Singapore Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong and Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani lead distinguished speaker line-up

Forbes Media today announced that it will hold its 20th Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore from September 26 to 27, 2022.

The theme of this year’s conference is “The Way Forward”. The world is looking for a way back to normal. Recovery from the pandemic is underway for much of the globe. Yet markets gyrate on every economic, geopolitical and Covid update, while investors keep a wary eye on inflation and rate hikes. Global tensions escalate between major economic powers, with ripples felt worldwide. Amid all these uncertainties, some 400 leading CEOs, entrepreneurs and investors will convene at the 20th Forbes Global CEO Conference to share insights, spotlight opportunities and stake out the way forward.

William Adamopoulos, CEO/Asia, Forbes Media, said: “We are delighted to host the 20th Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore, where our conference first started. This is an important milestone for Forbes in Asia and we look forward to bring back together, for the first time in three years, our community of some of the world’s most economically powerful and influential business leaders.”

One of the highlights on the opening day of the conference is a one-on-one dialogue between Lawrence Wong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Singapore and Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media. On the second day, Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, will be making a keynote speech.

To date, some 40 speakers have confirmed their participation at the conference. Speakers will gather from around the world to share insights on topics such as the global economy, technology, innovation, and investment opportunities in sectors such as finance and venture capital, real estate and sports. Panels will also discuss best strategies for leadership, entrepreneurship, family business, ESG and sustainability.

Speakers who have confirmed their attendance include Jenny Johnson, President and CEO of Franklin Templeton; Eduardo Saverin, Cofounder and Managing Partner at B Capital; Jenny Lee, Managing Partner at GGV Capital; Ajay Banga, Vice Chairman of General Atlantic; Ferran Soriano, CEO of City Football Group and Manchester City Football Club; Miwako Date, President and CEO of Mori Trust Co., Ltd; Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO of Byju’s; Nisa Leung, Managing Partner at Qiming Venture Partners; Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute of India; Ho Kwon Ping, Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings; Janet Henry, Global Chief Economist at HSBC; Mohammed Dewji, President of MeTL Group; Russell Coutts, CEO of SailGP; Goodwin Gaw, Managing Principal and Chairman of Gaw Capital Partners; John Studzinski, Vice Chairman and Managing Director at PIMCO; William E. Heinecke, Founder and Chairman of Minor International and Arif P. Rachmat, Cofounder and Executive Chairman of TAP Group.

Other speakers include Anderson Tanoto, Managing Director at RGE; Sudarshan Venu, Managing Director at TVS Motor Company; Kevin L. Tan, CEO of Alliance Global Group Inc.; Nancy Pangestu Tabardel, CEO of ANB Investment; Kishin RK, Founder and CEO of RB Capital Group; Meng Kuok, Group CEO and Founder of Caldecott Music Group; Aaron Tan, Cofounder and CEO of Carro; Katrina Razon, CEO of KSR Ventures; Kyungsun Chung, Managing Partner at The Sylvan Group; Simon Loong, Founder and Group CEO of WeLab; Laurent Junique, Founder and CEO of TDCX; Lee Yeow Chor, Group Managing Director and CEO of IOI Corporation Bhd; Randall S. Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business; Binod K. Chaudhary, Chairman of CG Corp Global; Wendy Yap, Founder, President Director and CEO of Nippon Indosari Corpindo; Harald Link, Chairman of B.Grimm; Joe Ravitch, Cofounder and Partner at The Raine Group and V Shankar, CEO and Cofounder of Gateway Partners among others.

The Principal Sponsors of this year’s Forbes Global CEO Conference are Royal Golden Eagle, HSBC Global Private Banking and Star Energy Geothermal. The Corporate Sponsors are Wuthelam, Singapore Economic Development Board, International Container Terminal Services, Inc, MQDC (Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited) and Mayapada Group. Supporting Sponsors are Sari Roti, OUE Limited and Hill & Associates.

The festival was inaugurated by H.E. Sunjay Sudhir, Indian ambassador to the UAE

ZEE5 Global, the world’s largest streaming platform for South Asian content, has partnered with the LuLu Group for their India Utsav celebrations.

The announcement was made in a press conference at LuLu Regional Headquarters in Dubai.

In the Group’s first ever simultaneous region-wide launch of its celebration of the 75th Indian Independence Day - Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, the “India Utsav” was launched at the same time across the GCC countries on 15th August 2022, Monday at Al Wahda Mall, Abu Dhabi.

The festival was inaugurated by H.E. Sunjay Sudhir Indian Ambassador to the UAE, alongside Mr. Yusuff Ali, Chairman and Managing Director of LuLu Group International, Archana Anand, Chief Business Officer of ZEE5 Global, the official partners of this promotion, and other top officials and government authorities at LuLu Hypermarket Al Wahda Mall, Abu Dhabi.

“India Utsav” is a retail festival that brings alive the 3 Cs of the Indian experience at LuLu: Culture, Commerce and Cuisine. It showcases the close commercial ties UAE enjoys with India.

In celebration of 75 Years of Indian Independence, the "India Utsav" will present a unique immersive shopping experience at LuLu with regional food trails, celebrity visits organised by ZEE5 Global and amazing promotions & Offers on every category from fresh food to grocery to lifestyle and fashion wear in time for the festive season to follow.

ZEE5 GLOBAL PARTNERHSIP

This year, LuLu has partnered with ZEE5 Global, the world’s largest platform for South Asian entertainment. As part of the initiative, ZEE5 will be flying in popular actor Sonali Bendre to meet and greet with fans in the UAE. Shoppers at LuLu Hypermarkets across the GCC will also win a free annual subscription to ZEE5’s for every purchase of AED 1,000 and above; and a free one-month subscription or a 50% discount on yearly subscription for every purchase of AED 100 and above. 

Speaking on the occasion H.E. Sunjay Sudhir said, “We are delighted to note that LuLu Group is celebrating the India Utsav across all their stores on the historic occasion of Azadi Ka Amritmahotsav and I thank LuLu Group for always promoting India and Indian products through their hypermarkets. No doubt initiatives such as this will go a long way further promoting the trade ties between India and UAE.”

Mr. Yusuff Ali said, “Needless to say, India is very close to my heart and mind emotionally. On the occasion of the 75th Independence Day, I would say that the country is an emerging economic superpower, and the visionary foreign policy of PM Modi has led to stronger India-GCC ties and the UAE is emerging as one of India’s staunch business partners. I believe strongly that the LuLu Group can be a key player in this vision of the future for India.”

“Apart from product promotion, India Utsav will also showcase rich cultural diversity of India through many shows, competitions and celebrity visits during the campaign period,” added V. Nandakumar, Director of Marketing & Communications, LuLu Group.

Speaking on the occasion, Archana Anand, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 Global said, “It’s a highly exciting time for ZEE5 Global as we have galloped ahead to become the No.1 streaming platform for South Asian content across multiple global markets, including the Middle East. We now look forward to continuing to build on this success through multiple local initiatives and on the back of our compelling content, further deepening our connection with South-Asian audiences here, we are thrilled to partner with LuLu for their India Utsav celebrations. This marks the continuation of a wonderful and deep relationship with them, and with the region.”

Key highlights:

Special stalls to promote Indian handicrafts, khadi products, Kashmir products, etc.

Indian Food Festival to showcase different state cuisines and snacks.

Daily cultural shows and competitions.

Free subscriptions of ZEE5.

KICKING OFF INDIAN FESTIVALS 

 “India Utsav” will herald LuLu’s celebration also of India’s busy festival months with a series of celebrations, LuLu India Utsav Deals for Indian Independence Day (from Aug 11th – Aug 17th), Janmashtami Specials (Aug 17th – Aug 18th), Ganesh Chaturthi (Aug 25th – Aug 30th), Onam (Aug 30th to Sept 8th), Navratri – (Sept & Oct), and culminating with Diwali (End of Oct).

Egypt has a long and illustrious legacy of storytelling. It also has a wealth of untapped potential that can bring fresh & nuanced perspectives to global content but has so far remained underrepresented on the global stage. There is a subset of voices within this community — those of women, that need better acknowledgment.

On September 12th, Netflix is launching the ‘Because She Created’ writing program in partnership with Sard, a dedicated hub for scriptwriters in the Arab world, to train women in writing and develop their storytelling and creative expression skills. This program is part of the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity which aims to help create new opportunities for underrepresented communities within the entertainment industry.

Mariam Naoum, CEO & Founder of Sard said, “Sard believes that expressing oneself through writing is the first step to self-discovery, and we're proud to have discovered talent through this program that we feel will one day become scriptwriters of the future. The Arab world, including Egypt, is ripe with talent. What they need is concerted effort and professional support to nurture their growth. Women in the region in particular, need this kind of incubation and technical support to gain access to opportunities that advance their professional growth in an industry where their presence is still limited. Sard is trying to achieve this through the work we do, and through partnerships with organizations like Netflix that help steer talent in the right direction."

Ahmed Sharkawi, Director, Arabic Series, Netflix said: “At Netflix, we recognize that being part of the creative communities comes with responsibilities and that includes the need to develop the talent pipeline and give new voices a chance to be heard. Through our partnership with Sard, we are mining a wealth of untapped potential from Egypt, an integral component of the MENA creative community, and introducing storytelling as a viable career option for the next generation of Egyptian women. We want to create more diverse content to ensure that women are represented both on screen and behind the camera, and partnerships like this allow us to equip them with the skills they need to tell the best version of their stories.”

The ‘Because She Created’ writing program will recruit 20 women from outside Cairo, particularly, and equip them with the creative tools and industry insight needed to advance their professional development. The five-day program will be hosted in Cairo and will include storytelling classes, creative expression sessions, as well as daily artistic activities like trips to the theater and the cinema. 

The program helps mine for talent in historically underrepresented regions of Egypt and introduces storytelling as a viable career option for the next generation of Egyptian women. By providing talent with a chance at a professional writing career, the program aims to inspire people to break through in the industry and create a network of women who can support each other well after the program.

Over the last two years, we’ve sparked important discussions aimed at filling the pipeline of women in entertainment, partnered with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture to provide financial assistance to women producers and directors in the Arab world, and recently launched the Because She Created collection to highlight the importance of equitable representation in storytelling.  

beIN MEDIA GROUP and its flagship channel beIN SPORTS, the official broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has partnered with Twitter to share bespoke content throughout the world’s biggest football event, which kicks off in Qatar on 20 November 2022.

beIN SPORTS will be sharing content for regional audiences across Twitter, highlighting the biggest moments throughout the tournament and providing brands and marketers with association opportunities via Twitter Amplify sponsorship. Each match will be highlighted through content clips, one match recap and an in-studio analysis, aired through the beIN SPORTS official handle, @beINSPORTS for a total of 320 videos.

“Football is one of the biggest conversations in this region. We’ve witnessed a 74% spike in average monthly football conversations in comparison to the previous 12 months. From Saudi Arabia alone, we’ve seen more than 53 million Tweets about football so far this year,” said Kinda Ibrahim, Director – Global Partnerships, MEA and Turkey, Twitter.

“When Twitter talks sports, the world listens. From firing up fan excitement to meeting fans on their home turf, Twitter is the best place to connect to the moments that get the world talking — right where it’s happening. By working with the region’s biggest sports broadcaster, we are excited to provide near real time match highlights to die hard fans who drive the intensity and build community around one of the most watched global sporting events,” continued Kinda Ibrahim.

Commentating on the partnership with Twitter, Faisal Mahmoud Al-Raisi, Director of Digital, beIN MENA, said: “As one of the leading official broadcasters of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM in the 24-country MENA region, our talented teams will be working night-and-day to deliver the best content and insight – using the latest cutting-edge technology, so that every fan’s experience is incredible. We are delighted to partner with Twitter for this historic event to do everything we can for our millions of followers across MENA to make memories for a lifetime.”

Created by Zerotrillion and Moderated by Chantelle Brinkley.

In a new series, New York Festivals and Chantelle Brinkley, Managing Director of award-winning creative agency Zerotrillion, invite four exceptional women leaders to discuss hot button topics about leadership.

New York Festivals partners with their “Best New Agency of the Year'' winner, Zerotrillion, to create a new content series titled Carving Stairs into Stone, which will be moderated by Zerotrillion’s NYC Managing Director, Chantelle Brinkley. The Collaboration was inspired by a recent wave of interest in the New York Festivals’ other new content series’, including Black Madison Avenue and Immigrant Madison Avenue where various industry experts gather to discuss underrepresented groups and themes in the advertising world.

Carving Stairs into Stone delves into the career journeys of women in brand and marketing leadership positions. The executive interview series explores each leader's trajectory to the top, revealing how they defied unspoken rules and outdated traditions. Rather than clinging to the notion that "we all go through it," the series advocates for industry change and serves as a road map for newcomers to follow as they navigate the industry and seek to move it, and their own careers, forward.

The panel is composed of women from some of the world’s most exclusive brands. Tennille Kopiasz (Global CMO of Fresh at LVMH), Angelique Bellmer Krembs (author and former Global Head of Brand at BlackRock), joins Ashley Stallings (Chief Customer Officer at Salsify), and Marina Sukhova (AVP, Head of Search, Insight & Measurement, Luxe Division at L'Oréal USA) to share the valuable lessons that will benefit up and coming leaders in the industry.

When recruiting for the interview series, Brinkley was surprised by how many women in leadership positions felt there were not enough platforms for them to share their valuable stories of overcoming adversity in business. “I'm honored to help build a bridge between the industry's experienced leaders, and those charting a path, as well as helping to define a roadmap for bettering the industry through effective, empathetic leadership. Now more than ever, women’s voices and experiences need to be amplified so we can continue crafting a legacy of strong women carving out new paths to success in the global brand and marketing industry."

New York Festivals Executive Director, Scott Rose added, “Zerotrillion has been making waves and collecting towers in NYFA for the last few years and we're thrilled to be partnering with them. The goal with our content is to elevate the people behind the work and help them get important ideas out to the community. Chantelle and the ZT team have certainly delivered, organizing an inspiring group of top executives to share stories, lessons, and actionable takeaways. Carving Stairs from Stone is not to be missed.”

The first 45-minute Carving Stairs into Stone episode launches on August 18, 2022 and can be viewed on New York Festivals YouTube channel. The next interview series will include new leaders and fresh topics. Confirmed guests include Felita Harris (Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer & RAISEfashion Founding Board Member) Julien McCluney (GM VP Global Brands Hasbro Gaming at Hasbro), Rebecca Kovalcik (Senior Creative Director, Happy Family Organics - Danone), and Lee Piper (Global Creative Director, Yahoo!). Filming will begin in New York in September and a new episode is planned to be released in October.

Commerce media is revolutionizing how ads are bought and optimized. Companies need the right strategy to share in its potential trillion-dollar-plus value.

Key takeaways-

Advertising is being transformed by commerce media, a new form of advertising that closes the loop between media impressions and commerce transactions to improve targeting, provide new audience insights, and deliver more relevant and valuable experiences for consumers.

It has the potential to generate over $1.3 trillion of enterprise value in the United States and create a paradigm shift in digital advertising not seen since the rise of programmatic.

Retail media is the first domino to fall, and is a harbinger of the commerce media trend, with retailers creating high-margin, rapid growth media businesses.

For decades, advertisers have faced challenges connecting their ad spending to actual customer purchases. Figuring out whether they were delivering impressions for the right price in the correct channel was an imperfect science, with many assumptions, data extrapolations, and a cottage industry of measurement solutions. Commerce media changes this by directly connecting audience impressions with omnichannel transactions and business results. By linking content and commerce, brands can better serve their customers through more relevant offers and incentives, all in a privacy-protected way. While building brand relevance and favorability will always be an essential part of the marketing mix, today’s opportunity is to connect impressions to actual sales and feed these results back into true full-funnel marketing models.

Commerce media has its roots in affiliate advertising—partnerships in which publishers link their content to commerce opportunities to provide an enhanced experience for consumers. The category is now rapidly expanding to include retail media networks (RMNs), third-party ad platforms that retailers set up on their websites. It also includes “shoppable ads” that enable people to purchase products through online or mobile ads, and “live commerce” or “shoppable TV,” where viewers can interact with video content and buy products directly from their TV or device screens. In China, where shopping on the live streams of popular influencers has become mainstream, live-commerce media purchases reached $170 billion in 2020, driven by the apparel/fashion and beauty categories. In the future, new forms of this media could include contextual purchasing in the metaverse, which would enable consumers to purchase any product they see whenever and wherever they want.

How did the industry get here? The growth of e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst that raised the bar on consumer expectations and produced new signals on customer behavior that advertisers could learn from. Next year, the planned removal of cookies from web browsers is expected to be another tailwind for commerce media. In an increasingly data-driven future, first-party data will become a powerful competitive differentiator.

Retail media networks: A $1.3 trillion domino effect

Over the past two years, retailers have taken significant steps to embrace the commerce-media trend by launching RMNs aided by their large and stable user bases, new real estate for ad placements, and the proliferation of privileged first-party data. What used to be considered a side business generating supplemental revenue from “sponsored products” is now a strategic way for retailers to drive consumer loyalty. In the United States, the growth of RMNs could represent as much as $100 billion in ad spending by 2026. With the overall operating margins of RMNs in the 50 to 70 percent range, companies across the retail spectrum are fully awake to the economic potential. For instance, Amazon has led the way in using its repository of e-commerce data to create an advertising and advertising technology business that now goes well beyond sponsored ads on its own shopping site. Retailers with single-digit margins and those newer to e-commerce may also consider selling off- and on-site sponsored ads a potential strategy.

The ripple effect from this growth is already significant. The ability to match unique customer IDs and ad impressions to stock-keeping-unit (SKU) sales in a privacy-protected way is compressing the marketing funnel and disrupting the entire advertising ecosystem. With $100 billion in ad spend expected to go to RMNs by 2026, the effects are likely to scale, creating potentially far-reaching implications for advertisers, ad agencies, traditional publishers, ad-technology providers, and retailers. Over time, a substantial number of impressions could be tied to SKU-level sales, ultimately changing the way advertising is optimized.

It’s not just retailers who can build “retail” media networks. The first-party data and customer touchpoints owned by hospitality brands, travel and hotel providers, telecommunications companies, banks, and automakers, for instance, may also lend themselves to contextual advertising that consumers opt into in return for more relevant, tailored experiences.

Our research indicates that over $1.3 trillion of enterprise value (EV) is at stake in the United States by 2026. This has potential revenue implications across the advertising value chain-

$820 billion for retailers who develop new, margin-rich media businesses

$280 billion for advertisers in the form of higher returns on ad spending (ROAS)

$50 billion for publishers from new ways of capturing additional ad dollars

$5 billion for ad agencies that deliver high-efficiency performance marketing for clients or help firms set up media planning and buying capabilities

$160 billion for ad-tech providers who offer martech solutions to firms that have no experience as media companies

Disruption and imperatives across the ecosystem

Based on engagements with over twenty retail media networks globally and our survey of more than 180 advertisers across various categories, including CPG, beauty, apparel, and consumer electronics, here is a deep dive into the commerce-media disruption and its impact across the value chain.

Retailers

Even though several retail and e-commerce giants have multibillion-dollar ad businesses, it’s not too late for newer entrants to get into the game by leveraging their first-party customer data. RMN campaigns can reach, for instance, personal-care-product users who haven’t made a purchase in the past six months or millennial moms who make purchases of both organic and keto products. Advertisers are then given feedback (with customer data anonymized) on who bought what in response to which ad. In our survey, nearly 70 percent of advertisers say their performance in retail media is significantly or somewhat better than in other channels

Our survey also indicates that 82 percent of advertisers will continue increasing their RMN spending over the next 12 months, and approximately 20 percent plan to increase it by more than 10 percent. This increased RMN spending will not cannibalize what advertisers already spend on marketing directly to in-store or co-op shoppers, as many retailers fear. More than 80 percent of advertisers say that their spending on RMNs will be funded from new budgetary sources (Exhibit 5). Thus any impact on retailers’ in-store shopper or co-op marketing revenue can be managed.

RMNs offers retailers—including those who feel they’ve missed the boat on shifting digital-ad spending—a significant opportunity to differentiate themselves as media partners. Our survey indicates key pain points still exist for advertisers working with RMNs. Advertisers value several key factors, among them, transparent reporting of an ad campaign’s performance, unique shopper insights, reasonable media costs, and ease of use. Retailers today don’t always fulfill these expectations. Additionally, 71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver interactions personalized to their needs and interests, yet only 23 percent think retailers are doing a good job at it.

Building an RMN with a compelling value proposition can help retailers to better meet the expectations of both ad buyers and customers. Any of the following actions could be a good place to start:

Relentlessly protect the customer experience. For some consumers, seeing advertising or sponsored product recommendations on a retailer’s website will be a new experience. Retailers will need to regularly assess the impact of the advertising on the customer experience. RMN and e-commerce teams could collaboratively employ test-and-learn processes (such as A/B testing) and fine-tune ad load, format, and content.

Clearly demonstrate campaign performance. Advertiser expectations for RMNs are higher than for other media channels. They want to see that shoppers have interacted with their ads and made actual purchases. Showing a high level of steady growth in return on ad spend (ROAS) is key for building advertiser confidence in a retailer as a trusted media partner. This applies to placements on a retailers’ own sites and also those on platforms owned by their media partners or other marketplaces.

Deliver unique brand and shopper insights. RMNs aren’t just about providing inventory. Advertisers want to work hand-in-hand with retailers to find consumer insights that can inspire product innovation or new market positioning or messaging. Retailers may benefit from investing in the capabilities and martech infrastructure that will upgrade their ability to identify these audience insights—for example, a customer-data platform that builds a single, complete view of each customer.

Strategically segment with different service models. Not all advertisers are created equal. A relatively small number of high-value ad buyers will require elevated levels of service and thought leadership. To form a true partnership with these advertisers, retailers will need to provide rigorous performance reporting; unique shopper insights; distinctive creative services; sales and operational support; access to privileged ad inventories; and highly customized or curated audiences. At the same time, retailers will want to build easy-to-use, self-service capabilities for most advertisers, who will form the backbone of the RMN’s financial performance.

Build a curated partner ecosystem. Building a media business is an entirely new skill for retailers. Advertisers may expect managed-service capabilities, and retailers will likely benefit from partners that help deliver them, such as technology partners, content partners, sales partners, campaign-planning/buying partners, and reporting and measurement partners. To adhere to consumer-privacy laws, some RMNs are exploring partnerships with media companies that use cleanroom solutions. In addition, retailers may want help with accounting, billing, and the assessment of any related legal or privacy ramifications. Having a clear plan for what to in-source versus what should be provided by a partner may help deliver a seamless experience for advertisers.

Advertisers

Given the pace of growth of RMNs and other forms of commerce media, advertisers may need to move quickly to develop a strategy that keeps them ahead of peers. More than 80 percent of advertisers expect to increase their spending on RMNs significantly in the next twelve months. A similar number of advertisers rate retail media as a key strategic priority.

Marketing organizations could consider four actions to develop impact with commerce media, especially RMNs:

Create partners internally and externally. Working with RMNs is a marketing-led effort for most of our surveyed companies. But because retail media has direct implications for both product inventory and innovation, the participation of sales teams is key. In our survey, only 30 percent of respondents said they make sure to have joint visibility and accountability between marketing and sales.

It is also essential to bring retailers along as partners. The first step in achieving strategic goals—whether boosting sales among a particular segment, re-engaging with lapsed customers, or meeting sales targets for a new product—is to articulate the goals clearly. Demonstrating a willingness to pilot new product offerings with retail media networks could be a valuable way for advertisers to elevate their importance within an RMN.

Don’t lose sight of the big picture. Although RMNs present opportunities to drive growth, it’s essential to evaluate ad spending holistically. Marketing should be assessed and optimized across brand, trade, shopper marketing, and traditional media. Benchmarking tools could help identify how an advertiser’s marketing spend allocation compares with its peers’.

When engaging with RMNs, advertisers may want to broaden their aperture beyond a retailer’s owned and operated sites and mobile apps. Our surveyed companies allocate 30 percent of their spend with retailers to onsite ads, 45 percent to offsite, third-party sites and apps, and the remaining 25 percent to direct marketing and in-store marketing.

Set clear expectations. With 70 percent of advertisers reporting enhanced returns from their RMN ad spend compared with returns from other channels, advertisers should hold their retail media partners to a high standard. A pet-food company, for instance, achieved a 437 percent ROAS during a three-month keyword search campaign. If an advertiser doesn’t see significant results, it may be a sign to re-evaluate expectations and approaches.

Gain new business insights. Insights derived from retail-media data could be a source of new inspiration for advertisers. After several rounds of testing on different creative iterations, for example, a beauty company discovered a customer segment it didn’t realize it had: consumers interested in Korean skincare routines. Using this information, the company launched a new line of products to match this audience’s interests.

Robust reporting and measurement capabilities, therefore, are assets for retailers seeking to deliver higher performance and new insights. Before committing or increasing their investment with retailers, advertisers will want to know these capabilities are in place. This will allow them to audit their spending and do real-time reporting on how campaigns perform. Such a test-and-learn approach could result in midstream improvements and potentially help inform future campaigns and investments.

Publishers

Traditional media companies face a double dose of disruption. The planned disappearance of cookies will make it harder for them to track the performance of campaigns, potentially weakening their value proposition to advertisers. They also risk losing ad dollars to RMNs, which are better able to measure ROAS.

However, media properties can reach consumers at the point of purchase and compete with RMNs. Just as retailers or other companies that facilitate transactions are becoming more like media companies, publishers and media providers can move toward commerce. To do so, they may want to innovate in several ways:

Become more like a retailer. Build e-commerce capabilities or create a marketplace to understand consumers’ shopping behavior, and optimize it as a platform for targeted advertising opportunities.

Engage with audiences in the lower funnel. Incorporate live-commerce elements, such as hosted livestream shopping, to create innovative engagement experiences and bring audiences with specific purchase intent onto publisher properties.

Partner with RMNs on data sharing and cocreation of content. Instead of reinventing the wheel, publishers can partner with RMNs to utilize their ad inventory. They can also supply RMNs with innovative marketing content to boost engagement and drive purchases. For instance, several publishing companies have partnered with e-commerce providers to create “shoppable” recipes and meal-planning tools.

The era of commerce media is just beginning. Retailers are blazing the trail with high-quality, high-visibility, and highly matchable audiences that can benefit from more targeted and relevant advertising. Many leading companies have meaningful data on unique, hard-to-reach audiences, which could be used to create such advertising. Although the buying landscape is shifting quickly, there is still ample room to build a high-margin business of significant size. Retailers could assess their customer base and find ways to help advertisers enhance their consumers’ experience.

As companies approach the commerce-media opportunity, they must keep the customer as their North Star. Consumers already want personalized experiences and advertising that’s truly useful. Very soon, they will also expect to be able to complete purchases within the context of a TV show, online content, or virtual reality. Companies that find suitable customer use cases and forge strategic partnerships to deliver these experiences could reap substantial rewards. They will also help shift advertising’s mission from audience delivery to the acceleration of business growth.

Source:McKinsey

The function was inaugurated by Harivansh, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha

Mathrubhumi paid tribute to the great architects who helped to bring together one of the greatest publishing houses in Kerala. The commemoration of the first meeting of the Board of Directors of Mathrubhumi and remembrance of M P Veerendra Kumar was held at Uday Palace Convention Centre, Kowdiar in Thiruvananthapuram.

The first-ever meeting of the directors was held exactly 100 years back, on May 28. It was in this meeting that was presided over by K P Kesava Menon that the first Managing Director K Madhavan Nair was appointed and the first shares of the company were transferred to publisher Kuroor Neelakandan Namboothiripaad. 

M P Veerendra Kumar, who was the chairman and managing director of Mathrubhumi, passed away on May 28, 2020.

The function was inaugurated by Harivansh, Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Harivansh, who was a friend of M P Veerendra Kumar,said that Mathrubhumi is the ray of hope for true journalism as it paces forward, imbibing the values of Gandhi’s words. Malayalam poet V Madhusoodanan Nair who delivered the commemorative speech on M P Veerendra Kumar recalled his greatness as an individual. He referred to him as a complete human who loved other people, living beings and nature selflessly.

The presidential address was delivered by the Chairman and Managing Editor of Mathrubhumi P V Chandran. He said that it is deeply saddening that M P Veerendra Kumar is no more. He said that Mathrubhumi, a company that has always upheld its values and preserved democracy, will continue to move forward paving a path for the society to follow.

K N Balagopal spoke on ‘Developmental issues of Kerala and Environment’, Dr Vandana Shiva on ‘Development and Environment’and M V Shreyams Kumar on ‘Mathrubhumi and Environment’.

The welcome speech was delivered by Mayura M S, Director of Digital Business and Devika M S delivered the Vote of Thanks.

Estee Lauder has announced intentions to acquire luxury fashion house Tom Ford for $3bn, in its largest reported acquisition deal to date.

The proposed acquisition makes sense for Estee Lauder given it already works closely with Tom Ford via its brand license for the Tom Ford Beauty line. Our latest study suggests that the Brand Value of Tom Ford Beauty alone is approximately $1bn, driven by growth outlook and brand awareness. In its third-quarter earnings call three months ago, Estee Lauder said that Tom Ford Beauty was one of a few brands with double-digit sales growth. Tom Ford is a well-established brand, achieving 62% awareness among US consumers in our latest global survey. The brand value of Tom Ford as a whole is not known, but could be worth in the region of $2bn.

Historically, Estee Lauder has focused on cosmetics and wellness brand acquisitions. During the pandemic, home-working and reduced socialisation led to a dip in colour cosmetics, and an upsurge in wellness products. Continuing supply chain disruptions and rising material costs are posing a threat to cosmetics players like Estee Lauder. Analysts claim that this move to acquire Tom Ford signals a potential wider venture to become a diversified luxury house like LVMH. Unlike LVMH, which has a well-known record of acquiring and transforming various small and large luxury players from all over the world, Estee Lauder’s record is more conservative and focused on the US. 2/3 of Estee Lauder acquisitions in the past 30 years were purchases of US companies, versus 1/5 for LVMH.

A notable past US acquisition by Estee Lauder was its acquisition of Jo Malone in 1999. Similarly to Tom Ford, the brand is eponymous. Jo Malone remained as Creative Director of the brand under Estee Lauder’s ownership until 2006 when she left. Her exit deal meant that she lost control of her brand, her own name. Her regret over this decision is well-documented and in 2011, she launched a new perfume brand, Jo Loves. Although details are not yet confirmed, it is likely Estee Lauder will adopt a similar strategy for the integration of Tom Ford and therefore the ex-Gucci designer is likely to remain onboard for the foreseeable future.

Director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde explores the starlet’s complicated relationships. 

Inside the booth of a New York restaurant, Marilyn Monroe sits opposite a revered playwright — they’re sharing a meal after her audition for his latest work. He feels he’s humoring her. How could this vacuous screen siren possibly have anything substantive to offer to his production? Then, with one stunningly insightful observation, she reorients his perception of her entirely. Before long, they’ve fallen in love.

It’s an intimate scene that leaps off the screen in Andrew Dominik’s new film Blonde, which offers a searing and singular portrait of the interior life of screen icon Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas (Knives Out). “He’s got to turn on a dime once he realizes that this person he’s having dinner with is not the bubble-headed actress he thought she was,” explains filmmaker Dominik. “She actually knows more about what happened in an event in his life than he does. He’s got to put down this self-absorbed writer guy who’s really sensitive to criticism and on the attack. He’s got to drop that and plug into 30 years of grief and then look at her like, Where have you been? Where has this person who understands me better than anyone I’ve ever met come from?”

The exchange dazzles not only because of the electrifying performances from star de Armas and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody, who portrays The Playwright, but also because it’s one of the few fleeting moments of uplift and connection in Dominik’s haunting, elliptical tragedy. Based on author Joyce Carol Oates’s best-selling fictional novel Blonde, the film unflinchingly depicts the violence that was visited on Monroe, from her earliest days in Los Angeles as Norma Jeane Baker to the final hours of her life. “She’s deeply traumatized, and the trauma necessitates a split between a public self and a private self, which is the story of every person, but in a famous person, it’s more exaggerated,” Dominik says. “The film’s very much concerned with her relationship with herself and with this other [persona], Marilyn, which is both her armor and the thing that is threatening to consume her.”

As Blonde charts a lifetime of experience through its subjective lens, Marilyn’s relationships take center stage and she moves through a string of romantic entanglements and failed marriages. “The movie’s very much seen from the point of view of how the men affect her, the compromises she has to make in order to be with them,” Dominik says. “We never see their side of it.”

Her clandestine love affair with Charlie Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams) stands out as one of the less virulent romances of her life as the two sons of world-famous actors are able to see past the Marilyn persona and gain an understanding of Norma Jeane — Oates invented the relationship for her novel to help illustrate that not all of her interactions with men were wholly negative. “You very rarely see her in a state of desire,” explains the director. “With Cass and Eddy, you do. Of the relationships that you see in the movie, that’s actually the best one. I feel like they see her and she’s kind of herself [with them].”

When Marilyn marries The Ex-Athlete, she enters one of the darkest of her consensual relationships. Desperately seeking out the love of a father figure, Marilyn turns to the strong Ex-Athlete to find protection from the continuous glare of the Hollywood spotlight — deep down, she’s desperate for some sort of normal family life. But rather than offering her safe harbor, he proves to be possessive and jealous, unable to control his violent temper. The role went to Bobby Cannavale, whose Emmy-winning work on the drama Boardwalk Empire had long impressed Dominik. “That character had to have a kind of brute masculinity that Bobby’s got in spades,” says the director. “He’s a passionate guy who can’t really find a way to express himself properly. It’s not the most flattering role for an actor necessarily, but Bobby was great.”

Marilyn then finds herself in love with the cerebral Playwright, a character that Brody embodied with soulfulness and charm — making it easy to see how the world’s most well-known sex symbol might fall for him. But even he fails her — he, too, is ultimately blinded by her celebrity persona and cannot begin to understand the depths of her trauma or help her through her pain. “Adrien is a guy who’s really happy when he is working, and he’s just a joy to be around,” Dominik says. “I was really blown away by how quickly he would get into an emotional state when he had to. He was very much an advocate for The Playwright. You can see that he loves her. He might not see her. He might not understand her completely, but he’s trying.”

“In all the relationships, you see the compromise under which the relationship is going to continue,” Dominik adds. “You can see what she wants, what they expect of her — she’s already betraying herself or making some kind of trade-off between what she wants and what she has to do to feel loved, which I think is the case in most relationships. I actually think that most relationships are negotiated immediately, probably in the very first meeting. The whole dynamic is there.”

Source:Netflix Queue

Will Spotify and Apple Music meet their match?

TikTok continues its world domination after its parent company (ByteDance) filed a trademark application for the service, called “TikTok Music” in the US, back in May of this year.

Of course, this seems as no surprise as TikTok is the platform to discover new music. But did you know that ByteDance has already launched a music service in India, Brazil and Indonesia called Resso? It even managed to amass 40M monthly users across the 3 countries in November 2021. In India alone, its active users grew 304% from Jan 2021–2022, in comparison to just a 38% increase for Spotify.

ByteDance has described its music service to enable users to “purchase, play, share and download music”, letting users on the app “live stream audio and video interactive media programming in the field of entertainment, fashion, sports, and current events.”

What could this mean?

This is purely all speculative as it’s still early days, but we at Osaka think that the music app will coincide with TikTok (naturally), featuring all the major sounds and songs created on the app. Could this streamline the music marketing process for up-and-coming artists? Allowing them to share their work between the apps?

But could this take off? Spotify has reportedly acquired 422M unique users in Q1 of 2022, with 182M of them being premium members. Apple Music, the other relatively-new kid on the block, acquired 98M in 2021. It’s also worth mentioning that YouTube Music and Youtube Premium together have more than 50M subscribers globally.

But who knows? This could all be the start — what about something like TikTok Maps? After all, the platform’s already become the place to discover new places to go.