We know that digital out of home ads, delightfully called DOOH, are hot. So hot, in fact, that T-Mobile just bought a Octopus Interactive, which has an ad network of screens inside rideshare vehicles. The screens will be replaced by T-Mobile devices, extending T-Mobile’s Magenta Audience Network of more than 100 million mobile customers.
Nigerian multi-merchant rewards platform ThankUCash has raised US$5.3 million in seed funding as it plans expansion into new markets and further product launches. Co-founded in 2018 by Simeon Ononobi, Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi and Harshal Gandole, ThankUCash offers cashback on purchases and deals from thousands of merchants, which in turn helps merchants retain customer loyalty, increase revenues, and grow. The startup has recorded over 600,000 users and onboarded over 1,000 stores on its platform, whilst processing more than US$80 million in transaction volume.
Connected TVs, or CTV to the cool kids, is another hot ad channel. Data marketplace Datonics has mapped 110 million households to IP addresses, and linked the households to search, intent, life-stage, behavior, demographics, purchases and other information. It’s now providing that data to programmatic adtech vendor Simpli.fi, which will use it to build standard and custom ad segments.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.