MANILA, Philippines — Gamned! is a pioneer in real-time bidding digital advertising with clients in seven countries. It has been serving brands such as Ford, De’Longhi, BIC, Heineken and Pernod Ricard to name a few. Gamned aims to collaborate with agencies and brands in the Philippines.
Anas Alhilal, Managing Director for Gamned! Southeast Asia, is a highly seasoned manager and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, recently holding important roles in big organizations such as Lazada. Joined in 2019, Alhilal entered the Gamned! family and has been building the commercial and operational capabilities in the region from scratch. The Managing Director said that the Philippine market is very important to the company, hence, the ramping of operational capabilities in the country to better serve their partners here.
Media buying has long been the practice for marketers and advertisers alike from across the globe. When asked about what he thinks is the future of media buying in the Philippines, Anas said that media buying in the Philippines is one of the strongest in the region as it holds the biggest population next to Indonesia. He went on and said that the Philippines is also very distinct since the Filipinos are very heavy on Facebook. Amazed, Anas said, “They [Filipinos] are very cheerful, very open— people who like to share, and Facebook is a good platform for that. So probably, whatever you launch on Facebook will probably work better in the Philippines than in other countries.”
In the same interview, Anas revealed that Gamned! is in partnership with Facebook, which in turn allows for the company to get a more sophisticated view of data and a more advanced way of targeting the right audience for a specific client. Anas said that Gamned!, when dealing with campaigns that are more sophisticated in terms of creativity, segmentation, and targeting, uses a technology called ‘G Optimizer’ which allows them to serve the best ads for the best audiences. Talking about the advantages of integrating AI in media buying as compared to traditional media buyers/traders, he said, “In [the] case of the media optimizer, we let the AI learn about the performance or the success of the campaigns. Fed by all the campaigns that we had during the last 15 years, we have generated so much data that the optimization can be done automatically.” He added that the company also does dynamic creative optimization of “DCO” which further allows them to create the best ads for the right audience, be it with the background color, the language, and other elements among others.
When asked about cookies and its future— referring to being cookie-less in 2023, Alhilal Anas said that “What we need to keep in mind is that it’s [Philippines] a mobile-first market. Most people access online assets via mobile devices, on which cookies traditionally do not perform well because mobile browsers do not handle them well. He added that since Filipinos are very heavy on mobile phones which generally have more apps not using cookies, being cookie-less in 2023 will not create any big impact on collating data to create the best ads since it’s not there, to begin with. He also circled back on how Gamned! is in partnership with Facebook which then strengthens the company’s capabilities in terms of creating and deploying media in the said platform.
On contextual targeting, he strongly said that contextual targeting is a successful way of targeting since it’s not relying on cookies. He explained that behavioral and demographic targeting, among others, are very much reliant on cookies and it will be affected once the world goes cookie-less, and so, contextual targeting is gaining momentum since it is not affected by cookies.
On Gamned’s culture, he said that three ways he would describe the company is that it is: 1) international, 2) entrusting, and 3) healthy & balanced. He elatedly said, “We are not micro-managers, we trust each other. And the moment that we do that— when a new joiner joins, Gamned! considers them part of the family and is trusted from day one.” He went on and said that this culture is also what they enculturate with their partners— especially being trusting.
Learn more about Gamned! at gamned.com
@Gamned is really proud to officialy present you the new Gamned! website!🤩
The website has been completely renovated, both internally and externally.
The site is accessible in 4 languages and adapted for all of our countries:Check this out! https://t.co/Wbovjgt4WT pic.twitter.com/5pSnHjxwGA
— Gamned! (@Gamned) November 22, 2021
