In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sums up the key industry updates on ad tech from around the region – and in this week's edition: VivaKi inks DMP deal with Tencent in China; Asia leads smartphone purchases; Chinese consumers have high mobile expectations; Nexmo offers API for brands to engage mobile audience; Singapore telco appoints new head of media sales.

VivaKi inks DMP deal with Tencent in China
The Publicis Groupe subsidiary has inked a deal with Tencent that will see both companies develop DMP applications and big data analytics for cross-screen marketing.

The partnership allows the two allies to tap each other's resources in data management and applications, with the aim to improve the effectiveness of branding and performance marketing

Under the agreement, VivaKi's DMP can access Tencent's data pool, which gathers data from various internal sources and partners across different industries, including ecommerce and search. This will improve the accuracy of user targeting and will benefit clients of Publicis Groupe agencies in China, including ZenithOptimedia and Starcom Mediavest Group.

Sidney Song, VivaKi's general manager of data solutions, said: "DMPs are a great tool to integrate branding and performance marketing. Fragmented data, in the absence of a single view to understand users and target audiences, was the big challenge for advertisers in generating valuable insights for effective media planning. With these problems resolved, our DMP will become the core of brands' communication plans by providing automatic and high quality targeting."

ZenithOptimedia China CEO Mykim Chikli added: "Programmatic buying has been established for many years in the markets of US and Europe, in part due to the close collaboration with key media publishers and vendors. This partnership with Tencent is a huge step forward for the programmatic market in China."

Asia leads smartphone purchases
According to Criteo's latest State of Mobile Commerce Report, mobile devices now account for more than one third of global ecommerce activities, suggesting that advertisers must offer compelling mobile sites to ensure success.

Asia led in terms of smartphone purchases, where consumers in the region made close to half of their ecommerce transactions on the mobile device. In Japan, mobile conversion rates were more than 3.5 times higher than that of the US.

In fact, mobile already accounts for more than 50% of ecommerce transactions in Japan and South Korea. Criteo further predicted that by end-2015, mobile will account for 40% of all ecommerce transactions worldwide.

Chinese consumers have high mobile expectations
Marketers in China are not well-positioned to serve the high expectations consumers have of their mobile devices.

According to Forrester's Mobile Mind Shift Index for China, consumers in the country had a higher mobile expectation score (62), compared to their peers in US (39). The index measures consumers' mobile readiness based on three metrics--mobile intensity, expectation, and behaviour score.

Wang Xiaofeng, Forrester's senior analyst, said in the report: "Marketers in China are lagging behind consumers in mobile adoption, and they need to do a better job understanding mobile behavior trends to develop effective mobile strategies."

The index was developed based on a survey of 4,004 online consumers in metropolitan China.

Nexmo offers API for brands to engage mobile audience
The cloud communications company has added the Nexmo Chat App API to its portfolio, which it says it will enable brands to engage with their mobile audience via chat applications, specifically, WeChat and Line.

While SMS and voice remain the main forms of mobile communications, Nexmo said chat apps are increasing in popularity and, hence, increasing in importance to brands that need to transform beyond instant messaging and add feature such as video, voice, and commerce.

With each chat app using different features, it can be challenging for brands to build and maintain multiple APIs to support each app, it said. "Additionally, making sure these APIs comply with marketing, sales, and service platforms is cost prohibitive," the company said, touting its Chat App API to enable brands to automatically detect and connect via the appropriate chat apps and their preferred service platform. It consolidates chat messages in the marketers' existing communication platforms so they do not need to manually manage communications over each chat app.

The chat API, however, currently only supports WeChat and Line. Nexmo said it will add support for more chat apps and service platforms in "the coming months".

Singapore telco appoints new head of media sales

StarHub has hired a new head of media sales, Callie Ng, who is responsible for the Singapore telco's advertising and sponsorship business and partnerships with pay TV content owners. The local carrier offers fixed line, broadband, and mobile services, as well as pay TV services.

Reporting to the company's vice president of enterprise sales, Teh Chong Mien, Ng also will work with other business units within StarHub to develop product offerings that target various market segments.

The new media sales head was previously vice president of media sales and marketing for Singapore broadcaster, MediaCorp, where she spent 16 years in integrated advertising sales and marketing.