Each week, the PMW editorial team selects five of the latest product releases from the adtech and martech worlds, with our verdict on why they made the cut – and why you should pay attention.
This week:
Scope3: always-on decarbonization to brands and media buyers
Canopy and Silence Media: Media management and DCO
Chatmeter: AI-powered sentiment analysis tool to boost brand intelligence
Kinetix: gamified emotes with generative Ai
Gem Display: Scotland’s largest digital ad display board
Scope3 brings always-on decarbonization to brands and media buyers
Climate Shield is a one-click solution that enables the adtech ecosystem to systemically reduce ‘climate risk’ and lower the industry’s carbon emissions footprint.
How it works
Scope3 has been building an emissions model to measure the carbon footprint of the programmatic supply chain and help individual companies understand and reduce their emissions. Building on its ‘Green Media Products’ giving advertisers a way to find and buy PMPs (private marketplaces) that can help reduce their carbon footprint, Climate Shield brings the power of Scope3 data to the open programmatic marketplace, enabling carbon reduction for the entire programmatic landscape. Climate Shield segments are available for activation in Microsoft Advertising’s Invest DSP, Amobee, MediaMath, Basis and Undertone, A Perion Company, with more DSPs launching later this quarter.
What the provider says
Anne Coghlan, COO and Co-founder of Scope3,said: “Just as viewability and brand safety have been folded in with performance metrics, carbon must now be a consideration. While robust and accurate emissions data are foundational to sustainable advertising, it is ultimately the actions that are taken with it that will drive change. Climate Shield makes it easy to factor emissions into campaign decisions.”
The PMW view
The key barriers to ‘ad net zero’ are complexity and the fear of losing revenue at the expense of cutting carbon. Scope3 is hoping to tackle both of these issues with Climate Shield. In tests, the company claims to have found that streamlining the programmatic supply chain and defunding climate risk inventory, which includes domains with excessive carbon emissions and ‘made for advertising’ (MFA) content, has no adverse performance or reach impact for media buyers. So do we now have proof that ‘ad net zero’ isn’t a zero sum game when it comes to ROMI?
Canopy Media Management buys DCO specialist Silence Media
Acquisition of the company will form the cornerstone of Canopy’s performance driven solutions.
How it works
Silence Media was founded in 2009 to provide an affordable, scientific and results driven approach for companies interested in testing multiple messages with the audiences for their campaigns. Silence helps brands and their agencies to maximise sales of their products and services by delivering digital display and digital out of home campaigns at scale.
What the providers say
Paloma Walder, Managing Partner of Canopy Media, said of the acquisition:
“Silence Media is a best-in-class creative and media buying, strategy and execution specialist that immediately strengthens our value proposition for agencies and clients alike. Addressable media is a key growth area for the industry and for Canopy. As such, Silence Media’s bent for providing compelling design creativity will ensure that our solutions reflect the complex nature of today’s consumer journey, in an omni-channel world.”
Silence Media owner Lee Henshaw said: “Now that we’re part of the Canopy family, we have more resources than ever to help our clients maximise sales of their products and services across digital display and out of home. Getting people’s attention is difficult, especially when they’re suffering from ad fatigue, the idea that customers and prospects get tired of seeing the same ad. You might not be able to outspend the competition, but you can outthink them with Silence.”
The PMW view
Dynamic Creative Optimisation is becoming ever-more sophisticated, reflecting a growing interest across the industry in driving performance through personalised communications. Silence Media has earned plaudits for helping brands adjust creative in real time to optimise returns – combining this with Canopy’s specialism in media creates a compelling proposition for clients... and marks a trend for agencies and adtechs to offer ‘complete’ services for advertisers.
Chatmeter updates AI-powered sentiment analysis tool to boost brand intelligence
The new features will allow multi-location brands to analyse data about the customer experience (CX) in more strategic and customised ways
Reputation management tool Chatmeter has launched new features for its Pulse, designed to offer greater customization and more granular reporting than ever before.
How it works
Each day, Chatmeter’s platform analyses and reports on millions of customer emotions embedded in reviews and comments. Pulse provides brands with a visual and highly intuitive way to track trends and pinpoint what matters most to customers. Pulse’s new AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP)-powered sentiment analysis tools provide an at-a-glance look at: top positive and negative topics with customer sentiment and star ratings across all online channels, category trends, top locations and a visual representation of the most frequently mentioned topics.
What the provider says
Dan Cunningham, Chatmeter's Chief Technology Officer, said: “We have a rigorous roadmap of new enhancements all designed to create more meaningful customer conversations, elevate brand intelligence, and drive customer loyalty and growth for multi-location brands."
Chatmeter CEO, John Mazur, said: “It’s not enough to simply track what customers are saying. We have the advanced technology to zero in on trends in real-time, as well as over longer periods, to uncover what keeps customers coming back and where the areas of opportunity lie.”
The PMW view
Marketing at a multi-location brand means that AI-based platform is becoming critical to managing a brand image and maintaining a positive customer experience at scale. It has become the new standard. What’s different is how organisations are approaching this and addressing the market needs. Chatmeter has been in the CX space for 15 years and these upgrades were designed to offer greater customization and more granular reporting on local brand intelligence.
Kinetix helps advertisers and developers gamify emotes with generative AI
Kinetix, the AI startup known for bringing emotes to video games and virtual worlds, has announced the launch of ‘Text2Emotes’ – a generative AI technology that enables anyone to create 3D animations and emotes for games using a simple text prompt.
How it works
Text2Emotes lets users create high-quality, playable 3D animations and emotes – animations which express emotion – from a basic text input. For example, users could enter a well-known dance such as ‘griddy’ or a literal prompt such as ‘I’m angry’, and see their avatars come to life through AI-generated emotes. The AI has been trained on the large proprietary dataset created by Kinetix over the last three years. Emotes generated can be used on any avatar, within any video game or metaverse world that integrates the Kinetix SDK. Game developers and publishers can open their games up to user-generated content, allowing players to import viral trends into their favourite games – or even fuel the next one by coming up with their own in-game emotes.
What the provider says
Yassine Tahi, CEO and Co-founder of Kinetix, commented: “As we know, UGC is becoming the bedrock of modern gaming and enabling gamers to generate their own content on the fly using AI will be a critical part of this. So for two years we’ve focused on perfecting our AI models and the animations generated by them; first using video inputs and now, incredibly excitingly, using just a simple text prompt. The clear early use case for this tech is in gaming. Emotes have become an essential part of users’ self-expression and a revenue driver for game-makers, and our AI-powered emotes tech is already being integrated by some of the best-known developers and virtual world builders.”
What the client says
Jay Lee, Global Head of Ecosystem of virtual world platform ZEPETO, which has more than 400 million global users and is operated by NAVER Z, a Kinetix partner company, added: “Kinetix's Text2Emotes feature represents an exciting use case for generative AI in virtual worlds, with the potential to enable a new dimension of expression for ZEPETO users. When integrated, it will provide the ZEPETO community with an even more immersive social experience."
The PMW view
Emotes have been used by MMOs like World of Warcraft for over two decades but, after rocketing into the mainstream with games like Fortnite and PUBG, they are fast becoming a must-have feature for self-expression in gaming content. UGC is core to the success of many gaming platforms such as Roblox, and is set to become the new standard for helping games generate sustainable, long-lasting revenue, as shown by Fortnite’s Creative 2.0 announcement. For Kinetix clients, the crossover potential of emotes is huge, with videos tagged #emote having received more than 2.4 billion views on TikTok alone.
Scotland’s largest digital ad display board launched in Edinburgh
Digital Out of Home (DOOH) media owner, GEM Display has secured a prime media location in central Edinburgh.
How it works
The LED ad display site will launch this summer and offers brands a way of engaging with the millions of commuters, shoppers and tourists that pass through the World Heritage Site each year. The 166m squared High-Definition LED display board will be fixed to the exterior of the prominent OMNi Centre in central Edinburgh and will offer brands a stunning opportunity to deliver creativity with contextual relevance.
What the provider says
Dave Watson, Head of Sales, GEM said: “This is the most significant digital ad display announcement since London Piccadilly was relaunched 5 years ago and similarly it is destined to become an iconic landmark. These sites do not come along very often and even more so because the display is located in a world heritage site. Brands now have an opportunity to be part of all the buzz that Edinburgh offers, from the summer Fringe Festival to the Hogmanay celebrations.”
The PMW view
Digital OOH is set to be a key driver of advertising growth in 2023, as it offers brands unmissable impact, memorability and presence. DOOH provides a wealth of creative opportunities including time-sensitive, location-specific, contextual and other dynamic triggers, providing brands with innovative creative opportunities to engage their audiences. This ensures that brands can not only reach, but creatively engage with audiences better than ever before.