Nielsen Marketing Cloud launches in Asia Pacific with TVB as its first client

Nielsen’s core measurement business is already live in many major Asia Pacific markets, but the Nielsen Marketing Cloud service has, until this point, been online available in the US and Europe. The reason for this is that the business has been built mostly via acquisitions, the latest of which was VisualDNA in Europe.

Damian Garbaccio, EVP of Nielsen Marketing Cloud, said the TVB deal was key to its launch plans in the region, and that global clients have been calling for services in Asia Pacific for a while.

Speaking to The Drum, he added: “We want to be in the region of Asia Pacific, and clients are specifically looking at China and Australia. With a large business development opportunity with TVB, the sweet spot made it advantageous."

Garbaccio went on to say: “We have the gravitas of Nielsen and we have now put together relationships and different assets, such as Exelate and Gracenote, and we also have very good timing in terms of digital growth. The client is very similar to US and western Europe media powerhouses in a way, it has almost 85% of the broadcast market but is building a next generation business. TVB has a mantra around still maintaining that in the next 50 years."

As for TVB, it sees this as the start of a long process in which it adds data into its business in order to stay competitive.

SK Cheong, executive director and general manager of TVB, told The Drum: “One part of this is us playing catch-up, but then also significant part of it where we think we are going to be setting new standards. It is part from a desire and a strong intention to collect more data and be engaging users in various ways, collaborating with advertisers themselves.”

He added: “We see data as a strategic competitive advantage. We have to learn to play data game more smartly and more strategically to get a greater sense of how to contribute to effectiveness."

Cheong also said that, with such high penetration in the Hong Kong broadcast space, TVB would be able to target around 40-50% of the Hong Kong population with addressable, or targeted, TV advertising by the time it is set up next year. This would be a significant boost for programmatic TV advertising in Hong Kong, and also place TVB among the most forward-thinking broadcasters in Asia Pacific.

In 2017, the partnership will involve setting up the data capabilities required for the DMP side of the deal, and according to Cheong, the following year will see TVB start to work with advertisers, including using advertiser data to better target their TV ads to relevant audience.

Nielsen Marketing Cloud will be staffed locally from Hong Kong initially, but Garbaccio also said some lower hanging fruit may also drive business in other key markets such, as Nielsen has plans to roll out the service in other APAC markets next year.