“A direct and customized approach is imperative for brands to collect data and generate insights that create more targeted strategies. Brands now need more effective methods to engage with potential prospects and existing customers. By doing so, they can also generate more business opportunities by enhancing customers’ loyalty and having them make repeated purchases through a holistic marketing funnel that collates marketing and sales data,” says Tang.

iClick helps such marketers by undertaking a programmatic cross-channel advertising approach through its unified data platform. Imbued with omnichannel capabilities, the platform collects data from first-party digital advertising campaigns, search engines, content sites, mobile apps, social media, and other sources. This data includes the user’s online interactions, interests, offline purchase behavior, social media behavior and demographics, as well as campaign performance data. Currently, iClick possesses data profiles for over 98 percent of the internet users in China. There are more than 930 million anonymously-profiled Chinese users on the iClick platform, and the company’s data analysis capabilities allow for the simultaneous processing of 100,000 transactions per second and the collection of 0.9TB of data every day. iClick also possesses data sources that cover around 125,000 mobile apps and 2.3 million websites globally.

With such extensive data sources, iClick’s audience identification and data management platform, iAudience, helps businesses attain an in-depth understanding of their customer needs and demands. Moreover, the company’s one-stop targeting solution, iAccess, allows clients to customize their advertisements and direct the target audience to the product page through cross-channel advertisements. Its integrated Marketing Solution empowers brands to acquire new consumers both efficiently and effectively. Leveraging these capabilities, iClick is continually looking for ways to bring digital marketing to the next level by delivering even greater value to its clients. In 2019, iClick launched its Enterprise Solution that enables data integration from online and offline sources, creating more extensive and detailed consumer profiling. Combined with iClick’s Marketing Solutions and Consumer Data Platform, the company’s Enterprise and Marketing Cloud Platform allows brands to acquire more refined customer insights and achieve higher ROI through closed-loop data analytics.

At this juncture, what makes iClick a cut above others in the market is the fact that, since its inception, it has become one of the leading companies to master programmatic marketing strategies in Hong Kong and mainland China. Not only has this given it a first-mover advantage, but it has also allowed iClick to develop the most prominent and independent online marketing technology platform in China today. Additionally, the company has formed strong partnerships with top internet companies such as Tencent and Baidu, as well as with the country’s most popular social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu (RED). Such collaborations have enabled iClick to enhance its marketing networks in China’s highly fragmented market.

The COVID-19 crisis has set in motion some of the most unexpected disruptions for various industries in decades, presenting the ultimate test of resilience for companies worldwide. “While adverse market conditions and the global economic slowdown have affected the overall sentiment and advertising budgets of customers, many brands are seeking to enhance the cost-effectiveness of their marketing tactics via online and offline consumer behavioral data integration and analysis,” remarks Tang. As iClick snowballs ahead with the goal of becoming the leading fully-integrated Enterprise and Marketing Cloud Platform in China, the company is well positioned to maintain strong business-model resilience and enjoy the favorable growth prospects of the online-to-offline market in the region.