Unruly Expands Into Benelux With New Office In Amsterdam

• News Corp-owned video ad tech company moves into new offices in Amsterdam, offering both managed service and programmatic distribution for brands and agencies; Dentsu Aegis Network partner with Unruly on launch
• Unruly’s video solutions help advertisers connect more effectively and authentically with audiences across Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg

HAMBURG, AMSTERDAM – May 31, 2017 – Video ad tech company Unruly today continued its global expansion by opening a new office in Amsterdam.

The company, which helps brands get their videos seen and loved across the open web, has been distributing ad campaigns across the region since 2012 for brands such as Unilever and Heineken.

The new office means brands and agencies in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg will have greater access to Unruly’s unique data sets, polite ad formats and premium media titles.

Benelux Sales Director Ernst Dirkzwager will lead operations in the new office, reporting to Christoph Thielecke, Managing Director, Unruly Germany and Benelux.

Dirkzwager has more than 12 years of industry experience in digital communication and online advertising. Prior to joining Unruly, he was Senior Sales Manager at Exponential, where he worked with agencies such as Mindshare, Havas, Mec, Starcom and Carat. He has also worked at Radio 538 in Hilversum.

Thielecke said: “The new office in Amsterdam will broaden and strengthen our business and open up opportunities for growth in the video advertising market for our clients in the region. Online video advertising is booming in Benelux. In the Netherlands alone, digital ad spend is predicted to surpass $2bn by the end of next year, with every second media ad dollar going to digital by 2020 (source: eMarketer). We’re delighted Ernst is joining us to offer our clients the full spectrum of Unruly’s products and services.”

Unruly’s extensive product set includes UnrulyX™, the first supply side platform (SSP) to offer scaled delivery of native ad formats and guarantee the viewability of premium video impressions bought via RTB, with 84% of impressions delivered across comScore 250 sites.

Dentsu Aegis has partnered with Unruly on the launch of its new office. Reinier Breij, Trading Manager Online, Aegis Media, said: “Unruly is perfectly placed to help advertisers in Benelux. Their evidence-based approach to video content testing and amplification minimises risk and increases certainty for leading advertisers, while their ad formats will help advertisers connect more authentically, intimately and effectively with audiences across the region.”

Other products available to the Dutch market include Unruly Custom Audience (UCA) and Unruly EQ. UCA allows advertisers to target viewers who demonstrate an intense emotional response to a specific ad, leading to increased brand recall and purchase intent, and can also be used to target bespoke and light-buyer audiences.

UCA targeting can be applied to a range of Unruly’s consumer-friendly formats. These include its skippable pre-roll format Unruly In-Stream™, Unruly-In-Article, a viewable outstream format which only begins to play when the video is in-view, and its click-to-play Unruly In-Page™ format.

Unruly EQ is a content testing tool which uses a combination of biometric, emotional and audio testing methods to evaluate, improve and predict the emotional impact and brand effectiveness of their video ads. These include:

• Brand authenticity and perception testing – Unruly EQ allows marketers to test their ads to see if the content is perceived as authentic, (credible and genuine) and consistent with their brand’s values and purpose;
• Emotion analytics and facial coding – Advertisers are given a second-by-second emotional trace of their content using Affectiva’s market-leading facial coding and emotion analytics technology;
• Social impact and shareability analysis – Unruly’s unique algorithm is trained using 1.5 million consumer responses to videos and sharing data relating to 3 trillion video views, and enables advertisers to predict and improve the social impact of their video content.

Thielecke added: “Unruly can help advertisers optimise their video spend. Unruly’s extensive set of digital solutions brings emotional intelligence to digital advertising for 91% of Ad Age 100 brands. Our full tech stack for video advertising helps our clients to create a direct link between content and distribution, evaluating data about content quality and viewers’ preferred viewing environments, devices and sharing platforms to optimise for engagement metrics that are simply not available on current demand-side platforms.”

Adding to the Unruly Benelux team will be one of Ernst’s priorities, with Unruly currently looking for a Senior Business Development Manager to work with publishers across the region.

Thielecke added: “We would like to grow our team quickly in order to extend our excellent partner network for the increasing demand in the Dutch-speaking market. Our new office in Amsterdam underlines the successful development of Unruly over the past few years and our leading position within the video market.”