China Event Recap: Hivestack’s Programmatic DOOH Luncheon

On November 24, 2022, Hivestack, the world's leading independent programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) technology company, hosted a luncheon in Shanghai with an outside-in theme, titled “New Track, New Way to Cross Borders”. Hivestack and its partners gathered to discuss their industry insights and experiences, launching a key new partnership for the market.

Committed to building deep roots in the Chinese market

Andreas Soupliotis, Founder and CEO of Hivestack, gave his welcome speech sharing, “China offers exceptional growth opportunities for the entire advertising industry, and programmatic DOOH technologies are driving innovation across the whole ecosystem. Hivestack is strongly committed to serving and rooting our business in the Chinese market.”

As part of this commitment, Hivestack will focus on 3 key areas of business development: 

1. Help global brands reach audiences in China through programmatic DOOH technology, for which Hivestack has built a full programmatic DOOH infrastructure in China. 

2. Support Chinese brands grow their global footprint by using programmatic DOOH as a platform to connect with international audiences. Note: Hivestack can now activate DOOH ads programmatically in 25 countries/regions. 

3. Drive domestic programmatic DOOH growth between Chinese advertisers premium inventory via local media owners in China, taking into consideration the important nuances of the Chinese advertising market.

Resilience throughout the challenges of 2022

Troy Yang, Managing Director of Hivestack North Asia, reviewed the many achievements Hivestack was able to unlock in 2022 and the numerous partnerships Hivestack has entered with  renowned outdoor media companies in North Asia. Most notably, onboarding several premium local media owners such as XinChao Media ,Tikin Media and now Focus Media.

Mr. Yang stated, “Looking ahead to the coming year, our global sales team and major partners will continue to work hard to promote outdoor media in China. I believe that more and more outdoor screens will become available to buyers via our platform in China. Together with the growing maturity of technology, we will see accelerated growth in outdoor advertising budgets.”

Hivestack China milestones

Aileen Ku (Gu Shiyi), General Manager of Hivestack China, shared important milestones from the past 2 years since Hivestack's entry into China such as the launch of the custom Hivestack China platform. In order to actively promote transparency and compliance, Hivestack has also actively participated in industry associations and obtained the national information security level 3 DJCP certification for its domestic platform.

What does programmatic mean for the industry?

Cindy Chen, CSO of Focus Media, talked about the transformation she’s witnessed of the entire Chinese media market. The Internet, IoT, data and algorithms have made connections that were once impossible offline (as well as online), connecting all screens for data retransmission and online monitoring.

Ms. Chen summarized the changes that digitalization has brought to offline media, including cost-cutting and open-source.  By cutting costs, the route of brand building has changed in the digital era, making the entire process much more efficient. Open source has opened many doors for growth, working with  technology companies like Hivestack that support open source can help media serve more customers, allowing for seamless integrations with their technology and systems. Ms. Chen also formally introduced a new partnership between Focus Media and Hivestack. She finished her speech by saying that, “Digitalization is the beginning of unstoppable growth.”

The complete customer journey viewed from an omnichannel marketing DSP

shley Wu, Director of Business Development for The Trade Desk China, provided insights on the complete customer journey and DOOH from an omnichannel marketing DSP perspective. As an omnichannel marketing platform, DOOH plays a very important role throughout the funnel, especially at the top level. The trend of transforming out of home advertising from a traditional medium to a digital medium is unstoppable, with data showing that 1/3 of the world's outdoor billboards have gone digital, with growth rates expected to reach 15%.

Ms. Wu also shared 2 successful case studies that leveraged the Hivestack platform, one from an omnichannel placement strategy and the other for a video game promotion for mobile phone brand overseas. She concluded by sharing the pillars of The Trade Desk’s DOOH approach which include audience targeting and cross channel activations, looking at ways  to converge DOOH and CTV.

Focus on both overseas and domestic markets, a two pronged approach

Kate Wang, Head of Overseas and Domestic Branding and Omni Marketing for Dentsu China, presented key lessons on how to best manage overseas and domestic advertising programs. Ms. Wang shared that the booming Chinese economy presents compelling growth opportunities domestically, while at the same time there are great opportunities to expand their market share overseas. For this reason, Dentsu China has a dedicated team to support cross border growth. The partnership with Hivestack's programmatic DOOH technology platform is also an important component in helping clients develop omnichannel marketing strategies.

How to navigate China's complex and ever-changing legal system

Jerry Liu, partner of Global Law Office, provided professional and pragmatic advice to digital advertising companies. Mr. Liu pointed out that there has been rapid development of China's laws and regulations in the areas of Company Law, Foreign Investment Law, Labor Law and various regulations. What was once a focus on foreign business, is now shifting to data regulation. Digital advertising companies need to pay close attention to the regulations related to data protection and intellectual property, both of which are incredibly important to outdoor digital advertising. As for foreign companies, Liu highlighted the need to pay attention to two regulations: the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) and the Antitrust Law.

Best practices for video game brands looking to advertise overseas

Charlie Ruan, Senior Vice President of Blue Media and CEO of Madhouse, shared his experience and insights from years of specializing in overseas expansion of the video game industry. He pointed out that the overseas market of the video game industry showed high growth (blue ocean) from 2018 to 2020, and competition is expected to continue to accelerate in the coming years. Recently, the Chinese video game industry has boomed, with Chinese games accounting for 12 of the top 50 US handheld games in terms of revenue in 2021 and 4 of the top 10 breakthrough video games.

With the maturity of the payment model in the North American market, there is still a large space for Chinese video game companies to grow overseas, and the overseas expansion model changed from the traditional volume purchase to the new marketing mix (i.e., the multi-dimensional combination of PR + vertical media + outdoor + CTV + KOL + live broadcast activities, etc.,). This will maximize the coverage of potential audiences and achieve long term and circle breaking marketing. Outdoor advertising can be more accurate with the support of digital technology and programmatic, which will also be an important way to help video game brands hit the overseas market.

The new trend of DTC going overseas

Charlie Que, Senior Vice President of MeetSocial, elaborated on the development and trends of DTC (direct-to-consumer) in recent years. Mr. Que said that export e-commerce in China, especially DTC e-commerce, has been booming in the past two years. In the post-pandemic era, Chinese products have a great advantage in the international market as the trade landscape has changed, bringing in new opportunities for brands. The pandemic has also changed consumers' shopping habits. Online shopping has driven the development of e-commerce platforms, thus accelerating the iteration of the cross-border e-commerce industry.

To make a healthy and sustainable overseas business, DTC faces many challenges, such as high operational difficulty, high customer acquisition cost and long-term difficulty in breakthrough. In the face of these challenges, DTC sellers in different operation stages need to leverage additional tools to deep dive into the entire life cycle of their users to maximize user value with phased and refined business practices. Digital upgrade is fundamental to enhance the competitiveness of their business, which requires the integration of various traffic, creative and marketing methods, and the adoption of omnichannel strategies including programmatic DOOH.

This last year has solidified the notion that programmatic DOOH is a driving force for many advertisers looking for new avenues to market their brands. Buyers can now rely on privacy-compliant data to target key audiences with contextually relevant messaging anywhere in the world. Looking ahead, Hivestack and its partners will continue to work together to create better opportunities for Chinese and global enterprises to drive business outcomes with efficiency, precision and scale. After a very successful event, we are looking forward to seeing more advertisers take the plunge and investing in this unmissable medium.