Moving Walls acquires programmatic adtech firm Ahoy

Moving Walls Group, Singapore-headquartered adtech provider, has acquired adtech company Ahoy. With the acquisition, Ahoy’s mobile advertising capabilities will become part of both Moving Walls’ out-of-home (OOH) planning platform and Location Media Xchange (LMX), a newly formed company that provides supply-side technology to OOH media owners. This comes during a period when global lockdowns have adversely affected OOH media spends, according to a press release.

In a statement to Marketing, a spokesperson from Moving Walls said the acquisition has global footprint, and it will start off by focusing on all markets of Moving Walls including Singapore, Malaysia, India, USA, Indonesia and The Philippines.

Srikanth Ramachandran, founder and group CEO of Moving Walls, said the acquisition will enable OOH media owners to provide a layer of mobile onto billboard campaigns and be an advertising provider.Instead of just depending on historical traffic data around their sites, advertisers can plan campaigns on OOH and mobile as a combination to reach audiences from all screens on a single platform. He added that it will also enable media owners to extract more qualitative insights from their OOH campaigns by running incentivised brand studies on the exposed audiences.

According to the release, Ahoy has built a complete programmatic advertising tech stack with a focus on leveraging location signals and purchase data to improve digital campaigns. The acquisition will allow Ahoy's demand side platform, data management platform for hyperlocal targeting, and control panel for optimising campaigns in real-time, to be integrated into LMX’s platforms. Ahoy has worked with brands such as including Coca Cola, Unilever, Pepsico, and GlaxoSmithKline among others.

Puneet Giri, CEO of Ahoy, said he is excited about the potential of integrating Ahoy’s tech stack to Moving Walls’ and LMX’s existing OOH platforms, and activating a complete location-based marketing platform across four continents (APAC, North America, Africa, and South America). Moving Walls' spokesperson told Marketing that Giri will be joining Moving Walls' senior management as COO, mobile solutions. He will be looking after the global markets.

“Essentially, the location signals that power outdoor advertising measurement can be used to reach similar audience segments online and influence audiences who have already been primed. This is a powerful combination as brands will not be looking to drive footfall to physical stores when people movement starts to pick up. We now have the ability to take our home-grown solution to more than seven markets where Moving Walls already has a presence,” he said. 

Earlier this year in March, Moving Walls Group appointed Omar Shaari as CEO of LMX. In his role, Omar is tasked to accelerate the adoption of technology and data-driven outdoor media solutions in the Malaysian market. Omar last helmed the role of CEO of Posterscope in July 2019, a position he held for two years. He also founded Dentsu One Malaysia (formerly known as Dentsu Utama) in 2005 and was with Dentsu Aegis Network for about 14 years.

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