Company overview of MicroAd <9553>.
- "Cerele" for BtoB industry. This product is a data platform that supports BtoB marketing. It provides a service to deliver targeted advertisements using business data of more than 10-30 billion yen to companies that aim to expand awareness of corporate products and services. The features of this product are the ability to use abundant data for sophisticated targeted advertising, the completeness of the reporting service after advertising distribution, and the ability to visualize the effectiveness of advertising distribution by questionnaire. Particularly for BtoB marketing, it has very rich data sources, which are linked to corporate information and business card information databases based on corporate IP address, and various media for various business personnel. This enables precise targeting and approach such as corporate name, industry, position, etc. Regarding the report function, it provides data on industry, listing classification, sales scale, capital, etc. in a report format after advertising distribution. By utilizing this report, customers can confirm the consistency between advertising delivery performance and marketing strategy, and reflect it on their future marketing strategies.
- "IGNITION" for the automobile industry. This product is a marketing data platform specialized for the automobile industry. It acquires potential customer groups that lead to store visits by combining vast site browsing data from automotive specialty media with AI analysis unique to "IGNITION". Specifically, it models user behavior up to purchase as a purchasing process by score-izing the likelihood of car purchase for each user from the data of multiple automotive specialty media. Based on the purchasing possibility, it realizes maximum number of considerers by advertising distribution. In addition to a large amount of databases, another feature is that it enables users to visualize and compare the effects of accurate targeting and advertising delivery based on the modeling of the purchasing process. With these functions, it solves various challenges that customers face, such as "want to deliver to layers planning to purchase", "want to target more detailed than auto-related layers", and "have a few customers who visit the store and have a contract".
- "Pantry" for the beverage and food industry. This product is a marketing platform specialized for the beverage and food industry. It realizes digital marketing based on offline purchase trends, using credit card payment data and various point service history data from physical stores. By analyzing the beverage and food brands that consumers purchase regularly, it realizes online marketing that promotes brand switch, based on offline purchase trends. It also conducts reporting by analyzing purchasing data to visualize the advertising effects, i.e., how much the digital marketing campaign has contributed to actual product sales in physical stores. With these functions, it solves various challenges that customers face, such as "want to conduct marketing based on real consumption behavior" and "want to understand the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns in terms of sales".
Automobile industry-specific marketing data platform "IGNITION". This product is a marketing data platform specialized for the automobile industry. By combining huge amount of data on site browsing activities on automobile specialty media with IGNITION's own Artificial Intelligence analysis, it collects potential customers who may make a store visit. Specifically, it scores the car purchase possibility of each user from data from multiple automobile specialty media, and models it as a purchase process. Then, it distributes advertisements based on the purchase probability to maximize the number of potential customers. One of the features is the ability to compare the effect of targeting and advertising delivery, which enables users to visualize the impact of the right targeting. It also has large databases which lead to better visualization. This product can tackle issues like "Want to advertise to potential customers who tend to make purchases", "Want to target people who are one level lower than those who are already into automobile industry", and "Need to increase the number of store visitors who turn into our customers".
- "Pantry" for the beverage and food industry. This product is a marketing platform specialized for the beverage and food industry. It realizes digital marketing based on offline purchase trends, using credit card payment data and various point service history data from physical stores. By analyzing the beverage and food brands that consumers purchase regularly, it realizes online marketing that promotes brand switch, based on offline purchase trends. It also conducts reporting by analyzing purchasing data to visualize the advertising effects, i.e., how much the digital marketing campaign has contributed to actual product sales in physical stores. With these functions, it solves various challenges that customers face, such as "want to conduct marketing based on real consumption behavior" and "want to understand the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns in terms of sales".
- As one of the characteristics of "UNIVERSE", "since it combines the data it holds, you do not need to develop a new system, and can immediately provide a new product." The company has successfully launched several services to the market, such as the market-oriented marketing product "Machiage" for local governments in February 2023, the advertising distribution service "UNIVERSE for Shin NISA" for financial industries in June 2023, and the marketing product "Marble" for recruitment specializing in people in August that year, which utilized the data held by "UNIVERSE" as a new marketing product. Using the purchasing data, it can analyze how much the implemented digital marketing has contributed to actual sales in physical stores, and it conducts reporting based on that data. Most recently, it has started offering a new tourism promotion support service, "AIT de Machiage", which was jointly developed with JTB Communication Design Corporation in May 2024.
- Marketing product specialized in local governments, "Machiage".
Marketing product specialized in local governments, "Machiage".
The product in question is a more comprehensive marketing product specialized for local governments, including 'UNIVERSE for national travel support' and 'UNIVERSE for hometown tax' that the company has provided before. By analyzing the browsing history and location information data of travel and outing media that 'UNIVERSE' collaborates with, it is possible to capture a higher affinity layer for various measures implemented by local governments and execute promotions such as attracting users' needs such as migration, travel and hometown tax according to their own needs and issues with more appropriate targeting advertisements. In addition, it can be utilized for future promotions by comparing the performance before and after advertising delivery.
Marketing product 'Marble' specializing in talent acquisition.
Within the high demand for talent acquisition, this product has expanded its features for advertising delivery services for talent acquisition and introduced it to the market as a marketing product specialized in talent acquisition. By analyzing the browsing history of Web owned by 'UNIVERSE' and data from job hunting media provided by partner companies to analyze the tendencies of students who can be appeal targets, targeted advertising delivery is carried out to student groups estimated to have a high likelihood to enter companies. This encourages an increase of corporate awareness and supports creating a better population for new graduate recruitment activities. In addition, it has functions such as creating analysis reports after advertising delivery. We think that demand for this product will continue to be solid as there is still a serious shortage of labor in companies amid the resumption of social and economic activities after the spread of the novel coronavirus infection, so this is what we expect.
Furthermore, in addition to the development of new products, we have been implementing the improvement of performance and the functional expansion of existing products by utilizing such means as data integration. In October 2023, we strengthened the function of 'Machiage' by doubling the total volume of location information data that was collaborated and, as measures to expand the sales of 'UNIVERSE', we established a Hiroshima branch office in February 2024 and a Sendai branch office in April the same year. This is to respond to the increasing demand for digital marketing for local governments and companies around bases.
Under such circumstances, the main KPI of 'UNIVERSE,' the number of operating accounts, has been growing favorably. The cumulative number of operating accounts in the second quarter of the September 2024 period increased by 11.0% year-on-year to 1,741. The timely introduction of new products, the strengthening of the performance of existing products through data linkage, and the transformation to a sales organization specialized in customer attributes implemented in the September 2022 period have all contributed. It also seems that the sales strategy of promoting expansion to other brands within the same customer has also contributed. We expect that the customer needs for the company's product, which can allow more accurate data analysis by specializing in each industry, will continue to grow in the future, and the number of operating accounts will continue to increase smoothly. Furthermore, specializing in each industry also leads to a deeper understanding of the KPIs of customer companies, and it is also attractive to be able to propose to customers by properly linking insights extracted from data with KPIs. In fact, even in the second quarter of September 2024, the percentage of repeat accounts is maintained at a high level, and it seems that the company's high proposal ability has led to continued use by customers (although the percentage of repeat accounts in the second quarter of September 2024 has not been disclosed, the percentage of repeat accounts among operating accounts in the second quarter of September 2023 was about 80%). A deep understanding of customer companies' KPIs and proposals based on that are supported by the company's long history of business activities. In this sense, it can be said that it is difficult to imitate and is a competitive advantage of the company.
In this way, the main KPI of 'UNIVERSE', the number of operating accounts, has been growing favorably. The cumulative number of operating accounts in the second quarter of the September 2024 period increased by 11.0% year-on-year to 1,741. The timely introduction of new products, the strengthening of the performance of existing products through data linkage, and the transformation to a sales organization specialized in customer attributes implemented in the September 2022 period have all contributed. It also seems that the sales strategy of promoting expansion to other brands within the same customer has also contributed. We expect that the customer needs for the company's product, which can allow more accurate data analysis by specializing in each industry, will continue to grow in the future, and the number of operating accounts will continue to increase smoothly. Furthermore, specializing in each industry also leads to a deeper understanding of the KPIs of customer companies, and it is also attractive to be able to propose to customers by properly linking insights extracted from data with KPIs. In fact, even in the second quarter of September 2024, the percentage of repeat accounts is maintained at a high level, and it seems that the company's high proposal ability has led to continued use by customers (although the percentage of repeat accounts in the second quarter of September 2024 has not been disclosed, the percentage of repeat accounts among operating accounts in the second quarter of September 2023 was about 80%). A deep understanding of customer companies' KPIs and proposals based on that are supported by the company's long history of business activities. In this sense, it can be said that it is difficult to imitate and is a competitive advantage of the company.
(Written by FISCO Guest Analyst Yoichiro Shimizu)