Opinion | Features

• Singapore women want more from media than consumerism, beauty, fashion and sex tips

  In this guest post, ShuQi Liu argues that Singapore’s media scene needs to look beyond International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day to tackle women’s issues and celebrate their success stories.

  When I first started my agency two years ago, I really wanted to help female entrepreneurs succeed by getting their message across in print and online publications. Unfortunately, Singapore’s competitive female magazine landscape does not make this easy. Let’s face it, there are scant opportunities to share what women on their way to success really want.

• Q&A with PropertyGuru CMO Bjorn Sprengers: Rising content costs will lead to higher quality

  Bjorn Sprengers is chief marketing officer of PropertyGuru, a real estate information service with operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

  In this Q&A with Mumbrella Asia’s editor Robin Hicks, Sprengers talks about the value of data for journalism, Big Data Vs Small Data and why most of the content produced by brands at the moment is falling short of consumer expectations.

  Data journalism is, according to your definition, about building content around data. How does that work?

• Programmatic targeting... for dummies

  In this test Timothy Whitfield pits six demand-side platforms against each other to find out how good programmatic offerings really are. 
  

  Following my previous article on hyper local geo-targeting I felt that it would be equally interesting to use scientific principle to forensically dissect another group of adtech companies that are often clumped together.

  Not knowing where to start I figured that I might as well start at the beginning of adtech: Demand Side Platforms (DSP).

• Damn Instagram, back at it again with the algorithm

  In this guest post Tym Yee discusses the content dilemma created by Instagram’s adaption of an algorithmic feed and why simply ‘creating better content’ isn’t enough.

  I’m glad we made it through the week. For a second there I didn’t think humanity could do it. I mean, Instagram was changing to an algorithmic feed, which is, like, totally the end of the world, right?

• Unrequited loyalty: How brands must start valuing their faithful customers

  In this guest post, David Atkins argues that brands which often ignore, and even penalise their most loyal customers, must start viewing loyalty as a profit centre rather than a cost centre. 

  For my sins I do a lot of flying. Not the sexy, long haul, arrive in New York for keynote speech refreshed after sleeping ten hours on a flat bed sort of flying. No, I do the biweekly, inevitably delayed, cattle-class, short haul sort of flying.

• Q&A with TBWA\Singapore chief creative officer Edmund Choe: Briefs are like Ocean's Eleven, you analyse the job and pick specialists to do it

  TBWA\Singapore claimed the crown of Southeast Asia agency of the year at the Mumbrella Asia Awards earlier this month and won best ad for its ‘Welcome to Airbnb’ work. In this Q&A, the agency’s Singapore and Southeast Asia chief creative officer, Edmund Choe, insists disruption is more than just a hackneyed phrase at TBWA, likens creative briefs to the movie Ocean’s Eleven and looks ahead to its work with the Singapore Tourism Board.  

  The word disruption has, of course, become part of the vernacular in the agency world. Everyone talks about it. TBWA is no different and last year launched Disruption Live globally. But what exactly is Disruption Live?

• Brands, beware: Instagram is going algorithmic

  In this guest column George Pappas says Instagram’s decision to change its feed from chronological to ‘optimised’ via a new algorithm, challenges brands to refine their message and improve the quality of their content.

  Instagram last week announced a major update – their feeds are moving from a real-time chronological order of content, to an algorithmically optimised collection of content that you’d prefer to see.

• Q&A with R3 principal and co-founder Greg Paull: There is turf warfare in agencies and there's more disruption on the way

  

  The principal and co-founder of pitch consultant R3, Greg Paull, discusses the recent developments at Dentsu Aegis and Publicis Groupe, suggests marketers are heading towards a Mad Men mentality and warns of new competitors on the agency landscape.

  Recent events at Dentsu Aegis have been likened to Game of Thrones. What is your take on developments?

  It’s endemic of a lot of agency groups. It’s turf warfare. You’ve got to remember that agencies were once upon a time integrated and the people from the creative side were running the place.

• Native and video: how mobile advertising can start living up to its potential

  In this guest column, Rick Mulia insists many advertisers need to rethink their approach to mobile if it’s to start living up to its potential. The future, he says, is in native and video.

  It’ll come as no surprise that mobile usage will increase in 2016.

  But while recent data from Nielsen reported that Southeast Asia nations ranked among the highest globally when it comes to watching movies on a tablet and for dual screening, there is still lots of evidence that the mobile landscape is open for considerable growth and fundamental shifts in media consumption habits.

• Twitter at 10: It's time to get cracking on North East Asia

  Twitter celebrated its 10th anniversary this week. But while the social media platform has become an integral component of a brand’s marketing arsenal, David Ko suggests not every region is happy with its progress.

  Happy birthday Twitter! My first tweet was in March 2008, when Twitter was fresh and full of promise, a pure, elegant way to share thoughts compressed into 140 characters.

• Do you need a comment thread? And can you make it more civilised?

  In this post Alex Hayes talks about the evolution of comments threads and how they can develop as earners if utilised effectively.

  The cases for and against comment threads on websites are many and varied. At best those user-generated words at the bottom of a page can add insight and stir debate. At worst they’re a troll-filled cesspit turning normally civilised people into rabid lunatics.

  So why would publishers have comment sections?

• Ad blocking: who are the winners and losers?

  What does ad blocking mean for publishers, advertisers and consumers in Asia? Lee Walsh highlights the winners and the losers.

  Here’s the deal: pay $3.64 a month and the internet would be completely free of ads. No banners, no sponsored search, zero tracking and no pre-rolls.

  eMarketer estimate that $70 billion was spent on digital advertising in APAC last year. When this is spread across 1.6 billion internet users it is just $3.64 per month.

  With the rise of ad blocking why not apply a subscription to the whole internet and leave the ads to TV and print?

• From backflips to power potato peeling: why videos go viral

  In this cross-posting from The Conversation, Brent Coker looks at the four key ingredients to making a video go viral.

  It’s the Holy Grail for marketers: understanding what makes a video ad go viral. A lot of the research in this area has looked at what makes people share, since it’s assumed something goes viral because it’s sharable. But exactly what motivates a person to tell others about a video?

  Viral videos have four things in common that inspire us to share and drive up those YouTube views.

• The possibilities of Periscope: viewers watch live streaming longer than pre-recorded content

  Many brands have been avoiding live streaming because they have not been able to figure out how to make it work for them. Alex Hayes looks at some of the tips handed out by successful Periscoper Mario Armstrong.

  When it comes to live streaming you can’t argue with the Mario Armstrong, founder of the Never Settle Club.

• Q&A with MullenLowe creative chief Jose Miguel Sokoloff: We're all the same - adland needs a disruptive agency to lead change

  Jose Miguel Sokoloff, the global creative head of ad agency MullenLowe, was in the Philippines last week where he gave a presentation on the virtues of soft power over the hard sell at Ad Summit Pilipinas.

  In this Q&A with Mumbrella Asia’s editor Robin Hicks in his hotel lobby in Subic, the award-winning Colombian talked about a period of disruption in adland that will expose agency “dinosaurs”, how the commodisation of the business has made outstanding work rare, and what he thinks of DDB creative chief Amir Kassaei’s call to end the “madness” of awards shows.

  Two Havas executives gave their view on what’s happening in the industry right now in Subic yesterday. What’s your take the recent upheaval?