Ketch Secures $20 Million in Series A1 Funding, Accelerating its Rapid Growth

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September 22, 2021

The new funds will support growth through future M&As and be used to create new tools, solidifying Lightricks as go-to platform to elevate creators in the creator economy

Lightricks, creator of the world’s leading photo and video editing apps including Facetune2, Facetune Video, and Videoleap, announced $130M in Series D funding. The round is comprised of $100M in primary and $30M in secondary funding which brings Lightricks’ total funding to-date to $335M and the company’s latest valuation to $1.8 billion. The round was co-led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners and Hanaco Venture Capital, with participation from existing investors Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Clal Tech, Harel Insurance and Finance and Greycroft, and new investors Migdal Insurance, Altshuler Shaham and Shavit Capital. Lightricks raised this strategic Series D to power the expansion of its suite of tools and offer more features and services for creators, further cementing its position as a leading player in the booming creator economy.

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“The creator economy has changed the way we, as a society, experience social networks. Audiences constantly consume information through the different content channels daily. Lightricks’ platform enables creators to have a broader, more professional and higher-quality set of tools to optimize content”

In just over eight years since its founding, Lightricks has grown to develop dozens of creativity apps for users in every country of the world, spanning from beginners to professional artists and creators. On the heels of this current funding round and explosion of the creator economy, Lightricks will aim to expand the company by initiating strategic mergers and acquisitions and creating new platforms and tools specifically geared towards professional creators. Lightricks plans to add to its already expansive offering with the goal to become a one-stop shop for resources including creative tools, services and monetization opportunities.

“Our mission has always been to continuously strive to bring creators the most advanced technology and help them find new ways to express themselves,” said Zeev Farbman, co-founder and CEO of Lightricks. “The rise of the creator economy has only exacerbated the need of mobile users to streamline the content creation and monetization processes. With this latest funding, we’re able to help elevate our users’ creativity and capabilities with continued advancements to our technology and offering.”

Lightricks’ apps have seen tremendous growth during the past year, with millions of people turning to the creativity tools to express themselves and earn income during the pandemic. During the peak of the pandemic lockdown, Lightricks saw a 90 percent increase in app usage across its creativity tools in the U.S. The number of downloads for Videoleap—its most popular video editing app for professional creators—increased 70 percent since the start of the pandemic. A survey found that nearly half of Videoleap users are exporting their creations to TikTok in pursuit of monetized content. Lightricks users create over a billion creations per year on the creativity apps, and the company continues to innovate and improve upon its tools to better serve creators in the creator economy, having launched four completely new apps within the last year.

“We’re delighted to continue to team with Lightricks to help further professionalize the world of content creation,” said Thilo Semmelbauer, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “We look forward to Lightricks building the future of this industry by continuing to supply creators with the highest-quality, most-preferred tools and technology. Lightricks allows people to showcase their individuality and brand on social media, whether for personal self-expression or for monetization.”

“The creator economy has changed the way we, as a society, experience social networks. Audiences constantly consume information through the different content channels daily. Lightricks’ platform enables creators to have a broader, more professional and higher-quality set of tools to optimize content,” said Pasha Romanovski, Co-Founding Partner of Hanaco Ventures. “At a time when we are seeing content creators monetize content on social media at new levels, it is clear that Lightricks’ platform has the ability to create a one stop shop that will be meaningful to its users.”

Lightricks’ popular suite of creativity apps currently includes editing tools for social media such as Facetune2, Facetune Video, and Filtertune, general creativity photo and video editing tools such as Videoleap, Motionleap, Photoleap, Artleap, Lightleap, and Beatleap, and the Boosted app which is Lightricks’ social media toolkit for small businesses.

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Genially Raises $20M to Make Interactive Content a Global Standard

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September 22, 2021

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Genially, a leading interactive content creation platform, has raised $20M with its latest round of funding. Their Series B financing was led by the U.S. venture capital firms 645 Ventures and Owl Ventures and aims to accelerate the company’s goal to set a global standard in content creation. They were joined by the European venture capitalists DN Capital and Brighteye Ventures and successful entrepreneurs like s16VC and Kahoot founders.

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Previous backers JME Ventures, GP Bullhound, FJLab, Market One Capital and Athos Capital are investing in the startup again, reaffirming their commitment to the company.

This capital injection advances Genially’s place as a leader in interactive content. Its priorities include the growth and loyalty of its community along with the constant evolution of its product.

Genially was founded in Spain in 2015, and over the last year, the company has opened an office in New York and tripled its user base and revenue.

Juan Rubio, co-founder and CEO celebrates this milestone: “Genially is ready for the next stage of growth. Making Genially a global and iconic company has always been part of our vision; we want to create a new standard in communication with interactive content at its core. We believe that this round is an important step towards realizing this vision, not so much for the capital received but rather because of the value offered by our new partners.”

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The ease of use and the visual appeal of the resulting interactive and animated creations have pushed Genially forward to make a name for itself among learning, marketing, graphic design, and communication professionals. Genially has over 10 million creators, and its “geniallys” have billions of views. Its community is present in over 190 countries and boasts especially heavy use in countries such as France, Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, and rapid growth in 2021 in countries such as the United States, Brazil, and Italy.

645 Ventures, headquartered in New York, has ample experience in software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure and consumer technology. Aaron Holiday, Co-founder & Managing Partner shared: “While we were first impressed by the rapid growth of millions of users of Genially’s software, we were most impressed by the founders’ purity of motivation to build a creative software that users love to use at home, work, and school. The team is also building an outstanding culture where team members are happy and motivated by the company’s goal to create a new standard in content creation.”

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Syte Acquires Top Visual Search Company Slyce to Expand North American Footprint

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September 22, 2021

Syte Acquires Top Visual Search Company Slyce to Expand North American Footprint

Strategic acquisition follows a year of accelerated growth for Syte and will add to its expanding portfolio of major U.S. fashion, luxury, and furniture retailers

Syte, the leading Product Discovery Platform for retail, today announced that it has acquired both the fashion and furniture segments of Slyce, a US-based visual search company that has integrated its technology into the apps and websites of more than 60 major retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, New Look, and Ashley Furniture HomeStore.

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“This strategic acquisition allows Syte to leverage Slyce’s deep knowledge and experience in the North American market, establishing a powerful go-to-market group to support new and existing clientele”, said Ofer Fryman, Syte’s co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer who led the acquisition process.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Syte saw a 43% year-over-year growth of North American customers between 2020 and 2021, and the acquisition of Slyce’s portfolio of fashion and furniture customers, combined with the company’s strong reputation in the North American retail and eCommerce markets, will further propel Syte’s sustained growth. Through this transaction, Syte will also have the ability to present a wider range of sophisticated product discovery solutions to Slyce’s fashion and furniture customers ahead of another unprecedented 2021 holiday shopping season.

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“The acquisition of Slyce’s book of business is an important driver of growth for Syte as we scale our expansion into the US market. We believe our full-platform approach, combining visual discovery, searchandising, and personalization solutions, will drive performance for Slyce customers and new clients alike as we extend our services to leading North American brands and retailers,” said Vered Levy-Ron, CEO of Syte. “This is a pivotal era for eCommerce, and the Syte team is thrilled to position these businesses at the forefront of retail innovation with an integrated, hyper-personalized approach to online product discovery.”

As brands increasingly welcome new and varied online shopping personas, and consumer expectations for personalized experiences continue to heighten as they rely more heavily on eCommerce, Syte is continuing to fill the gap created by siloed retail solutions with a holistic product discovery platform that goes beyond visual search to cater to all shopper styles. Shoppers are demanding comprehensive, connected experiences with diverse and personalized recommendations, and the acquisition of Slyce will allow Syte to bring this seamless eCommerce experience to North American consumers at scale.

“We’re very excited for Slyce and Syte to join forces,” said Slyce CEO Ted Mann, who is helping lead the integration of the two businesses. “On top of the camera search solution that we’ve long-provided for Slyce customers, they will now have access to several new capabilities like automated product tagging, hyper-personalization, and Augmented Site Search, all powered by visual AI.”

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Immuta Achieves SOC 2 Type 2 Certification

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September 22, 2021

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Immuta, the leader in universal cloud data access control, today announced its SaaS deployment option received Service Organization Control (SOC 2) Type 2 certification, further validating the company’s commitment to providing the most robust data security and privacy for its rapidly growing customer base.

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“Trust and transparency are a crucial part of being a premier technology partner and achieving a SOC 2 Type 2 certification is an important achievement for any SaaS provider”

The SOC 2 Type 2 certification is an independent audit assessing internal controls involving security, availability, and confidentiality of the data processed on behalf of customers, as defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Trust Services Criteria. As part of the audit, Immuta demonstrated the robustness of its data protection policies and procedures, including the security of the data held, the confidentiality of the data processed, and the availability of that data to those that had permission to access it.

“Trust and transparency are a crucial part of being a premier technology partner and achieving a SOC 2 Type 2 certification is an important achievement for any SaaS provider,” said Mike Scott, Chief Information Security Officer, Immuta. “As organizations invest in more SaaS solutions to securely navigate today’s complex cloud landscape and safely collect and store an immense amount of data, they will look to partners who have a proven history of strong privacy practices. Immuta achieving the SOC 2 Type 2 certification assures customers that we will keep their data safe, allowing them to focus on their business goals. At Immuta, we consider SOC 2 Type 2 to be the minimum baseline for our security program.”

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Immuta’s SaaS deployment option is a fully managed cloud service that provides data teams with universal data access control and security across their entire cloud data infrastructure. With Immuta SaaS, data teams can be up in running in minutes, register data from multiple cloud data platforms, and implement Immuta’s full suite of innovative capabilities, including:

Universal data cloud compatibility
Scalable, attribute-based access controls
Dynamic policy enforcement and auditing
Data masking, anonymization, and advanced privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)

“As the leader in automated data access control, having SOC 2 Type 2 certification is critical as our customers rely on Immuta to protect and govern their most sensitive data and analytics workloads,” said Matt Carroll, CEO, Immuta. “With Immuta’s SaaS deployment option, customers can get started quickly using our free trial, easily convert to a production deployment while making it easier to support complex use cases like data localization and sovereignty and enjoy maintenance-free deployments with no infrastructure or technology costs. We’re seeing more and more customers choose SaaS as they migrate analytics to the cloud and want a fully hosted data platform.”

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Reprise Appoints Glen Conybeare to New Role as Global President Reprise Commerce

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September 22, 2021

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Former Managing Director of Stickyeyes UK to lead eCommerce business unit amidst rapid growth and worldwide expansion

Reprise, the performance marketing and eCommerce specialty agency of IPG Mediabrands (NYSE: IPG), announced the appointment of Glen Conybeare as Global President of Reprise Commerce. The business unit dedicated to eCommerce within Reprise Digital was launched in late 2020 and has achieved significant growth despite uncertainty in the broader economy. This newly created role builds on the vision for Reprise Commerce to become a preferred agency partner for clients globally by adding enterprise-wide leadership of the business unit.

Reprise has earned a strong track record managing billions of dollars in media spend in crafts such as search and social, while also creating experience and content plays for some of the world’s best-known brands. The agency’s roots in paid search and SEO laid the foundation for a thriving eCommerce craft and ultimately the establishment of Reprise Commerce. Reprise Commerce as a holistic offering is expected to continue to scale up and achieve substantial double-digit growth in 2022 after going from strength to strength in 2021.

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“During the first half of 2021 Reprise Commerce quickly attracted new business and top talent to support our tremendous pace of growth, including welcoming 50 new hires and onboarding 20 new clients globally. We believe this growth speaks to the value we deliver as an agency partner and the culture we have as a desired employer. I have known Glen for several years since his Stickyeyes agency in the UK joined our Reprise network, which boosted our overall proposition. He is a proven leader whose entrepreneurial background and commercial drive will help us achieve even more,” said Dimitri Maex, Global CEO of Reprise.

Conybeare added: “I am delighted to take on this new challenge. Reprise Commerce is moving at a pace we don’t often see in network agencies, and that really excites me. We’re innovating as fast as we are growing, which ensures the service we are providing our enterprise clients is truly world class. In addition, we continue to invest in the business, both from a technology and people point of view, indeed we’re opening up several global roles in the coming days.”

Reprise Commerce shares the same DNA as Reprise with a fanatical focus on Customer Flow. Mapping customer journeys end-to-end is a crucial to how strategic solutions are designed. This competitive offering goes beyond media solutions to incorporate site experience from SEO/CRO/UX for Direct-to-Consumer site to Marketplaces and eRetail, and, of course, content. Whether it is Amazon A+ Product Detail Pages, brand stores or great creative, Reprise Commerce is uniquely fit for purpose to help clients drive sales and maximize profitability.

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Treasure Data Survey Findings Spotlight Path to Ideal Marketing Technology Stack

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September 22, 2021

Treasure Data Survey Findings Spotlight Path to Ideal Marketing Technology Stack

Customer Data Platforms Cited as Preferred Solution for Data Security, Flexibility, Interoperability and Ease of Integration

Treasure Data today released new survey results demonstrating the benefits of an optimized marketing technology stack. Across industries, decision makers from mid-market and enterprise companies expect significant improvement in overall marketing effectiveness, time spent managing and improving data quality, and operational efficiency, as a result of enhancements to the integration and interoperability of various martech solutions.

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“Digital transformation has accelerated across verticals over the past several years, there remains significant opportunity for companies to take advantage of a more holistic, seamless and data-driven approach to customer engagement,” stated Tom Treanor, CMO at Treasure Data. “While 56% of survey respondents—who spanned B2B and B2C brands—view their current martech stack as ‘adequate,’ the need for various technology solutions to more seamlessly plug into existing infrastructure and drive and support business objectives, at scale, is evident.”

Survey findings show complexity in technology integration (46%), budget (38%), and lack of data security and privacy features (31%) are significant organizational barriers to building a technology stack that can adequately scale with modern business needs. Respondents also noted the ability to overcome these challenges would make them better equipped to improve overall marketing effectiveness (94%), time spent managing and improving data quality (92%), and time spent integrating platforms (89%).

According to the results, customer data platforms (CDPs) are the favored solution capable of unifying customer data from multiple sources, retaining high-value customers, and generating insights through machine learning. Among the most advantageous attributes offered by CDPs in addressing these challenges, respondents cited:

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Security (52%)
Data flexibility and interoperability (46%)
Ease of integration with other systems (35%)

The study affirms there is a strong desire to maximize marketing technology to understand, attract, retain and identify customers. Related challenges and opportunities coming out of the survey include:

A Privacy and Security Conundrum: Security is a critical consideration when evaluating new tools (58%), yet managing privacy compliance across the stack (27%) is considered a current challenge.
The Need for Cross-Functional Collaboration: With a parallel interest in optimizing the martech stack, there’s an opportunity for IT and marketing teams to collaborate more closely to overcome pain points and solve common challenges.
Favored Stack Technologies: Those organizations which fine-tune their stack to achieve better outcomes often mix CDPs, content or conversational marketing tools, or customer journey analytics.
Personalization, At Scale: Main advantages of a CDP include the ability to gather data from a variety of on and offline sources, aligning with respondents’ desire to unify data, personalize websites and build audience targeting segments.

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Change.org Becomes World’s Largest Nonprofit-Owned Tech Platform for Social Change

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September 22, 2021

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Change.org, the world’s largest platform for social change, announced a transition in ownership of the company to the nonprofit Change.org Foundation. This is made possible by donations of equity from more than 50 leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists who have invested in the company’s growth, led by LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman and including Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, and Arianna Huffington.

“Nonprofit ownership will secure the long-term stewardship of Change.org as a digital public utility committed to the public interest,” said Change.org founder Ben Rattray, who will transition from CEO to serve as Executive Chair of the Change.org Foundation. “Hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on Change.org for the tools and support to have their voice heard, and this shift in ownership and governance ensures the permanent independence of our platform and our legal commitment to our mission to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see.”

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Today’s announcement caps an 18-month process to explore the ownership and governance structure that would best enable the organization to scale its global impact. In an unprecedented action, dozens of the company’s investors will donate their equity stakes to the Change.org Foundation, including many leaders in technology and business such as Jerry Yang, Co-Founder of Yahoo!, Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter and Medium, Sam Altman, Co-Founder of OpenAI, Anne Wojcicki, Co-Founder of 23andMe, Xavier Neil, Founder of Iliad, Jeff Weiner, Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, Barry Sternlicht, Chairman of Starwood Capital, Ashton Kutcher, and Blake Mycoskie, Founder of TOMS.

“We are deeply grateful for the support we’ve received from an extraordinary group of investors,” said Rattray. “We could not have built Change.org without their support and advice, and would not be able to make this historic ownership and governance transition without their generosity.”

As part of this transition, Change.org’s former Chief Product Officer Nick Allardice has been appointed as the new CEO of Change.org. Allardice brings a rare combination of skills to the role as a seasoned technology executive, successful entrepreneur, and lifelong social movement campaigner.

Allardice has held leadership roles at Change.org for 10 years, and prior to his role as Chief Product Officer he spearheaded Change.org’s global expansion and its campaigns teams. Before Change.org, Allardice co-founded Live Below the Line, an international digital fundraising platform that raised tens of millions of dollars for fighting poverty, and was part of the team responsible for some of the largest and most successful anti-extreme poverty protests in Australia’s history.

“I’m inspired every day by the people that use Change.org to stand up for what they believe in, and the Change.org team that equips them with the tools and support they need to be heard,” said Allardice. “I couldn’t be more excited for our next phase, as we expand beyond petitions into a true civic infrastructure platform that empowers billions of people to use their voice, their money and their time to build a healthier, more participatory and responsive society.”

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Change.org has become an essential public service enabling people to raise their voice at a time when governments and corporations were failing to meet the needs of the public. Across dozens of countries, more than 250,000 campaigns have been launched related to the pandemic and joined by more than 125 million people — from national campaigns like the largest universal basic income campaign in US history, which has become central to the ongoing effort to provide regular financial support to struggling Americans, to thousands of local campaigns around the world to address school and essential worker safety, to personal campaigns like the successful efforts to preserve the right of birthing mothers to be accompanied by their partners in the hospital.

Today’s transition ensures the essential service that Change.org provides is secured as an independent digital public utility in perpetuity.

Change.org was founded in 2007 and became one of the first tech companies to incorporate as a Public Benefit Corporation. Change.org will continue to operate as a Public Benefit Corporation wholly owned by the nonprofit Change.org Foundation, establishing an innovative, hybrid model that combines the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the public interest stewardship and mission-focus of a nonprofit.

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Retailer Ashley Stewart Selects Amperity Customer Data Platform’s Full Stack to Fuel Customer Data Strategy

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September 22, 2021

Retailer Ashley Stewart Selects Amperity Customer Data Platform's Full Stack to Fuel Customer Data Strategy

Amperity enables the plus-size women’s clothing company to seamlessly transition operations into the new data landscape

Amperity, the leading customer data platform (CDP) for consumer brands, today announced that Ashley Stewart, the American plus-size fashion retailer and lifestyle brand, has implemented Amperity’s Customer Data Platform into its existing IT, customer service, and marketing operations. This seamless integration supports the company’s current campaign strategy and builds predictive models which identify new use cases for customer data.

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The unified database of customers, created using Amperity’s customer data and identity platform, will enable Ashley Stewart to engage more deeply with new and existing customers and develop elevated customer service and brand loyalty. Given the company’s significant e-commerce presence, this partnership will further enhance Ashley Stewart’s marketing and digital strategies, including email, social, and SMS campaigns targeting customers at every stage of the marketing lifecycle.

“Ashley Stewart’s omnichannel approach to sales meant that our existing marketing operations were already present across email, social, SMS, search, direct mail, and customer service,” said Liz White, chief customer officer at Ashley Stewart. “By building out our Amp360 customer database, we now have a more complete and accurate view of customer behavior across all touchpoints, improved analytics, as well as point and click activation across our marketing channels.”

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Expanding and enhancing the use of customer data
Amperity’s platform ingests raw customer data across various databases, using machine learning to resolve identities even when records lack unique identifiers across systems. The result is unified and centralized customer databases from online and offline transactions, loyalty programs, email interactions, finance systems, etc., enabling its partners to efficiently deploy customer data for targeting, suppression, analytics, customer service, regulatory compliance, and more.

“Ashley Stewart is a brand that fully embraces the modern e-commerce model,” said Kabir Shahani, CEO, and co-founder of Amperity. “Amperity is providing the company with the tools necessary to better understand its customers’ interests and develop analytics to predict their intent – data and insights that are critical to success in a rapidly changing economy.”

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Dapper Labs Announces $250M in Funding from Coatue, a16z, GV, BOND, GIC and More

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September 22, 2021

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Latest investment will be used to supercharge the Top Shot fan experience while continuing to bring transformative sports, entertainment and music blockchain based experiences to consumers

Dapper Labs, Inc., the company behind NBA Top Shot and the Flow blockchain, today announced US$250M in new funding. Led by Coatue, the new round brings together existing investors a16z, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Version One Ventures with new investors including BOND and GIC, who believe in the long-term potential of Dapper Labs’ vision, its marquee titles including NBA Top Shot, which is one of the world’s fastest growing marketplaces, as well as the consumer-facing Flow blockchain.

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“Coatue has been investing in technology trends for over 20 years and web 3.0 is one of the most exciting trends we’ve seen,” said Dan Rose, Chairman, Coatue Ventures. “We think Dapper Labs is a leader in the space at the infrastructure level with Flow blockchain and in the application layer with NBA TopShot. We continue to be impressed by Roham’s strong leadership and vision and we could not be more proud to partner with him and the entire team at Dapper.”

“Blockchain and crypto are foundational underpinnings for the next wave of technology evolution,” said Mary Meeker, General Partner of BOND. “With NBA Top Shot and a compelling pipeline of products to come, Dapper Labs is leading the way with the innovative Flow platform. We are excited to be a part of this journey – and its next iterations – with Roham and team.”

This latest round follows a year of exponential growth for Dapper Labs. While still in open Beta, its flagship NBA Top Shot grew by 30x in 2021, with more than US$780M in collectibles bought and sold, more than 1.1M registered accounts of which over 48% own at least one moment, and over 13 million transactions.

“Dapper Labs is growing quickly but we’re just scratching the surface of what this new technology can do for people,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO, Dapper Labs. “We’re excited to partner with our incredible investors to scale NBA Top Shot and launch our upcoming titles as well as unlock the potential of the open ecosystem building on Flow.”

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Partners Who Print Together Win Together: BrandMuscle’s New Consolidator Tool Simplifies Bulk Printing

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September 22, 2021

New Report Identifies Marketing Strategy Linked to 44% Revenue Growth

Brands Can Now Print Collateral More Efficiently and Precisely at a Lower Cost, Ensure Brand Compliance in Local Markets, and Improve Campaign Adoption and Speed-to-Market by Consolidating Partner Print Runs

BrandMuscle, the industry leader in integrated local and channel marketing, has introduced Consolidator, a new solution within its Intelligent Local Marketing Platform that streamlines the print process to make channel marketing simpler and more cost-effective than ever.

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BrandMuscle’s Consolidator tool empowers brands to easily manage bulk print orders for distribution across multiple partners through a user-friendly shopping system. When partners print marketing materials through independent vendors, it can be difficult to ensure brand compliance, guarantee partner reimbursement, and understand the true cost and return on investment of local marketing efforts. Moreover, coordinating multiple print runs of the same marketing materials through different vendors is costly and time-consuming. Consolidator solves for these common pain points. Here’s how it works:

Marketing leaders can set a deadline for partners to order their campaign materials
Partners add the materials they wish to order in their shopping cart; they can even use MDF or co-op funds as payment, all from within the BrandMuscle Intelligent Local Marketing Platform
Once all partners submit their orders, BrandMuscle completes a bulk print run, fulfills, and ships each order
Partners receive custom local marketing materials that are accurate, consistent, and high quality at a fraction of what it would cost to place each order individually

With Consolidator, marketing leaders gain visibility into which partners are participating in marketing campaigns, how marketing funds are being spent on print collateral, and location-specific sales data that breaks down the print campaign’s return on investment. This tool ensures that local marketing expenses and ROI are tracked correctly at the corporate level so that leaders can understand partner performance and adjust strategy and budgets as needed.

“Bulk printing and local distribution of corporate marketing materials has long been a cumbersome process that requires many hours to coordinate,” said Ravi Patel, Senior Director of Product Management Marketing at BrandMuscle. “The simplicity and low maintenance of Consolidator will revolutionize bulk printing for any company with a channel partner network. Best of all, orders are self-service and can be placed from within the BrandMuscle Intelligent Local Marketing Platform, so partners don’t need to learn new technology or face new barriers to adoption.”

By using a single vendor and a streamlined process for ordering, billing, tracking, and monitoring print runs, brands can now print more collateral at a lower cost, ensure brand compliance in local markets, improve speed-to-market and adoption of corporate marketing campaigns, and enhance alignment between corporate and local marketing efforts. To learn more about integrating Consolidator into your channel marketing strategy contact BrandMuscle.

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Audius Chooses Cognito Flow, First Complete No-Code Online Identity Verification Service for Businesses with International Customers

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September 22, 2021

Audius Chooses Cognito Flow, First Complete No-Code Online Identity Verification Service for Businesses with International Customers

Audius will use Cognito Flow to provide a full stack of online verification for global music customers who join the popular streaming platform

Cognito, which provides the first easy and comprehensive online identity verification of global customers without any code, announced today that Audius, a streaming platform built for all musicians, has launched Cognito Flow for online identity verification of customers receiving rewards as part of Audius’ Trust & Safety efforts.

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Audius chose Cognito Flow because it is a drop-in, no code solution that can be deployed quickly and easily. The company is using Cognito Flow’s full stack of online verification including data-backed instant lightning verification, in addition to document verification and liveness/selfie checks to securely verify customers.

“As a rapidly growing streaming platform for musicians from all over the world, it is critical that we ensure trust and safety on our platform,” said Forrest Browning, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Audius. “With Cognito Flow we can now verify identifications for both domestic and international artists with minimal coding effort in a matter of seconds. It’s a real game changer when it comes to our compliance program.”

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“Streaming platforms face the challenge of needing to quickly onboard lots of customers and artists at once,” said Alain Meier, Co-Founder and CEO of Cognito. “Because Cognito Flow does all of the online verification automatically, companies like Audius can move fast without extra work on their end to verify that their customers are who they say they are. Cognito Flow also takes the pain out of localizing identification forms accurately, following local standards like date of birth, address, and name formats, and sourcing high quality ID verification data. For businesses like Audius with an international customer base this means not having to work with multiple different systems to account for all types of global online identity verifications.”

Cognito Flow provides the full stack of online verification requirements for global business customers, including scanning and verifying passport and driver’s license verifications, liveness checks, risk flags, and more, and can do it instantly across hundreds of countries. Cognito is the only verification system available to authenticate global users in seconds for businesses.

Cognito has run 2.73 billion watchlist scans and has conducted 76 million ID verifications. The company is growing rapidly with revenues in the tens of millions and doubling year over year.

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Moovila® Shortlisted for 2021 SaaS Awards

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September 22, 2021

Moovila® Shortlisted for 2021 SaaS Awards

Award-Winning Work Management Platform Named a Finalist by International Software Awards Program

Moovila, the world’s most accurate work and project management platform, announced it was recently named a finalist in the 2021 SaaS Awards for Best SaaS Product for Project Management, Workflow Automation or PLM. The highly competitive award recognizes those innovative SaaS solutions demonstrating proven results directly increasing user productivity.

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Moovila is a first-of-its-kind technology revolutionizing project and work management with a math-based engine and built-in AI tools. Programmed to actively identify and eliminate project obstacles, it helps keep budgets and schedules accurate and on time. By connecting people and work in one digital ecosystem, Moovila delivers accurate answers to business-critical questions instantly and automatically. The platform’s unmatched capabilities include project scoring and debugging, critical path visualization, and an AI-powered project management coach to guide users of all skill levels through the project management process.

Moovila Founder and CEO Mike Psenka commented, “Similar to how GPS and navigation apps improved the way people travel, Moovila revolutionizes work and project management through automation and a patent-pending math-based engine to identify and remediate hidden risks. Our platform helps users efficiently navigate their work and projects, even when there’s uncertainty ahead – something we’ve all experienced first-hand this last year.”

James Williams, Head of Operations for the SaaS Awards, commented, “Just as SaaS technologies have been vital in pivoting organizational functions to respond to global crises, they will be essential as we look forward to returning to normal levels of productivity. We’ve seen remarkably innovative solutions across all conceivable areas of industry. All shortlisted candidates represent truly innovative thinkers in the SaaS industry.”

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DatChat Announces Partnership and Influencer Campaign with IZEA

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September 22, 2021

DatChat To Launch Metaverse Advertising and NFT Monetization Platform

DatChat, Inc. (“DatChat” or “the Company”), a communications and social media company that gives users the ability to communicate with privacy and protection, announced that it has awarded a $1M managed services contract to IZEA Worldwide, Inc. (“IZEA”), a provider of influencer marketing technology, data, and services for the world’s leading brands, to execute a celebrity influencer online dating campaign for DatChat Messenger.

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The campaign is intended to highlight DatChat’s messaging platform capabilities and its focus on personal privacy and data protection. IZEA plans to leverage its roster of influencer talent to drive awareness of the messaging platform and the benefits of the technology as a dating app, and more broadly, as a messaging ecosystem.

“Individuals that use online dating platforms are all potential DatChat users who we feel would find our privacy-focused features especially useful,” said Darin Myman, founder and CEO of DatChat. “IZEA is a natural fit as a partner for the social media space, and we believe that this campaign is an exciting opportunity to grow the DatChat Messenger brand. Online dating has seen significant technological advancement but has yet to address the inherent data privacy risks in meeting strangers online and sharing information without any data protection. Users deserve protection, safety, and privacy, and we aim to provide the best privacy with the DatChat technology that protects users’ information and pictures after they hit send, share or post.”

The campaign is expected to launch in Q4 2021 and will run through the end of the year across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. DatChat is available as a free download for iOS and Android.

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Emplifi Acquires Live Commerce Software Provider Go Instore to Enable In Store Experiences Online

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September 22, 2021

Emplifi Integrates Snapchat for Improved Analytics and Marketing Measurement

Acquisition of live commerce software pioneer Go Instore will give B2C brands faster connection-to-conversion experiences in-store and online

Go Instore enables live commerce by connecting online customers with in-store product experts using immersive HD live video. Their leading-edge video technology provides brands with a new channel via which they can engage with and serve their customers, strengthening Emplifi’s omnichannel approach – meeting customers, wherever they are.

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“We are thrilled to welcome Go Instore into the Emplifi family with their outstanding people, platform, culture and fantastic customers”

With the addition of Go Instore, Emplifi Social Commerce Cloud is leading the way in the commerce market as the platform of choice for customer experience-focused brands. Today more than ever, brands need the ability to deliver livestream shopping experiences, as well as provide stand-alone livestream solutions to enable them to build faster connection-to-conversion experiences for their audiences. Live video can be used to provide customers with a number of personalized services, including sessions virtual stylists, fashion consultants, product experts or sales people — or use it to host one-to-many streamed video events from your own website or via social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for product launches, seasonal campaigns or influencer marketing promotions.

“We are thrilled to welcome Go Instore into the Emplifi family with their outstanding people, platform, culture and fantastic customers,” said Emplifi CEO Mark Zablan. “This acquisition marks another important milestone on our journey towards being the CX platform of choice for brands who want to give their customers great experiences at every touchpoint on their journey. We’re excited to start helping brands connect and convert consumers more quickly and directly through the power of livestream video and social media.”

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“We are incredibly excited to join forces with Emplifi to deliver even more powerful shopping experiences across our client’s websites and social channels,” said André Hordagoda, Co-Founder, Go Instore. “Emplifi’s vision, innovation, and speed-to-market align perfectly with Go Instore. Together we will accelerate retail transformation with social commerce.” added Aman Khurana, Co-Founder, Go Instore.

Go Instore, which is headquartered in London, has 60+ employees and more than 100 global clients, including Currys, Marks & Spencer, Pandora, Signet Jewelers, Samsung, HP and many more.

With the addition of live commerce technology, Emplifi continues its fast-paced go-to-market strategy. Coming off the recent rebranding and fusion of Astute Solutions and Socialbakers companies, Emplifi’s acquisition of Go Instore helps strengthen its position as a CX leader and provides brands with an end-to-end platform for social marketing, social commerce and omnichannel service and care.

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Pijper Media Partners with Outbrain to Power Recommended Content

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September 22, 2021

Pijper Media Partners with Outbrain to Power Recommended Content

Outbrain, a leading recommendation platform for the open web, is proud to announce today a new partnership agreement with Pijper Media, a renowned media owner in The Netherlands. Via a multiyear partnership, Outbrain will be exclusively managing audience engagement and development via the company’s recommendation technology across all the websites within the Pijper Media’s network. Pijper Media, which includes brands such as Grazia, Marie Claire, and Beau Monde, serves more than 12 millions page views per month to their Dutch audience.

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“The quality of Outbrain’s advertiser network greatly influenced our decision to partner with them and we look forward to an increase in ad quality compared to previous partners,” said Anton Pijper, CEO of Pijper Media. “Outbrain’s suite of products, aimed to boost the monetization of our inventories, also played a key role in securing our partnership, as previous partners had over promised and under delivered in this aspect; we look forward to seeing the results they will yield.”

Pijper is among the first media groups in the Benelux region to fully implement Outbrain’s Smartfeed technology, a personalised feed experience powered by artificial intelligence made up of a multitude of organic and sponsored links, including advertising formats such as Click-to-Watch Video, Carousel, and App Install Smartads. The Explore More feature, another Outbrain product currently seeing success in regions such as France and Germany, is expected to boost the monetization of Pijper’s placements.

“Adding Pijper Media via a multiyear deal to our network of top-tier media owners is a real achievement for Outbrain. It illustrates the growing momentum Outbrain is currently achieving in both the Netherlands and the entire region,” said Magdalena Flick, Managing Director Benelux at Outbrain.

“I am confident Pijper Media is in great hands with our local Dutch team and that together, we are already building a successful collaboration utilizing our offerings such as Smartfeed. We continue to focus on creating long-term partnerships with our publishing partners through the trust and transparency we provide and this collaboration is yet another proof point of what we are building towards,” said David Kostman, Co-CEO of Outbrain.

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MobStac Launches QR Codes with Integrated Security Features to Help Businesses Build Customer Trust and Loyalty

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September 22, 2021

The first QR code platform to offer built-in data protection for users and businesses

MobStac, creators of Beaconstac, a phygital customer engagement platform that helps businesses and brands create mobile connections with customers to bridge physical and digital worlds, announces the launch of expanded security features to help protect consumers scanning QR codes against mobile security threats.

Mobile cybersecurity threats and attacks are rising as the world relies more on mobile devices throughout the pandemic. Typically, mobile security software that protects against security threats does not come standard on smartphones — and it’s also costly and time-consuming for the user to research and install.

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MobStac provides an additional layer of security for users scanning QR codes powered by the Beaconstac platform. The expanded security features protect smartphones against phishing websites, mobile malware, and unauthorized third-party attempts to access credit card numbers, financial information, and passwords. The announcement comes at a time when QR code usage is skyrocketing, with MobStac serving over 5 million users each month in the past year alone through its Beaconstac platform.

“The pandemic forced us to rely even more on our mobile devices, creating opportunities for brands and retailers across industries to connect with consumers in new ways that also open gateways for hackers to take advantage of that,” said Sharat Potharaju, CEO of MobStac. “Our team’s top priority is security, and we recognize the need for software developers and businesses to create a new trusted standard for QR codes — one that gives consumers the confidence they need to scan codes safely.”

For businesses, Beaconstac’s newly enhanced QR codes provide the following benefits:

Preserve trust: Beaconstac automatically adds Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to all QR code domains, allowing businesses to add HTTPS protection to new or existing domains – so consumers know the website they’re visiting is safe.

Detect threats: With expert-level cyber security features like automatic detection of malware, phishing and social engineering threats, consumers have peace-of-mind knowing that they are safe from such attacks. Beaconstac’s security also integrates with Web Risk, a website authenticator, to guard against QR codes being used to redirect users to blacklisted websites.

Prevent unauthorized access to the platform: With security features such as multi-factor authentication and secure Single Sign On (SSO), Beaconstac ensures that unauthorised user access and modification of QR code content is not a risk that businesses have to contend with, preventing bad actors from hijacking QR codes that belong to legitimate organizations.

Beaconstac is the only QR code management platform that is System and Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 1 certified. Annual security and data management audits are conducted by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) officials, ensuring the highest level of data management, privacy, and security standards.

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Sprout Social Announces Two Major Growth Milestones

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September 22, 2021

Sprout Social Announces New Integration with WhatsApp Business

Sprout Social, an industry-leading provider of cloud-based social media management software, announced it has surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Additionally, Sprout now serves more than 30,000 customers across the globe, underscoring both its market expansion and accelerated growth rate.

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“Our customers are at the core of everything we do; the fact that more than 30,000 of the world’s best brands choose Sprout both humbles and motivates our team,” said Justyn Howard, CEO and Co-Founder of Sprout Social. “At a time when social has never been more critical to business success, we’re excited to deliver new and innovative value for the entirety of our growing customer base.”

“$200 million in ARR is a remarkable achievement for our company,” said Ryan Barretto, President of Sprout Social. “We’ve doubled ARR in roughly two years and we’re growing at a faster pace at $200 million than at $100 million, which is a true testament to the execution of our teams. We’re happy to celebrate these milestones, but we also believe that the best is yet to come.”

Sprout’s leadership team will discuss these milestones as well as their vision, people and product at their first investor day today. Registration for the virtual-only event can be found at http://sproutsocial.com/investor-day and the event will also be webcast live in this location.

Sprout Social offers deep social media listening and analytics, social management, customer care, commerce and advocacy solutions to more than 30,000 brands and agencies worldwide. Sprout’s unified platform integrates the power of social throughout every aspect of a business and enables social leaders at every level to extract valuable data and insights that drive their business forward. Headquartered in Chicago, Sprout operates across major social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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Skai Announces Partnership with Snowflake, Expanding Access to Unique Commerce-Intelligence Datasets

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September 22, 2021

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Today, leading commerce intelligence platform Skai launches its partnership with Snowflake, a Data Cloud company. Initially, Skai’s unique market intelligence data will be available in the Snowflake Data Marketplace, giving brands that use Snowflake immediate access to some of Skai’s most popular insights to guide timely, accurate decision-making. Over the coming months, the company plans to expand access to further datasets, underscoring its commitment to helping data, analytics and marketing teams leverage critical insights for a competitive edge in ecommerce.

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The Skai platform enables brands to predict, measure and analyze consumers, competitors and markets by augmenting data that was previously disconnected or unavailable. Using Skai data, brands can proactively shift strategies, understand the impact of media spend, grow brand and product equity, shift budget to relevant commerce channels and find new audiences. At present, the partnership includes three data listings available for analysis: Most Viewed Ecommerce Products, Consumer Sentiment, and Share of Ecommerce Shelf Life for Specific Product Claims. Most Viewed Ecommerce Products allows users to identify which products in their category have received the most reviews over the past month, while Consumer Sentiment looks at social chatter from the past six months to reveal consumers’ opinions on products. Finally, Share of Ecommerce Shelf Life for Specific Product Claims highlights which attributes are most dominant and have the most staying power on ecommerce sites. Layered with a brand’s internal data, Skai customers have demonstrated that these particular views are powerful variables for consideration in making e-commerce decisions around product portfolios, competitive positioning, inventory management, ad creative and more.

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In its work with household name consumer brands, Skai has found that the right intelligence based on a comprehensive data foundation can improve decision-making accuracy from 25% to 97%, wildly improving ecommerce outcomes. Whereas other consumer intelligence providers rely on a single or few data feeds from specific categories, such as social listening or credit card data, the Skai intelligence platform connects and contextualizes tens of thousands simultaneously, offering a comprehensive vantage point unparalleled in breadth. By employing powerful machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to extract meaningful, actionable insights about a consumer or market segment, Skai intelligence also surfaces granular insights such as consumers’ opinions of a particular skincare attribute or ingredient.

“Snowflake and Skai share the belief that the smartest decisions are founded on data—and often, access and integrity are hurdles in the way,” says Kobi Gershoni, Vice President of Data Partnerships at Skai. “The goal for consumer brands is to exploit today’s digital opportunities and dominate e-commerce with connected intel. No longer can they afford long waits, stale data, or overwhelming expenses from static, outsourced insights—intelligence today is about agility. We want to make access to Skai data a non-issue, whether they’re working with us directly or relying on Snowflake, so they can get down to the business of meeting customer needs and demand.

“We developed the Snowflake Data Marketplace with the goal of giving companies access to meaningful data at scale, all without compromising on privacy or security. Layering in Skai’s data assets will level up our marketplace even further, giving Snowflake’s customers the ability to leverage critical market intelligence for a competitive edge in e-commerce,” adds Adrian Bolosan, Industry Principal, Media & Entertainment, Snowflake.

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LastPass’ Psychology of Passwords Report Finds People are Still Practicing Poor Password Hygiene While Increasing Their Online Presence

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September 22, 2021