ITV announces the launch of linear addressable advertising across ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe in YouView homes, opening up addressable targeting for advertisers in live broadcast viewing across 1.3 million households. This announcement follows a successful beta trial of the ad-replacement technology over the last 12 months, during which more than 30m addressable ads were deployed, powered by insights from ITV’s registered user data. This is the first step in ITV’s roll out of addressable targeting in live linear viewing. It complements the over 12 billion addressable ad opportunities already delivered by ITVX, extending the scale and reach of sophisticated addressable targeting available to advertisers. ITV is launching live linear addressability with Omnicom this month and campaigns will be planned and managed exclusively via Planet V.
Global business transformation agency Valtech has announced it has developed the first connector to act as a bridge between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and experimentation and digital experience platform Optimizely. The connector allows businesses within B2C retail commerce to easily synchronize their products, catalogs, content, and other relevant information between the two platforms. By integrating the connector, businesses eliminate the need for manual data transfers and ensure real-time data consistency, leading to faster time-to-market and the ability to deliver personalized e-commerce experiences to customers. In terms of performance, the connector accelerates a typical project from start to dev completion within 60 days. Once deployed, it synchronizes a typical 4,500 product catalog in 5 minutes and keeps it up to date so marketers can focus on merchandising. Content from Optimizely to Salesforce Commerce Cloud can be loaded in milliseconds, providing a fast response to optimize performance. Real-time personalization can also be delivered using ODP segments to the client, without any performance costs.
Bazaarvoice, a provider of full-funnel authentic user-generated content solutions, has announced the acquisition of the affable.ai platform from Affable Technologies. With the affable.ai platform, Bazaarvoice adds creator discovery and management technology to its existing creator-managed services. This ensures clients can build a creator marketing strategy with the choice of service options that best suits their social commerce needs. The acquisition of the affable.ai platform accelerates Bazaarvoice customers’ ability to harness the power of social commerce, by activating content across their communities of everyday customers, creators, and brand ambassadors. According to a recent study commissioned by Bazaarvoice, creator content is the most used type of content by e-commerce sites, after branded content.
The customer data technology platform formerly known as Planning-inc, has announced the introduction of its new name: Plinc. The company chose to rebrand itself now as the result of significant changes to its own operations, but also to the marketing industry as a whole. Plinc helps clients such as Argos, M&S, and Halfords to connect and process all of their customer data to generate fresh insights. It enhances their customer data stacks with composable personalisation and marketing modules. Using its AI-enhanced, real-time data platform Unilyze™, clients can connect millions of customers with billions of interactions. With major technological innovation continuing to disrupt the industry, Plinc’s leadership team maintains that talented people will remain a crucial component of effective marketing. That’s why Plinc offers customers both its platform and its people – not just a product. Clients and friends had often referred to the company as ‘Plinc’, a shortened version of its former name, in the past. This new name nods to its more than 20 years of heritage, while offering a fresh path forward in line with its unique position in the industry.
Specialist database, cloud and applications managed service provider DSP has acquired Canada-based Eclipsys Solutions (Eclipsys) to grow its Oracle Cloud services offering and expand its geographical presence in North America. The M&A activity, DSP’s first since LDC invested in the business earlier this month, forms part of the next stage of DSP’s international growth strategy, focused on expansion in North America and Europe. Revenues for the combined group are more than £75m with a staff base of c.250 across the UK, Ireland and North America. As the DSP Group continues to grow its Oracle ground-to-cloud service offering, it now holds over 1,000 Oracle certifications with over 50 Oracle Expertise covering Oracle Database, Oracle Engineered Systems, Oracle Applications and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Time Out and British Airways Holidays are announcing their joint Christmas markets campaign, spotlighting a selection of the best cities to visit in the run-up to the festive season. The 360-degree campaign, created and delivered by Time Out’s Creative Solutions team, will feature inspiration-driving branded content – as well as a live event – with some of the best Christmas markets in Europe at the heart of everything, encouraging experience-seeking holidaymakers to visit Prague, Krakow, Cologne and Salzburg with British Airways Holidays. This content-driven partnership will feature a cross-platform branded series that brings to life the magic of these markets. Time Out will create a content hub with key messaging around what sets British Airways Holidays apart and showing how they are the facilitators of truly magical festive experiences. Bespoke feature pages for each destination will be roadblocked with British Airways Holidays festive takeovers. Digitally, content will feature across posts and stories on Time Out Travel’s Instagram, and via a dedicated email newsletter to subscribers. Content will be further amplified via digital display ads as well as digital and social traffic drivers running across Time Out social channels and the Time Out network with native traffic drivers. Finally, to celebrate noël, IRL, Time Out will bring a taste of these European Christmas market destinations to London with its delicious hot cocktail event, Hotboozapalooza. Time Out’s annual tentpole festive event – now in its fifth year – puts a toasty twist on boozy beverages, and will be held on Thursday 2nd November 2023 at London Bridge’s Vinegar Yard, ticketed and promoted via Time Out channels. Time Out will take inspiration from four of British Airways Holidays’ key destinations to create delicious hot cocktails which will be accompanied by entertainment, music, decor and interactive experiences, evoking the magic of Christmas markets.
VIOOH, the premium global digital out-of-home (DOOH) supply-side platform in partnership with Yahoo Advertising has released a whitepaper examining the potential outcomes of including programmatic digital out-of-home (prDOOH) within multi-channel campaigns. As outlined in VIOOH’s annual State of the Nation report, a key request from advertisers is to understand how prDOOH fits within multi-channel campaigns, and how to best measure its impact. Analysing a series of case studies, the report outlines the best way for advertisers to maximise multi-channel campaign impact through the inclusion of prDOOH. Findings indicate that prDOOH’s inclusion in multi-channel media plans can drive more attention, boost engagement, and improve overall campaign effectiveness. Two key outcomes are clear. Firstly, including prDOOH in a multi-channel media plan adds incremental value to the return on investment (ROI) of the digital media mix due to the priming effect – DOOH plays an important role in preparing consumers for conversions during re-engagements on other channels. Secondly, prDOOH as a channel can boost offline outcomes in terms of sales and footfall as a result of its ‘attention-grabbing’ characteristics and flexibility as a programmatic medium.
