Parker moves across from Trading Director EMEA, a role that followed 15 years leading the UK investment effort for Kinetic and, previously, Poster Publicity. Parker will use his considerable experience of the investment workings of the Out of Home media industry to assert a new level of influence for the agency to ensure Kinetic continues to drive maximum value for its clients on a global scale. He will be supported by Kinetic’s significant investment in the deployment of unified global systems.

Steve Ridley, Global CEO Kinetic, comments: “Nick’s unparalleled commercial experience in Out of Home and his strong UK and EMEA background makes him perfectly placed to ensure Kinetic delivers investment leadership for our business and clients on a global scale.”

Ridley adds, “Kinetic is now exerting unrivalled leadership in Out of Home media on a global scale and the time is right to bring our investment expertise to the fore in this area. We are becoming more joined up in both our thinking and commercial behaviour and there will be much more to come from Kinetic in this global space. ”

Nick Parker adds: “The challenges facing Out of Home on a global and commercial scale right now and in the coming years are exciting and I’m really looking forward to driving maximum value for our clients on the global stage.”

For more information contact:

Nick Mawditt, Kinetic Worldwide +44 (0)20 7150 6035 nick.mawditt@kineticww.com

Jennifer Evans, Kinetic Worldwide +44 (0)20 7150 6127 jennifer.evans@kineticww.com

“SN: Xchange fundamentally changes the way that we can track and deliver our clients’ digital campaigns,” said David Krupp, President, US. “For the first time, we can see how a campaign is pacing in real-time—hourly, daily, weekly, and can make the necessary changes to ensure that our clients’ campaign requirements are achieved.”

Zurich, a commercial insurance company for mid-to-large size companies, is one of Kinetic’s first clients to use the reporting tool. “We’ve previously seen success using digital place-based media to reach our target audience,” said Jeremy Ahto, Zurich’s head of brand marketing in North America. “Having the added benefit of the platform’s impressions tracking is important to us, as we can more closely monitor our campaign to see how the impressions stack up across all of the outlets we’re using.”

SN: Xchange’s ad serving functionality is powered by Vistar Media, a media technology company that specializes in providing digital serving capabilities for digital place-based media. The SN:X product suite includes an additional toolset that sits on top of the Vistar platform, which allows digital place-based campaigns to be planned in a similar fashion to other media with impressions and estimated reach, established by Nielsen OnLocation. “Our solution uses the enhanced capabilities the digital world has to offer at the intersection of physical location. The idea of a third party ad server is revolutionary for digital place-based media, but standard practice in online display and search,” said Patrick Bonomo, EVP, Spafax Networks.

For more information, please contact:
Sara Hogan 212-792-7475 sara.hogan@kineticww.com

About Kinetic:
Kinetic Worldwide is the global leader in connecting brands with consumers in the environments they engage with while away from the home. As the Americas’ largest Out-of-Home agency, Kinetic utilizes a deep understanding of consumer behaviors to develop outcome-based marketing solutions for more than 200 clients across six offices in the Unites States. The agency also delivers wide-ranging media expertise in aviation, digital place-based, healthcare, and multicultural, as well as data analytics and large-format printing services. Owned by WPP and operated under tenthavenue, Kinetic Worldwide services clients across 38 offices around the globe. www.kineticww.com

“…another WPP unit, massive out-of-home, mobile and experiential marketing division tenthavenue, set out to reorganize the out-of-home media-buying marketplace, utilizing an almost identical approach that it has used for the online industry.

Specifically, tenthavenue unit Spafax began by creating its own “DSP,” or demand-side platform for buying digital out-of-home media early last spring. Then it began using the massive media-buying leverage of tenthavenue units like Kinetic (the largest buyer of out-of-home media in the world) to begin organizing the data necessary to buy audiences in out-of-home media, the way agency trading desks like Xaxis do online.

It started in October by once again working with Nielsen to develop a new index for measuring, planning, buying and posting the value of digital out-of-home network media buys. The new index, which will be built on top of Nielsen’s existing On-Location service, will incorporate sophisticated consumer segmentation data from another consumer media behavior data supplier, GfK MRI, as well as lifestyle and media consumption data from the Media Behavior Institute, which is partly owned by Nielsen and GfK MRI.

The new index, which will enable advertisers and agencies to identify a digital out-of-home media buy “down to the sub-block level, based on longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates,” says Spafax Executive Vice President Patrick Bonomo, is a crucial next step for the industry, as well as Spafax’s development of an exchange-based approach to digital out-of-home media that will replicate what has been evolving in the online display advertising marketplace.

In essence, Spafax’s Bonomo, and veteran of the online media industry, has begun replicating the online industry’s infrastructure for out-of-home, creating the opportunity to buy out-of-home audiences in a biddable, real-time marketplace just like online media.

While out-of-home may not have the kind of audience targeting data that online user cookie profiles represent, Bonomo said it has other valuable data, especially geographic navigation coordinates that can be used to pinpoint a consumer’s lifestyles and behaviors based on physical locations.

“Everything we are focused on is API-driven,” Bonomo explains, referring to the acronym for an applications programming interface that enables third-party developers to access data or write computer programming code to interact with or enable applications tied to another platform’s computers. Because digital out-of-home networks utilize essentially the same infrastructure as online media — a computer serving content and/or advertising to a screen — Bonomo says he believes such APIs will enable Spafax and other agencies to access data directly from digital out-of-home network screens down to the“longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates.”

The implications of that infrastructure go well beyond media-buying, and will ultimately impact creative, as marketers gain the ability to target specific messages and creative formats to consumers in specific locations.

The last key component of out-of-home’s new infrastructure is an online exchange where agencies can access and bid out-of-home inventory the same way they do online. Spafax also helped some online industry vets develop a similar model, incubating Vistar Networks, which is the out-of-home industry’s equivalent of an online audience buying exchange…”

Read the full article at: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/190106/change-agent-media-agency-holding-company-of-the.html#ixzz2I2kHYzcc

Taylor’s appointment as CEO for the UK business adds further strength to the senior management team following Kinetic’s recent announcements of King F. Lai as CEO, Kinetic Asia Pacific, Christian Scholz as CEO, Kinetic Group Germany and the promotion of David Payne to Chief Development Office in the US.

Andy Jonesco, CEO EMEA, said: “I am delighted that we have been able to attract somebody of Stuart’s calibre. He brings a wealth of high quality experience gained during a 25 year career across both national and local media. His proven track record and expertise will provide a fresh perspective on our sector and will build further on the work to date to ensure that Kinetic – as market leader – remains best placed to provide best in class solutions to both clients and partners in this rapidly changing and evolving market.”

Speaking of his appointment, Stuart Taylor said: “It’s a time of great innovation in the Out of Home sector, with exciting solutions for those brands that recognise the growing role it has to play as connected devices drive the convergence of content, transactions and communication. Kinetic, with its extended network of partners within tenthavenue, is leading the insight and understanding of audiences on the move, so to have the opportunity to lead the UK team at this particular time is too good an opportunity to miss.”

Prior to this appointment Taylor was Chief Executive of Guardian Media Group Radio (GMG Radio), which operated 14 broadcasting licences across the UK and under his leadership, the business was transformed from loss to profit and achieved record listening audiences. Following this success the business was ultimately sold to Global Radio in 2012.

For more information contact:

Cass Stainton 07798 554520 c.staintonpr@gmail.com

Nick Mawditt, Kinetic Worldwide 020 7150 4635 nick.mawditt@kineticww.com

Forward, which was established 26 years ago and became part of the WPP group in 2001, announced the opening of its first international office in China in June last year.

Simon Hobbs, CEO of Forward said: “We are really excited about the potential for this new relationship. Forward’s skills sit really well with tenthavenue’s, and we believe that Joule’s mobile offering and Kinetic’s outdoor specialism, combined and aligned with our content offering, will be very attractive to clients. Combining our strengths with Spafax to offer expertise across retail; luxury; travel and other sectors, in an increasing global network, makes absolute sense and we’re looking forward to working together on even stronger programmes of work for clients across multiple sectors in 2013. ”

Rupert Day, CEO of tenthavenue said: “Forward, with its offices in the UK and China, builds on tenthavenue’s capability to deliver relevant Content aligned with specific client objectives across different environments”.

For more information about Forward and creating bespoke digital solutions, please contact:

Helen Ketchin                                                                (helen.ketchin@theforwardgroup.com)

or

Steph Smith, PR Consultant, 07803 853006 (stephsmith00@googlemail.com)

About Forward (www.theforwardgroup.com)

•  Now 26 years old, Forward was one of the UK’s first publishing agencies ever established.

•  Forward’s heritage is in magazines, but it was one of the first UK agencies to set up an in-house digital team.

•  Forward’s digital work is now growing at twice the speed of the industry average.

•  Forward was the first UK agency to introduce planning, insight and segmentation into UK publishing.

•  WPP bought Forward in 2001, making it part of the world’s largest marketing communication group.

If airlines want to be in the content business (and they already are), they need to be platform agnostic, serving passengers with relevant, revenue-driven content wherever they are.

The inflight entertainment industry has “hotted up” recently with the merger of Global Eagle – Row44 and Advanced Inflight Alliance – based upon a bundling of services. In this instance, it’s the bundling of Content and Technology (inflight connectivity).

Here at tenthavenue and Spafax we agree that the market is looking at a level of bundling but in our opinion there are a number of alternative options available to the industry.

Bundling of IFE and Media Sales

In our model, the provider of the Content – the “experience” which gets customers to interact – is also responsible for the media sales around it. After all this is the core revenue model for mainstream media, whether they’re “old” or “new,” owned or licenced.

Bundling of IFE with the Broader Brand Proposition

Inflight entertainment is so much more than distributing Content (created or curated) to passengers. If done well, it has the ability to communicate the airline’s brand values to customers in a way that is aligned with all other communications distributed in the air, at home, or on the go.

Focusing on these two ideas allows Spafax to deliver either the greatest immediate value to the airlines or building brand loyalty (or both, if we bundle the bundles, to build yet further ancillary revenues). It allows us to be platform/technology agnostic and to build connections across every touchpoint throughout the journey cycle.

Kinetic Worldwide, the world’s leading planner and buyer of Out of Home media, has appointed King F. Lai as CEO, Kinetic Asia Pacific, effective 1 January 2013.

As CEO, King Lai will oversee Kinetic’s operations in India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, with focus on the expanding Kinetic China operation.

King joins from MediaCom China where he served as Managing Partner, overseeing the relationship with Swatch Group, the world’s leading manufacturer and marketer of mechanical and quartz timepieces.

King brings with him more than 25 years of top management experience in advertising, marketing and management.  He has held leadership positions at Initiative Worldwide as Asia Pacific President; at Nasdaq-listed Chinese portal Netease.com as CEO; and at Saatchi & Saatchi as CEO, China.

Steve Ridley, Global CEO Kinetic comments: “King’s appointment represents our strong commitment to our business and clients in Asia Pacific. His extensive Asian market knowledge, international outlook and a very successful management track record will strengthen Kinetic’s continued leadership in the region.”

King Lai adds: “Consumers are wholeheartedly embracing the technologies that converge communications, connectivity, content and commerce.  These always-on platforms blur the @home and Out of Home divide of consumers’ brand experiences and more importantly, their expectations from brands.  Kinetic and its extended network of partners within tenthavenue are leading the global understanding of audiences as they engage with the world when out of the home. This is our future and I could not be more excited to be a part of it.”

King will report to Steve Ridley and be based in Shanghai.

The team there have been working over the last few months with a number of research companies to create tools that map, target and measure where different audience segments are during the day. The focus is on understanding consumer intent, which is derived from their location, time of day and activity. The innovative part of this approach is that the audience information goes down to a sub-block city level (based on latitude and longitude) which can then be ascribed to inventory and purchased based on consumer pathing. Ultimately this provides a powerful tool for us to create more precise, efficient media plans as well as laser target content/messages relevant to the consumer’s mood and intent. This leads to a greater level of engagement which will allow us to start developing performance models that are based upon achieving a specific outcome.

The team has aligned with Nielsen to develop a sophisticated calibration to the product, which is what the press release highlights this week. With Nielsen’s experience in the out-of-home space and rigor to their data, they are working with the team to stabilizing a mobile panel from Media Behaviour Institute to create consumer media tendencies while they are on-the-go, through their day. An important added benefit to working with Nielsen is that it is a common currency across all video experiences in the US – whether they are in Television; Video Digital Placed Based Screens. This then provides the ability to connect the video, on-the-go experience to the rest of the media planning process.

For more coverage:

Media Post

“WPP’s Spafax Teams With Nielsen To Develop Digital OOH Index, Calls It A Vital Next Step Toward ‘Exchange’ Model”

A cross-continental WPP collaboration with TNS Australia’s Carolyn Childs, Same Same, But Different: Understanding Emerging Markets explores some of the culturally complex issues that are changing the world of media, marketing and travel around the world. Examples include how Brazil became one of the most digitally engaged countries in the world, why sex in advertising is okay in India but not in China, how mobile phones have transformed banking in Africa and more.

You can download it here for free http://books.sparksheet.com/samesame/ and test your knowledge with the interactive emerging markets quiz game http://play.sparksheet.com/samesame/.

For more information about Sparksheet or to become a contributor, contact Sparksheet editor Dan Levy at dlevy@spafax.com.

Kinetic’s guide, produced in conjunction with production and creative technology company Grand Visual, provides media agencies, creatives and clients with an overview of all available DOOH formats, with all the information needed to create appropriate copy – from technical guidelines to loop lengths and interactivity potential. The handbook gives an insight into every category of screen, from one-off locations to nationwide networks.

Kinetic anticipates that by the end of 2012, spend will reach over £153m, an increase of 23% on 2011.  If this level is achieved, DOOH will account for 16-17% of the OOH marketplace in the UK.

Significant recent investment has gone into making digital OOH formats more interactive.  The increased availability and demand for campaign activation is becoming an increasing feature of the UK market. Thanks to continued investment by media owners into their respective portfolios, advertisers are able to satisfy their need to truly engage with their consumers. Kinetic provides the insight and perspective to truly understand the value of digital OOH in the UK.

For more information please contact our people at Kinetic or view the handbook at here.