Hej!

Mondadori Media’s innovative MarTech Centre – created around the digital company AdKaora following the acquisition of Hej! in 2021 and then the Spanish media agency Adgage, completed a few months ago – aims to offer the market a wide range of next-generation marketing and advertising services.
The offering ranges from proximity marketing solutions to data-driven performance conversational marketing solutions, from mobile first video advertising solutions to a creative studio able to offer customers high-impact and highly effective advertising formats.

The synergies between AdKaora, Hej! and Adgage – which today make up Mondadori Media’s MarTech Centre – began at the end of 2022 with the aim of guaranteeing, from a technological standpoint, better development of new integrated solutions, to enhance the different professional skills available and to maximise commercial effectiveness and go-to-market.
It was a successful undertaking, cemented by the results achieved in 2023, which showed total revenues of more than 32 million euros, up by almost 30% compared to the previous year, alongside the team continuing to grow stronger, and which now numbers 80 professionals across Milan, Rome and Madrid.

GROWTH DRIVERS

International development is one of the strategy’s most important drivers. The acquisition of the Spanish company Adgage opened up important new international opportunities in 2023, starting in Spain itself and, in recent months, Latin America.
This allowed AdKaora and Hej! to expand into foreign markets and to extend the AdKaora Value Network, thanks to the entry of important new publishing groups worldwide, with entry into other European markets and beyond also planned for 2024.

The second development lever for the coming years is the search for companies that can be integrated in order to offer innovative and complementary solutions to the range of services already offered. A number of interesting special operations are already under consideration in this area.

The third area of development focuses on the strong ability of the in-house marketing, tech and innovation teams to continue developing new products by understanding the opportunities that technological developments provide ahead of time. Along these lines, AdKaora has recently launched new advertising solutions on the market, like Impact Video, a high-impact, full-screen mobile format that is part of an advanced total video strategy covering different channels and focusing on the most interesting current KPI: Attention. The effectiveness of AdKaora’s video formats has been proven by the excellent results in ‘The Attention Game’ research conducted by GroupM and by KPIs provided by third-party certifiers such as Lumen and DoubleVerify.

Proximity marketing has also taken a further leap towards even more effective coverage of the entire consumer funnel thanks to the partnership with Savi – a marketing technology company specialising in coupon-based shopper activation services – where the aim is to strengthen product consideration and purchase incentives through mobile couponing.

Consideration becomes a crucial stage to oversee in order to achieve more concrete results: 2024 will therefore see the consolidation of AdKaora and Hej’s! full funnel proposal, which combines the quality of products with branding focus of the former with the performance strength of the latter.
The strength of Hej! Lies in harnessing Artificial Intelligence at different product and analysis levels. Using its proprietary platform, which is increasingly advanced in terms of analysis automation, Hej! can offer its customers in-depth qualitative analyses aimed at optimising the results of the entire supply chain. With data collected in real time, it is possible to achieve optimal performance and act on the subsequent marketing steps, like processing a qualitative lead.

And it is specifically Generative Artificial Intelligence that the Mondadori Group intends to invest in significantly in the coming years, not least to support the growth of the MarTech Centre. In this respect, a major Open Innovation project will soon be launched, which will also see Mondadori Media at the centre of the AI-related revolution in publishing and marketing.

A NEW STRUCTURE FOR THE MARTECH HUB

In order to achieve its ambitious goals, the MarTech Centre has established a new organisational structure.
Reporting directly to Andrea Santagata, Managing Director of Mondadori Media, Davide Tran, formerly Director of AdKaora, was appointed as Director of the MarTech Centre, with the aim of implementing the new development strategy and maximising synergies.
Reporting directly to Davide Tran, Stefano Argiolas was confirmed as Managing Director of Hej! and appointed the Head of Artificial Intelligence for the Mondadori Group; Paolo De Santis, Co-Managing Director of Hej!, was appointed the Head of Development of New Acquisitions for the MarTech Centre.
To strengthen international development, Luca Nigro, former Managing Director of Adgage, was appointed the Director of Development for the MarTech Centre in LATAM countries; Francesco Binetti, Head of Operations at AdKaora, was appointed the Director of International Development for the MarTech Centre’s Publisher Solutions.
The central sales department is entrusted to Paolo Ingrosso, appointed as Sales Manager for the MarTech Centre, and Luigi D’Alterio, Sales Manager of Hej! and MarTech Centre’s direct customers, while Walter Ferrari assumes the role of Marketing Manager.

AdKaora and Hej!, the Mondadori Group’s MarTech Centre digital agencies, and Savi, a marketing technology company specialising in managing shopper activation services using discount coupons, have been chosen by Sofidel, a leading manufacturer of paper for hygienic and domestic use to promote the Regina Asciugoni product with a proximity marketing campaign aimed at distributing digital discount coupons.

The campaign ran online in November and December 2023, together with Wavemaker, and was aimed at product awareness and drive to store, through multichannel planning: standard and interstitial display, push notifications, formats and notifications on the Stocard app, Hej! social media. All these formats were shown to the target group of shoppers and frequent shoppers nearby Esselunga sales points and let them get on Savi’s form or on Hej!’s “AI based” conversational landing page, in the case of social media, with the aim of getting the users to download the coupon.

The project’s goal was to intercept the target audience nearby the relevant sales points for the campaign and tell them about the existing product offer, influencing the shopper journey through mobile couponing. According to research by Iri FMCG Demand Signals, more than 40% of Italian households search for discounts and offers when shopping.

The results were positive: on four different placements (AdKaora network, Push Notification, Stocard, Hej!) the campaign reached about 1 million users and about 24,000 users lgot to the landing pages, and over 4,000 coupons were generated.

Moreover, a CTR on AdKaora display formats of 1.63% and on push notifications of 2.45% were recorded, confirming the users’ interest and consideration for the product and the offers activated.

The combination of AdKaora’s advanced proximity marketing suite and Savi’s shopping activation technology enables brands to enhance their marketing strategies, boosting brand awareness, consideration and conversion through the integration of Savi’s technology in the main sales point checkouts and through AdKaora and Hej!’s multi-channel planning. This makes it possible to engage users at the points of interest involved in the campaign, but also to gather important insights for brands about consumer behaviour through footfall and post-campaign analysis.

AdKaora and Savi are active with digital coupons on a major retailer network covering several large-scale retail chains in Italy, including Coop, Acqua e Sapone, Iper, Esselunga, and Carrefour. Savi’s platform is integrated with the ecosystem of individual retailers and allows the shopper to redeem promotions in every large or small sales point increasing product consideration and encouraging impulse purchases.

Andrea Zermian, Sales and Marketing Director for Savi said: “From the outset, Sofidel showed great interest and confidence in the proposal we presented to the market through our partnership with AdKaora. The results were encouraging and this further strengthens the partnership’s development prospects. Today, we are able to offer brands an end-to-end, measurable, omnichannel tool that closes the circle of every promotion by providing timely data on both consideration, thanks to issuing coupons, and actual conversion, thanks to the use of coupons at checkouts. This means it’s not only a matter of engaging customers when they are inside the sales point doing their shopping, but also in the consideration phases: announcements, supported by having a voucher, positively impact on perception by leveraging a concrete benefit that supports the customer through the subsequent phases of the funnel”.

Davide Tran, CEO of AdKaora, stated: “Together with Sofidel and our partner Savi, we wanted to achieve very specific communication goals, such as reinforcing product consideration and encouraging purchase by using digital coupons. In addition to achieving high reach numbers with multi-channel planning, another important result was the collection of qualitative leads through Hej!’s conversational marketing, which enabled significant performance in terms of coupon generation and redemption at the sales point. We would like to bring continuous innovations into proximity marketing strategies not only for distribution channels but also in terms of results by adding other “last mile” solution that give a nod to customers’ wishes”.

2021 was a year of growth for AdKaora and Hej!, the Mondadori Group digital companies specialised in mobile advertising and conversational marketing, which, following AdKaora’s acquisition of Hej! at the beginning of 2021, form the nucleus of MarTech, a cutting-edge digital hub and leading player in tech advertising.

With their focus fixed firmly on the future and new challenges, the two companies evolved over the year through product innovation, using their strong technological and know-how synergies to create increasingly effective adv solutions for their brands.

Their success is also confirmed by the results reported by the hub, which posted aggregate gross revenues of more than 20 million euro (preliminary figures) – with the newly acquired Hej! contributing approximately 8 million euro –, an improvement of over 50% from the previous year on a pro-forma constant-size basis.

THE MARTECH HUB OFFER – The secret of the success of the two companies is the ability to support their brands step by step in achieving their targets through a technologically advanced, creative consultancy-based approach, which also enabled them to strengthen relations with key clients on the market.

“The synergies between AdKaora and Hej! blended naturally right from the start,” said AdKaora CEO Davide Tran. “For example, the integration of proximity marketing in correlation with the performance marketing campaigns, two different but closely related areas. The new developments of our MarTech hub are still under way, in 2021 we took a first step towards expansion on the Spanish market with the acquisition of 30% of Adgage, a Madrid-based company, through which we aim to export our own products and those of Hej!. I am very satisfied with the remarkable results we achieved this year, and the opportunity to work closely with the Hej! team of talents, with whom we immediately established a strong bond and a shared vision of innovation and the market. 2022 will be a year when these synergies generate full value to offer our clients an unbeatable integrated offer,” Tran added.

In 2021 AdKaora developed a series of new adv solutions based on constant observation of the market. As a result, the proximity marketing offer reached a new level, introducing channels such as DOOH and SMS, and extending planning with rich media formats with a high engagement impact. It also saw the development of Circle, the proprietary platform that enables brands and media centres to monitor campaign results in real time.

In the last quarter of 2021, in anticipation of the gaming trend, AdKaora launched the new native in-play offer: immersive display formats inserted in game dynamics, where the focus is on brand and product awareness, thanks to the high visibility afforded by the communication message.

Hej! also reported unstoppable growth. “2021 was the first year for Hej! on the Mondadori Group’s MarTech hub, and it was very exciting,” said Hej! CEO Stefano Argiolas. “We established a natural alchemy with AdKaora, a process of continuous contamination enabling both companies to set and achieve ever more challenging objectives. Together we design and develop integrated solutions to cover the entire marketing funnel. At Hej! we have continued to invest in innovation and the evolution of our solutions, guided by our sole mantra: tangible results for clients. By its nature, conversational marketing gives us a privileged view of user needs: a view we use for in-depth analyses of aggregate campaign data in order to improve results continually and bring innovation into performance marketing, a segment that has been tied to obsolete processes for too long,” Argiolas added.

Hej! conversational marketing has become an indispensable solution for many brands because of the quantitative and qualitative results it delivers. Thanks to its robust data drilling capability, Hej! can use artificial intelligence to offer clients even more detailed qualitative analyses and campaign insights, which help the entire chain to optimise results. Automated real-time analyses is an undeniable advantage for optimal performance.

Creativity, conversation and customisation merge in the conversational audio display format recently launched by AdKaora and Hej!, which aims to engage all the consumer’s senses when they are choosing a product, and strengthen their discovery. This dynamic multi-sensory experience creates greater product awareness for both online and in-store sales.

The two agencies are also working on the development of brand lift survey solutions, which measure the brand-consumer interaction in an advertising campaign, and identify the extent to which the customer journey changes in terms of awareness, perception, consideration and purchase probability.

CASE HISTORY AND SUCCESSFUL FORMATS – A demonstration of these initial synergies is the successful Somatoline Cosmetic campaign for Bolton, presented by AdKaora and Hej! at IAB Forum 2021: the combination of proximity marketing and conversational marketing made it possible to cover every stage in the funnel, with a multi-channel strategy that guided the user in both online and offline stores, creating a personalised conversation channel with the consumer and following them as the protagonist of their purchase decisions.

The project achieved important results in terms of engagement and visits: AdKaora’s Find&Go Now! obtained a 26.6% engagement rate, reflecting a high stimulus to action and effective activation of drive-to-store dynamics, which led to a 54.4% increase in visits to sales outlets. Consumers also showed an offline/online balance in their purchase habits: from Hej!’s Conversational Engaging Marketing format, 53.4% of users landed on the brand’s e-commerce and, an almost equal share, 46.62% on Find&Go Now!.