2021 Google Workspace Ecosystem Landscape and Ecosystem Guide by Happeo Featuring Leading Workspace Integrated Applications

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September 28, 2021

Blueshift's SmartHub CDP Unveils Next Evolution of Omnichannel Journeys

For the first time, brands can seamlessly orchestrate marketing and CX touchpoints together, with Blueshift’s new App Hub and next-generation Omnichannel Journey Builder

Blueshift today announced the next evolution of its AI-Powered SmartHub Customer Data Platform (CDP) by extending its journey orchestration across all customer experience touchpoints including support, commerce, sales, loyalty, product, and other CX channels. With the combined launch of its new App Hub and next-generation Omnichannel Journey Builder, Blueshift’s SmartHub CDP enables marketers to further activate customer data with first-of-its-kind functionality, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of smart CDPs. Blueshift’s new advanced capabilities and partner ecosystem will be available in October 2021.

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Blueshift Launches Next Generation Omnichannel Journey Builder and App Hub. For the first time, brands can now seamlessly orchestrate marketing and CX touchpoints together. (PRNewsfoto/Blueshift)

Together, Blueshift’s App Hub and next-generation Omnichannel Journey Builder fill the void in connecting and orchestrating the entire customer experience through traditional CDPs and Campaign Management Platforms (CMPs). While traditional CDPs provide a unified view of customers and push audiences to various channels they lack the functionality to orchestrate customer journeys. CMPs provide journey orchestration, but are limited to marketing channel data and can’t access the full customer profile. In addition, CMPs limit journey orchestration to marketing channels only. Now, Blueshift’s SmartHub CDP seamlessly merges the benefits of both.

“To stay relevant to users and drive viewership you need to be able to re-engage users across the right channels at key times of the day with content that matches each user’s unique interests,” said Fredrik Salzedo, Director of CRM, Discovery+ EMEA. “You can’t achieve that without a centralized platform that provides visibility into users’ viewing habits and gives marketers the ability to quickly create, test, and optimize personalized engagement strategies across the customer lifecycle.”

Blueshift extends its SmartHub CDP for omnichannel CX orchestration
Engineering and IT-dependent processes that took marketers weeks or more can now be accomplished in minutes with the new advancements to Blueshift’s SmartHub CDP. Brands will be able to:

Easily Orchestrate Relevant, Real-Time Experiences. Blueshift’s next-generation Omnichannel Journey builder provides an intuitive canvas and numerous trigger options, filters, campaign controls, and testing options for brands to more quickly and seamlessly orchestrate, test, and optimize omnichannel customer experiences, and improve engagement throughout the customer lifecycle.
Use AI to Personalize the Journey. Blueshift’s suite of AI offerings, including Predictive Channel and Engage Time Optimization are directly available inside the journey builder and help marketers present the most relevant content in the right channel and at the right time to all customers seamlessly.
Connect Any Touchpoint Into the Customer Journey. Blueshift’s new partner ecosystem, App Hub, offers a growing library of 80+ integrations that brands can connect and start using in minutes. The simple, self-serve, no-code interface makes it easy to customize interactions across marketing and CX channels, and sync data with any system including company internal systems, in real-time. Key integrations include:
- Direct Mail (Lob, Inkit, etc.)
- Customer Support (Zendesk, etc.)
- Sales CRM (Salesforce, etc.)
- IVR / Phone (mPulse, 8×8, etc.)
- Paid Media (Facebook, Google, Snap, LiveRamp etc.)
- Publish Your Own App

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Today’s digitally native consumers have growing demands around the customer experience and expect brand interactions to be frictionless across channel lines. Companies that successfully meet these demands and deliver strong omnichannel engagement and retain 89% of their customers. However most brands have failed to adapt and according to Gartner, 40 percent of marketers struggle to seamlessly connect channels within the buyer journey largely because they lack a centralized platform to connect and orchestrate across their distributed organization and tech stacks.

With the releases of the App Hub and the next-generation Omnichannel Journey Builder, Blueshift enables brands to seamlessly deliver the right experiences to the right customers through the right channel. For example, an ecommerce brand can create a journey based on a purchase and connect a direct mail upsell, a post-purchase product review, and a post-purchase customer satisfaction survey all in one platform that is omni-aware of exactly where the customer is at any moment.

“Marketers need to build their strategies around the customer,” said Houman Akhavan, Chief Marketing Officer at CarParts.com. “We’ve seen time and again that using first-party data to deliver the right message in the right place at the right time results in a more cohesive and desirable experience for the customer, and more efficient conversions and sustained growth for the business. Blueshift’s intelligent omnichannel orchestration capabilities help us achieve that.”

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Sprout Social Makes $100,000 Contribution to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to Provide Scholarships for Black/African American Software Engineering Students

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September 28, 2021

Allset Raises $3M to Automate Tips for Service Professionals

Sprout Social, an industry-leading provider of cloud-based social media management software, announced a $100,000 contribution to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) for the establishment of the Sprout Social Scholarship Fund. This contribution will provide eight merit-based scholarships to Black/African American college seniors who exemplify strong leadership abilities and demonstrate interest in computer science or software engineering. Scholarship recipients will also receive the opportunity to apply and interview for a full-time role at Sprout Social that would start in the summer of 2022.

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Selected college seniors will be awarded an $11,000 scholarship to help alleviate outstanding financial burdens as they complete their post-secondary education. Moreover, through its partnership with UNCF, Sprout Social is also providing more access to opportunities for highly qualified students to enter the workforce.

Students interested in a career opportunity with Sprout Social can apply to be a part of the engineering rotational program for new graduates. Sprout Social’s rotational program embeds engineers in cross-functional Agile development teams. Individuals work across multiple engineering disciplines: back-end, front-end, QA, or mobile. Engineers also get exposed to a variety of technologies, including Java, Python, MySQL, Cassandra, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, NSQ, Docker, Kubernetes, React and Redux. They work in tandem with product designers and product managers to drive product initiatives to successful outcomes.

“We are proud to partner with UNCF to establish the Sprout Social Scholarship Fund,” said Cassandra Blackburn, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Sprout Social. “At Sprout, we are committed to increasing access to education and workforce opportunities for the Black/African American community. These scholarships are just one part of the work we are excited to continue with UNCF to cultivate creative, collaborative and inquisitive leaders that will drive the future of software development.”

“This gift from Sprout Social is very helpful, making a significant impact on the lives of talented, deserving students pursuing careers in computer science and engineering,” said Maurice E. Jenkins, Jr., executive vice president and chief development officer, UNCF. “HBCUs produce 25% of all Black graduates in STEM. Through valued partnerships such as this one, we can enable more students attending HBCUs to achieve better futures. We look forward to working with Sprout Social and others who would like to fuel more diversity across STEM careers in the United States. Black students have a lot to provide to this field, and their voices, skills and talent are truly needed.”

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Issuu Announces Raising $31 Million of Committed Financing from Capital IP

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September 28, 2021

Issuu Announces Raising $31 Million of Committed Financing from Capital IP

Issuu, the global leader in digital content publishing, today announced the company has secured a $31M round of financing from Capital IP.

Issuu will use the capital to scale teams across the company, invest in new product expansion, and compound accelerating growth.

“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a significant upswing in both new customer acquisition and active use on Issuu,” said Joe Hyrkin, chief executive officer at Issuu. “While Issuu continues to be the leading platform for SMB content marketing, catalogues, brochures, menus, real estate guides, architecture portfolios, and publications across every digital channel, we’re also seeing a huge increase in the creator economy ecosystem.”

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Continued Hyrkin, “Last year we saw 840% growth in digital sales thanks to independent creators using Issuu to sell their content across social media platforms. Across the board, hundreds of millions of businesses globally are embracing the necessity to distribute their content digitally and Issuu will be here to help them. Capital IP’s investment will provide valuable support to further expand Issuu’s leadership in this market.”

Capital IP Managing Partner Aron Dantzig said, “We are excited to partner with the Issuu team to further drive the company’s successful record in empowering content creators to seamlessly create, transform and distribute content. The Issuu business model has exhibited strong historical growth, which has been further accelerated by recent digital trends in content marketing. Our investment will help Issuu bolster the company’s industry leading technology platform and further enhance the value proposition for millions of Issuu’s publishers and readers, while allowing Issuu to build ever-closer integrations with leading content distributors.”

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This new round is the first for Issuu since July 2014, when the company raised $10 million from Heartcore Capital and Japanese Telco, KDDI. Hyrkin is a well-known advocate for profitable growth, a business strategy known colloquially as ProGro. Hyrkin has spoken extensively on the topic and recently released an eBook to help startups who wish to learn about the ProGro path.

“ProGro is about delivering sustainable customer value. After 17 consecutive quarters of profitable growth, even in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re in a great position to raise capital from a creative and supportive firm like Capital IP. We see them as an important partner to help us fuel the expansion of our team, product, and vision.”

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One Door Focuses its Account-Based Marketing Program with Influ2

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September 28, 2021

One Door Focuses its Account-Based Marketing Program with Influ2

Influ2 platform’s precise targeting helps One Door reach key buying groups, boosting its marketing performance and influence on revenue pipeline by 70%

Influ2, a Person-Based Advertising platform, announced that it helped the leading provider of cloud-based visual merchandising software, One Door focus its Account-Based Marketing (ABM) program – boosting marketing performance and influence on its revenue pipeline by 70%. This was a result of Influ2’s precise targeting capabilities, which allowed One Door to more accurately reach theaccount buying groups within its target accounts and filter out irrelevant contacts.

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“Influ2 is one of the most reliable ways to know that an individual has engaged with you and that’s an important part of why we’re using the platform to put our branding front and center with engaged prospects,” said Ken Kuperstein, Director of Marketing at One Door.

“When we get the ‘Influ2 clickers’, there is that kind of excitement of: ‘These are great leads!’ Influ2 helped our sales team understand interest and engagement from their key accounts and the decision makers. It’s been really positive having visibility of these results.”

Additionally, Influ2’s dashboard gave One Door insight into what ads key decision makers engage with. This helped the One Door sales team put their efforts toward engaged accounts. Influ2’s insights also enabled One Door to develop ad creative and content that is more relevant and appealing to a target’s defined roles within the buying group.

“Working with CommCreative, One Door was one of the early adopters of Influ2. They were experiencing the exact challenge that Influ2 tries to solve – where the wrong buyers are targeted with repetitive, irrelevant ads,” said CEO & Co-founder of Influ2, Dmitri Lisitski. “This occurs too often in digital advertising, and so many people are turned off by it, and companies end up pouring a lot of money into campaigns that don’t drive results.

“Having worked in the industry for over 20 years, I knew that a better approach was possible and that’s why I launched Influ2. And, One Door’s story is proof that marketers can effectively use ABM – all they need is enough insight to reach the right person.”

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Talkdesk Research Finds Engaged CX Employees Drive Bottom Line

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Business Wire

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September 28, 2021

Talkdesk Research Finds Engaged CX Employees Drive Bottom Line

Organizations must reevaluate employee engagement and satisfaction metrics to achieve sustainable success

New research on the future of workforce engagement in the contact center finds 90% of CX professionals view agent engagement as a major driver of customer loyalty
Sixty-one percent of survey respondents also said their organizations are planning to implement a hybrid workforce model when returning to the office is again deemed safe
Join Talkdesk Sept. 28 from 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. ET for a live video discussion during Enterprise Connect 2021 to hear more predictions on the evolving role of contact center employees

Talkdesk Inc., the global customer experience leader for customer-obsessed companies, released its newest research report, “The future of workforce engagement in the contact center,” finding 90% of customer experience (CX) professionals consider contact center agent engagement a catalyst for building customer loyalty. The report explores the future of a hybrid work environment and the opportunities for improving employee engagement in the contact center.

“Every organization is facing difficult decisions around how and where their employees will work going forward. For contact center staff, there is the added pressure and unique considerations given the agent’s roles in serving as a company’s frontline workers,” said David Gardner, vice president of research and insights, Talkdesk. “Our research highlights the pros and cons for a variety of workplace models, but one thing is consistent – engaged and satisfied CX employees are the key to customer loyalty, and can drive bottom-line results for the organization.”

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“Every organization is facing difficult decisions around how and where their employees will work going forward. For contact center staff, there is the added pressure and unique considerations given the agent’s roles in serving as a company’s frontline workers”

The Future of the Contact Center Work Model Is Hybrid

Following the swift pivot to remote working models required of companies all around the world in 2020, organizations are now assessing what their “return to normal” will look like. According to the Talkdesk report, hybrid work arrangements are likely the new standard for working post-pandemic, as 61% of organizations plan to use this model for contact centers once returning to the office is deemed safe. In fact, only 4% expect to employ a fully remote workforce. Additionally, most expect flexible work shifts to become the preferred approach for contact centers, further indicating that employee demand for flexibility and work-life balance is being taken seriously by business leaders.

While organizations expect to see many benefits from hybrid working, the model does come with its own set of challenges. The top challenges expected with hybrid workplaces include:

Technological concerns (40%)
Strains in communication and collaboration (32%)
Difficulty managing or training and onboarding new employees (30%)

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The New Measurement of Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

Today, more than half (53%) of contact centers use employee productivity metrics (which may include calls taken per shift and call resolution rate) as the primary indicators of employee engagement and satisfaction. While productivity is key to growth, the prevailing use of productivity metrics signals that leaders may be underestimating the role of employee-centric metrics in driving important business KPIs. In fact, only 42% of organizations are using employee satisfaction (ESAT) scores to measure engagement in the contact center today. Moving forward, companies should look beyond performance metrics in the contact center, as these may have a negative impact on employee engagement and retention over time.

Maintaining an engaged workforce has never been as important – or as challenging – as it is today. Although CX professionals are optimistic about current rates of engagement in the contact center, more than half (54%) anticipate attrition rates to be 20% or higher between now and 2025. With this, 78% of CX professionals report that investing in workforce engagement management (WEM) tools is a priority for their organization.

While there are still many unknowns as to what shape workforce engagement will take in the contact center between now and 2025, it is safe to expect that those organizations prioritizing employee experience have much to gain, both in bottom-line results and an enhanced customer experience. Explore the topic further by joining Talkdesk on Sept. 28, from 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. ET, during Enterprise Connect 2021 for a live video discussion on the evolving role of contact center employees.

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Accretive Media Launches Accretive Outcomes™ Suite of Automated Measurement Products Purpose-Built for the Out-of-Home Advertising Market

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prweb

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September 28, 2021

Accretive Media launches Accretive Outcomes™ suite of automated measurement products purpose-built for the out-of-home advertising market

New reporting solution democratizes measurement for out-of-home advertising, making it as accountable and easy to measure as online media

Accretive Media, a leader in out-of-home data and technology, today announced the launch of Accretive Outcomes™, a new solution that delivers highly effective and efficient measurement and attribution for the out-of-home advertising channel.

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“We believe that access to accurate and reliable measurement will be a huge catalyst for growth for the out-of-home industry and are thrilled to lead the charge,” said Craig Benner, Founder and CEO of Accretive Media. “Advertisers want to invest more in out-of-home advertising, but can’t spend tens of thousands of dollars and wait weeks after every campaign to determine if the spend was worth it. Accretive Outcomes™ ensures that advertisers clearly understand how their out-of-home investment is performing, regardless of the screen, the platform, or the format they ran.”

The patent-pending Accretive Outcomes solution is the first and only OOH effectiveness measurement product specifically built for the out-of-home market. Existing out-of-home measurement solutions are either platform-specific or utilize mobile advertising measurement principles and retrofit them for out-of-home, proving to be costly and time consuming. Accretive’s suite of measurement products considers the nuance of consumers in the physical world and their interaction with out-of-home venues to deliver accurate, privacy-compliant, and actionable analytics that allow advertisers to make better investment decisions around their OOH media spend.

The key to the platform is Accretive’s Out-of-Home Graph™; a repository of POI data, screen locations, household information, mobile location data, and online and offline sales data. The platform joins campaign data with the graph to help advertisers understand the impact of their out-of-home adverting. Metrics available in the reporting suite include web visitation, online sales, app downloads, foot traffic, reach/frequency, return on ad spend, and custom offline sales reports. All reporting is based on the OAAA’s newly adopted exposure methodology and has been refined over the past three plus years of field market execution.

Clients have already seen the benefits of the technology. “Accretive’s measurement has completely changed the way we think about the out-of-home channel and how it fits into our media mix,” said Lawrence Shapiro, head of marketing for Electra Meccanica, who utilized Accretive Media to help launch their eco-friendly electric vehicles this year. “We now have greater visibility and control into how out-of-home helps us achieve our goals and can grow our presence in the channel with confidence.”

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Part of what sets Accretive Outcomes apart from other offerings is that it’s not a one size fits all solution. “You could immediately tell that Accretive built this measurement product with consideration for what was important to both OOH media buyers and clients alike,” said Keri Weber, head of OOH for The Richards Group, “They truly care about helping our advertisers utilize the out-of-home medium to drive meaningful business results.”

Michael Provenzano, Founder and CEO of Vistar Media, a leading OOH programmatic platform, said, “Accretive continues to develop innovative solutions to bring robust data capabilities into the OOH programmatic ecosystem. Marketers constantly ask us for advanced measurement solutions that can connect out-of-home exposure to tangible metrics like sales and ROI/ROAS in a quick and efficient way. This is a much-needed addition to our industry.”

Accretive Outcomes™ works with all OOH formats and platforms and provides advertisers more control over how analytics are structured to ensure alignment with other channels. It can also provide omni-channel integration to help with more advanced attribution requirements like online to offline sales, multi-touch and media mix modeling.

“Accretive was the first to offer this type of measurement and attribution back in early 2018 as we brought the promise of more addressable and accountable programmatic digital out-of-home to light,” added Benner. “The Accretive Outcomes™ suite of products is the natural extension of this work aiming to help make all out-of-home more accountable, thus making it easier to justify OOH as a much larger component of a media plan. Smart out-of-home advertising has always worked in driving results; now we can finally – and consistently – prove it across every out-of-home campaign.”

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Adapex Wins Bronze Stevie® Award in 2021 Stevie® Awards for Women in Business

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September 28, 2021

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Fastest Growing Company of the Year

Adapex Inc has been named the winner of a BRONZE Stevie® Award in the Fastest Growing Company of the Year in the 18^th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run– worldwide. The Stevie Awards have been hailed as the world’s premier business awards.

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“I couldn’t be prouder of this award. It is a recognition of a lot of hard, smart work by the Adapex team and the over 700 publishers who work with us,” said Debra Fleenor, Founder & President, Adapex Inc. “I am honored to be in the company of so many outstanding women business leaders. Like the other companies honored with this distinction, Adapex’s success is driven by our team of experienced professionals who bring creativity, innovation, and dedication to helping our business grow, day after day. And we certainly couldn’t enjoy this kind of record growth without the collaboration and trust from our publisher partners.”

Adapex provides expert adops services and revolutionary technology to help publishers grow their revenue and improve user experience. The Adapex publisher network currently includes over 700 publisher sites, across the web, in-app, and the ever-expanding landscape of CTV. Our innovative technology, the m4 Tech Suite™ has led the charge for advancing our company’s explosive growth and revolutionizing monetization for all of our publisher clients. All our incoming new clients see revenue increases of 40-400%.

This past year, Adapex has taken an active role in finding solutions to drive transparency and efficiency that protect consumer privacy on the internet but allow advertisers to find their target audiences. We are researching and testing various identity solutions to bring more opportunities to our clients. The m4 Tech Suite™ includes our most recent addition of Magnify™ which enables seamless connection to multiple ID solutions. We are one of the first ad tech companies to bring large-scale plug-and-play identity solutions to publishers of all sizes.

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New Research Predicts AR Spending to Surpass $48.6 Billion by 2025

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September 28, 2021

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Research firm identifies winning enterprises of the future will embrace adoption of remote expert technology from top-down

Librestream, the #1-rated provider of augmented reality (AR) and remote collaboration solution Onsight, commissioned IDC, a premier global provider of market intelligence and advisory services, to conduct data analysis of the AR market including adoption rates, expanding use cases, and a roadmap to successful technology deployment.

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“AR is a key way that C-suites are achieving transformation at scale,” said Andrea Minonne, senior research analyst at IDC. “Spending on AR is expected to grow 18-fold over the next four years: from $2.7B in 2021 to $48.6B in 2025. Use cases will integrate AR with AI-centric products, IoT, new devices, and smart analytics to build knowledge networks that enable workforces to digitally access the data, people, and workflows that help them perform their work fast, efficiently, and safely.”

As C-suites continue to look to future-proof themselves and create a company culture based on digitization, innovation, disruption, and agility, tech investments remain a lead topic of discussion. According to IDC’s Advanced Technologies for Industry Survey 2020, over 50% of European businesses associate the adoption of emerging technologies to three key KPIs: customer satisfaction, time efficiency, and product/service quality.

“As a global provider of AR-powered collaboration solutions, we’ve experienced the increasing level of investment and corresponding benefits realized by our customers in support of IDC’s whitepaper findings,” said Jereme Pitts, COO at Librestream. “From 2019 to 2020, usage of our platform increased by 838%, with companies—including those from manufacturing, utilities, aerospace and defense, and more—reporting business outcomes that ranged from efficiency metrics such as productivity gains to worker safety improvements and positive carbon footprint impacts.”

This new research is detailed in the IDC whitepaper, “Time to Start Your AR-Enabled Remote Workforce Transformation Journey,” and includes case study examples such as a European oil and gas company that reduced costs by 20% and a carmaker that reduced machine downtime and maintenance costs by 15% by using AR technology. In the automotive industry, downtime costs an average of $22,000/minute and with manufacturers losing 800 hours/year to downtime on average, the savings can add up to $13.2 million each month.

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Cardlytics Appoints Microsoft Cloud Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh to Board of Directors

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September 28, 2021

Cardlytics Appoints Microsoft Cloud Chief Financial Officer Chris Suh to Board of Directors

Cardlytics, a digital advertising platform, today announced the appointment of Chris Suh, corporate vice president and CFO, Cloud+ AI Group at Microsoft, to its Board of Directors and Audit Committee.

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Mr. Suh is a 25-year veteran at Microsoft. He was appointed to his current position as CFO of Microsoft’s strategically important Cloud+ AI business in 2018. Prior to that, he has held a number of leadership positions throughout the organization in investor relations, sales and marketing, FP&A and internal audit. Prior to joining Microsoft, Suh began his career as a CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“Chris brings a wealth of highly relevant experience to the Cardlytics Board,” said Lynne Laube, CEO and co-founder of Cardlytics. “He deeply understands the journey we are on to scale our platform, enhance our user experience, and apply AI to enable self-service. Chris will also be a great thought partner as we expand our cloud business and move to recurring revenue pricing models.”

“All of our Directors are excited by what Chris will bring to Cardlytics. We continue to shape our Board to make sure we have the skills and experience that align with what’s most critical to drive long-term growth,” said Scott Grimes, Executive Chairman and co-founder.

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Unbabel Announces Speakers for LangOps Universe 2021 Summit

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Business Wire

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September 28, 2021

Unbabel Releases New Open-Source Large Language Model, The First LLM Fine Tuned to Predict Translation Quality

Unbabel’s two-day virtual summit will feature speakers from JetBlue, Nike, ESPN, Discovery, Trivago, and Zendesk to discuss how multilingual communication builds customer loyalty

Unbabel, an AI-powered Language Operations platform that helps businesses deliver multilingual support at scale, announced the speaker lineup for its upcoming virtual summit, LangOps Universe 2021. With an event theme of #TranslateFearlessly, over 30 speakers, 20 sessions, and 10 breakout sessions, attendees can expect to learn more about how AI can leverage data to support customer service teams, how AI helps businesses deal with customer service surges, and how Language Operations (LangOps) will redefine localization efforts and more. According to our 2021 Unbabel LangOps Survey, more than 90% of decision-makers at global organizations said they believe that a centralized LangOps platform could be a cost-effective solution to do more with less.

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Held over two days, October 27-28, 2021, and beginning at 8:00 a.m. PST, LangOps Universe 2021 will feature Michelle Poler, bestselling author of “Hello Fears,” as the event’s keynote speaker. Poler, known for starting a social movement empowering millions of people to step outside of their comfort zone and tap into their full potential, will act as a catalyst for conversation as attendees and speakers think about stepping into their power, crossing borders, and expanding global reach. In addition, the event will feature experts in customer service, language translation, and artificial intelligence who will collaborate, explore, and create a dialogue around global expansion through LangOps. LangOps is a new market category that helps global businesses communicate trust more effectively with their customers and stakeholders in any language.

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The digital-first summit is aimed at expanding and educating the LangOps community: from organizations communicating with customers in multiple languages to the human translators and editors enhancing the customer experience. Highlighted sessions will include the following experts:

Doug Kramon, Head of Fan Support and Customer Service at ESPN, Whitnee Hawthorne, VP of Customer Support at JetBlue, and Eamonn O’Brien, Vendor Operations Manager at Nike will join a panel to share insights on how to tackle surges in customer service.
Sara Cecamore from Discovery Inc. will dive deep into how Discovery was able to support its customers in over 15 languages.
Oliver Nono, Director, Enterprise Customer Success at Zendesk, will discuss how technology can aid businesses in global expansion.
Trivago’s Arisona Hampl, Head of User Support, and Marcel Basmer, Responsibility Lead Agent Services, will speak about how the company mastered customer service in hospitality.

“LangOps Universe is designed to inspire attendees to boldly break out of their comfort zones and create a positive impact on customers around the world,” said Vasco Pedro, co-founder and CEO at Unbabel. “The experience will give attendees the knowledge and insight to enable them to connect seamlessly with their customers in their native language. By creating conversation and interest in the growing LangOps sector, we will foster community and learning that will ultimately improve the bottomline for all businesses.”

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Free Live Demo: Unlocking B2B Marketplace Success With OroMarketplace

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September 28, 2021

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Elevate B2B and B2X marketplace strategies with Oro’s No.1 open-source marketplace management platform

Digital commerce pioneer Oro, Inc., announced that it will host an inaugural live demo of its purpose-built open-source B2B marketplace platform, OroMarketplace, on October 7th. The Oro leadership team will be on hand to demonstrate key capabilities that make OroCommerce the undisputed B2B leader in the highly competitive digital marketplace space.

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With marketplaces now accounting for 62% of global web sales, B2B merchants need robust, flexible infrastructure and rich features to enable them to transition into marketplace selling. Recognized by Gartner’s 2021 Market Guide for Marketplace Operations, OroMarketplace is agile enough to support B2B marketplaces of any kind or size, empowering sellers to rapidly implement B2B, B2C, B2G, B2X, franchise network ordering, services procurement, bookings and appointments, and physical goods marketplaces.

The live demo will explore the opportunities that come with multi-vendor B2B marketplaces, and highlight a slew of OroMarketplace capabilities, including operator, vendor, and customer features. Oro experts will offer operators tips on setting up product approval workflows, vendor permissions, and marketplace monetization strategies. Marketplace operators will also receive actionable insights to help them manage seller pages, products, customers, and even multiple warehouses, along with strategies for launching products, uploading catalogs, and setting up storefronts.

Participants will include manufacturers and distributors; marketplace operators seeking a platform suited to their B2B needs; B2B start-ups looking to enter a new marketplace niche; and private and venture capital investment companies looking to boost the value of their portfolios. Franchise operators, commercial and governmental procurement specialists, and IT consulting and development companies will also get particular value from the session.

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Nametag Platform Verifies Online Identity for Businesses and Consumers with Multi-Factor Identity™ and Advanced Biometrics

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September 28, 2021

Bearer Launches Data-First Security Solution

Nametag is the new standard that verifies users based on identity, not passwords or easily stolen PII, generating a reusable digital ID

Nametag, a new platform that verifies online identity for businesses and consumers using Multi-Factor IdentityTM and advanced biometrics, is the next generation of cybersecurity. Nametag empowers individuals with private, reusable identity verification on their phone so that accounts can be accessed, and companies can authenticate customers. Nametag never mines or sells a user’s personal data, and allows the user to decide where, when, and for how long their data is shared with a company.

“Privacy online is a broken promise. Our mission is to bring authenticity to the internet and enable people to build more trusted relationships,” said Aaron Painter, the founder of Nametag and the former VP of Microsoft China and CEO of Cloudreach.

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Stolen passwords account for over 80% of security breaches with data breaches costing companies $4.24 million on average per incident between May 2020 and March 2021, according to a study by IBM, which is 10 percent over the previous year’s total. And the recently released report U.S. Identity Theft: The Stark Reality by the Insurance Information Institute, found identity theft is on the rise, costing $712.4 billion in 2020, a 42 percent increase from 2019.

Methods to safeguard and maintain crucial information are outdated with dozens of passwords for online accounts haphazardly stored in various locations. Nametag offers the gold standard of account authentication by fully verifying a person’s identity with a combination of government-issued ID and additional highly specific criteria.

Legacy approaches to identity verification focused on onboarding, with businesses verifying an identity once and then allowing a person to use vulnerable credentials for future interactions. Nametag is reusable, giving a user the ability to log in to a wide spectrum of websites or apps across a user’s digital life, and the target site can immediately verify the user’s identity every time they return.

Nametag offers additional benefits, so companies can quickly authenticate their customer accounts with confidence and accelerate customer onboarding and support with premium account protection. Nametag’s no-code platform makes it easy for companies to reduce the risk of fraud loss and increase security by using industry-leading security protocols and APIs that were built by developers, for developers.

The platform utilizes proprietary technology called Multi-Factor Identity that keeps accounts safe, and easy to access and recover by using a unique, privacy-protected, reusable ID. Through this ID, users can quickly and repeatedly access their high-value accounts, such as banking, crypto wallets, gaming, and social media sites.

A key differentiator, Nametag puts privacy first, and allows the user to approve or reject a request from companies that are asking for their data, giving the user full control and transparency over their identity. “We have a privacy policy that can be summed up in ten words: ‘We only share information when you specifically ask us to,'” Painter said.

Nametag has undergone a rigorous testing process in all 50 states and is available for both Android and iOS devices.

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The Investors

Investors behind Nametag include Glasswing Ventures, a venture capital firm that funds generation-defining businesses harnessing the power of AI and frontier technologies to transform markets and revolutionize industries, and Village Global, a firm that is focused on the strength of trusted networks and funded by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

The Team

Previously, Painter was the CEO of Cloudreach and VP & General Manager at Microsoft China. He held executive and leadership positions with Microsoft over nearly 14 years in France, Brazil, Hong Kong, the UK, and Seattle.

Ross Kinder, CTO, is an experienced engineering leader from the security and identity industry. He was a security researcher with CERT, a Distinguished Engineer and Deputy CTO for Cloud at SecureWorks, and the former co-founder of an SSO and identity provider.

David Adrian, Principal Engineer, is a former co-founder and engineering leader at the enterprise security startup Censys. He also holds a PhD in computer security and applied cryptography.

The rest of the Nametag team is comprised of industry leaders who bring a depth of experience in cybersecurity and enterprise solutions, including engineers, product designers, customer success experts, and business development specialists, among others.

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Factor4 Provides Seamless Gift Card Conversion Process

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September 28, 2021

Factor4 Announces Gift Card Integration with LMS-POS

The industry’s best gift card platform just got better and easier to use

Factor4, LLC, the leading provider of gift card and loyalty solutions, has made it even faster and easier for merchants and processors to switch their gift card programs to Factor4. Most of the industry has not yet invested in the technology required or met the demands of the market leaving merchants and processors searching for another gift card solution. Factor4 enables them to convert to their omnichannel gift card solution immediately without any interruption to service, loss of gift card data, or heavy workload.

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“We are excited to offer an enhanced gift card conversion process with even more benefits to processors. Factor4 boasts the most integrations in the market; plus, we have invested in robust ecommerce and mobile gift card technology. We do all of the conversion work while providing topnotch customer service to go with our leading gift card solution.”

Factor4 no longer requires lists of unused cards or numbers that have not been used. Now cards and numbers can be easily used and automatically added to the system when a merchant runs the first transaction on that card. A list of existing cards/numbers and balances are imported into our system. This upgrade to the API allows Factor4 to import any other gift card processor information.

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IDC MarketScape Recognizes Contentstack as a Leader in Content Management Systems for Persuasive Digital Experiences

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September 28, 2021

IDC-MarketScape-Recognizes-Contentstack-as-a-Leader-in-Content-Management-Systems-for-Persuasive-Digital-Experiences

Contentstack, the leading Content Experience Platform (CXP), announced the company was positioned as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape of Content Management Systems for Persuasive Digital Experiences (Doc #US47412821, September 2021). The IDC MarketScape assessment highlights Contentstack’s rapid ascension in the Content Management Systems (CMS) market and demonstrates the company’s full-service support.

The assessment evaluated 16 CMS vendors using a rigorous scoring methodology that examined product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and each vendor’s current and future market success factors.

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Contentstack pioneered the industry’s most beloved cloud-native content experience platform designed to empower technical and business users alike. Brands including Broadcom, Chico’s FAS, Ellie Mae, IcelandAir, Miami HEAT, McDonald’s and NBC rely on the company’s CMS platform to fuel in-game or interactive experiences, ad servers, live events, as well as traditional web and mobile sites and apps.

According to the IDC MarketScape assessment, “Contentstack and partners interviewed for this evaluation rated Contentstack highly in customer service for both the responsiveness to technical/operations issues or in addressing requests for feature development.” Additionally, it noted, “Contentstack provides a dedicated Customer Success team to proactively reach out to customers even before issues may arise and pioneered Care Without Compromise™ as a multi-vendor program to harmonize the support experience across a vendor ecosystem for enterprise customers.”

A founding member of the MACH Alliance, Contentstack’s platform is built on API-first principles that are developer-friendly and support a variety of content and delivery models. IDC MarketScape author Marci Maddox, research director for IDC’s Digital Experience Management Software program, noted,”Contentstack offers sophisticated CDN coverage, omnichannel capabilities and high API rate limits.”

“Now more than ever before, leading brands are striving to deliver content-rich digital interactions. This is especially the case in industries such as retail, financial services, and hospitality that have had to quickly evolve their customer touchpoints and delivery methods throughout the last eighteen months,” said Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack. “Customers are looking for a true partner who can not only meet their content delivery needs today, but can scale as they evolve their content architecture in the future. We remain committed to delivering a sophisticated and easy-to-use Content Experience Platform that enables our customers to drive revenue, build customer loyalty, and deliver superior customer experience.”

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Valtech Named 2021 Optimizely Partner of The Year in Sweden and Denmark, and DXP Partner of the Year in North America

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September 28, 2021

Valtech, a global leader in digital customer experience and business transformation, was recently named Partner of the Year in Sweden and Denmark and DXP Partner of the year in North America by Optimizely (formerly Episerver). Optimizely’s annual Partner Awards recognizes the outstanding contributions and commitment of these companies to helping businesses unlock their digital potential.

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Valtech’s Denmark and Sweden offices have been honored with The Partner of the Year award in those markets. This award recognizes the top-performing Optimizely partners that have demonstrated outstanding business performance and excellence in the sales and delivery of Optimizely solutions.

Additionally, Valtech North America was named DXP Partner of the Year, an award that focuses on the adoption of the Optimizely Digital Experience Platform (DXP) through solution partners. The partners recognized by this award are the top drivers of DXP adoption and have successfully implemented DXP solutions that yielded significant business results and drove long-term growth for clients.

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As a global leader in business transformation and a driver of innovation for some of the world’s biggest brands, Valtech is deeply committed to its investment into the Optimizely platform and has built a highly experienced team of certified Optimizely developers. To view all of the award winners, please see the Opticon 2021 Awards page.

Taboola to share its e-Commerce Strategy Following Connexity Acquisition

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September 28, 2021

Taboola Completes Acquisition of Gravity R&D, Adding New R&D Hub and Accelerating Product Development Related to AI and Personalization

Outlines approach to capturing share of an estimated $124 billion total addressable market

Provides updated 2021 and initial 2022 guidance that incorporates recently closed Connexity acquisition

Taboola, a global leader in powering recommendations for the open web, helping people discover things they may like, today is sharing with the investment community their strategy to bring more e-commerce solutions to open web publishers and more commerce value to advertisers following their acquisition of Connexity. The company is also announcing that for 2022 it expects Revenues of $1,698 to $1,748 million, Gross Profit of $530 to $550 million and ex-TAC Gross Profit* of $645 to $665 million. This would represent Gross Profit growth of approximately 36%, and ex-TAC Gross Profit growth of approximately 38% versus the mid-point of Taboola’s pre-Connexity 2021 guidance.

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Taboola closed its acquisition of Connexity on September 1, 2021, bringing Connexity’s 6,000 publishers and 1,600 direct merchant relationships to Taboola, unlocking new ways for publishers, advertisers and merchants to effectively scale outside of walled gardens.

Taboola estimates its total addressable market, when accounting for its recent Connexity acquisition, to be $124 billion. This includes $64 billion in the Open Web and $60 billion of e-commerce ad spend in walled gardens.

“We estimate that a third of our own revenue, as well as publishers in the open web will come from e-commerce over time. Especially on the back of a pandemic, people are buying online – and it’s better to buy from a trusted, editorial publisher. Following the acquisition of Connexity we are uniquely positioned to offer an e-commerce strategy to our 9,000 publishers around the world, and help merchants diversify outside of walled gardens. Today is a new beginning for Taboola and our partners. We could not be more excited,” said Adam Singolda, Founder & CEO, Taboola. “e-commerce will supercharge our business and position us to capture more of the $100B+ of available TAM. With Connexity, in 2022 we will be more than double what we were in 2019 in terms of ex-TAC Gross Profit and we project $100 million in annual ex-TAC gross profit synergies within four years – roughly equivalent to adding another Connexity. We are laser focused on execution and delivering on the huge opportunity before us.”

Key points include:

The e-commerce industry is rapidly accelerating: According to eMarketer, worldwide sales for e-commerce will surpass $7.3 trillion by 2025, and continue to grow its share of total sales against in-store sales.
Publishers are prioritizing e-commerce to thrive: According to Digiday, the majority of publishers are using e-commerce as a revenue stream, with a separate report from eMarketer reinforcing that point, noting that 60% of publishers see e-commerce as a top revenue source.
Connexity’s deep e-commerce expertise amplifies Taboola revenue performance: As one of the largest e-commerce media platforms on the open web, Connexity creates synergies for Taboola that will help to grow Taboola revenue. These include offering publishers new ways to monetize and increase yield, while also deepening Taboola’s publisher relationships.

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Updating Third Quarter and Full Year 2021 Guidance, Releasing Initial 2022 Guidance

With the closing of the Connexity acquisition, the Company is issuing updated Q3, Full Year 2021 and initial Full Year 2022 guidance for the combined company. This guidance is on an as reported basis with Connexity financials included starting September 1, 2021. This guidance represents for 2022 ex-TAC Gross Profit growth of approximately 30% on an as-reported basis and 17% on a Pro Forma basis with Connexity included for all of 2021. The below table provides the guidance.

(dollars in millions)	Q3 2021	Full Year 2021	Full Year 2022
Revenues	$338 to $342	$1,392 to $1,400	$1,698 to $1,748
Gross Profit	$101 to $103	$418 to $424	$530 to $550
ex-TAC Gross Profit*	$122 to $124	$503 to $509	$645 to $665
Net income (loss)	($7) to ($5)	($41) to ($35)	($18) to $2
Adjusted EBITDA*	$36 to $37	$168 to $171	$193 to $213

Our guidance assumes that the global economy continues to recover, with no major COVID-19 related setbacks that may cause economic conditions to deteriorate or significantly reduce advertiser or consumer demand.

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authID.ai Announces Enterprise Security Veteran Jeremiah Mason Joins as SVP, Product

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September 28, 2021

authID.ai Announces New Hires and Appointments

Mason will be responsible for product vision, strategy and direction of authID’s Identity as a Service (IDaaS) solutions, including its flagship technology, Verified.

authID.ai, a leading provider of secure, mobile, biometric identity authentication, announced that enterprise security software veteran Jeremiah Mason has joined the company as Senior Vice President for Product, reporting directly to CEO Tom Thimot. In his new role, Mason will be responsible for product vision, strategy and direction of authID’s Identity as a Service (IDaaS) solutions, including its flagship technology, Verified.

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With strong roots in enterprise security solutions, Mason has deep experience designing highly secure authentication systems to address security needs and deliver unique authentication products across regulated industries including healthcare and financial services. Most recently, Mason was Senior Product Manager at Beyond Identity, an identity authentication provider. Prior to that he was Manager of Research and Discovery for Imprivata, an international healthcare IT company, where he oversaw the team helping to bridge the gap between customer problems and innovative technology. Under his leadership, the team increased the year-over-year (YoY) conversion of concepts to product delivery and patent applications by more than 200%.

“Jeremiah brings a rare combination of innovation and strategy, focused on important customer challenges. With deep experience leading cross-functional groups to design, develop and
deliver industry-leading identity authentication solutions, Jeremiah’s expertise is second to none,” authID.ai CEO Tom Thimot said. “All of us at authID are thrilled to welcome Jeremiah to our growing team.”

Prior to his tenure with Imprivata, Mason managed and grew $100M+ hardware and software product lines at Dell EMC where he set the product vision, strategy and roadmap for backup and disaster recovery solutions. He graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Computer Networking and Information Systems. He also earned a Certificate in Disruptive Strategy from Harvard Business School.

In his new role, Mason will drive go-to-market strategies to help increase growth and lead the creation and delivery of new product concepts that will eliminate one-time passwords and knowledge-based authentication. The average Internet user has 100 passwords, many of which must be reset on a regular basis through a series of manual steps that may even require a costly customer support call. As SVP of Product, he will focus on product design, market needs, user research and the delivery of a comprehensive portfolio of biometric authentication solutions.

“Security and user experience no longer need to be a trade-off. At authID, we authenticate human users, not devices. We are laser-focused on providing simple and easy-to-use biometrics to replace those pesky one-time passwords and insecure challenge questions,” Mason said. “Verified, authID’s biometric authentication technology, helps financial, healthcare, and eCommerce enterprises free their eliminate the risks and costs of password and delights their customers with secure, seamless authentication experiences,” Mason added.

Specifically engineered to replace passwords, Verified provides enterprise customers with 99.995% accurate user facial matching. With an easy to integrate IDaaS platform, authID stops fraudulent account takeover and identity spoofing by biometrically authenticating a person’s identity in a real-time, seamless user experience.

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Adsonica Audio Display Ads Available on Envisionwise Platform

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September 28, 2021

National distribution agreement gives radio stations a new revenue opportunity by selling audio display ads

Adsonica, the leading audio display advertising solution, announced the availability of self-service audio display ads for small- to medium-sized radio stations using the Envisionwise station marketing platform. Adsonica ads are created using the Adsonica Studio web application that combines audio and image in a single image file, without video, coding, or multiple file management.

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Subscribers to Envisionwise’s LinkedUpRadio website platform will have the option to access a basic version of Adsonica, enabling them to create single-image audio ads and serve them using Envisionwise’s ad management software. The service, priced at $50 per month, provides up to 15,000 digital ad impressions, with additional impressions available as required.

“I’m very excited to be working with Envisionwise to bring the storytelling power of audio display ads to radio stations across the country,” said William Agush, Founder & CEO of Adsonica. He continued, “These new ad units increase engagement by 50% or more giving Envisionwise’s stations a premium ad product to sell with only minimal production overhead. Advertisers can utilize existing display ad creative and audio content so stations can begin selling immediately.”

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Jackie Parks, President & CEO, Envisionwise, said: “The alliance between Adsonica’s groundbreaking audio display ad unit and our Envisionwise integrated ad software will advance the digital presence in radio and bring new opportunities to stations across the nation. Providing this unique and effective solution with combined audio and visual concepts will amplify brand awareness and engagement for our clients. When Dave ‘Chachi’ Denes, CEO of Benztown, introduced us to William Agush, Founder & CEO of Adsonica, we knew this was an opportunity that would work seamlessly with our existing products. We look forward to embracing the power of audio with Adsonica.”

Software Buyers Will Increase Spending in 2022, with 86% of Buyers Using Peer Reviews to Make Decisions, Says G2 Survey

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September 28, 2021