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Tag: ZenithOptimedia

  • Tanushree Radhakrishnan returns to ZenithOptimedia as SVP

    Tanushree Radhakrishnan returns to ZenithOptimedia as SVP

    MUMBAI: The ZenithOptimedia Group is expanding and consolidating its digital operations in India. The global media services network has recently hired media veteran Tanushree Radhakrishnan, who was serving GroupM India earlier, as MEC North digital head.  Radhakrishnan will report to Zenith Optimedia Group, digital companies Performics and Resultrix, MD Tanmay Mohanty. 

    This is her second innings with the ZenithOptimedia Group. She was previously employed with the organisation between 2008-2013 and was instrumental in the phase when Resultrix was being integrated into the group.

     

    Mohanty says that Radhakrishnan will help the group deliver holistic value to the clients and develop a 360-degree offering basket in line with the Live ROI philosophy. “The group is witnessing unprecedented growth all around, whether it is increase in spends from existing clients, the rush of new business or talent. Be it the setup of a media technology division in Bangalore this year or the launch of Performics Mobile last year or the Centre of Excellence teams, there is a lot of vibrancy and energy flowing within, and I am sure that Radhakrishnan will now be a part of it. She has rich and varied experience across all key verticals of digital marketing and we are delighted to have her on board. Her real strength lies in delivering high ROI for clients.” He explains.

    Radhakrishnan concludes, “After having spent fantastic five years during my earlier stint, I’m excited to be back with the ZenithOptimedia Group. Performics is one digital organisation that really invests into its products and has the best in class tools and technologies. So am really thrilled about setting up and leading their Programmatic offering and Product Standardization, which is the need of the hour and will help us add value to our clients. It’s indeed a splendid opportunity to work with people who have a great vision and contribute to bring the ZOG Live ROI philosophy to life.”

  • ZenithOptimedia to launch analytics & technology hub for APAC

    ZenithOptimedia to launch analytics & technology hub for APAC

    MUMBAI: ZenithOptimedia plans to create its first regional Analytics and Technology Hub for Asia, in Singapore.

     

    This Center of Excellence (CoE) is a major investment by ZenithOptimedia to develop solutions for the emerging technologies and data.

     

    This 45-strong team will consist of domain specialists to develop and deliver custom solutions for the Asia Pacific market and its clients. In addition to addressing existing technology and data needs, the CoE will also focus on emerging spaces like mobile and contemporary analytics solutions like social and text analytics.

     

    While announcing the setting up of the Analytics and Technology Hub, ZenithOptimedia Asia Pacific chairman Gerry Boyle said, “This initiative recognises the increasing importance of creating Asia-specific data and technology solutions. It is a major step in driving future readiness and growth for ZenithOptimedia. With the progressive ecosystem of talent and technology established by the Singapore Government as part of its long-term vision, we are confident that Singapore is the right place for this significant investment. We have received tremendous support from EDB and other government institutions throughout the deliberation process and we look forward to working with them to grow this center into a global base over time.”

     

    “We are delighted by ZenithOptimedia’s decision to set-up their regional Analytics and Technology hub in Singapore. Given the increasing data-centricity of marketing, as well as the number of devices, channels, and platforms available to reach consumers, brands are looking to their partners for specialised expertise to plan, create and manage innovative solutions for the region. Today, 80 per cent of digital work done in Singapore is regional in nature, and ZenithOptimedia’s hub will grow Singapore’s position as the digital marketing hub of Asia,” added Singapore Economic Development Board assistant managing director Kelvin Wong.

     

    Talking about the development plans for the hub, ZenithOptimedia chief information officer Harpreet Kaintel said, “Employment of the best strategy, analytics and technology resources from Singapore will be paramount to the success of this hub. As part of this initiative, ZenithOptimedia will hire and develop Singaporeans and PRs in the domains of new media, technology and analytics. We look forward to harnessing Singapore’s unique eco-system and strong academic base to create a world-class CoE.” 

  • ZenithOptimedia acquires Australia’s FirstClick Consulting

    ZenithOptimedia acquires Australia’s FirstClick Consulting

    MUMBAI: ZenithOptimedia has acquired Australia’s independent performance marketing agency FirstClick Consulting.

     

    FirstClick will become part of Performics Worldwide, ZenithOptimedia’s global performance marketing network. The agency will rebrand to Performics Australia and will retain its current management team, led by CEO Grace Chu, who will join the Performics Global Executive Leadership Team.

     

    Investing in performance marketing solutions through the development of the Performics network is a key growth strategy for the ZenithOptimedia Group. Performance media includes measurable, ‘biddable’ channels such as paid search, programmatic display and paid social. Performance media has seen considerable global growth in recent years, with expected growth of 19.1 per cent globally for 2015 (eMarketer).

     

    Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Sydney, FirstClick provides clients across Australia with a full range of digital performance marketing services including search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, programmatic buying, social marketing, marketing analytics and conversion rate optimisation.

     

    FirstClick CEO Grace Chu said, “We are very excited about becoming part of Performics Worldwide and the ZenithOptimedia Group. Our clients and our people will benefit from the global perspectives, best practices and capabilities that come with being part of this award winning international network. It’s a testament to the FirstClick team to be recognised as leaders within an international context.”

     

    Performics Worldwide CEO Michael Kahn added, “We have been very impressed with the quality of FirstClick’s offering and the results it is delivering to its clients are truly exceptional by global standards. The combination of Performics, a global leader in performance marketing with FirstClick, a market leader in Australia will provide clients with a combination of global best practice and strong local knowledge. We are confident that together we will be very well positioned to service the growing digital opportunity in Australia.”

     

    ZenithOptimedia Australia CEO Ian Perrin said, “We have been unequivocal in our pursuit of delivering the very best performance offering in Australia, and bringing FirstClick into the group represents a massive step in this direction. Grace and her team are world class and arguably the most talented digital performance thinkers in the country. The team will make an enormous contribution to our organisation and we look forward to welcoming them into the family.”

  • Will Apple’s iOS 9 adblocker kill mobile ads?

    Will Apple’s iOS 9 adblocker kill mobile ads?

    With online privacy becoming a growing global concern, adblocking has risen in popularity among consumers over the past couple of years. To date, adblocking has largely been confined to desktop, but this week it comes to mobile with the release of iOS 9, which will come with integrated options for Content (read ‘advertising’) Blocking built-in.

     

    The issue of online privacy is not just about brands seeing what consumers are up to online; people are also concerned about their family knowing what they are doing online. Predictably, this is largely about pornography. According to Thinkbox research last year in the UK, 16-34s now spend 15 minutes a day watching porn and don’t want to reveal this private browsing behaviour.

     

    But it is the issue of advertising personalisation, targeting and retargeting that concerns our industry, and various desktop tools and systems have emerged to counter these activities. ZenithOptimedia’s recent research with GlobalWebIndex across 34 markets and 200,000 panellists highlights the take-up of privacy products:

     

    1. Almost half the global internet population (46 per cent) has used ‘private browsing’

    2. 40 per cent have deleted cookies so that websites can’t track their behaviour

    3. 27 per cent have used an adblocker so that brands can’t track and serve personalised advertising

    4. 15 per cent have used anti-tracking software that combines all three of the above into one.

     

    So, adblocking is a clear issue for our industry. iOS 9 will enable people to switch on adblocking at the device level. The effect though will be to block ads that appear within the browser. As well as keeping a person’s mobile web activities private, mobile adblocking will have the added twofold benefit of speeding up page-load times (important on mobile) and reducing data charges (even more important).

     

    Understandably there is much consternation among the advertising fraternity, particularly on the publisher side. However the concern is somewhat misplaced, certainly from a marketer’s perspective. The reason for this is that the majority of mobile adblockers will work on mobile browsers but not in-app. And 84 per cent of mobile time spent is in-app (source: Flurry). With that in mind the initial impact of iOS9 will be limited. In the longer term, though, we see the impact of iOS9 Content Blocking being threefold:

     

    1. It will accelerate the demise of the mobile web banner. This no bad thing and it is frankly surprising that the banner (a legacy format of the desktop environment) ever made its way onto mobile devices in the first place.

     

    2. It will accelerate the growth of native in-app mobile advertising (e.g. newsfeed advertising). This advertising is by definition integrated with the user interface and therefore a better experience, generally yielding better results for advertisers too. We have adjusted our spend forecasts based on the Apple announcement: native to represent 25 per cent of display advertising by 2017 globally (source: ZenithOptimedia).

     

    3. As a result of points 1 and 2, the creative/production process will need to adapt to take account of the rise of native formats and the move away from standardised formats.

     

    DISCLAIMER: The author of this article is ZenithOptimedia chief digital officer. The article has been sourced from ZenithOptimedia’s website. The views expressed here are purely personal views of the author and Indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to them.

  • Singapore Airlines appoints Zenithoptimedia as global AOR

    Singapore Airlines appoints Zenithoptimedia as global AOR

    MUMBAI: Singapore Airlines has appointed ZenithOptimedia Group as agency of record (AOR) to manage its global media communications business both offline and online.
     
     
    The contract will take effect from 1 October, 2015 and will see ZenithOptimedia Group continue Singapore Airlines’ media strategy of balancing traditional with new digital forms advertising.
     
     
    The business will be led centrally from Singapore where there will be a contemporary agency team delivering a data led strategy across communication planning and performance marketing.  The central team will work closely with ZenithOptimedia’s network to support Singapore Airlines’ local markets.
     
     
    “We are absolutely delighted to be able to expand our relationship with Singapore Airlines. They are a leading global brand and we are really excited at the prospect of taking our partnership to the next level in supporting their marketing and communications,” said ZenithOptimedia CEO Gareth Mulryan.
     
     
    This business extends the partnership from the search-only assignment that was won two years ago under the Performics brand, a division within ZenithOptimedia Group.
  • Internet advertising to overtake television in 2018: Zenithoptimedia

    Internet advertising to overtake television in 2018: Zenithoptimedia

    MUMBAI: Even as desktop internet advertising continues to grow, it is slated to lose market share for the first time this year, dropping from 19.8 per cent of global adspend in 2014 to 19.4 per cent according to ZenithOptimedia’s new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts.

    By 2017, ZenithOptimedia forecasts desktop internet to account for 19.1 per cent of global adspend. Meanwhile, mobile internet advertising’s share of the global ad market will rise from 5.7 per cent in 2014 to 15 per cent in 2017. Overall, internet advertising will account for 34 per cent of global adspend in 2017, slightly behind television’s 35.9 per cent.

    The market share gap between the two media will narrow from 13.3 percentage points in 2014 to 1.9 in 2017. At this rate of growth, internet advertising will overtake television in 2018.

    On the other hand, print adspend continues to decline across most of the world, as it has done since 2008. The report predicts that newspaper adspend will shrink by an average of 4.9 per cent a year through to 2017, while magazine advertising will shrink by 3.2 per cent a year. Their combined share of global adspend has fallen from 39.4 per cent in 2007 to 19.6 per cent this year, and we expect it to fall further to 16.7 per cent by 2017.

     

    Mobile advertising to overtake newspapers in 2016: 

     

    Mobile internet advertising will overtake newspaper advertising next year, accounting for 12.4 per cent of global adspend while newspapers account for 11.9 per cent, according to ZenithOptimedia.

    Mobile internet will be the third-largest advertising medium, behind television and desktop internet. Mobile advertising will grow 38 per cent in 2016 to $71billion, while newspaper advertising will shrink four per cent to $68 billion.

    Mobile advertising remains the driving force behind the growth of the entire advertising market, contributing 83 per cent of all new ad dollars between 2014 and 2017.

     

    Global adspend to grow 4.0 per cent in 2015

     

    ZenithOptimedia forecasts that global adspend will grow four per cent to reach $554 billion in 2015, and will accelerate to five per cent growth in 2016, boosted by the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the US Presidential elections. Adspend will then slow down slightly in the absence of these events, growing 4.4 per cent in 2017.

     

    Mature Markets to lead adspend growth for the first time in nine years

     

    ZenithOptimedia has reduced its forecasts for adspend growth in 2015 since its June forecast by 0.2 percentage points. There has been broad-based deceleration across the world as marketers have moderated their expectations of global economic growth. With Brazil and Russia in recession, and China slowing down, the world can no longer rely on emerging markets to set the pace of growth. The agency expects ‘Mature Markets’ (defined as North America, Western Europe and Japan) to contribute more to global adspend growth this year than ‘Rising Markets’ (everywhere else), for the first time since 2006. The agency says that this is a temporary aberration, however – Rising Markets will become the leading contributors to ad market growth again in 2016, and will increase their market share from 37.4 per cent in 2015 to 38.8 per cent in 2017.

     

    China slows but is still growing twice as fast as the world as a whole

     

    China’s ad market has not been substantially affected by the turmoil in its stock market, but the slowing economy and concerns about the potential for future growth have caused advertisers to moderate their spending slightly. The report forecasts adspend growth in China to fall from 10.5 per cent in 2014 to 7.8 per cent in 2015 – a rate of growth that’s still twice as fast as the global ad market’s, and which places China as the 13th – fastest growing ad market of the 81 that the agency covers.

     

    Low oil prices weigh on big producers

     

    While beneficial for the global economy – and the ad market – as a whole, low oil prices are depressing activity in the big oil producers. The report forecasts double-digit declines in adspend this year in Azerbaijan, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, and declines of seven – eight per cent in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Russia, the problem of low oil prices has been exacerbated by international sanctions, leading to an estimated 14.1 per cent drop in adspend this year.

    “Mobile technology is rapidly transforming the way consumers across the world live their lives, and is disrupting business models across all industries. We are now witnessing the fastest transition of ad budgets in history as marketers and agencies scramble to catch up with consumers’ embrace of the mobile way of life,” said ZenithOptimedia worldwide CEO Steve King.

  • ZenithOptimedia Singapore names Nik Vyas as content head

    ZenithOptimedia Singapore names Nik Vyas as content head

    MUMBAI: ZenithOptimedia Singapore has named Nik Vyas as head of Newcast, the agency’s content division, as it looks to grow and expand its content offering.

     

    Vyas has been part of the Newcast London team for six years, where he was instrumental in the set-up and diversification of the unit into a broad range of content areas.

     

    Vyas said, “This is a very exciting time to be joining the talented team at ZenithOptimedia Singapore. The value and power of content is increasingly understood and there are growing opportunities for creating connected campaigns that work for both brands and consumers. I’m looking forward to working with our partners to create and distribute quality content, which gets audiences excited.”

     

    ZenithOptimedia Singapore MD Helen Lee added, “We are looking forward to tapping into Nik’s extensive experience. He will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in developing rich brand experiences for our clients and their consumers.”

  • ZenithOptimedia names Gareth Mulryan CEO for Southeast Asia

    ZenithOptimedia names Gareth Mulryan CEO for Southeast Asia

    MUMBAI: ZenithOptimedia has promoted Gareth Mulryan as the CEO of Southeast Asia.

     

    Mulryan was until recently ZenithOptimedia head of digital for Asia Pacific.

     

    In this newly-created role, Mulryan will work closely with ZenithOptimedia APAC chairman Gerry Boyle, and the local market leaders to further develop ZenithOptimedia’s communications offering across the Southeast Asia region.

     

    Mulryan will use his digital experience to transform and grow these markets over the coming years.  He will be responsible of integrating digital specialists within market and will work closely with local and regional publishers and technology partners to create innovative solutions for clients. 

     

    He will also work with ZenithOptimedia corporate development director Felix Cartoux to build the agency’s business in Southeast Asia through external growth opportunities on a local market basis.

     

    Mulryan has been part of the ZenithOptimedia family for more than 10 years and has spent the last seven years in Asia. As well as leading ZenithOptimedia’s digital offering, he has been instrumental in the set-up of ZenithOptimedia’s performance arm, Performics across Asia Pacific.

     

    Over the last four years the Performics brand has grown significantly and now has 12 offices in the region with more than 300 members of staff. Mulryanwill continue to support in the growth of Performics in the role of managing partner, Asia Pacific.

     

    Boyle said, “Gareth has done a simply brilliant job in building Performics across Asia. All our markets in SEA are in transformational mode, and Gareth’s digital nous and unswerving client focus will help our market leaders to deliver new solutions and success for our clients.”

     

    Mulryan added, “We have done a great job in transforming our product and talent in China, India and Singapore. Now is the time for us to build on these best practices, and I look forward to working with the local Southeast Asia leaders to shift to a smarter and more contemporary communications agency in the region, to provide the best possible value to our clients.” 

  • Publicis Groupe acquires Match Media in Australia

    Publicis Groupe acquires Match Media in Australia

    MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe has acquired Australia’s independent media agency Match Media.

     

    Match Media will be part of ZenithOptimedia Group’s newly launched global media network, Blue 449. As part of the Blue 449 network, Match Media will benefit from the extensive range of “open source” services offered within Publicis Groupe in order to better equip its clients with the latest technologies, accompanying them through their fast-paced business transformation fuelled by digital, technology, innovation, and consumer empowerment today.

     

    Match Media was founded in 2003 by John Preston. The agency, headquartered in Sydney, has more than 75 employees and specialises in media strategy and buying, digital planning and buying, search, social and analytics. Over the last twelve years, Match Media has focused on helping clients grow by creating work that works.

     

    Match Media will retain its management team under the leadership of John Preston as CEO and James Simmons as COO. They will in turn report directly to ZenithOptimedia Asia Pacific global managing partner and APAC chairman Gerry Boyle. Match Media in Australia will be the vanguard to expansion of the Blue 449 network across Asia-Pacific.

     

    The network launched in February with the rebranding of Walker Media in London to Blue 449. There are now four Blue 449 hubs – Australia, France, Italy and UK – and a further 13 are planned for launch by the end of the year.

     

    Boyle said, “Blue 449 is a new global network comprised of like-minded entrepreneurs who are embracing technology and data as a means to delivering growth for clients. As a progressive digitally focused agency, Match Media is the perfect fit and we are pleased to announce their addition to the Blue 449 network.”

     

    Preston added, “Match has enjoyed a wonderful run in its twelve year history as an independent. Now, the rapidly changing world of data and technology has motivated us to explore potential partners that will allow us to provide our clients access to the latest technology and a suite of world class platforms and tools. The challenge was finding a partner who could supercharge our existing offering but also had a kindred spirit. Publicis Groupe and its network ZenithOptimedia really impressed us with their digitally progressive vision and their focus on harnessing the independent entrepreneurial spirit that is in our DNA. I am really looking forward to the next evolution of Match as part of the Blue 449 network.”

     

    Simmons said, “This is the natural next big step in the story of Match. We have been on a continual journey of improvement and have built what we believe to be an excellent foundation. The time is right to leverage the assets that Blue 449 can bring to our clients, people and business to grow and create another chapter of pushing the boundaries in the media agency landscape.”