Sep 16, 2014

Caption  SINGAPORE: SingTel made its largest investment in the digital space two years ago when it bought Amobee. Now, through Amobee, it has completed the acquisition of two more firms - Adconion Direct and Kontera Technologies - totalling almost S$450 million. Adconion's expertise is in digital marketing across channels, such as social media, email and videos; while Kontera's technology helps brands analyse consumers' reactions to their advertising campaigns.  Amobee said the integration of both companies will broaden the reach and effectiveness of its advertising. Said Mr Mark Strecker, CEO of Amobee: "Adconion brings us a lot of scale and relationships with the big advertisers. They have customers in the US, for example, Kellogg, P&G, Unilever, Sprint, big advertisers - we traditionally did not have relationships with them. "And Kontera brings us the ability to know how effective is the brand in the digital sphere, and be able to measure that so we can do more effective marketing campaigns. " Consulting firm AT Kearney estimates that internet digital advertising revenues grew by almost 20 per cent between 2011 and 2013, and that mobile advertising revenues almost doubled over the same period. In total, global digital advertising revenues for 2013 are estimated at about US$130 billion (S$164 billion). AT Kearney said that the acquisitions can help consolidate SingTel's position in the fast growing, competitive industry. Mr Naveen Menon, partner and head of Communications, Media and Technology Practice for Asia Pacific at AT Kearney, said: "SingTel has made an interesting move by entering into the digital advertising space, because it will start to compete more against the Googles, Facebooks, Yahoos and MSNs of this world. SingTel entering into these two acquisitions and consolidating their position in this space, will enable it to compete more aggressively against serious competitors like Google and Facebook and Yahoo. " While acquisitions are a quick way for the telco to diversify away from traditional voice and messaging services, experts said it is not necessarily cheap nor is it a recipe for success. But with SingTel's scale and expertise, Amobee is well-positioned to become a significant player in digital advertising. - CNA/ac