Here’s a round-up of the biggest adtech announcements in the Middle East last year.
- Early this year, Next Broadcast Media launched Admanager.fm to make the management of audio campaigns as simple as a social media campaign. It works as a self-serve audio ad manager for businesses to plan, launch and manage audio ads on a simple dashboard. Admanager.fm serves brands in the UAE, KSA and other global locations
- In March, MMP World Wide became the first local marketplace in the GCC region to join the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) in a move towards tackling criminal activity and promoting brand safety in digital advertising across the market. Achieving TAG certification will help MMPWW to better combat ad fraud and malvertising, as well as minimising the risk of ad misplacement.
- Arabic aggregator app and platform Nabd launched an email newsletter product which provides subscribers with a personalised daily news digest autonomously curated using AI and machine-learning algorithms. It analyses a massive amount of content in real-time including news articles and videos and curates relevant and trending stories for each user separately based on geolocation, interests, previous engagement and content-consumption behavior.
- Reprise Digital was awarded Google Marketing Platform partner and reseller status this year. Reprise strengthened its status within the digital advertising ecosystem as a Google marketing platform partner and reseller. The certification allows Reprise to support advertisers owning their own data and technology stack.
- Audience Collective announced its expansion into the Middle East to offer several aspects of the marketing mix such as branding, data analytics, profiling, digital media buying and web development. Jess Hickman lead the group’s entry into market by working closely with the local team lead by Marija Raisi, marketing and sales director for the UAE.
- In July, Google announced that it will delay ending third-party cookies in advertising, pushing back the deadline to 2024. The tech giant explained in a blog post it received feedback that the industry asked for a longer time to test Google’s new Privacy Sandbox technologies. Google said it expects the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and available in Chrome by Q3 2023. As developers adopt these APIs, Google intends to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.
- Digital Turbine unveiled a unified corporate brand identity and strategy. The new brand identity follows its integration of the organisation’s acquisitions including Fyber, AdColony and Appreciate by merging the teams, technology and business assets to create Digital Turbine’s mobile growth platform. The unified identity is expected to simplify its offering and boosts the cross-channel approach.
- WebEngage raised a $20m funding in Series B led by Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund and SWC Global. The company expanded late last year into the Middle East with a dedicated local team for sales and customer success management in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Qatar markets. According to WebEngage’s announcement, it burnt only $6m in capital to reach a $20m revenue run rate through its 11-year journey filled with ups and downs while its peers in SaaS spend about 3–5x more to achieve the same scale.
- In August, Incubeta announced structural management changes across its MENA offices following the acquisition of Dubai-based integrated digital marketing agency Bruce Clay MENA in June this year. With the acquisition and restructure, Incubeta and Bruce Clay intend to blend their creative and organic capabilities with pure performance, tech and data products and add value through integrated digital solutions.
- Adtech company ArabyAds announced that it raised $30m in a pre-series B funding round from AfricInvest. ArabyAds said it plans to use the funding to expand its footprint and further invest in accelerating its technological advancement and talent acquisition. In a release, ArabyAds stated that it plans to expand its presence in newer markets.
