While 2022 might have been a hard year for many in the agency and tech sectors, investment in advertising across Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan remained positive, jumping by almost US$55 billion in 2022 – an overall increase of 12%.
Indonesian e-commerce firm Bukalapak announced that it has acquired a majority stake in iPrice, a Malaysia-based price comparison platform. Through this strategic investment, iPrice has the opportunity to accelerate its growth by leveraging the synergies between the two groups.
Mexican startup Pacto, a point-of-sale (POS) platform with integrated payments for restaurants and bars, announced a US$4 million seed round led by DILA Capital. The capital will be used to increase its engineering, product development, and customer service teams. With the new round, Pacto already has a total financing of US$6 million. It also has an alliance with Getnet Mexico.
It’s deal-making time for generative AI model builders and publishers who can provide them with quality data. Germany publishing giant Axel Springer is trading access to its data for Microsoft adtech, AI, and Azure hosting solutions. Meanwhile, The Financial Times has struck a deal with OpenAI to license its content with attribution of summaries and quotes.