E-commerce giant Alibaba makes $1.43bn bid for digital OOH ad tech

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has made a $1.43 bn (₤ 1.09 bn) bid for a 6.62% share of Focus Media, a Shanghai-based professional in digital out-of-home (OOH) advertising.Focus Media’s digital advertising screens can be seen on the street, subways and in elevators across 300 Chinese cities, reaching 200 million “middle class “consumers, inning accordance with Alibaba’s own news outlet Alizila.The investment is part of the business’s wider’New Retail ‘strategy, which seeks to incorporate the “finest elements”of online and offline commerce, the latter of which still constitutes 85%of Chinese commerce. Alongside the shares, Alibaba is making an extra$504.7 m(₤ 388m )purchase for 10%of anentity managing a 23%share of Focus Media, owned by its founder and chairman, while New Retail Strategic Opportunities Fund L.P., a non-consolidated, associated celebration of Alibaba, will obtain a 1.37%interest in Focus Media as well.The total financial investment of all of the above will total up to$ 2.23 bn(₤ 1.72 bn ), indicating Alibaba’s overall stake will really get to over 10%, while the business plans to get another 5%within the next 12 months.The objective of all this is to make shopping more “engaging and convenient”for its customers, it states, while providing improved marketing tools and more-detailed consumer analytics

to merchants, connecting its digital marketing platform Alimama.Meanwhile, Focus Media itself has medium-term aspirations to surpass 5 million terminals throughout an additional 300 million cities, linking the brand names on Alibaba’s platform with the increasing spending power of 500 million middle-class consumers.Peaking at 325k deals per second on Single’s Day last year and boasting over 500 million users, Alibaba’s scale offers it with unmatched lakes of customer information, making it possible for brands to deliver hyper-targeted projects across the business’s e-commerce and media properties.Following the combine with Focus Media, a cat food brand name might target its advertisements to digital displays in cat-loving areas of cities, for instance, based upon Alibaba’s insights into regional consumer costs habits.The 2 business have said they will work together on extra ways to combine offline media and digital marketing, along with aid offline brand names transition to” completely digital operations “throughout all sectors.