Wolt Ads, the advertising arm of food delivery service Wolt, has announced the launch of its self-service advertising platform, enabling brands and agencies to plan and activate campaigns across the platform’s 30+ European and Asian markets. Wolt Ads for Brands promises increased visibility both in-app and offline through banners, sponsored placements in product listings as well as packaging, branded vehicles, and hyper-targeted sampling. More than 40 brands have already leveraged the tools.
The Trade Desk has announced OpenSincera, an application that provides the ad tech ecosystem with Sincera’s advertising metadata. The application, which is free to everybody across the advertising industry, will provide metrics such as ads-to-content ratio, page weight, average ads-in-view, and ad refresh rate. OpenSincera will launch alongside a new API that aims to enable ad tech companies to build services based on the data easily.
Off-price luxury retailer Secret Sales has implemented retail media solution Mirakl Ads. The retailer’s network of more than 2,400 brands will gain access to advertising capabilities through the Mirakl Ads platform. The rollout begins in the UK market in May 2025, focusing initially on sponsored product advertising with Secret Sales’ brand partners. The company plans to expand into Germany and additional European markets from June 2025, with future developments including new advertising formats.
Health technology company Philips has collaborated with Google Cloud to update its global image library and content marketing systems. Philips has leveraged Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to process and match over 200,000 images into 8,000 brand-aligned assets.
Podcast company Acast has announced the launch of Talent-Voiced Ads. The format will allow advertisers to leverage podcast talents’ voices across scripted audio ads. Unlike host-read sponsorships – where the podcaster promotes a sponsor in relation to their own podcast – Talent-Voiced Ads use the trusted voice of the podcaster for the voiceover of a brand’s own ad.
Twilio has entered into a multi-year strategic partnership with Microsoft to accelerate adoption of conversational AI solutions for customer engagement. The two companies will collaborate on developing conversational AI customer engagement solutions built on Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Twilio’s customer engagement platform.
Home improvement retailer B&Q has appointed BrandSwap, a brand partnerships technology provider, to deliver post-checkout rewards to shoppers on diy.com. B&Q will use BrandSwap’s advertiser network and retail media platform to add rewards from brand partners – such as Apple, Sky, and The AA – to its order confirmation page.
57% of British shoppers want more cashback rewards from the brands they support, while 46% want more personalised discounts, according to research from marketing automation technology provider Dotdigital. UK consumers are leading in omnichannel loyalty, engaging across email (64%), mobile app push (7%), and SMS (4%), while 9% expect to receive brand communication via a combination of channels. 48% say they value free delivery and returns, 55% want more freebies and gifts and 49% want to see more birthday rewards from the brands they support. UK consumers are 20% more likely to find the marketing they receive irrelevant compared to their international counterparts. 23% of UK shoppers are uncomfortable with the idea of sharing their data, but they will do so for the right reward.
Cross-media measurement company Fluzo has announced its official launch in the UK, following its entry into the French market through a strategic alliance with panel provider MIS Group, with whom it now extends collaboration into the UK. With this launch, Fluzo adds the UK to its footprint across 13 markets, including Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, and Peru.
Retail marketing solutions provider Communisis Brand Deployment has announced that has rebranded to Paragon Global Brands, marking the formal integration with the marketing services business line of Paragon, following its acquisition of the brand deployment arm of Communisis in December 2023. All current services and relationships will remain in place under the new identity.
