Propel, a Lagos- and Berlin-based startup, wants to build sustainable talent pipelines for communities and help global companies de-risk the process of hiring remote talent from emerging markets, particularly in Africa. The firm has secured €2.5 million (US$2.74 million) in seed investment.
Zambia’s Union54, a leading provider of innovative digital financial solutions, has partnered with Mastercard to launch social commerce platform ChitChat. A Y-Combinator alumni, Union54 has developed a number of tools to propel African commerce forward. The startup works with financial technology companies across Africa and has issued millions of debit cards to African consumers from almost every country on the continent.
Connect Ads by Aleph launched a new brand called Mediam Group, dedicated to advertising sales and account management for Google. The partnership aims to reinforce and expand Google’s presence in Iraq and Morocco, providing Google solutions to more customers and agencies in order to grow their businesses through dedicated local support.
Media mix models (MMM), originally developed in the 1960’s, have undergone a resurgence as new technologies make them easier to execute and click-based attribution becomes less credible. But evaluating MMM brings its own challenges. Australia-based Mutinex offers a vendor-neutral Open Source MMM Validation Framework which is now available for free to North American marketers and agencies.