Business Overview 4. DX Regional Collaboration Project Signpost's DX and Regional Collaboration Project started in March 2022 with the establishment of the DX and Regional Collaboration Division. It aims to provide products and services that contribute to regional collaboration by collaborating with local financial institutions nationwide, utilizing its own DX technology and open innovation. In August 2022, it began working with Oita Made Co., Ltd., which was established with the investment of multiple companies in Oita Prefecture, including Oita Bank, to sell original products made in Oita Prefecture to both domestic and overseas markets and to match local companies and Signpost's products and services in order to promote the revitalization of Oita Prefecture's economy. In addition, in April 2024, it started offering DX support services for medium-sized and small businesses. As the first effort, it supports the creation of DX declaration by (The) Fourth Hokuriku Bank, Ltd. (Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture) to deploy DX declaration support services to the market. Furthermore, it will realize new solutions by commercializing its own technology and open innovation and promote regional collaboration through innovation.
2. Business Area
The services offered by Cygnia <6031> are mainly the "CX Improvement Service" provided by its subsidiary ZETA, which improves the purchasing experience of users visiting EC sites, promotes purchasing, and increases EC site sales. Customers include powerful retail companies that stock and sell large quantities of products, such as United Arrows <7606>, Urban Research Co., Ltd., Konan Shoji <7516>, and CROOZ SHOPLIST, among others. In recent years, powerful retailers have been strengthening their own EC businesses to capture consumers who use the internet, but ZETA's "ZETA CX Series" is of high-end quality that can support the goals of EC businesses at a high level, "noticing desired products," "finding desired products," and "connecting to physical stores," and has been well received.
Within the Internet advertising market, retail media advertising is being noticed as one of the alternatives to retargeting advertising, which has become difficult due to cookie regulations. Retail media advertising refers to search-linked advertising within EC sites, such as "ZETA AD," and is not just a simple advertisement placed on EC sites. The latter is also sometimes referred to as retail media advertising, but since anyone in the internet advertising business can enter it, it has already become a red ocean. However, the former, the true retail media advertising, requires highly advanced functions such as search speed, inventory linkage, cooperation with core systems, and dynamic pricing, as well as very labor-intensive operational support tailored to each EC business, making it difficult for anyone else to enter besides this company (even if they try to enter, they will likely give up due to the labor involved), and is considered to have plenty of room for growth on a blue ocean.
*Search-linked advertising: A type of listing advertising that is an ad related to the search content displayed on the search results screen. Normally, it refers to ads on search sites like Google, but in this company's case, it is search-linked advertising within specific EC sites.
(Author: FISCO guest analyst Nobumitsu Miyata)