This week’s most interesting `deals, product launches and research releases.
Ingenuity, the connector of brands and agencies, has announced its acquisition of award-winning marketing event MAD//FEST for an undisclosed sum. MAD//FEST co-founders Ian Houghton and Dan Brain will now report into Ingenuity CEO and Founder Chris Kemp.
Following the successful acquisition of Future Factory in 2023 and of Reg & Co earlier this year, MAD//FEST is the latest business to join The Ingenuity Group. The deal will give all businesses in the group an opportunity to grow and scale as complementary parts of an interconnected marketing ecosystem – with genuinely unrivalled connections to both brands and agencies.
Clear Channel UK has released a study focusing on diversity in advertising and inclusive shopping experiences. The study of 2,000 respondents conducted via OnePoll revealed that Gen Z is more inclusive than older generations, especially when it comes to race and disability representation in media.
According to the research, Gen Z considers the following groups greatly underrepresented in advertising: race and ethnicity (42%), people with disabilities (40%), plus size models (36%), older age groups (30%), neurodiverse (30%) and LGBTQI+ (27%).
In comparison, only one in four (24%) of all Brits think that race, disability (31%), plus size models (25%), older generations (35%) and LGBTQI+ (16%) are underrepresented in the media. Despite an estimated 15-20% of the population being neurodiverse, as well as rising awareness of the subject, only one in five (20%) Brits think that neurodiverse people need more representation.
Research from Amazon Ads shows UK SMBs are benefitting from the positive impact of advertising as they look to expand both at home and internationally. The study found that nearly nine in 10 (86%) said that their current advertising strategy is successful in acquiring new customers while more than three quarters (76%) said it had helped them to expand their UK business. More than half (54%) said that advertising had helped them grow their business internationally within the last 12 months.
This confidence in advertising led more than two in five (44%) UK SMBs to increase their spend on advertising during the past year, while 35% kept their budget the same year-on-year. The most common motivations for this increase in spend include to drive awareness of a new product or service (48%) or to improve customer awareness of their brand (51%). The most popular channels for SMB spend in advertising include social media advertising (65%), followed by online search (58%) and online display (40%). Looking ahead, more than a quarter (28%) of those sampled said they planned to spend on streaming TV advertising during the next 12 months.
Of the 300 SMBs sampled, almost three quarters (71%) of those sampled said they currently spend on advertising, compared to 29% that do not spend advertising at all.
Despite the success enjoyed by some, not all SMBs feel they need advertising to grow their business
29% of UK SMBs do not currently spend on any kind of advertising. When asked why they are not currently advertising, the most common response was that it is too expensive (42%) while a similar number (38%) said they haven’t seen a return on previous investments (ROI).
Taboola has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stock apps, including in the UK. The apps are available across Apple devices—on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and are the most used news app in the US, UK, Canada, Australia.
Kantar has launched ConceptEvaluate AI, the world’s first AI-driven, automated service for early-stage evaluation of product and service development. ConceptEvaluate AI allows businesses to screen new product and service concepts at scale, helping R&D and innovation teams move more efficiently and effectively from conception to reality when developing new innovations. Available immediately on Kantar Marketplace, ConceptEvaluate AI helps screen iterations of initial concepts, providing critical insights into which concepts are performing best before moving to in-depth testing.
Kevel, the API-first ad serving company, has announced its new branded AI feature set: Kai (Kevel Artificial Intelligence), a suite of AI and machine learning technologies that enable performance optimization and drives relevancy, profitability and revenue. Kai is available as part of the Retail Media CloudTM, the ultimate SaaS platform for building retail media networks with ad serving that maximizes share of advertiser budgets.
The new tools were developed and spearheaded by Kevel’s AI/ML research group, chaired by CTO Tim Ewald, Sr. Director of Research and W3C member Paul DeGrandis, Principal Data Scientist Richard Carter, PhD and Retail Media CloudTM GM and Velocidi founder Paulo Cunha.
