Malaysia’s leading digital publisher, RMG continues to invest in first-party data

REV Media Group (RMG), the leading digital publisher in Malaysia, has already set its strategic goal to continue to leverage their leading position using Best in Class Adtech & Martech (Advertising & Marketing Technology). This is crucial for RMG in order to maintain its market position as the largest consolidated & unified media assets in Malaysia.

With tech giants (and lilliputs) deciding to put an end to the “open cookie jar” policies by next year, it is inevitable that first-party data will be king again.

This has been Google’s trump card with major implications for how many retailers advertise, and most possibly a boon for retail media operations at major companies as well.

If you don’t have the foggiest, third-party cookies are pieces of code that track what a user or their device does across different websites, in turn helping retailers figure out when to serve an ad to various groups of users.

Cookies are most commonly used for ad retargeting and behavioral advertising. That being said, as Google is already on its way to phase out support for third-party cookies, it could limit the number of ways retailers can target and advertise to users across the web.

Every month, over 15,851,000 million Malaysians browse RMG’s (Media Prima) digital assets, so best in class technologies will go hand in hand with providing the best experience to RMG’s users and their advertisers.

Leveraging the rich data assets, the RMG tech stack will remain central to the publisher’s strategy for connecting brands to our audiences. The key areas include data sciences, data solutions and most importantly, people.

The Death of Third-Party Cookie

With the third-party cookie shut down inevitably approaching, estimated in 2023. It is already known that publisher first-party data will be pivotal for marketers to still have a data driven marketing approach.

In 2021, RMG completed moving away from reliance on third-party cookies across all main websites. Being the largest source of local audience data in Malaysia, RMG remains in a prime position to cater to SEA advertisers for targeting any audience across Malaysia.

Leveraging data in 2021 has been a substantial growth area with brands showing a 168% YoY increase in demand for AudiencePlus, which is RMG’s audience-based digital media solution.

The key to RMG’s success has been in organizing and implementing data management practices across 30 websites from the Media Prima group over the last few years, resulting in improved programmatic performance and revenue growth for non-direct revenue at 30% YoY, even with the uncertain market conditions caused by Covid-19.

Continued integration with RMG’s key stakeholders under MPB will focus on creating even more omni-channel solutions in 2022, and linking RMG’s first-party data will be a natural attraction for the market.

Data as a part of Insight solutions will continue as these products have seen significant growth across the group, made possible by the scale and diversity of the RMG and MPB properties. These forms of insight were developed to help marketers strategize using localized data perspectives and audience data.

Moving forward

Development of new data science products will be key for RMG to maintain technological edge against competitors.

The deployment of new Lookalike models have proven successful in increasing scale and performance for campaigns. In tests showing up to 3x improvement in engagement.

New models and audience optimisation are constantly being created, tested or deployed for various advertiser segments, leading to a 20% increase in overall CTR for data/audience-targeted campaigns in 2021.

Further growth has been observed in new display and video products such as Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Completed View (CPCV) pricing models designed for more performance-based advertisers or outcome-based approaches. Staying in tune with the latest market demands is critical in continuing to innovate the Malaysian digital media market.

Combined with the prolific sponsored content opportunities at the core of RMG, this will create a distinct and comprehensive solution for advertisers to reach all types of Malaysian audiences for sponsored content and data-driven marketing campaigns.

Great content powered by first-party audience data, advanced analytics, and data science based AI can help solve the various issues arising from the Cookiepocalypse for marketers and retailers.

Enhance your digital ad performance. You can now reach the audience that matters the most to your business across multiple ad formats. This allows more accurate audience targeting and minimizes ad wastage, and essentially improves your campaign performance and driving efficiencies.