Founder Institute in unique Asean alliance with Effective Measure

By A. Asohan June 19, 2013

Shortlisted candidates get free access to digital measurement and analytics tools for 12 months
Tie-up currently covers Malaysia and Singapore, but Effective Measure hopes to see tie-up go global

Founder Institute in unique Asean alliance with Effective Measure DIGITAL media planning solutions and online measurement company Effective Measure has formed a unique alliance with accelerator the Founder Institute in Malaysia and Singapore that they believe would boost the startup ecosystems in both countries.

Under the alliance, Effective Measure will provide shortlisted entrepreneurs participating in the Founder Institute’s mentoring programme free access to its Brand and Audience digital measurement and analytics solutions for 12 months.

“Malaysia and Singapore are the first two countries we’re doing this in, and if it works out well, we hope to go for it on a global level,” said Tom Hogg, Effective Measure’s commercial director for Malaysia and Singapore.

Hogg told Digital News Asia (DNA) that one of the Melbourne-based company’s clients in Malaysia which works with the Founder Institute got the ball rolling on discussions between the two.
Founder Institute in unique Asean alliance with Effective Measure
We got to talking about it and decided it would be a good thing to offer to digital startups, and since we’re doing it in Malaysia, decided to do it in Singapore as well,” he said.

Heislyc Loh (pic), the director of the Malaysian chapter of the Founder Institute, began discussions with Effective Measure in the middle of May, and the alliance was quickly sealed.

“We trust the partnership with Effective Measure will benefit Founder Institute members in many ways, especially on actionable insights and measurable outcomes,” he said in a statement released by Effective Measure.

“Equipping our founders with the best resources to get the most out of their own digital assets gives them a competitive edge right from the inception of their journey,” he added.

Founder Institute startups will be able use utilise Effective Measure’s dashboard which aggregates the online data of their digital assets, allowing for a deeper understanding of their audience and consumer behaviour across site, section and cross platform content, the company said.

The solution also provides assessment of the qualitative and quantitative effectiveness of advertising campaigns, and includes mobile and tablet segmentation, Effective Measure said in a statement.

In an email to DNA, Loh said that “I believe you can't manage what you don't measure.”

When asked what kind of companies would benefit from the tie-up, he suggested consumer-facing Internet startups involved in businesses ranging from Software as a Service (SaaS) to business-to-consumer and business-to-business.

Startups like these could “greatly benefit from any audience profiling and behavioral analytics,” he said.

“Such data can provide fundamentals that would be valuable not only for advertising campaign planning and targeting, but would also be useful for content creation planning.

“By using traffic tools such as Google Analytics, you know where your site visitors are coming from, but you also need to find out more about who they are and what they do at your website,” Loh added. “All founders should get this done, right from the beginning.”
Founder Institute in unique Asean alliance with Effective Measure
The programme has already kicked off in Malaysia, Effective Measure’s Hogg (pic) said. The current Founder Institute semester in Malaysia started in May, with 40 original startups having been filtered down to 10.

“Out of the 10, two have already signed up for our tools, and we’re in further discussions with five more,” he told DNA.

Hogg concurred with Loh on the kind of digital startups that would find his company’s tools useful – essentially any that would be interested in measuring their audience’s profiles.

“Out of the shortlisted 10, there are a couple which are not quite the type of businesses that we would typically work with,” the Effective Measure commercial director admitted.

“Our tools are usually used by publishers to sell their advertising inventory, but more importantly, we’re encouraging companies which are building their user and traffic profile to look at the content they’re posting so that they can understand which types of content leads to the biggest spikes in data .

“So you can basically improve the customer experience by aligning the content on your site to your audience,” he added.

Effective Measure has operations all over the world, and expanded into South-East Asia in 2009 with a regional head office in Singapore. It has a presence in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.

“Our two strongest regions are probably South-East Asia and Middle East/ Africa. We’re an emerging market specialist for digital traffic and audience measurements,” Hogg said.

Meanwhile, Loh said that the Founder Institute will continue to build partnerships that can help its startups with service providers both regionally and globally. As for extending the Effective Measure alliance beyond Malaysia and Singapore, he said it would be up to the local chapter directors in other cities.

“But I don’t see why not,” he added.

Coming up: Effective Measure out to change the digital advertising and marketing conversation