Auramo, who has over 25 years of experience in the global IT industry, will also become a member of Vodafone’s Executive Committee from the same date.

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She succeeds Giorgio Migliarina, who has successfully led the telecoms giant as interim CEO.

Auramo joins from global enterprise company, SAP, where she held the position of Chief Business Officer for the EMEA region and was responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy for SAP’s product portfolio across 89 countries and for managing 14,000 employees.

She joined SAP in 1999 and held a raft of leadership roles including COO of EMEA North, Managing Director for the Nordic and Baltic region, Global COO of SAP Database and Data Management in the US, and Interim President of the EMEA region.

Vodafone Group CEO, Margherita Della Valle, said: “I am delighted that Marika will be joining Vodafone to lead our Business division, a key growth driver. She brings extensive B2B experience from the IT industry, and I look forward to welcoming her as a member of our Executive Committee.”

Auramo continued: “I am looking forward to working with Margherita and the management team and to engaging with Vodafone’s customers and partners.

“Vodafone Business has strong growth opportunities ahead – as large corporates, SMEs and the public sector look to adopt more digital tools to enhance growth and productivity – and I will be working alongside my new colleagues to capture this.”

The move comes as Vodafone recently appointed Max Taylor as its new CEO.

Taylor, who previously held the position of Chief Commercial Officer, took over from Ahmed Essam on 2 April 2024.

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This will enable Snowflake customers to seamlessly share targeting and conversion data, which they can use to optimise their Snapchat campaigns and ultimately drive better, ROI-optimal outcomes for their business.

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According to the ex-social media platform, the partnership allows brands to easily and securely share their data without sacrificing control, all in a highly governed and privacy-preserving environment.

Meanwhile, the collaboration will roll out in the coming months and allow Snowflake clients to quickly implement Snap’s Conversions API (CAPI) signal solution without needing to build a bespoke back-end integration.

Snowflake Head of Product Management for Snowflake Marketing Data Cloud, Onil Gunawardana, said: “The Snowflake Marketing Data Cloud offers marketers a robust platform to build their enterprise marketing data foundation and enter the era of first-party data confidently.”

“This integration with Snap empowers marketers to navigate privacy-first marketing without sacrificing advertising effectiveness.”

The platform also revealed its partnership with AppsFlyer on an advanced privacy-centric measurement solution.

This partnership enables the platform’s advertisers to gain a better understanding of Snap’s performance within Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) attribution for their iOS campaigns.

Snap added: “We are confident that these partnerships and improvements will help advertisers protect against signal loss and drive results through their campaigns. We are committed to helping advertisers reach their performance goals and look forward to sharing more updates along the way.”

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‘Specsavers Obby’ has been launched to mark the high-street retailer’s commitment to educating younger generations and continued steps into the gaming space.

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The game has been created in partnership with game development studio Dubit and Specsavers’ social media agency, Tangerine, which has brought the Specsavers brand into three highly popular Roblox games: Super Fun Obby, Chill Obby, and Ultimate Easy Obby.

As part of the five Specsavers’ levels, players will be able to interact with branded virtual items from the retailer and have the chance to collect 10 limited edition Specsavers’ themed User-Generated Content (UGC) items.

The items include glasses, hearing aids and even a Snellen Chart sandwich board, which players can opt to equip their avatars with throughout the Roblox universe.

The game also features eye and ear-based obstacles for players to overcome, question gates relating to health messaging and advice from in-game optometrists.

Specsavers, Head of Consumer PR, Brand Activation & Social Media, Lisa Hale, said: “We’re always looking for new ways to engage with our customers and share relevant health messaging in easy, yet creative ways. So, we’re excited to get involved with the Roblox community and take our first step into the gaming world.

“This collaboration allows us to connect with younger audiences in an interactive way, that will feel completely natural to them. Conditions such as digital eye strain and myopia have all become more prevalent over recent years, so we want to encourage gamers of all ages, to look after their most valuable pieces of gaming equipment – their eyes and ears.”

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As a result, the anonymised data, which will be available on the Integrated Data Service (IDS), will be used to support the UK Government’s work at national and local levels, providing insights that reveal population dynamics, travel patterns, and other movement trends.

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The IDS cloud-based platform provides governmental bodies access to a rich data repository, empowering users with valuable information for them to make “data-driven policy decisions” on things such as public health, regional growth, climate change, jobs and skills.

Currently operating in public beta, the IDS platform and data releases will scale at pace over the coming months with a planned pipeline of additional and transformational capability, data, projects and users onboarded, the telecoms giant revealed.

VMO2 Business, Head of AI and Data Insights, Geoff Wappett, said: “We are proud to extend our partnership with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and to integrate our aggregated and anonymised O2 Motion data into their Integrated Data Service (IDS).

“Generated from billions of daily network events, our mobile data will provide governmental organisations and officials with reliable information to inform their work addressing major societal challenges at pace. Beyond numbers, the IDS platform and our wider work with ONS will ensure quality insights are easily accessible to support data-driven decision making.”

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In the first test of its kind using all elements of a fibre broadband network Vodafone and Nokia’s research arm Nokia Bell Labs were able to demonstrate the benefits of a new Internet standard called L4S to simultaneously maintain a high throughput of data (customer traffic) and low latency, at Vodafone’s laboratory in Newbury, UK.

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Using a replica fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) link serving a standard laptop over a busy Wi-Fi broadband connection (simulating the worst-case peak load), the telecoms giants were able to reduce the response times, known as latency, when accessing an Internet site from 550 milliseconds (0.55 seconds) to just 12 milliseconds (0.012 seconds) whilst maintaining fast speeds.

The latency reduced to only 1.05 milliseconds (0.00105 seconds) when an ethernet cable was used in place of Wi-Fi.

Vodafone Head of Fixed Access Centre of Excellence, Gavin Young, said: “As a leading broadband provider, Vodafone aims to give customers a faster, more responsive, and reliable service unhindered by lag even during peak hours. L4S is an exciting technology with huge potential to achieve this goal, as well as deliver a more interactive and tactile internet experience for our customers.”

Nokia Bells Labs, Head of Network Systems and Security Research, Azimeh Sefidcon, added: “These highly encouraging results show that L4S will unshackle any real-time application that would normally be constrained by high latency.

“Video conferencing, cloud-gaming, augmented reality and even the remote operations of drones would run flawlessly across the internet, without experiencing any significant queuing delays.”

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Following a competitive pitch, Pets at Home’s media agency, Carat UK, successfully secured exclusive sponsorship of all Heart Drive shows for the pet retailer.

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This includes shows hosted by presenters including JK & Kelly Brook, Vicky Pattison, and Rich Clarke.

The move will also see Pets at Home access Global’s comprehensive portfolio, utilising audio, outdoor and presenters.

Pets at Home, Marketing Director, Madeline Shaw, said: “We know just how much joy pets bring to people’s lives – none more so than at the end of a busy working day. We are delighted to be keeping the nation company every weekday afternoon, showcasing our incredible expertise and range of products and services.

“The Heart Drive audience is closely aligned to our core customer, so it’s the perfect platform for us to demonstrate how Pets at Home can support every pet and every pet owner. We can’t wait to inspire the millions of listeners that tune in each afternoon.”

Global, Commercial Partnerships Director Jenni Lees, added: “Heart’s Drive network has the perfect audience for Pets at Home. We know that 72% of listeners have a pet, and one in three plan to get one in the next year.

“Additionally, Pets at Home shares Heart’s feel-good spirit and I know that the content we’re creating together will help our presenters turn up even more of the feel good right across the UK.”

The news comes as the media and entertainment group recently announced a 10-year partnership to upgrade payphones in the UK and launch more digital hubs for local communities.

In a move to provide better connectivity and hyper-local advertising to over 200 towns and cities, the agreement will see Global convert up to 2,000 conventional BT payphones and kiosks into brand new Street Hubs over a 10-year period from next year.

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The partnership will give advertisers transparency into the percentage of safe and suitable content their ads are appearing against.

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As a result, the platform is offering advertisers brand safety controls at the campaign level when launching new projects.

This first-party tool will ensure advertisers that their ads are shown alongside only the premiere content on our platform, specifically for creator mid-roll ads.

To provide advertisers with more control when placing ads in Creator Stories, which was launched last year, the company has created a brand safety tool that will give advertisers the choice to add an extra layer of protection.

When the filter is turned on, ads will appear near content that has passed additional brand safety content moderation filters.

Otherwise, ads will be shown next to all available inventory.

Further enhancements to the solution will also be released in the coming months, the social media platform revealed.

IAS CEO, Lisa Utzschneider, said: “We are excited to partner with Snap to deliver best-in-class measurement solutions for marketers to safeguard and scale their businesses on Snapchat. Snap is focused on developing ad offerings in a premium and safe content ecosystem, and our partnership will give advertisers actionable data to maximise their investment across Snapchat.”

Snap’s UK Business Solutions Director, Fintan Gillespie, added: “Through partnering with IAS, we’re delighted to offer our advertisers an extra layer of brand safety and suitability on Snapchat. These initial results showcase just how brand safe our platform is and we’re excited to continue investing in products and services that enhance this.”

Recently, Mobile Marketing Magazine sat down with Gillespie to discuss the brands ‘game-changing’ role in AR advertising.

Read the full interview HERE.

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In a move to provide better connectivity and hyper-local advertising to over 200 towns and cities, the agreement will see Global convert up to 2,000 conventional BT payphones and kiosks into brand new Street Hubs over a 10-year period from next year.

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This also includes selling and marketing on the telecoms giant’s 959 existing Street Hubs.

BT will also continue to provide mobile and WiFi connectivity to the units.

BT Business Chief Executive Officer, Bas Burger, said: “BT’s payphones have long been an iconic feature on the UK’s streets – and with the way we all communicate changing, today’s announcement marks a further step into the future.

“There are already almost 1,000 modern digital Street Hubs bringing communication benefits to local communities across the UK.

“By bringing together BT’s rock-solid connectivity with Global’s unrivalled expertise in out-of-home advertising, we can almost triple this number over the next decade.”

Global Group CEO, Stephen Miron, added: “We are absolutely delighted to continue our partnership with BT for at least another 10 years. Street Hubs have become increasingly attractive to advertisers, given their striking presence and prominent positioning on the major streets across the UK.

“Together with BT, we have very exciting and ambitious plans to significantly expand the Street Hub network, alongside some highly innovative solutions for advertisers. BT has been a great partner, and we look forward to continuing this relationship over the next decade.”

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Irving has over 20 years of experience in building and marketing global technology brands. He most recently held the position of CMO/VP of Marketing of Meta Reality Labs, a position he held for three years.

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Before that he spent a similar amount of time at Eventbrite, having started as Chief Brand Officer before being promoted to CMO in 2019. He has also held senior marketing roles at Airbnb, Google and Apple.

At Google, Irving held the position of Global Brand Director of Google+ before being promoted to Senior Director of Marketing, whereas, at Apple, he was the Director of WW Marketing Communications.

Commenting on his appointment, Irving said: “I grew up in the automotive industry…always fascinated by helping people get places. And now, as a loyal Lyft rider for years, I get to meld my passion for transportation with the technology that helps riders and drivers alike”

“The brand foundations are strong – and yet there is so much more we can do to put the brand into action. Lyft is known for its warmth, likability, and endearing personality.” 

He added: “These are qualities that any other brand would be jealous of, and I am confident in the team’s ability to accelerate the brand connection to even more riders and drivers as we go forward.”

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According to the British competition watchdog, which has launched an in-depth phase two investigation into the tie-up, the move could lead to higher prices for customers and affect investment in UK mobile networks.

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As a result, the CMA has given the two telecoms giants five five working days to respond with “meaningful solutions” to their concerns.

The CMA also raised its concerns that the deal may make it difficult for smaller mobile ‘virtual’ network operators such as Sky Mobile, Lebara and Lyca Mobile to negotiate good deals for their own customers, by reducing the number of mobile network operators capable of hosting these “virtual networks”.

In January, the CMA launched its Phase 1 investigation into the merger, which found it could “could lead to mobile customers facing higher prices and reduced quality.”

CMA Phase 1 decisionmaker for this case, Julie Bon, said: “Millions of people in the UK depend on effective competition in the mobile market in order to access the best deals for them.

“Whilst Vodafone and Three have made a number of claims about how their deal is good for competition and investment, the CMA has not seen sufficient evidence to date to back these claims.”

Bon added: “Our initial assessment of this deal has identified concerns which could lead to higher prices for customers and lower investment in UK mobile networks. These warrant an in-depth investigation unless Vodafone and Three can come forward with solutions.”

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