Roli Okoro, director at VivaKi MENA

VivaKi’s Audience On Demand (AOD) MENA has signed an exclusive partnership with Effective Measure (EM), a provider of digital audience, brand and advertising effectiveness measurement and targeting solutions. Having come into effect on February 1, the partnership is the first of its kind in the region, offering AOD exclusive first access to EM’s third-party audience data, emPower, through Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, utilizing relevant and localized data into targeting and planning for client campaigns, and optimizing the latter’s tracking and monitoring as well as overall performance. It will equally expand on EM’s offering and solutions, marking the provider’s foray into monetizing its third-party data capabilities beyond measurement and research.

While globally, AOD has combined proprietary technology and engineering expertise with other tech and data platforms such as Google, 4C and Blue Kai, the EM partnership is part of its efforts into honing and readapting its offering and tools to better service advertisers in the region. “Other agencies in the region have been working with established global data players and platforms, but they’ve not joined hands with local or regional third-party players that had been aggregating data on audiences here. Data provided by international providers and platforms is valid, but its viability and segmentation are far from guaranteed in markets that are not on their priority list. We are the first to make use of EM’s data into client campaigns,” explains Roli Okoro, director at VivaKi MENA in a statement.

The partnership with EM allows AOD clients to deliver campaigns to customized regional audiences and maximize their efficiency and effectiveness against a more refined set of campaign criteria, objectives and key metrics. “AOD is available globally and, collectively, our operations are leading not only in terms of addressable media experts, but also in third-party data buying and management. Our partnership with EM is very much aligned with AOD’s strong leverage on consumer targeting through access to all data platforms, as well as with its predictive audience understanding capabilities. We have the first-mover advantage in this space, and we are very happy to be leading a partnership that we are sure will drive forward the programmatic business in the region,” adds Ali Nehme, managing director – digital at VivaKi MENA.

“The Effective Measure dashboard remains a critical tool for publishers and agencies, as it provides a granular view of website category rankings and rich audience demographic profile data at a country and regional level. ‘emPower’ is the natural progression of our suite of audience validation products for the region,” explains Brendon Ogilvy, chief product officer at Effective Measure. “Advertisers are seeking near real-time validation of audience segments to achieve their marketing goals and Effective Measure enables both advertisers and publishers to better target and plan campaigns in real time, programmatically. We are very excited to be working with VivaKi MENA to bring emPower to the industry”, Ogilvy adds.

Effective Measure has a footprint of 275 million unique browsers in the MENA region, measures over 2000 websites, and generates over 400,000 demographic surveys per month as participating websites.

Commenting on the partnership, Nourah AlFayez, doubleclick bid manager lead in MENA, says: “One of the key value propositions of programmatic buying globally is the ability to reach specific audience segments and until now this was missing in the region.  We are extremely excited about the DoubleClick Bid Manager integration with Effective Measure as it will accelerate the development of the programmatic ecosystem in MENA and provide our partners with a robust audience buying solution.”

The announcement comes on the heels of AOD launching its first TV sync campaign in the region; combining powerful audio, video and content recognition features with agile real-time marketing solutions, the AOD Sync tool activates digital campaigns when an advertiser’s – and inversely, competitor’s – spot is airing. “Digital campaigns can also be synced with TV programs and categories. This tool will help maximize advertiser reach as consumers’ attention spans are increasingly reduced and divided,” explains Okoro.