editors to make their latest news more accessible, but Rhythm’s instant translations enabled by AI will enhance the reader experience across many more geographies worldwide.

Tactus Group, a specialist in the development of consumer tech products, has acquired PC gaming specialists CCL Computers in a deal that sees the group become a £125m business. The acquisition also sees Tactus increase in headcount to 110 people and adds an e-commerce capability to its offer. The deal has been funded by an £11.25m private equity investment, with lead investor Arete Capital Partners investing £10m, in addition to the group’s existing facilities. The primary deal team comprised Gav Jones of Tactus and Mike Fletcher and Andy Critchley of Arete.