Kenshoo rebrands to Skai following COVID-led ecommerce boom
E-commerce platform Skai (formerly known as Kenshoo) has undergone a local rebrand following the acquisition of global ecommerce artificial intelligence platform, Signals Analytics. The market intelligence, media activation and measurement technology platform, launched quietly in Australia in 2020 under the leadership of ex-Quantcast Southeast Asia commercial director Christopher Scudder.
Skai has since partnered with Amazon Australia, and is one of only two with a direct application programming interface (APIs), offering local marketers a direct route to the retail juggernaut.
Economic forecast predict that the Australian ecommerce market will balloon from around $13.9 billion in 2017 to $21.7 billion by the end of 2022, according to the Australia: retail ecommerce revenue forecast from 2017 to 2025 survey by Statista.com.
As Australians increasingly adopt online shopping as a part of their daily lives, the ecommerce industry continues to evolve, offering a new, lucrative and sometimes confusing opportunity for marketers.
Skai offers local brands planning, strategy and measurement via its SaaS cross-channel marketing solution for websites, search, social and apps.
Skai director of sales, ANZ and Southeast Asia, Christopher Scudder spoke to Mumbrella on the local rebrand and how Skai is assisting local brands to step up their ecommerce offering in the wake of lockdowns amid COVID-19.
“The product offering in a nutshell is we offer people the ability to activate their search, social, ecommerce and app campaigns through one centralised platform.”
Skai (formerly Kenshoo), director of sales, ANZ & S.E. Asia
Skai’s focus, Scudder said, is to enable better decisions and help brands thrive in this new landscape, not only with execution but also in strategy and planning, with all phases interconnected by a single view of the customer and market. From a high rate of failure in new product launches to material blind spots in media spend return on investment, Skai estimates brands stand to lose $26.8 billion in annual opportunity cost if they cannot adapt.
As the need to unify data and better understand consumers in real-time increases, Skai, can connect advanced data intelligence with execution and measurement.
“The landscape and space we are in is so fragmented, it’s so big and there are so many companies that can do similar things, but at the same time they don’t do everything we do. All the offerings we have all sit under one user interface and that’s really important. That’s why marketers love us, because they don’t have to log in multiple accounts to do their job, which is really time-consuming, it all sits under one UI,” Scudder said.
According to Scudder, a large percentage of new business has come due to the adoption of e-commerce being accelerated globally as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Earlier this year Skai partnered with CitrusAd and Criteo in the US . These partnerships enable digital retail media opportunities for thousands of retailers across their ecommerce ad networks. Skai is actively working on expanding these partnerships locally as part of their ecommerce offering,” Scudder said.
“What we are doing on a local level is trying to build partnerships with Skai, and that’s very much been our focus. The mix of our customers are a combination of agencies. The core of our revenue comes from holding groups, and have global contracts with every major holding company in the world, and have done for many years. We have brands direct as well, and independents who do make up a large chunk of our revenue also. 50% of our business is in the research and development side.”
Scudder explained that the platform’s model and the way that it works is that anyone can utilise it. Whether it be an individual or just a brand direct or whether it’s a small independent company or a large holding group.
“We have a direct API connection with some of the world’s best known and loved brands – Google, Facebook or Amazon etc. We don’t compete with these brands, we instead add many features on top of their native solutions which help our clients scale. This is done through increased automation, performance and efficiency provided in our solution – that’s why people love us,” Scudder said.
Skai CEO and co-founder Yoav Izhar-Prato added: “This is a turning point for the world, and we are answering the call of our partners and customers by building a complete intelligent go-to-market engine that aids more aspects of the process from data to insight to action to validation and growth.
“Our clients have been asking for it, executive leadership, brand managers, consumer insights analysts and media specialists alike, and we’re humbled to be able to deliver after seeing great initial results.”
