In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sum up key industry updates on ad tech from around the Asia-Pacific region – and in this edition: Indian publisher to invest £68.44m in martech platform; Myanmar establishes ad agencies group; Glispa opens Singapore office to boost SEA support; Taptica sets up shop in Seoul; IAB Singapore wants to know why firms not tapping data; and Grapeshot appoints ANZ chief.

Indian publisher to invest £68.44m in martech platform

Times Internet says it has set aside USD$100m (£68.44m) to develop marketing technology, which includes its current native advertising platform Colombia.

The digital media unit of Times of India, Times Internet said they had built up a global technology team comprising 150 employees over the last three years, focused on developing Colombia. The platform was designed based on opensource technologies and integrated with its own big-data engine, which provided insights based on users across different marketing formats, including display, video, and coupons.

They add that Colombia currently served more than six billion content recommendations. Swapnil Shrivastav, Times Internet's CTO of adtech and Colombia, said: "Colombia is currently processing billions of requests a day and matching the right marketing offer to the right users, at the right time, and the right format, and considers more than 1,000 separate attributes in real time."

The company's chief revenue officer, Gulshan Verma, added that more than 50 external publishers had signed-up to tap Colombia.

Myanmar establishes ad agencies group

The Advertising Agencies Association of Myanmar (AAAM) has been established with the aim to drive the Asian country's USD$200m (£136.88m) advertising market.

Led by chairman of Today Ogilvy, Tha Thun Oo, the group would look to do so based on international standards and best practices, as well as raise awareness among the local workforce about the advertising profession. Founder of Mango Media, Aye Hnin Swe, had been appointed AAAM's secretary.

Apart from Mango Group and Today Ogilvy, the association's other founding agencies included Coca Media, Net Com, Mandalay Advertising, and Red Line.

The AAAM said it was planning to set up guidelines and codes of conduct as well as engage in discussions with the government and media owners to develop rules and regulations for the ad industry. It also would be looking to sign-up new members.

Oo said: "We hope to play a key role in the Myanmar advertising industry by advocating an atmosphere of professionalism, creativity, and a genuine interest in uplifting the standards of advertising in the country.

"There is no other way but for our companies to work together, if we want to keep the industry abreast with the fast-changing Myanmar business landscape", he said, adding that the group would strive to be "the voice of Myanmar's developing advertising industry".

Glispa opens Singapore office to boost SEA support

Christian Nguyen

The mobile marketing platform has opened an office in Singapore to expand its presence in the region, appointing former Google executive Christian Nguyen as its new general manager for Southeast Asia.

Headquartered in Berlin, Glispa had been servicing its business in this region from the German office, which hosted native speakers from Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. It added that its new office in Singapore would enable the company to better tap growth opportunities in the region, where its clientele included e-commerce operator Lazada and ride-sharing services provider Grab.

Glispa Founder and CEO Gary Lin said: "From years of doing business in the Southeast Asian region and listening to advertisers and publishers, we understand the complexities of executing mobile marketing across these vastly different Southeast Asian markets, cultures, channels, and languages. Now is the perfect time to establish a permanent presence in the region."

Nguyen added that Southeast Asia had seen a "major behavioural shift to a mobile-first society", with mobile advertising expected to account for half of all digital advertising by 2020. This offered growth opportunities for Glispa to tap, he said.

Based in the new Singapore office, Nguyen was Southeast Asian head of mobile for Google and also head of brand sales at AdMob.

Taptica sets up shop in Seoul

The mobile ad platform has established a new office in the South Korean capital, following the recent opening of another outfit in Beijing, China.

Lee Hoon serves as general manager for its Korean operations, having joined the company from Yahoo, where he was Asia-Pacific head of search sales.

Taptica said the region's expanding digital retail market presented significant growth opportunities for the company, with Asia-Pacific already the world's biggest region in this space. They added that South Korea was the third-largest digital retail market in this region, behind China and Japan.

Taptica said their new outfit in Seoul would allow the company to better support its Asia-Pacific clientele and further tap the region's market growth.

IAB Singapore wants to know why firms not tapping data

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Singapore chapter (IAB SG) recently set up a Measurement & Standards committee to determine why businesses in the city-state were unwilling to tap data and choosing to remain in traditional organisational structures.

In a roundtable discussion, the team explored two primary domains (primary research and platform analytics) which IAB SG said had significantly evolved in recent years, and where silos needed to be eliminated.

IAB SG CEO Miranda Dimopoulos said the committee would allow digital companies, such as Google, LinkedIn, comScore, Yahoo, Xaxis, and Hewlett Packard, to "contribute and teach" businesses in the region how to better leverage their data.

In this aspect, the team had identified key takeaways and recommendations, which were published in a whitepaper. Challenges outlined in the report included "overinvestment in technology and underinvestment in people" as well as a culture "laziness" amid a rapidly evolving technology realm, IAB SG said.

The committee said its goals for 2016 would include working with marketers to establish a data taxonomy highlighting how metrics could be used as well as a set of "talent standards" defining "a common language" for key domains, functions, roles as well as skills for digtal marketing.

Grapeshot appoints ANZ chief

The contextual targeting vendor has named June Cheung its new vice president of Australia and New Zealand, where she will lead the company's development and operations.

Based out of Grapeshot's new office in Sydney, Cheung has more than 10 years of experience in digital media, spanning stints in Big Mobile ANZ and MNET.

Grapeshot's Asia-Pacific senior vice president, Chris Pattinson, said Australia was at "the leading edge of the programmatic boom" and establishing a local office presented "a huge opportunity" for the ad tech vendor.

Cheung noted: "With context involved, programmatic can move beyond having price and availability as the main factors determining placement, to a situation where relevance is the key driver.

"Context mitigates ad spend wastage by delivering high-value audiences across low value inventory", she added.