In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sums up key industry updates on ad tech from around the Asia-Pacific region – and in this edition: AU sees drop in invalid traffic; IAB SG offers measurement guidelines; CtrlShift restructures around three biz units; Rakuten Marketing lands in Singapore; C1X ropes in Taiwan's adGeek; Near expands US operations; and MobAir opens India office.

AU sees drop in invalid traffic

More than 97% of desktop inventory in Australia was identified as valid human traffic between October 2016 and March this year, up slightly from 96% between July and September 2016.

On mobile, 98% was marked as valid traffic, also up from 96% in 2016, revealed the second Invalid Traffic Benchmarks for the year released by IAB Australia and PwC. The report is released twice a year and based on data monitored by three vendors: comScore, Integral Ad Science (IAS), and Moat. The benchmarks also are accredited based on the Media Ratings Council's invalid traffic detection and filtration guidelines.

Video inventory, which was tracked for the first time, clocked at 98%, according to the report.

IAB Australia CEO Vijay Solanki said the benchmarks emphasised the importance of third-party verification and highlighted "the ongoing job and challenges of identifying new methods of fraudulent activity and invalid traffic".

Solanki said: "It is critical for the industry to continuously address this issue in order to build trust and accountability across the digital advertising landscape."

According to IAB, invalid traffic did not necessarily indicate ad fraud and could include other invalid traffic components, such as bots, spiders, crawlers, ad tags or creatives, malware, as well as hijacked devices.

IAB SG offers measurement guidelines

IAB's Singapore chapter has put together a whitepaper focused on measurement models to help companies align their marketing efforts with business goals.

Released by IAB Singapore's Measurement & Standards Committee, the document aimed to plug the current gap in available industry literature and offer best practises to establish more robust measurement frameworks and processes.

The industry said marketers across all industry sectors faced challenges matching up campaign activities with results and business outcomes. This, it said, partly was the result of a fragmented digital media environment and still-evolving capabilities in technology, tools, as well as skills.

Damien Crittenden, Xaxis' Asia-Pacific head of strategy and analytics, who is co-chair of the committee, said: "Connecting campaigns and their contribution to marketing and overall business objectives has long been coveted by marketers, but this capability has to start with measuring the right behaviours, attitudes, and actions."

CtrlShift restructures around three biz units

The Singapore-based ad tech firm has reorganised its business into three primary units in a bid to achieve more scalability.

Now structured around The Hub, The Studio, and The Lab, CtrlShift said the business shuffle would enable the company to establish a scalable "technology-led, data sciences-based" market approach.

The Hub, its flagship media management platform, runs on a software-as-a-service model and is expected to be the vendor's primary growth driver. The Studio offers audience marketing services, including trading desk services, while The Lab focuses on research and development in data sciences and is responsible for developing in-house capabilities for the vendor.

Reza Behnam, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, CtrlShift

Reza Behnam, CtrlShift's co-founder and executive chairman, described the digital advertising industry as "broken" and "optimised for the intermediaries at the expense of brands and publishers".

Behnam said: "On average, 60 to 70 cents out of each media dollar is siphoned off before it gets to the publisher. While technology and automation have greatly enhanced our ability to target audiences in real-time, the continued fragmentation and complexity of the industry have caused major inefficiency and confusion.

"While companies like Google and Facebook have created 'pre-packaged' full-stack solutions – that include DMPs, DSPs, ad servers, and analytics tools – to address the complexity, issues like pricing transparency and data retention remain unresolved."

He touted The Hub as a way for brands to access and optimise campaigns across multiple technology and inventory partners simultaneously, offering a "risk-free, transparent" media-buying tool. The platform offers integration with eight buying platforms including Google and Facebook.

Rakuten Marketing lands in Singapore

The performance marketing unit of e-commerce company, Rakuten, has launched its Singapore operations as part of its expansion efforts across the region.

Rakuten Marketing CEO Tony Zito said: "There is a tremendous amount of opportunity for advertisers in the Asia-Pacific region and we are thrilled to be expanding our presence in a market where we can empower marketers to maximise that potential."

The vendor was looking to tap Singapore's projected 11% compound annual growth rate over five years in online ad spend as well as the region's 53% increase in ad spend.

Peddling its e-commerce parentage, Rakuten Marketing said it would enable retailers and brands to "unify the entire online ad experience" spanning discovery and purchase to push campaigns based on consumer preferences and sentiments.

The ad tech firm's product portfolio included attribution and performance insights platform, Cadence, as well as Rakuten Marketing Affiliate Network and programmatic ad-delivery platform, Rakuten Marketing Display.

C1X ropes in Taiwan's adGeek

C1X has inked a partnership with adGeek in Taiwan, offering inventory across 100 publishers in the Asian market on its ad exchange.

C1X's Asia-Pacific business head and vice president, Swaminathan Iyer, said: "Now advertisers can access this unique supply on C1X DSP and other DSPs connected to C1X supply across the world. This partnership has put premium publisher supply in Taiwan, which is not easily accessible from the outside, programmatically, to be available globally."

adGeek's vice president James Chen added that the agreement would offer its publishers better yield on their inventory. "Consumers are consuming media differently today in Taiwan [where] media buying has moved from website buy to audience buy. This has sparked the growth of programmatic buying, but advertisers are still looking for audience within premium sites."

The partnership would offer both PMP and programmatic guarantee buys for adGeek's advertisers and publishers, Chen said.

Near expands US operations

The Singapore-based location data platform has set up operations in New York, marking its second office in the US market.

The new outfit would be led by newly appointed North America general manager, Andries de Villiers, who joined the vendor from Outbrain, where he headed the enterprise team. He also was previously chief revenue officer at search ad platform, adMarketplace.

De Villiers said: "I hold a strong belief in the value of data science as a core competency and the power of artificial intelligence. In today's connected world, the average user has over five devices –from smartphones, laptops, and tablets, to streaming sticks, wearables, and consoles. Together, these generate tremendous amounts of data for each individual."

He said Near's flagship audience insights platform, Allspark, could analyse "billions of these data signals each day" to offer actionable insights for businesses.

The vendor also has an office in San Francisco, in addition to other global offices in Tokyo, Sydney, Bangalore, and London.

MobAir opens India office

The mobile ad tech vendor has opened a new office in Gurgaon to beef up support for customers in India and tap the country's e-commerce market.

MobAir's India country head Vijay Singh said: "Unlike Europe and the US, the e-commerce vertical in India has its own peculiarities that we need to take into account for growing business in the area.

"Our task is to apply prior expertise in the field and smoothly adapt it to the local advertising industry, helping mobile brands monetise their content in the easiest, fastest user-friendly way," Singh added.

The vendor had been servicing clients in India since 2015.