Merkle Science works with government agencies and blockchain companies in detecting and preventing illegal use of digital assets

Singapore-based blockchain monitoring startup Merkle Science today announced a S$1.1 million (US$804,000) seed funding round led by LuneX Ventures and SGInnovate.

Digital Currency Group, Kenetic, and Entrepreneur First also participated in the funding round.

For LuneX, which is a dedicated fund for blockchain investments by Golden Gate Ventures, the funding round is the first lead investment it concluded since its appointment to SGInnovate’s panel of co-investors, under the Startup SG Equity scheme.

For Merkle Science, the funding will be used to build their technology and expand their sales team across Asia.

“We believe that the co-investment by LuneX and SGInnovate would be synergistic for our growth and development, as we look to build Merkle Science as a global brand from Singapore. Kenetic, DCG and Entrepreneur First would further help us establish ourselves as a trust provider globally,” said Merkle Science Co-Founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik in a press statement.

Also Read: Blockchain-powered ride-hailing app TADA officially launches in Cambodia

Merkle Science works with law enforcement agencies and blockchain companies to provide a risk-monitoring solution to detect and prevent the illegal use of digital assets.

The company combines both off-chain and on-chain data with the goal to provide for better analysis, and said to be the one of the first players to apply fraud sciences to analyse blockchain data.

Its co-founders have combined previous experience from Naspers-backed crypto exchange Luno, Paypal, Bank of America, and Instamojo.

“This space is quite attractive due to the increasing cryptocurrency AML regulations coming about worldwide. Due to this, new compliance tools for blockchain monitoring would be required not just by digital currency companies but also regulated financial institutions entering the space,” LuneX Ventures Partner Kenrick Drijkoningen commented on the investment.

LuneX Ventures’s partnership with SGInnovate was announced in late April. The partnership aimed to invest in early stage deep tech startups.

Also Read: 10 crazy blockchain ideas for Facebook

A recent Global Startup Ecosystem Report by Startup Genome has revealed deep tech as the fastest growing category in the global startup industry.

“Nearly half (45 per cent) of startups being created globally now are in deep tech-related sub-sectors -twice the share they made up in 2010-20115. Moreover, the four fastest growing startup sub-sectors are all deep tech-related,” the report stated.

Singapore itself has become an attractive hub for corporate R&D and PhD research students, which has led to an abundance of deep tech talent.

—

Image Credit: Merkle Science

The post (Exclusive) Merkle Science raises US$804K in seed funding round led by LuneX, SGInnovate appeared first on e27.

Pencil is a creative AI company that seeks to automate creativity but “without killing it”

Singapore-based creative AI company Pencil announced that it has secured US$1.1 million (S$ 1.5 million) seed funding led by Singapore and US-based VC Wavemaker Partners along with SGInnovate and Entrepreneur First.

It also launched its first enterprise product called Studio, a creative platform for advertisers.

Investor-advisors for this seed round include NUS Associate Professor Min-Yen Kan and members of Xoogler Angels, a leading angel network of Google executives in Southeast Asia.

The money will be used on Studio and company expansion.

The company said that the funding will be used to hiring engineering and customer success talent, grow proprietary datasets, and extend patent-pending technology.

Studio seeks to take advantage of recent advancements in AI to enable creative and media teams to generate personalised advertising content, both language and visuals with more speed and scale.

Pencil said that Studio’s technology works by first using computational power to experiment, then AI pattern detection proceeds to spot the best ideas. This approach ensures divergence and surprise in creative outputs, while at the same time also applying historical learnings to improve campaign performance, provides predictive feedback to users that suggests whether generated content is likely to be effective, differentiated, and “on brand”.

Also Read: Skillenza, India’s answer to Triplebyte, raises US$1M in Pre-Series A funding round

Generating AI content using Studio is collaborative, with the human user firmly in control. It lets creatives brief the platform and then review generated content, providing feedback in the form of approvals or edits which in turn train and refine the AI.

Pencil claims that its mission is to address the problem with advertising today, in which many creative teams get overwhelmed by the volume of content that modern digital advertising requires, resulting in the inability to focus on ideas which reach consumers creatively and effectively.

“The number one pain point of marketing teams is increasing their ROI. Almost every solution in the market proposes doing so through greater targeting or better customer profiling. But these approaches are fundamentally limited by the amount of content, be it visuals or text, that one can humanly produce. Pencil takes a new and complementary approach, allowing teams to generate and distribute personalised content at scale using AI,” said Paul Santos, Managing Partner of Wavemaker Partners.
–

The post AI company Pencil secures US$1.1M seed funding led by Wavemaker appeared first on e27.

MVL Foundation is behind the launch of Singapore-based ride-hailing application TADA In Phnom Penh

The ride-hailing company TADA, a product of MLV Foundation, announced that it has entered Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

TADA claims to be one of the first consumer applications in the world to utilise blockchain technology. It promises zero commission taken from the drivers. The app was launched in Singapore last July.

“Our purpose has always been to improve the lives of drivers, create a better experience for riders and deliver a trusted ride-hailing application through innovation for all our users,” said Kay Woo, Founder and CEO of MVL.

TADA also collaborated with Pi Pay and Alipay to facilitate digital payments.

According to Tomas Pokorny, CEO of Pi Pay, the collaboration marked another step forward to encourage more Cambodians to adopt cashless payments in the digital era.

Also Read: AI company Pencil secures US$1.1M seed funding led by Wavemaker

Representatives from the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and TADA’s driver partners were also present to witness the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between MVL and Pi Pay.

To date, TADA said it has operated in Singapore, Vietnam, and Cambodia with more than 30,000 drivers and 230,000 users.

The official launch and partnerships are also celebrated with TADA announcing a Free Rides Day, where riders will get to enjoy free rides on May 10 from 6 am to 11.59 pm (Capped at $3 and limited to the first 2,000 redemptions) by using the promo code TADANOW. Driver incentives would also be offered to commemorate the TADA launch during its beta-test phase.
–

The post Blockchain-powered ride-hailing app TADA officially launches in Cambodia appeared first on e27.

From speaker breakdowns, attendee numbers and exhibitor stats, here is what you can expect at #Echelon2019

Get insights from the best of the best at Echelon Asia Summit 2019. Happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Enter promo code ECHELONFUTURE for free tickets!

It’s the time of the year again as we’re building up toward Echelon Asia Summit 2019, and here’s a multitude of reasons why you should be excited for the event on 23-24 May in Singapore!

3 stages, 65 sessions, 150 speakers

Our line-up celebrates the best of Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem with household names such as James Chang, CEO of Lazada Singapore; Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures; Blake Larson, Managing Director, Lalamove.

Hearing personally from the very people who headline the trends and happenings you’ve been reading about will be a strong indication of where the ecosystem’s headed next.

While Echelon veterans would already be familiar with the Future stage and Founder stage, this year’s conference will introduce a brand new Capital Stage.

For the ecosystem to continue growing sustainably, we will also address key issues to ensure inclusivity and accountability, discussing topics such as “#MeToo two years on; Has the tech world done enough to create a safe space for diversity and level the playing field?”.

12,000 attendees, 250 exhibitors, 10 government delegations

This year’s event is expected to comprise of 45 per cent tech startups, 25 per cent corporates and 12 per cent investors, with incubators & accelerators, SMEs, developers, students, media organizations and regulators making up the rest of the demographic.

The 50 per cent growth from last year’s 8,000 is a result of our decision to subsidize ticket prices at US$10, as we continue championing startups and inclusivity, especially for the overseas delegation who make up slightly less than half of the total attendee size.

Also Read: Meet 6 of our corporate partners who will FORGE their corporate-startup innovation at Echelon

250 exhibitors is a new record for Echelon, and we have a diverse group of companies with SaaS, Fintech and AI forming the top representation in this year’s cohort.

Echelon will also host 10 government agencies – from Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Korea, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, – who will each bring a delegation of startups to Singapore, and also attend a 5-hour closed door forum.

4,000 minutes, 320 meetings, 45 investors

Echelon Connect will continue to catalyze the region’s fundraising and deal flow activity through 15min speed-dating sessions between startups and investors in-attendance.

This programme boasts a track-record of 15% startups raising follow-on funding post-event, and participating VCs this year include the likes of Monk’s Hill Ventures, Jungle Ventures and Quest Ventures to name a few.

6,000 minutes, 200 meetings, 20 corporate partners

The newly introduced FORGE aims to drive towards tangible value and outcomes by matching startups who wish to explore business opportunities with the bigger boys, as well as organizations who are serious about their corporate innovation ambitions.

Also Read: Don’t tell anybody, but this riddle can help you get to #Echelon2019

To illustrate a few business cases – NEC Asia Pacific wants to partner startups to co-develop and go-to-market with a complete solution for “payment by facial recognition”, Dentsu Aegis Network is looking to acquire adtech and martech solutions, while PT Sampoerna is looking adopt HR tech to support 20,000 staff for payroll, leave application and other employee matters.

600 applications, 20 countries, 110 startups, 1 judges choice 

Echelon is proud to be hosting the region’s largest startup Demo Day annually on the TOP100 stage. This year, we’re showcasing 110 promising companies curated from over 20 countries and 2-months worth of qualifiers across the continent.

This programme will culminate in the TOP100 finals featuring 10 startups who will vye for EnterpriseSG’s S$50,000 StartupSG grant. Other prizes include return flights and access to Web in Travel’s boot camp later this year, day passes to Greenhouse Co-working, as well as complimentary lifetime subscription to AntiHack.me’s email spoofing solutions.

300 premier tickets, 1 seamless experience

If you can’t contain your excitement already, engage us on social media at #Echelon2019, and we’ll see you there 🙂

—

Get insights from the best of the best at Echelon Asia Summit 2019. Happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Enter promo code ECHELONFUTURE for free tickets!

Photo by Ambreen Hasan on Unsplash

The post Everything you need to know about #Echelon2019 appeared first on e27.

Titip Doa was inspired by a common habit among Indonesian Muslims of asking pilgrims to pray for them as they depart to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage

A common habit among Indonesian Muslims during the Hajj pilgrimage season, which peaked on the Idul Adha celebration, is to ask departing pilgrims to pray for those left in the home country –a practice known as “menitip doa”.

Prior to departure, family and friends would gather at the pilgrims’ residence to send them off. Often these visitors would also convey their requests for prayers during the visit, inspired by the belief that a prayer read during the pilgrimage will have a greater likelihood to be answered.

Often the requests can get very specific and elaborate, and one pilgrim can receive a great number of them.

When Muhammad Senoyodha Brennaf went on a pilgrimage in 2016, to keep things easier, he and his wife created a simple survey form for family and friends to list down their prayers requests. They ended up receiving 190 entries, with topic ranging from curing illnesses such as cancer, success in education and marriage, to being given the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage themselves.

“When we read these prayer request [during the pilgrimage], the more we read these prayers, the deeper we felt their hopes and struggles … We would like for others to be able to feel the same sense of empathy,” Brennaf explained in an email to e27.

“Hopefully this will get people to start thinking and caring for each other, at least by praying for each other,” he added.

Brennaf, who is the CEO of local startup Astrajingga, then built a mobile app called Titip Doa.

Through the mobile app, users are able to submit their prayers request to be read by other users. Users are able to monitor the progress of their requests; once the prayer request has been read by other users, there will be information on the identity, location, and how many times the prayer has been read.

Prayer request going into the Titip Doa database will not be edited or curated, though users can report any request that is deemed in appropriate.

The app is set to be launched in mid-January for Android devices.

Also Read: How AyoPoligami app becomes the most hated app among Indonesian women today

The rise of halal-tech

 

Being the biggest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia provides a great potential for businesses working to provide halal services to the market, from food, clothing, to travel and tourism. Several startups in the Southeast Asian region has built platforms that cater to needs of the Muslim audiences.

Astrajingga itself has built online travel agency Halal Local and personal finance management platform Monicca.

Despite the great market potential, Brennaf said that his intention in building the app is purely for charity. The service will continue to be provided for free; he will not even put advertisements on the platform.

“Even if, in the future, there will be any intention to commercialise it, then the Titip Doa app will utilise big data to process Sentiment Analysis. This market sentiment analysis will be useful for many things, such as understanding the most common aspiration [of citizens] in a city, who is the leader that many people are expecting for, public opinion on certain issues, and many more,” he explained.

He also has no specific target with the launch of the app.

“But seeing the response towards the prayer request form that my wife and I created in 2016, hopefully it will gain the attention of many users. Hopefully, if God willing, we can get 10,000 downloads within six months,” he said.

Brennaf is also working on the app all by himself; he has just begun to recruit volunteers to help on the project.

“For the future, I already have a clear picture on the upgrades that we are going to implement, and the stages in doing it. But it will adjust the market validation process following the launch,” he said.

“If we are talking about a more serious process such as expansion, diversification, or even pitching [the product] to venture capital firms, then there is such possibility. As the Titip Doa app begin to grow significantly and have a good potential, then we will certainly need external support for this project to grow bigger and give greater impact,” he closed.

—

Image Credit: pansiriphoto / 123RF Stock Photo

The post Meet Titip Doa, the app that will get strangers to pray for you during Hajj pilgrimage appeared first on e27.

Looking to grow your portfolio or find the next big venture to support?

Looking to grow your portfolio or find the next big venture to support? Echelon Asia Summit 2019 gives you unprecedented access to the cream of Southeast Asia’s tech startup ecosystem for two whole days. Here are some highlights of activities targeted toward investors.

Showcase: Korea Startups Spotlight Hour

• What: 7 Startups from South Korea curated by Korea Mobile Internet Association (MOIBA)  will be pitching
• When: Day 2, May 2 at 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
• Where: TOP100 Fight Club stage
• Featured startups: Daliworks, Ideaconcert, PayRaiz, Unidocs, LiveK, Toy’s Myth, and Smart Study

Showcase: Taiwan Spotlight in collaboration with e27 Echelon Roadshow and TOP100 brought to you by AsiaIOA

Founded in Taiwan, AsiaIOA is a service provider for IHLs, corporate accelerators and government innovation agencies, focused on connecting startup ecosystem between East Asia and Southeast Asia through offline event management, and program curation.

• What: 3 Startups from Taiwan curated by AsiaIOA will be pitching
• When: Day 2, May 2 at 11:000 AM – 11:20 AM
• Where: TOP100 Fight Club stage

Showcase: Kazakhstan Startups Pitching

• What: 2 Startups from Kazakhstan curated by Astana Hub will be pitching
• When: Day 2, May 2 at 11:20 AM – 11:30 AM
• Where: TOP100 Fight Club stage
• Featured startups: Clockster and ISSU

Showcase: K-Pitch Demo Day

• What: Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA)  Demo Day — 9 startups from South Korea and curated by KOICA will be pitching
• When: Day 2, May 24 11:30 AM – 1:00PM
• Where: TOP100 Fight Club stage
• Featured startups: Glory & Tech, ShareLight, PiQuant, NEO TOP, VUNO, Flint Lab, TreePlanet, MoreDream, K.O.A.
• RSVP here.

NEXTICORN – Next Indonesian Unicorn 2019

The NextICorn (Next Indonesian Unicorns) platform streamlines and promotes Indonesia’s most investable startups to the most capable investors domestically, and across the globe. Backed by the ICT Ministry, BKPM, AMVESINDO and EY Indonesia, NEXTICORN promotes the growth of Indonesia’s digital sector – which has attracted over USD 4 billion in Foreign Direct Investments in 2017, resulting in over $24B digital economy and directly empowered millions of SMEs in 2018.

• What: Networking and lunch
• When: Day 1, May 23 at 12:00 to 2:00 PM
• Where: Conference Room J, Singapore Expo Hall 3A
• RSVP here.

Korea Mobile Internet Business Association (MOIBA) Networking Dinner at Echelon After Party

• What: Dinner and Networking with startups from South Korea, exhibiting under MOIBA pavilion
• When: Day 2, May 24, 2019 at 7:00 PM
• Where: Canvas, 20 Upper Circular Rd, #B1-01/06, The Riverwalk, Singapore
• Featured startups: Daliworks, Ideaconcert, PayRaiz, Unidocs, LiveK, Toy’s Myth, and Smart Study
• RSVP here.

—-

Get insights from the best of the best at Echelon Asia Summit 2019, happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Get your free Starter tickets here.

The post 6 Echelon Asia Summit 2019 exclusives the investor community can look forward to appeared first on e27.

“It’s what you do in the dark that gets you in the light.”

Get insights from the best of the best at Echelon Asia Summit 2019, happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Get your free Starter tickets here.

An interesting realities about running a startup is the fact that early decisions often impact the ability for the company to scale when it grows. A clunky product might hold back a fantastic business model. Truly global companies usually build a product that fall into the category of, “the more you use it, the more you love it”.

Once we get past the ideation stage, startups are all about company building — it’s execution over everything.

But how exactly should an entrepreneur go about ensuring their product has what it takes?

Pieter Kemps, a Principal at Sequoia Capital, will be speaking at Echelon on how early-stage startups can shape products, build for scale and create categories in Southeast Asia.

The VC will talk about what that means for Founders – and how they can build and tap their network for help, hacks and hands-on expertise.

Kemps has a long history in Product Management — having started a company in Japan at a young age. According to his company bio, he is fascinated by the idea of building something from scratch.

This requires hard work, tenacity and an ability to take feedback. Kemps mentions a quote from Michael Phelps in his bio,

“It’s what you do in the dark that gets you in the light.”

In many ways, the parallels to entrepreneurship are obvious.

The session will be moderated by Bhaskar Prabhakara, the Co-Founder and CEO of WeInvest. WeInvest is a B2B2C robo-advisory platform. WeInvest has built a platform for wealth management that it sells to institutions so they can provide the service to their customers.

—

Get insights from the best of the best at Echelon Asia Summit 2019, happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Get your free Starter tickets here.

Photo by True Agency on Unsplash

The post Sequoia wants to help young companies get their product right at #Echelon2019 appeared first on e27.

The US$281-million startup facility was built in 2017 by Xavier Niel, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Kima Ventures

With an aim to attract international startups into Paris and make entrepreneurship more accessible, serial entrepreneur and investor Xavier Niel built STATION F in Paris in 2017.

Niel — the founder of telecom operator Free Mobile, tuition-free coding school 42 in France and California, and hyper-active early-stage VC firm Kima Ventures — also wanted to add more coherence and unity to the fragmented startup ecosystem.

Located in central Paris, the 34,000 sq meter building hosts an entire startup ecosystem under one roof.  The facility hosts not just local startups but startups from across the world, including Asia, such as Wishupon (South Korea).

At STATION F, you can find a startup zone with 3,000 startup desks divided into 30 different startup programmes — including Facebook’s Startup Garage, vente-privee’s Impulse and its own Founders Program. STATION F also has event spaces, offices for investors and tech companies, a makerspace, a co-working coffee-shop, and a giant food market.

A co-living space for 600 entrepreneurs is also under construction 15 minutes away from STATION F.

So far EUR250 million (US$281 million) has been invested in STATION F.

STATION F campus is divided into three zones: SHARE, CREATE, CHILL. The SHARE zone provides a variety of event spaces and services for entrepreneurs. In this space, two areas are open to the public: an Anticafé (a co-working coffee shop where you can pay by the hour) and an innovative Post office.

The SHARE zone also includes six of the eight events spaces available on campus, including a 370-seat auditorium and a ‘creativity room’ built for brainstorming sessions. All events happening on campus revolve around entrepreneurship and creativity.

There are numerous startup services in the SHARE zone, like a French Tech area that provides direct access to 35 key administrations and experts.

There is also a Tech Lab, managed by Techshop Ateliers Leroy Merlin, with 3D printers, laser cutters, and workshops.

In addition, several private offices host major tech companies like Amazon Web Services and Zendesk, and a VC areas with members like Balderton Capital, Index Ventures, Accel Partners, Alven, Ventech, Kima Ventures, and more.

The post (In photos) A stroll around STATION F, one of the biggest startup campuses in the world appeared first on e27.

SalesCandy just launched in Malaysia 18 months ago

SalesCandy International Sdn Bhd, a Malaysia-based salestech startup, has entered Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The company said it has struck multiple contracts across Southeast Asia in the first quarter of 2019 and is readying up operation in the said countries.

“With a combined population of more than 650 million and smartphone penetration in Southeast Asia are on the rise, the adoption of digital solutions and technology in sales management, are still lagging behind. We are confident that our product will help businesses improve their sales productivity by closing more sales and bringing down cost per sale.” said Stanley Chee, CEO & co-founder of SalesCandy.

SalesCandy’s product is SalesCandy LMS that features a mobile app action-based Lead Management System (LMS) with a real-time routing mechanism. This allows a salesperson to respond to enquiries coming from multiple online and offline channels within five minutes.

SalesCandy LMS (lead management system) app is currently available in four languages: English, Thai, Vietnamese, and Bahasa Indonesia.

SalesCandy claims that right now, its platform serves more property players than other sectors.

Also Read: New US$50 million venture fund launches in the Philippines

Beyond regional expansion, SalesCandy said it has a bigger vision. “We aim to create tighter coordination between the property developers, real estate agencies, and the banks, that they can use SalesCandy to shorten the sales journey of home buyers – from the point where they book a unit to getting a mortgage loan. In the next 3 to 12 months, we will centre our product rollout around developing an ecosystem that helps both our banking and property clients to bridge the missing links, improve sales service level, and ultimately, close more sales,” said Chee.
–

The post Malaysian salestech startup SalesCandy sets foot in neighboring regions appeared first on e27.

A Facebook Founder called for the breakup of Facebook this week. Will it come to pass?

Calls to break up the big tech companies may be overdone depending on which side of the regulatory and political aisle you are on. But a loosening of the grip by Google and Facebook on the global advertising market will prove to be a good thing for a burgeoning ad tech industry.

Any time a monopoly or, in this case, duopoly is unchallenged for too long it harms innovation. That’s certainly become true of ad tech of late. Google announced earnings at the end of April and, as expected, we saw its advertising businesses increasingly pressured by newcomers like Amazon – sending the Alphabet stock down 15 per cent, its worst day decline in nearly seven years.

To be clear, I’m a fan of Google and Facebook. They’ve done amazing things for global advertising, connecting billions of consumers seamlessly to brands and marketers. But that has sometimes come at the expense of opportunities for smaller ad tech providers and would-be innovators.

The first signs of trouble for the duopoly became apparent during the previous earnings season in February, when Amazon reported that it earned more than $10 billion in 2018 income – most of which came from its advertising business. That raised eyebrows.

Indeed, Amazon’s e-commerce platform, which has a natural ability to gather consumer data, gives it an edge over Facebook. Google is more diversified with its search business and its Android mobile operating system, which powers most of the world’s smartphones. But traffic acquisition costs for Google have been very obviously rising as a percentage of revenue.

Competition is forcing both Facebook and Google’s costs up in the advertising space. With Amazon as the new competitor, we will move into a healthier state of affairs with a little bit more room for smaller ad tech players to steal slices of the giants’ pie.

I’m a strong believe that ad tech start-ups and innovators have an important role to play in the future of advertising, with a few big challenges on the immediate horizon that they can help solve.

One big challenge is around how to reduce ad loads on consumers, by which I mean how advertising evolves to continue delivering margins and profits while reducing the disruption caused to consumers. This tends to happen when ads are not delivered seamlessly in a way that flows with the content experience they are consuming, be it on a browser, TV, tablet, or mobile.

For example, rather than interrupting a consumer watching a TV show with a regular advert, a mixed reality experience prompt could be offered that invites them to learn more about a product they just saw on their favourite TV show. It could be Tesla’s latest electric car or Samsung’s new folding smartphone.

The technology already exists for the mixed-reality prompt to be delivered to the consumer’s tablet or smartphone, though the content was being watched on their TV.

Also Read: 6 Echelon Asia Summit 2019 exclusives the investor community can look forward to

Another use case could include allowing a fashion store to send a shopper, who made it to the changing room but not the cashier, a promo through social media inviting them to go back to the store to complete their purchase – with a suitable incentive. This kind of offline-to-online tracking technology already exists, but challenges remain around how to implement it in a way that is not creepy.

Ads need to become more relevant and targeted, but there is also a deeper question about the need for advertising to be reinvented altogether. If there is to be a rebirth of the industry – revolution rather than evolution – ad tech players are going to play a key role in how that’s conceptualised, achieved, and delivered.

With a more competitive advertising industry, the guys at the top (Amazon, Google, and Facebook) will be forced to innovate more quickly and aggressively in terms of what they offer the buy and sell sides. This will mean many more ad tech acquisitions and greater market incentives for breakthrough technology to be built, bought, and sold.

I’m optimistic about the end of the Google-Facebook duolopoly in advertising and so should you be – especially if you’re one of the little guys. It will prove to be a big boon for ad tech.

Also Read: (In photos) A stroll around STATION F, one of the biggest startup campuses in the world

—

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

The post An end of Google-Facebook advertising duopoly could be a boon for adtech appeared first on e27.