KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 23): In an effort to protect brand reputation of marketers in online advertising spaces in Malaysia, five online publishers signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) today to form a consortium and create an online advertising exchange platform called the Malaysia Premium Publishers Marketplace (MPPM).
 
The establishment of MPPM will offer marketers with high quality online advertising (ad) inventory from local premium publisher websites, backed by rich audience data and high-impact online ad solutions. The platform will also enable the delivery of brand messages and performance campaigns.
 
With the aim to offer marketers a safer and transparent online advertising buying ecosystem, the premium ad inventories provided on the platform will not be made available on the open exchange.
 
The MoU was signed by five online publishers, namely Media Prima Bhd, Star Media Goup Bhd, Utusan Melayu Malaysia Bhd, MCIL Multimedia Sdn Bhd and The Edge Communications Sdn Bhd.
 
MPPM will start off featuring 11 online premium publishers: New Straits Times Press (NSTP), The Star Online, The Edge, Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia, Harian Metro, Kosmo, Sin Chew Daily, China Press, Nanyang Daily and Guang Ming Daily.
 
"Advertising is the main revenue stream for the media companies. With the changing landscape of advertising in Malaysia, it is time for our media companies to find a better solution to simplify and improve the ad buying process, while addressing the market needs in terms of providing transparency, viewability and brand safety," said Datuk Abdul Jalil Hamid, chief executive officer of NSTP at the signing of the MoU earlier.
 
The current trend of programmatic digital advertising used by marketers is designed to automate how and where ads are placed online, promising wide reach and return on investments. However, this is done at the risk of advertisers losing control of where their ads are placed. In some cases, this has lead to the placement of ads in undesirable, irrelevant or even fake websites, Abdul Jalil said.
 
“MPPM therefore gathers some of Malaysia’s top media companies to effectively deal with the common digital advertising challenges such as ad fraud and brand misplacement and to provide an extensive solution to further expand brands’ reach to the local market. MPPM member publishers will also be able to improve their revenue, while offering advertisers quality inventory at a reasonable price,” he added.
 
The consortium intends to place focus on growing current MPPM member advertising revenue growth in the mean time, but will target adding more local online publishers in future.
 
It is currently in the process of appointing a third party company to manage the advertising inventories for the platform, which it targets to go live by mid February next year.