Above image: A slide from the presentation by Indranil Sarkar, Vice President of Partnership & New Business at Mediacorp, showing how a partner network can benefit advertisers.

By Xie Yihui

In a panel discussion at Digital Media Asia 2020 in October, advertising and publishing experts highlighted the importance of data-driven solutions, publisher alliances and creating new business models to compete for a share of the advertising pie.

The pandemic drives digital advertising trends As more people stay home and online due to COVID-19, advertisers have, in turn, accelerated their moves into the digital space.

London-based marketing agency, Zenith, says Covid-led declines have started to ease with ad spend beginning to return. It forecasts a 5.8 percent recovery in global adspend for 2021.

Against this backdrop, publishers are seeing new demands from advertisers, according to Michael Stephenson, Chief Sales Officer of commercial Australian free-to-air television network, Nine Entertainment.

During Nine’s conversations with advertisers, he said, common themes emerged.

“We were hearing that marketers had an absolute, unwavering obsession with customers and personalising their experience,” – Michael Stephenson, Nine Entertainment

Meeting the demand: multi-faceted digital transformation Nine’s story provides a good example of how the digital evolution of advertising has played out.

It happened over many years, with each step paving the path for future advancement. In the past five years, Nine transformed from a television business into a fully digital one.

This September, Nine deepened its digitalisation by partnering with Adobe, creating a new system called Audience Match.

This system offers the opportunity for Nine to compete with the big tech companies, as advertisers can now target ads to end users across Nine’s different screens – connected televisions, computers and tablets – just like how they target users across different Google’s properties.

“Every single day advertisers can communicate with known audiences, known customers, not anonymous devices, across every screen,” Stephenson said.

Each end user is identifiable thanks to Nine’s mandatory sign-in system implemented in 2016.

Furthermore, “it does it within a very safe environment that complies with brands, data privacy and governance requirements, ” he said.

Over in Indonesia, GDP Network is in the process of rolling out its new private ad network among some of the companies under its parent company, GDP Venture.

GDP Venture is a venture builder and investing company, with more than 50 media, entertainment, commerce, data, and AI companies in its portfolio, including IDN Media and Kumparan to name a few.

“Implementing data culture into organisations takes time. It took us two trials, [over the course of] a year to build all these data points and inventory,” – Antonny Liem, CEO, GDP Network

GDP Network now has more than 64 million unique users and over 1 billion monthly impressions, spread across 16 of its network companies.

Similar to Audience Match, GDP Network allows marketers to segment audiences and target certain users based on first-party and third-party data. The same technology also helps their media companies to understand their audience.

Cultivating resilience: publisher alliances

In 2020, GDP formed the Publisher Network Alliance, in which data-driven marketing, such as programmatic video ads and programmatic performance, are incorporated across the board.

“Advertisers are much more stringent about spending. They want to be sure of the return on their marketing investment, so data-driven marketing is [the way] to do it,” – Antonny Liem, GDP Network

Similarly, Mediacorp established a partner network two years ago to the great benefit of its advertisers.

First, it creates a brand-safe experience as advertisers are aware of the portfolio of platforms.

Secondly, the alliance allows advertisers to target audiences across traditional and digital media platforms, covering a wider demographic space, making cross-platform audience optimisation possible.

Lastly, the advertisers can tap into the expertise of publishers to understand local consumer habits and content preferences, enhancing the media companies’ ability to monetise for the advertisers.

Indranil Sarkar, Vice President of Partnership & New Business at Mediacorp, encouraged every publisher to start considering collaboration.

“It could be a smaller publisher alliance. It could be a startup alliance; can be anyone who has a dedicated audience. Think about your collaboration as broadly as possible,” – Indranil Sarkar, Mediacorp

Venturing beyond: create a new digital model

In addition to striking a deal with peers in the industry, Mediacorp took it one step further by collaborating with e-commerce companies to create new revenue streams.

It collaborated with Singapore e-commerce site, Lazada, for its 9.9 sale. The five-day campaign combined the convenience of e-commerce offerings with entertaining content to maximise the customer experience.

In another successful venture, Mediacorp joined hands with real estate agencies and a property portal in organising Singapore’s largest virtual real estate show.

Tapping into its own strengths, Mediacorp enhanced engagement through its extensive audience reach across different platforms, contributing to the partners’ revenue growth.

Sarkar emphasised the importance of unlocking business models, especially in difficult times.

“There are always things that are emerging. And sometimes crisis is a great time,” – Indranil Sarkar,  Mediacorp

About the author: Xie Yihui is a student at Yale-NUS College. Always committed to bringing clarity to important issues, she writes about news on campus, overseas Chinese and disability.

Edited by Bill Poorman