Video advertising platform Unruly has had its growth “turbocharged” since coming under new ownership, says Australia and New Zealand managing director David Haddad.
The adtech company was acquired by Tremor International in January last year from News Corp. The publisher offloaded Unruly in exchange for a share of Tremor International stock valued at about US$20 million, significantly less than the price News Corp paid for the company in 2015.
Haddad, a former IPG Mediabrands Singapore boss, joined Unruly in September last year to head up the team of 20 in Australia across its Sydney and Melbourne offices, which remain integrated into News Corp Australia.
Speaking to AdNews, Haddad says the adtech company has been focused on growth, both from a team and product development perspective.
As part of this growth, the company recently promoted Heath Irving to director of technology and partnerships across Australia and New Zealand. Irving, who has been with the company for more than three years, is tasked with driving Unruly’s strategic partnerships beyond News Corp Australia.
“Tremor has really turbo-charged Unruly's growth in the last 12 months,” Haddad says.
“Coming with that growth is the growth in people that we have needed to facilitate and oversee that. It’s also meant that we now have access to a range of multi-screen products and a full technology stack. So in the last 12 months we've really gone from being an outstream specialist, or an in-article format specialist, to a major player in the adtech space and one that focuses now on multi-format, multi-screens, and connected TV.
“It's incredibly exciting and I think there's a lot of future development in our pipeline from a product and a tech perspective that have come about with the acquisition by Tremor.”
A key focus for Haddad and his team has been shifting away from being just an outstream video specialist.
“Really when we talk about what the new Unruly is, it's about scalable tech solutions - so our DSP, our SSP, and our DMP,” he says.
“It's about multiple formats, so we now cover everything from not just outstream, which has been our history, but also in-stream display, in-app and across multiple screens as well, so mobile, desktop, and a key focus on connected TV.
“And our key focus is continuing to scale our reach and presence with new publishers. News Corp Australia continues to be our core publisher partnership and will continue to be into the future. But we also have a number of key partnerships with premium publishers that expand our region footprint. So much so that now we're actually reaching about 80% of the online population in Australia.”
Unruly is also preparing to launch its first in-house creative studios globally. The new teams, which will be revealed in the coming weeks, will be available for Unruly clients and agencies in all markets.
“For me that's really exciting because it allows us to talk to our clients and support them across every stage of the campaign lifecycle, bolstering our existing content testing product which is Unruly EQ,” he says.
“When we do things like rank videos through content testing, for example, we're using the EQ tool.
“And now we’ll have the ability through our creative studios to actually action some of the insights that come out of EQ to offer our clients and partners actual creative based off of those recommendations.”
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