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New Business Bulletin: Xandr, Impact, O2 Business, YorMedia, GumGum, Outbrain and more

Xandr has announced the renewal of a global contract with Microsoft which sees the extension of existing technology solutions, the introduction of new ventures and follows over ten years of successful partnership. Microsoft is extending its use of Xandr’s sell-side platform, Xandr Monetize, and its Global Supply Evangelism relationship with Xandr, as Microsoft expands and diversifies its monetisation strategy, focusing on increasing Microsoft’s unique audiences for advertisers across premium display, video and native supply in more than 100 countries. Concurrently, Microsoft is increasing its marketing spend that runs through Xandr’s Invest DSP, and extending the Microsoft Audience Network demand platform to bid in the Xandr Marketplace. 

Impact has announced $150 million in funding led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and joined by Providence Public. This strategic growth investment brings Impact’s valuation to $1.5 billion, the first partnership management platform provider to reach this milestone. Impact has also surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, solidifying its leadership position in the partnerships category.

Leeds-based digital media technology business YorMedia Solutions has joined forces with sports publisher Planet Sport Publishing to create a single sports media and technology company: Planet Sport Limited. The new, enlarged company now plans to rapidly grow its business fivefold in the next three years by living up to its clear mission to entertain and engage sports fans. In that time, the business expects to more than double its global audience to over 30 million. Planet Sport currently employs over 120 people and expects to immediately expand headcount by an additional 30 in all areas of the business to meet its ambitious targets.

GumGum has announced that it is the first independent ad tech provider to have achieved Media Rating Council (MRC) content-level accreditation for contextual analysis, brand safety and suitability. GumGum’s content-level solution, Verity, goes one step deeper than property-level analysis by incorporating all available signals (text, image, audio, and video) within an environment rather than just text. 

Outbrain, has announced the initial results of working with AdRizer, an award-winning digital marketing agency, and their strategic partner Ogee, an organic-certified luxury skincare line, to drive online sales. Utilising Clip, Outbrain’s latest performance video solution, Ogee was able to achieve peak return on ad spend (ROAS) of 180%, and drove 14,000 online sales transactions in four months.

Verve Group, a privacy-first omnichannel ad platform, has announced the acquisition of Smaato through a subsidiary of its parent company Media and Games Invest SE (MGI). The transaction places Smaato at an enterprise value of USD 170M. The acquisition positions Verve Group as one of the top global mobile ad exchanges, with a joint team of over 300 employees spread across 25 offices worldwide

Yext, Inc. the AI Search Company, and Häagen-Dazs have today announced the results of their collaboration, which saw it integrate Yext’s Answers Platform to help manage online reviews and listings. Since enabling the franchisees with Yext technology, the volume of reviews has gone up 40% and the brand now has over 200 individual users leveraging the platform with bespoke training.

Customer intelligence company, Acxiom, has partnered with Tealium to enable South Western Railway (SWR) to improve the targeting and efficiency of its marketing activities with data, as the sector rebuilds in the wake of the pandemic in the UK.

Digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) company, Widen, will be announcing the advancement of its partnership with AI lifecycle platform provider, ClarifAI. Together, Widen and Clarifai will be introducing a ‘visual similarity search’ function to enable brands to save time and money spent on manual processes, while improving their return on content investments.

Nonvoice, the 5G app agency, announces the signing today of its newest client, PowerMarket who has developed a turn-key solar asset management platform that allows 5G network operators to fully control the process of solar power management that will save them up to 90% of their time and resources.

O2 Business has launched Spatial Insights, a new technology that uses video analytics and Artificial Intelligence to provide a slick and efficient experience for customers in retail stores and other public spaces. Initially piloting across 20 of O2’s high street stores, the ground-breaking tech will help deliver insights around customer movement and flow, enabling managers to make informed space and capacity management decisions. It can also help improve customer experience and efficiency by reducing service and transaction times, and monitoring queue lengths, dwell times and conversion rates on certain products.

Contentsquare has announced its acquisition of Upstride today, a Paris-based deep-tech company specialized in improving machine learning performance. Upstride’s deep learning engineers will join Contentsquare’s Data Science development team in the Paris product hub to accelerate the company’s ambitious AI innovation roadmap.

 Emma, the budgeting super app, has announced that it has partnered with Open Banking infrastructure provider Yapily, to launch its new peer-to-peer (P2P) payments feature.

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