GrabAds, the advertising arm of Southeast Asia’s leading superapp Grab, has announced an expanded partnership with GroupM, WPP’s media investment group. This collaboration will empower GroupM’s clients with advanced geo-based audience insights and enhanced retail media network (RMN) capabilities to drive brand performance, business growth, and full-funnel advertising outcomes across Southeast Asia.

Under this expanded partnership, GrabAds will enhance its first-party audience data with geo-based signals like:

• Cuisine preferences
• Frequently visited points of interest
• Spend behavior attributes

These insights, aggregated and anonymized in full compliance with data privacy standards, will be integrated into GroupM’s proprietary platforms. Brands in markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam will benefit from more refined, data-driven media planning that connects online behaviors to offline consumer journeys.

Full-Funnel Campaign Optimization

With GrabAds’ robust RMN ecosystem, GroupM clients can optimize their marketing strategies and budgets for both brand-building and sales objectives. The collaboration enhances capabilities such as:

• Precise audience targeting using transaction-based and geo-enhanced insights.
• Omnichannel campaigns, including exclusive native advertising formats within Grab, offline fleet placements, and programmatic buying options.
• Co-innovation opportunities, enabling early access to new advertising tools and strategies.

Retail media networks continue to dominate the digital advertising landscape. GroupM’s ‘This Year Next Year’ report highlights RMNs as the fastest-growing digital segment, with projected growth of 17.5% in 2024 and 13.5% in 2025. Superapp RMNs like GrabAds are playing an increasingly vital role, enabling brands to access high-value, real-world audiences.

Anita Munro, Chief Investment Officer at GroupM Asia Pacific, emphasized the strategic importance of the partnership: “We embarked on this partnership with Grab given our confidence in their ability to work together with us to unlock market-leading advantage and value for clients in the evolving advertising landscape. As we continue to build and invest in a high-quality media ecosystem that is diverse, sustainable and audience-first, we are excited at the opportunity Grab presents with rich first-party audience insights and their strength as a platform that serves advertiser needs to connect the online to offline consumer journey. Multiple elements of the partnership will come together to accelerate growth for our clients including data, geo and audience-based expertise and more.”

Ken Mandel, Regional Managing Director and Head of GrabAds, added: “We are excited to continue working alongside GroupM to help their clients unlock the true potential of retail media advertising, whether that’s crafting full-funnel campaigns or providing more precise means of measuring advertising returns. By combining GroupM’s scale, commitment to innovation and client-first mindset with our superior RMN capabilities, we are well-positioned to help GroupM clients drive accelerated growth in Southeast Asia,” said Ken Mandel, Regional Managing Director and Head of GrabAds and Enterprise at Grab.