E-Mersion Media moves into pole position to deliver exclusive content to Formula One fans

A digital media company invested in by Authorised Investment Fund (ASX: AIY) has made significant progress in the digital marketing space with the pooled investment fund now looking forward to its investee commercialising its own technology.

e-Mersion Media is a digital media and publishing start-up that has developed innovative technology that engages consumers across a brand’s ecosystem and delivers always-on content in real time.

The platform facilitates a way for companies to digitise magazines for mobile devices and thereby potentially create innovative and significant and ancillary revenue channels for advertisers. Meanwhile, end-users and customers can make secure transactions as they engage with particular goods and services being provided thru the platform.

Authorised Investment Fund investment of 14% of the company therefore provides it exposure to its market performance.

Just yesterday, e-Mersion said it had partnered with Concierge Grand Prix Magazine for additional F1 races in 2020 after a successful launch of a digital magazine on both the Apple App and Google Play stores related to the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Concierge Monaco 2019 Gran Prix magazine engages fans via a digital platform that offers readers a richer, more immersive way to view its content and extends the value of the popular print magazine to bring to life destination guides for F1 fans.

The unique concept grants motorsport enthusiasts and their families unprecedented access to the top tier of Formula One racing – the world’s premier motorsports competition. It combines exclusive interviews with a targeted handbook of the finest that Grand Prix destinations have to offer.

Last month’s Concierge Magazine celebrated 90 years of the Monaco Grand Prix and included exclusive content relating to some of motorsports greatest figureheads including Alain Prost, Jody Scheckter and Martin Brundle.

“This year our readers were invited to download the magazine app on our exciting new platform. It allowed our readers to immerse themselves in our rich, fully interactive content, while also being able to book their favourite restaurants and hotels directly,” said Monica Head, SEO International and Concierge Founder and CEO.

Speaking about the development, e-Mersion Media CEO Vincenzo Viola confirmed that the relationship with Concierge meant e-Mersion would now be entering the next phase of commercialisation of its magazine app whereby the company moved from app development into revenue generation.

One of the most intriguing statistics made public by e-Mersion is that almost 41% of people that downloaded the app accessed it multiple times over the course of the Grand Prix weekend.

Furthermore, e-Mersion said the 140-page Monaco edition was praised by the Prince of Monaco, His Serene Highness Albert II, for its quality.

“Their powerful and popular Formula One destination guide for this year’s Monaco 2019 Grand Prix gave e-Mersion the perfect platform to test and launch a pilot digital magazine,” said Mr Viola.

“I can report we have successfully completed this important milestone in our app development, with real proof of concept, rigorous stress and volume testing, valuable learnings from UX testing and the capture of important data.”

“We are excited to now have our first commercial app up on both iOS and Android platforms, with 58% of users on iOS and 42% on Android. What’s really exciting is to learn that 81% of our audience clicked ‘play’ on one of the many videos within the issue and that during the Monaco Grand Prix, our retention rate was 40.9%,” said Mr Viola.

Recruitment drive

As a strong sign of its gradual growth and development, e-Mersion added to its ranks just last week. The company said it had appointed three key executives to support its growth plans, focused particularly on digital media, programmatic media, data analytics and app build.

Michael Chmielewski was appointed as Chief Digital Officer, Greg Kodikara as Chief Technology Officer and Jane Walshe as Head of Media & Partnerships with e-Mersion hailing the trio as “best in class”.

As the e-Mersion platform rolls out across a number of projects launching over the next few months, the trio is expected to strengthen the company’s pursuit of developing the world’s best digital magazine platform at scale.

Supplementary investments

In addition to e-Mersion Media, Authorised Investment Fund has several other investments across multiple sectors including cosmetics, programmatic advertising and renewable energy.

In news that is likely to please its shareholders, the pooled development fund announced it has increased its investment by a further 5% to hold 30% of Asian Integrated Media (AIM) while taking steps to acquire an additional 30% stake in a joint venture in AAA Programmatic Pty Ltd.

AAA Programmatic was established by AIM and Ambient Digital Group to provide programmatic advertising for luxury goods and targeting the country’s luxury-seeking consumers.

Aim and Ambient have formally agreed to Authorised Investment Fund participating as a 30% JV partner in the new programmatic advertising venture in exchange for 5,200,000 AIY shares at a strike price of $0.30 per AIY share subject to PDF board approval.

The combined equity stakes will significantly expand the company’s footprint in the multi-billion-dollar global programmatic advertising sector with views to potentially generating significant revenues in the foreseeable future.

In other related news, Authorised Investment Fund has also reported progress with its 30% stake in Aenea Cosmetics – a company that sells luxury epigenetic cosmetics. Aenea recently signed a deal with Sanahunt Luxury Department Store to expand its market footprint into Eastern Europe and has also agreed on a digital marketing and ecommerce tie-up with The Rake magazine.

In midday trade shares in Authorised Investment Fund were sitting at $0.047.