Home Blog Page 30

Flipping the Script to SOM: How ICP and ABX are the Marketing Programs You Need to Become the Next GTM Hero

0
Flipping the Script to SOM: How ICP and ABX are the Marketing Programs You Need to Become the Next GTM Hero

With widespread economic uncertainty becoming the norm, due to a series of trade-policy shocks, geopolitical frictions, and market volatility, companies are facing serious headwinds to achieve their growth objectives. Yet, uncertainty everywhere equals opportunity somewhere.

While this challenging global landscape is going to affect every business, it will be the marketing leaders who rethink their strategy to keep pace with growth targets and pivot effectively who end up emerging on the other side of this economic wall not only intact, but ahead of the competition.

So how exactly would you go about this? How can CMOs, VPs of Demand Gen, and Heads of Digital Marketing adjust to these conditions and become the next GTM hero?

Chasing customer needles in a TAM haystack

In most companies today, marketers are tasked with understanding their total addressable market (TAM). Do you know who the company is trying to sell to? This is developing your ideal customer profile (ICP). What are the specific titles, personas, and verticals that you’re targeting? This is standard work that marketing teams tackle every day.

The inherent problem is that only the companies who are best at defining their ICP lower their cost of customer acquisition. This is not a feasible outcome for the majority of businesses looking to refine their ICP and decrease customer acquisition costs.

The issue with broader TAM is that organizations simply have too many potential customers that they’re pursuing. It becomes finding a rarified customer needle in the total market haystack. Marketers think that they can get the pipeline they need based on funnel efficiencies, but that is much easier pitched than perfected.

Leave the silo behind

The reality for any business or leader addressing these challenges is that the more companies you target, the less efficient GTM becomes. Sales, Marketing, Biz Dev, and other teams are all running different campaigns based on different data sets. It’s not cohesive given how pervasive data fragmentation is in an organization, especially within the enterprise.

A common and persistent problem is inefficient demand generation. Poor focus in this area often leads to “spray and pray” campaigns, which wastes time and resources chasing the wrong targets. Campaign response rates and click-throughs decrease when you are focused on the wrong customers.

Bigger companies tend to struggle with this wasting marketing dollars, exacerbating these issues. But what if marketers could see the bird’s eye view and knew exactly where to fish? The answer, staring at us through all the data and noise, is for marketing leaders to focus on your Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) instead of TAM.

Optimize your pipeline

The second significant problem that marketers need to solve is dealing with the repercussions of focusing on TAM or even your Sales Addressable Market (SAM). These consequences include higher cost of customer acquisition, experimentation costs, and building different GTM teams. One way this manifests itself for companies is with a low-value pipeline—targeting the wrong buyers means potential deals (and deals’ probability of closing) will be lower due to a value mismatch.

By fixating on TAM or SAM, deal size can be an issue as businesses take all opportunities, small, medium, and large. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t lead to finding the highest value accounts.

Conversely, when companies hone in on SOM, the highest value accounts are targeted, and the average deal size improves. Your product is actually built for this audience and therefore will find value faster. This helps alleviate wasted effort and prevents teams from working on the wrong opportunities and essentially selling churn. A SOM-focused approach is essentially the opposite of marketers going the “spray and pray” route.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

A SOM-Focused Approach

The third problem arises with messaging, which is tied to low pipeline average. Messaging that is not specific to the target audience is ineffective. Let’s say a business works intently to refine its messaging though, investing time and resources to perfect it. If a buyer is not looking, the prospect won’t convert, no matter how much effort is made on messaging. The winning strategy for companies is to zero in on SOM in order to get more targeted to yield higher response rates, and more hand raises.

One of the many advantages of a SOM-focused approach is that it enables Sales and Marketing teams to hunt in a pack. Rather than any number of lone wolves all working individually to find prospects, this is a much more cohesive strategy. As a result, teams can show better value to the market, and the company will see that you need fewer resources to be more profitable.

For companies, the top line is staying on top of the pipeline and total revenue. The bottom line is that saving costs means more profitability.

The clear takeaway for marketers is this: focus on a SOM-based business model. High fidelity data is what informs your company, and a revenue growth-driven data set is what’s needed to deliver this crucial information. And this actionable data is provided by the revenue growth intelligence platform approach offered by HG Insights.

Every day, marketers are asking and trying to solve multiple questions: What are the success metrics? How does this change the cost of customer acquisition? What are the campaign conversion rates for multi-channel campaigns? These are complex queries requiring revenue growth data to answer effectively.

If marketing leaders can multiply their impact by improving KPIs and average deal size, they’ll quickly blow past pipeline targets. They can make the case to their bosses: The better I get with the companies we need to sell to, the better the customer lifetime value (LTV).

Evolving ABM to ABX for peak results

Account-Based Marketing (ABM), which brings personalized campaigns tailored to each account’s needs and stakeholders, is the solution for better targeting. Yet HG Insights is already focused on the next level—Account-Based Experience (ABX). Through ABX, account-based marketing is combined with account-based selling into the same dialogue.

What we’ve found is that a smaller set of accounts allows the emphasis to be on true ABM: How do I message separately to each persona? For campaigns targeted at  a larger audience, it’s incumbent on marketers to properly target Above the Line (ATL) economic buyers, prime decision makers, and those people who actually write the checks.

Currently, most businesses are taking a scattered, inefficient approach marketing to too many people resulting in a lower yield, while ABM is the more efficient route. Even when companies invest heavily in marketing platforms and hire specialized teams, these investments often underperform when there’s inadequate data to identify and prioritize the right accounts. Without the targeting that the right data provides, the best tools and talent can’t deliver meaningful results, leading to wasted budget and resources.

Another common issue that marketers face is poor personalization. This could look like generic messaging or irrelevant content. It undermines the core value of ABX, which is to engage decision-makers with tailored, relevant experiences with marketing and sales efforts. When personalization falls short, response rates drop, and ABX efforts fail to build the requisite trust and engagement to move accounts through the funnel.

A new SOM paradigm

One way to view all this is as a basic fraction. The number of companies responding is the numerator, while the number of companies you’re marketing to is the denominator. And the odds may not be ever in your favor.

However, with a SOM-based model, there is a new paradigm to try in which the denominator is already constrained. With this approach, marketers have noticeably better odds based on touch points, geotargeting, and focusing on highly active, engaged accounts. Marketing multithreads within these accounts with sales and the ratio suddenly looks a whole lot better. Sales nurtures these opportunities, then comes back to marketing with presentations, meet ups, and more content, creating a closed loop for marketing.

Higher ABX ROI is derived from intentional platforms and well-executed campaigns that effectively yield more leads, prospects, and ultimately, customers. When marketing and sales are aligned and focused on high-value accounts, businesses can achieve greater efficiency and close deals faster, driving measurable growth.

Higher response rates stem from targeted ABX campaigns that are informed by buyer intent data and tailored to address specific pain points and buyer needs. When messaging aligns closely with what buyers actually care about, marketers can cut through the noise and drive meaningful engagement.

Effective ABX enables marketers to be laser focused on high-fit accounts with the greatest revenue potential, leading to more relevant outreach and higher-quality engagement. As a result, marketing teams commonly see improved campaign performance due to better alignment and lead quality.

Let’s consider deal progression as a KPI. Marketers are asking: How many touch points are needed? What is the duration of the sales cycle?

Traditional B2B sales often require myriad interactions across multiple stakeholders, which can slow down momentum for deals. ABX helps streamline this process by delivering highly relevant, personalized content at the right time, increasing engagement and reducing the number of touch points needed. As a result, ABX can improve KPIs by compressing the sales cycle and accelerating deal progression.

How ABX stats tell the story

The data we have about ABX clearly illustrates its effectiveness across key business metrics. The value of ABX for organizations is evidenced by:

An ABX approach offers double the impact by not only improving deal velocity but also increasing win rate to close more deals through personalized, consistent engagement.

To drive better outcomes with ABX, companies must adopt an integrated approach built on close alignment among GTM teams. These include sales, marketing, and customer success. When teams truly collaborate around shared goals, target the right accounts, and deliver coordinated, personalized engagement throughout the buyer journey, ABX is maximized as an incredibly powerful growth driver.

Best-in-class organizations are already embracing this ABX model and seeing measurable gains in deal velocity, win rates, and overall ROI. Marketing leaders now have all the proof they need to leverage ABX and succeed wildly with this winning approach that gives them a distinct competitive advantage.

Panaya Launches Agentic Layer for ERP, CRM, and Enterprise Apps Testing and Change Delivery

0
Trump Media and Partners Announce Launch of Separately Managed Accounts

Panaya Logo

Seemore, Panaya’s agentic layer, adds an intelligent, context-driven, and action-oriented layer to its platform, elevating testing and ongoing transformation across ERP, CRM, and critical systems so teams keep pace with continuous change and focus on what matters most

Panaya, a leading enterprise testing and impact analysis platform, announced the launch of Seemore, its AI agentic layer designed to guide, analyze, fix, and test through every stage of ERP and CRM change.

Seemore helps busy teams work smarter with a natural-language interface and a network of specialized agents that analyze risk, streamline testing, and resolve issues before they reach production. Grounded in 20+ years of ERP and CRM domain context, Seemore brings the system-level intelligence teams need to deliver change more quickly and safely than before.

As enterprises face increasingly complex SAP S/4HANA programs and continuous updates across mission-critical systems, testing has become a major bottleneck. Fragmented knowledge, shrinking expertise, and time-sapping manual work slow delivery and raise risk. But Seemore brings consistent, expert-level context to every user, so teams can keep pace with continuous change without adding hires.

Enhancing IT Efficiency Through Autonomous Testing

Working side-by-side with IT, QA, developers, and business teams, Seemore serves as a project specialist who understands system context and orchestrates autonomous testing workflows across Panaya’s platform. With Seemore, IT teams multiply their capacity, reduce time to value, and minimize onboarding friction for new users.

Panaya has amassed 20+ years of SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce expertise by providing test automation, test management, and impact analysis for the world’s largest enterprises. Seemore builds on that knowledge by continuously learning from customers’ unique business processes and decisions. It builds a complete understanding of the entire change lifecycle, from requirements through development, testing, automation, and deployment, so every action it takes is always context aware.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Nicholas Kontopoulous, Vice President of Marketing, Asia Pacific & Japan @ Twilio

Core Capabilities

Precise Analysis

Seemore always sees the whole picture, running deep analysis across ERP, CRM, and critical environments to provide every change project with accurate updates and reports on what matters most.

Testing with Smarter Automation

Seemore orchestrates smart, codeless test automation, creating tests from natural language, running them at scale, and self-healing them autonomously

Intelligent Fixes

Seemore runs autonomously to detect what’s broken and spot anomalies. From code to test healing, it fixes issues before they hit production

User Guidance with Conversational Support

Seemore guides users step by step through every task across the platform, using natural language and contextual support

Marketing Technology News: The ‘Demand Gen’ Delusion (And What To Do About It)

A New Chapter in Enterprise Testing

“Seemore represents a significant step forward in how enterprises manage change,” said David Binny, CEO of Panaya. “By combining our deep ERP and CRM expertise with an intelligent agentic AI layer, we’re making it easier for teams to understand what needs attention, automate what matters, and deliver ongoing change without the usual uncertainty. Seemore keeps organizations focused on outcomes, not on navigating complexity.”

Seemore extends Panaya’s commitment to delivering a unified, intelligence-driven testing experience; one platform that brings together change impact analysis, test management, test automation, and code corrections. With Seemore, teams handle change faster, improving coverage and reducing the overhead and disruption of traditional testing.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Brick Marketing Expands Its Digital Marketing Training and Education Resources

0
Brick Marketing Expands Its Digital Marketing Training and Education Resources

Brick Marketing - Digital Marketing Agency

Brick Marketing has expanded its commitment to marketing education with new training opportunities and resources for businesses and teams. The company now offers full day in person (Boston MA) and virtual training classes focused on SEO, Generative Engine Optimization, and content marketing. Brick Marketing also provides free ongoing webinars that help organizations stay current with evolving search behaviors, AI driven visibility, and content expectations. In addition, the Wear Em Down Marketing eBook gives teams a structured framework for long term success. These resources reflect Brick Marketing’s mission to help organizations improve performance through clear instruction, practical guidance, and long lasting strategy.

Brick Marketing (https://www.brickmarketing.com/) announced an expanded suite of marketing education resources created to help businesses, teams, and professionals strengthen their capabilities and improve performance. For over 20 years, education has been central to Brick Marketing’s mission, and the company now offers a broad combination of learning programs that support organizations at every stage of their growth. With full day training classes, free webinars, and the Wear Em Down Marketing strategy eBook, Brick Marketing provides practical instruction that aligns with real business needs and helps companies build long term success.

Full Day In Person (Brick Marketing Office in Boston MA) and Virtual Training Classes

Brick Marketing offers full day training classes that provide a complete learning experience for businesses and teams seeking to understand SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and content marketing in a hands on, structured format. These sessions are conducted in person at the Boston Massachusetts office and virtually for participants across the United States, allowing organizations everywhere to benefit from comprehensive instruction. The curriculum includes foundational guidance, advanced concepts, real examples, live walkthroughs, and clear explanations of how each element contributes to stronger visibility and brand authority. Participants receive detailed frameworks they can apply immediately, along with the opportunity to ask questions, interact with examples, and gain deeper clarity around their marketing programs. The SEO, GEO and content marketing training class registration and schedule are open, and each class is intentionally limited in size to create an engaging environment where every attendee receives direct value.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

Free Digital Marketing and AI Marketing Webinars

Brick Marketing also offers free marketing and AI marketing webinars designed to help businesses stay informed about changes in search behavior, visibility signals, content expectations, and modern strategy requirements. These sessions are held regularly throughout the year and offer a convenient way for organizations to stay current with important concepts without needing to travel or enroll in a full training class. The webinars provide step by step guidance that attendees can apply right away, covering topics such as how AI influences search visibility, how content shapes trust and authority, and how companies can strengthen their strategy by focusing on alignment, relevance, and consistency. Attendees include business owners, in house teams, agency professionals, and sales groups looking for clear, practical instruction that improves day to day execution and long term planning. This ongoing series reflects Brick Marketing’s belief that education should be accessible and consistently available.

Wear Em’ Down Marketing Strategy eBook

The Wear Em’ Down Marketing strategy eBook presents Brick Marketing’s signature methodology for creating sustained growth through consistent action and aligned communication. Drawing on more than two decades of hands on work with companies nationwide, the eBook explains how brands can strengthen trust, build authority, and engage audiences by focusing on clarity, message alignment, and steady progress. The framework encourages organizations to think beyond quick wins and instead adopt a measured, strategic approach that produces outcomes that last. Businesses, marketing teams, consultants, and sales professionals rely on this eBook as a practical guide to improving planning, organizing their content strategy, and establishing a foundation that supports continued success. It remains one of Brick Marketing’s most referenced educational resources because of its simplicity, structure, and real world relevance.

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

Continued Commitment to Education

Brick Marketing’s expanded resources reflect a long standing belief that businesses achieve stronger results when they understand the principles that guide effective marketing. When teams gain clarity around how search works, how content shapes brand trust, and how meaningful engagement is built, their programs become more focused and productive. These digital marketing resources were developed to give organizations instruction that can be used immediately as well as guidance that informs longer term strategy.

“Digital Marketing education has always been at the center of how we help companies grow,” said Nick Stamoulis, Founder of Brick Marketing. “When people understand the principles behind strong digital marketing their programs become more effective, their confidence improves, and their results follow. Our goal is to provide the instruction and guidance that help them reach that point.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Teads Expands Executive Leadership Team with Appointment of Dani Cushion as CMO

0
Teads Expands Executive Leadership Team with Appointment of Dani Cushion as CMO

teads.png

Cushion to steer global marketing during a pivotal moment of integration, innovation, and accelerated platform expansion

Teads, the omnichannel outcomes platform for the open internet, announced Dani Cushion will join the company as Chief Marketing Officer, effective January 6, 2026. Cushion will lead and oversee Teads’ global marketing organization and drive the company’s brand, communications and go-to-market strategy to accelerate growth and deliver meaningful outcomes for advertisers, agencies, and publishers worldwide.

Cushion brings a strong track record of building and scaling marketing engines for high-growth technology companies. Most recently CMO at Innovid, a leader in CTV, she helped position the company for its acquisition by Mediaocean. She previously served as CMO at ExecOnline and at Cardlytics, where she guided the company through a successful IPO and public-company expansion. Earlier, as SVP of Marketing at Millennial Media, Cushion contributed to the company’s IPO, global expansion, and acquisition by AOL/Verizon Media. Her background also includes roles at SiriusXM, ISL, Omnicom’s Millsport/The Marketing Arm, and Major League Soccer, and she is a frequent speaker across prominent stages like CES, Cannes Lions, Advertising Week NY, Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and the MMA CMO & CEO Summit.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

“Dani has a proven ability to translate complex industry dynamics across CTV and the open internet into actionable marketing strategies that drive real business results,” said David Kostman, CEO of Teads. “Her impact at some of the most important companies in the industry speaks for itself. As Teads enters its next chapter of growth, Dani’s leadership will accelerate what we can achieve globally as we scale our omnichannel offerings.”

“Teads sits at the center of some of the most important innovations in ad tech—particularly as CTV continues to evolve—and the opportunity ahead is significant,” said Cushion. “With its technology, global scale, and multi-screen reach, Teads is uniquely positioned to help brands and publishers navigate a rapidly changing ecosystem. I’m excited to join at such a pivotal moment and to help shape how Teads brings its vision and value to market.”

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

Cushion’s appointment comes at a defining moment for Teads, as the company evolves to deliver a more advanced, omnichannel outcomes-driven platform for advertisers. In November, Teads also welcomed Mollie Spilman as Chief Commercial Officer. Overseeing global commercial strategy, Spilman is working closely with regional leadership and partners to accelerate growth and deepen client performance. With expanded capabilities and a broader global footprint, Teads is focused on building a leadership team that can accelerate innovation, strengthen its market position, and unlock new value for advertisers, agencies, and publishers worldwide.

Level Up Development Launches AI-Assisted Software Development Service to Accelerate the Delivery of Custom Software

0
Level Up Development Launches AI-Assisted Software Development Service to Accelerate the Delivery of Custom Software

Level Up Development

Accelerate your roadmap. Our AI-Assisted SDaaS model fuses elite human expertise with GenAI to deliver superior quality and feature-rich software, faster.

Level Up Development, a premier custom software consultancy, announced the launch of its AI-Assisted Software Development as a Service (SDaaS) offering. This new operational model integrates advanced generative AI workflows with the firm’s “Special Forces” engineering teams, enabling clients to deploy complex, scalable software solutions significantly faster than traditional methods.

Unlike standard development shops, Level Up’s new service leverages AI to automate architectural scaffolding, code generation, and quality assurance. This allows the firm’s expert engineers to focus entirely on high-value problem solving and innovation. The result is a hybrid “Human-in-the-Loop” approach that reduces time-to-market while maintaining the strict security and ethical standards required by modern business.

The era of choosing between speed and quality is over. We allow regulated businesses to innovate with the velocity of a tech giant, without the overhead.”

— Eric Marshall, Founder and CEO of Level Up Development

“The era of choosing between speed and quality is over,” said Eric Marshall, Founder and CEO of Level Up Development. “By equipping our expert teams with AI-driven workflows, we aren’t just coding faster; we are fundamentally reimagining the software lifecycle. We allow small and mid-sized regulated businesses to innovate with the velocity of a tech giant, without the overhead.”

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

How the Software Development as a Service Model Integrates AI

Level Up Development’s approach differs from automated code generators by keeping senior engineers at the helm. The process follows a rigorous four-step workflow:

– Strategy & Project Facilitation: We leverage AI to analyze team and user data alongside technical feasibility during the strategy phase, then instantly convert those insights into actionable roadmaps and user stories.

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

– AI-Architected Scaffolding: Generative models rapidly build the foundational structure and boilerplate code based on high-level requirements.

– Human-Led Logic: Expert engineers work to inject complex business logic, security protocols, and proprietary algorithms alongside AI.

– Automated Quality Assurance: AI agents run continuous integration tests and vulnerability scans, ensuring the final deliverable is production-ready from day one.

SHAREit Group Upgrades to AI-Powered Mobile Ad Platform to Drive Growth in Emerging Markets 

0
SHAREit Group Upgrades to AI-Powered Mobile Ad Platform to Drive Growth in Emerging Markets 

SHAREit Group, a next-generation internet technology company, has upgraded its mobile advertising platform, repositioning it as an AI-driven commercial growth engine. Powered by the Company’s proprietary AI-Powered Core, the platform has expanded beyond its developer-focused origins to support intelligent commercialization at scale. The platform now reaches approximately 2.4 billion users worldwide, with over 150 million daily ad impressions, and processes up to 180 billion ad requests per day through a high-concurrency AI architecture, further strengthening its role as a growth engine in emerging markets.

This strategic upgrade comes at a pivotal moment for the global digital economy. According to eMarketer’s 2025 forecast, mobile advertising spending in high-growth regions like Southeast Asia and Latin America is projected to continue outpacing global averages, driven by an increasingly mobile-first consumer base. The SHAREit Ad Platform is engineered to capture this opportunity, bridging the gap between global advertisers and these high-value “Next-Gen” users.

Built on over 10 years of data accumulation, SHAREit Group applies large-scale deep learning models to convert behavioral data into real-time commercial intelligence. Its high-efficiency algorithms assess user value and intent within milliseconds, dynamically matching ads with relevant audiences. To ensure this precision translates into authentic value, security and traffic quality remain core priorities. An AI-driven anti-fraud system continuously monitors traffic patterns, identifying and intercepting abnormal or invalid activity in real time to ensure advertising spend reaches genuine users and supports long-term brand value.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

The platform’s transformation reflects a strategy to turn massive consumer engagement into scalable business outcomes. By integrating first-party inventory from SHAREit Group’s own suite of apps with premium OEM partnerships and third-party SSPs, the platform offers end-to-end coverage across the full user lifecycle—from acquisition to retention and monetization.

SHAREit Ad Platform offers global advertisers four core advertising solutions, including retargeting, matrix-based interactive formats, and the proprietary HotApp solution. These solutions are supported by a product ecosystem of over 50 owned utility applications spanning music players, incentive-based offer walls, and e-commerce services. This diversified matrix enables campaigns to reach users in high-frequency, high-intent environments across emerging markets. In many regions, the platform ranks among the largest mobile marketing channels, on par with global leaders such as Google and Meta. Together, its scale and traffic advantages allow advertisers to efficiently reach, attract, and convert high-quality users through a transparent, performance-driven model.

To ensure support execution excellence, the company has established more than 10 regional teams in strategic hubs such as Singapore, Indonesia, South Africa and more. These teams provide full-lifecycle localized services ranging from creative adaptation to post-campaign analytics, bridging the gap between global scale and local cultural alignment.

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

Jason Wang, Partner of SHAREit Group, shared: “Our core philosophy has always been to start with developers, but not stop there. AI is essential to moving beyond traffic-driven competition and returning to the fundamentals of advertising. SHAREit Group is not just a media publisher but a smart digital infrastructure for emerging markets. By applying AI-driven insights, robust anti-fraud capabilities, and a collaborative ecosystem mindset, we help advertisers understand real market dynamics, avoid blind spending, and build a more transparent, sustainable media environment.”

SHAREit Group is focused on building an AI-driven, transparent, and efficient advertising ecosystem that supports long-term growth. By combining proprietary technology, data intelligence, and global traffic partnerships, the platform provides a strong foundation for developers and advertisers expanding across emerging and high-growth markets.

SHAREit Group is a global internet technology company dedicated to building a high-quality digital ecosystem for users and businesses worldwide. By integrating proprietary technology with deep local insights, SHAREit Group serves as a key growth engine for advertisers in emerging markets. It operates across 10+ global hubs, empowering partners in gaming, e-commerce, and fintech to achieve sustainable business growth.

StackAdapt Launches In-Platform NPI Targeting and Measurement to Power Deterministic, Multi-Channel HCP Advertising

0
Drupal Reinvents Open Source Content Management with Launch of Drupal Cms 2.0 -- New Visual Builder, AI and Templates Redefine Enterprise Web Publishing

StackAdapt Logo

New self-serve capability enables compliant, scalable, and real-time campaign measurement at the individual healthcare provider level

StackAdapt , the leading technology company in advertising and marketing, announced the launch of its in-platform National Provider Identifier (NPI) Targeting and Measurement capabilities. Purpose-built for pharmaceutical marketers and healthcare agencies, this new solution enables advertisers to deterministically target and measure one-to-one campaigns with healthcare professionals (HCPs) using NPI data, running privacy-safe, performance-driven campaigns across channels within a single self-serve platform.

With US healthcare digital ad spend projected to surpass $20 billion by 2026, marketers face increasing pressure to deliver precision-targeted, compliant campaigns with measurable outcomes. StackAdapt’s new in-platform capabilities close a critical capability gap by eliminating the need for third-party handoffs or managed service activation. Advertisers can now upload NPI lists, forecast campaign performance, create HCP segments, activate across connected TV (CTV), display, native, audio, and video, and access daily impression-level reporting, all in one place.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

Key benefits include:

  • Verified Precision – Upload custom NPI lists and build HCP audiences by specialty, clinical behavior, and geography.
  • Advanced HCP Segmentation – Refine targeting with granular HCP filters such as medical specialty, treatment behavior patterns, and regional practice data.
  • Multi-Channel Reach – Execute fully integrated HCP campaigns across CTV, display, native, audio, and video from a single platform.
  • Real-Time Measurement – Access HIPAA-compliant, impression-level reporting at the NPI level to evaluate and optimize performance with unmatched granularity.
  • Self-Serve Efficiency – Streamline campaign setup and optimization workflows to reduce friction and accelerate time to launch.

“Pharmaceutical marketers need more than reach. They need compliance, accuracy, and agility,” said Giuseppe La Rocca, VP of Enterprise Sales at StackAdapt. “With in-platform NPI Targeting and Measurement, we are offering a smarter way to engage individual HCPs, optimize in real time, and eliminate the operational delays tied to manual list management or third-party handoffs. It is a major step forward for anyone looking to streamline complex HCP campaigns rapidly, and it sets the stage for even more innovation in healthcare advertising.”

Unlike niche healthcare DSPs that often limit reach or rely on managed setups, the in-platform solution integrates targeting, optimization, and measurement into a single, intuitive workflow. The result is a more scalable and flexible path for healthcare marketers to drive compliant, high-return campaigns without compromising on data fidelity or speed. It also offers greater inventory flexibility across formats and channels, giving healthcare marketers a broader canvas than legacy healthcare DSPs, all while maintaining a user-friendly, self-serve interface.

In-platform NPI Targeting and Measurement is now available to StackAdapt clients in the US. This launch marks the latest investment in StackAdapt’s growing healthcare suite, which includes Script Lift, Audience Quality Measurement, Endemic, and EHR Inventory. Together, these solutions support continued innovation in compliant, data-driven HCP engagement.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Roku and iSpot Bring Outcome-Based Optimization to Streaming

0
Roku and iSpot Bring Outcome-Based Optimization to Streaming

Roku_Advertising_Logo_EP-1-1

iSpot attribution powers Roku’s optimization for better campaign performance

Roku, Inc. is now the first major streaming publisher to use iSpot’s Outcomes at Scale product for the explicit intention of optimizing off outcomes. This expansion of Roku and iSpot’s partnership will help brands achieve more accountable, performance-focused campaign results on the Roku platform.

With this integration, Roku advertisers can now use iSpot-attributed outcomes to track ROI, adjust creative strategies, and drive clear business results, such as web conversions. Early testing with SimpliSafe showed strong results, including a 23% increase in leads and a 31% increase in website visits (optimized group vs. control).

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

“This advancement with Roku and iSpot gives us a powerful way to ensure our advertising spend works as effectively as possible,” said Courtney Strauss Manning, Manager, Media & Customer Acquisition, SimpliSafe. “Our test campaign delivered positive results, showing significant gains across key performance indicators among the Roku audience. This partnership is clearly improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our media investments.”

The optimization features build on the data and measurement partnership first announced in spring of 2024.

“This deeper integration with Roku marks a key moment for outcome-based streaming,” said Stuart Schwartzapfel, EVP of Media Partnerships, iSpot. “With iSpot’s trusted attribution powering Roku’s optimization engine, we’re not just measuring performance; we’re helping drive it, ensuring advertisers gain new levels of efficiency and ROI directly on the Roku platform.”

“Our expanded partnership with iSpot represents an important step in our mission to give advertisers the most effective and measurable streaming advertising solutions,” said Miles Fisher, Senior Director, Strategic Advertising Partnerships, Roku. “By integrating iSpot’s attribution directly into our optimization algorithms, we’re enabling brands to achieve even stronger outcomes on the Roku platform.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Snowflake Enables Enterprise-Ready AI by Bringing Google’s Gemini 3 to Snowflake Cortex AI

0
Snowflake Enables Enterprise-Ready AI by Bringing Google’s Gemini 3 to Snowflake Cortex AI

Snowflake Inc. Logo

Snowflake expands its collaboration with Google Cloud by bringing Gemini 3 to Snowflake Cortex AI to help enterprises like BlackLine and Fivetran unlock faster insights, reduce data movement, and accelerate AI-driven growth

  • Expanded collaboration enhances Snowflake and Google Cloud’s GTM alignment by expanding joint sales and product integrations

  • Snowflake and Google Cloud provide customers secure, high-performance access to generative AI and advanced analytics on Google Cloud infrastructure

  • Snowflake launching on Google Cloud in Saudi Arabia and Melbourne to support growing customer demand

Snowflake , the AI Data Cloud company, announced it has expanded its collaboration with Google Cloud, connecting the world’s leading data and AI platform with Google’s advanced AI technologies to help accelerate enterprise innovation. Snowflake and Google Cloud will deliver deeper product integration and go-to-market alignment. This includes the availability of Google Cloud’s Gemini 3 natively within Snowflake Cortex AI, bringing Google’s proprietary large language models (LLMs) to Snowflake’s secure, governed data environment. Customers can now develop, deploy, and scale generative AI applications, including intelligent Data Agents enabled by Gemini, directly in Snowflake without moving or copying data across platforms, helping to ensure security, compliance, and performance.

“Google has long set the standard for innovation and large-scale infrastructure, remaining at the forefront of the generative AI revolution,” said Christian Kleinerman, EVP of Product, Snowflake. “By combining Google Cloud’s industry leadership with Snowflake’s ability to bring AI directly to enterprise data, we’re empowering customers to move faster, innovate more freely, and redefine what’s possible through data and AI.”

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

The expanded collaboration deepens go-to-market alignment between Snowflake and Google Cloud, enabling joint customer engagements, new co-sell opportunities, and the ability to transact through Google Cloud Marketplace. The companies will also collaborate across global markets, with the recent launch of Snowflake on Google Cloud in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and upcoming launch of Snowflake on Google Cloud in Melbourne, Australia in early 2026. Another advancement is the production availability of Snowflake Gen2 Warehouses on Google Cloud Axion-based C4A VM machines, a major infrastructure upgrade delivering notable price-performance benefits.

“Through this partnership, Google Cloud and Snowflake are empowering enterprises to innovate faster,” said Michael Gerstenhaber, Google Vice President, Agents, API & Vertex AI. “By bringing Gemini models natively into Snowflake, customers can use the world’s most advanced generative AI capabilities on their governed data, unlocking new insights and automation opportunities across industries.”

Enterprises across key industries — including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and supply chain, technology, and analytics — are already adopting joint solutions from Snowflake and Google Cloud to modernize their data foundations and accelerate AI innovation. Leading enterprises, including BlackLine and Fivetran are leveraging the Snowflake AI Data Cloud on Google Cloud to power its enterprise data strategy — enabling real-time analytics, AI model deployment, and advanced governance across their ecosystems.

“BlackLine is pioneering agentic AI for the Office of the CFO, moving beyond simple automation to create AI that actively partners with finance & accounting professionals,” said Jeremy Ung, BlackLine Chief Technology Officer. “By embedding Google’s powerful Gemini models into our unified data platform on Snowflake, we are empowering our platform to tackle the most complex financial processes with greater speed and intelligence than ever before.”

“Enterprises are finally able to do far more with their data than simply store it or run basic queries,” said George Fraser, CEO of Fivetran. “Fivetran delivers the connected and governed data foundation that allows Gemini in Snowflake Cortex AI to actually think and reason with customer data. What used to take weeks of custom development now happens in days, simply by asking questions and getting answers from the data that already runs their business.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Zenity Now Available on AWS Marketplace, Bringing End-to-End Security to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and Enterprise AI Agents Everywhere

0
Hubly Unlocks the Autonomous Practice Through Strategic AI Integrations That Turn Insights Into Action

Zenity Logo

Zenity makes it easy for customers to easily implement full-lifecycle security and governance for AI agents by consolidating purchases through AWS

Zenity, the leading security and governance platform for AI agents, announced it is now available on AWS Marketplace, making it easier for enterprises to deploy full-lifecycle protection for AI agents built on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and across their broader AI estates. The listing follows Zenity’s recent launch of native support for Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, which was featured onstage during AWS CEO Matt Garman’s keynote at re:Invent. Zenity’s platform provides customers with deep visibility, policy-driven governance, and real-time runtime protection for the agents powering their most critical workloads across cloud, SaaS, endpoints, and agentic browsers.

“With AgentCore, Amazon is making it dramatically easier for enterprises to go beyond theory and create AI agents that actually get work done,” said Ben Kliger, CEO and co-founder of Zenity.

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore gives developers a powerful foundation for building long‑running, tool‑rich, memory‑aware agents that act across identity, data, and applications. As enterprises rapidly experiment and deploy these agents, they face a growing challenge: understanding what agents exist, what they can do, and how to stop them from doing the wrong thing, all without slowing innovation. By partnering directly with Amazon, Zenity is addressing this gap by connecting build‑time configuration with live runtime telemetry, allowing security and platform teams to discover agents, understand behavior and intent, and enforce guardrails consistently across AWS and other platforms.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

“With AgentCore, Amazon is making it dramatically easier for enterprises to go beyond theory and create AI agents that actually get work done,” said Ben Kliger, CEO and co-founder of Zenity. “Our role is to help AWS build a platform where enterprises can adopt these tools at scale, responsibly, with the confidence that agents are operating within clear security and compliance boundaries.”

Zenity’s agent-centric platform gives customers:

  • End-to-end visibility and observability into agents that are built and deployed in AgentCore and beyond, including which agents exist, what tools and data they use, and how they behave in production.
  • Real-time detection and prevention of unsafe behaviors, such as indirect prompt injection, unauthorized memory access, or misuse of privileged tools and services.
  • Deterministic control over agent actions, ensuring agents cannot perform unsafe or unsanctioned operations, even as behaviors, prompts, and integrations evolve.
  • Frictionless fit into AWS developer workflows, enabling builders to keep using AgentCore the way they want, while security teams gain the observability, guardrails, and policy enforcement they require.

“Enterprises are adopting and building agents that read emails, move money, change configurations, and touch customer data,” Kliger added. “Those agents are where business value is created and where risk shows up first. By being on AWS Marketplace and integrating deeply with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, we’re making it so simple for customers to turn on the same level of security discipline for agents that they already expect for applications and infrastructure.”

Beyond Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Zenity helps organizations secure agents that are used in SaaS, cloud, homegrown, endpoint, and agent browsers. This cross‑environment visibility and enforcement is increasingly critical as security leaders look to manage AI agent risk with a unified, programmatic approach instead of fragmented point controls.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

TNL Mediagene Introduces NLWeb Support to Strengthen Its Digital Media as AI-Native Content Infrastructure for the AI-Driven Web

0
Nutshell's AI Agent Marketplace is here to save you time and keep moving deals forward

TNL Mediagene (PRNewsfoto/TNL Mediagene)

  • The Company has introduced Natural Language Web (“NLWeb”) support to its digital media assets, enhancing how its content interfaces with the AI ecosystem and facilitating AI monetization opportunities

  • NLWeb is an emerging framework introduced by Microsoft that is designed to enable websites to make content and services accessible through natural language interfaces, allowing users and AI agents to retrieve information through plain-language queries rather than traditional link-based navigation

  • By adopting NLWeb, the Company is enabling its digital media content to be not only consumed by people, but also directly understood, queried and utilized by AI systems, positioning its media assets as on-demand content infrastructure for the AI era

  • The introduction of NLWeb support represents an evolution in the Company’s transformation into an AI-native, platform-oriented content infrastructure provider, enabling structured, conversational and scalable AI access to its digital media assets

  • The Company views NLWeb support as a foundational capability aligned with the evolving AI-driven web, supporting the Company’s long-term growth and AI platform strategy

TNL Mediagene, a Tokyo-based next-generation digital media and data group in Asia, announced that it has introduced Natural Language Web (“NLWeb”) support to its digital media assets, enhancing how the Company’s content interfaces with the AI ecosystem and facilitating AI monetization opportunities.

NLWeb is an emerging framework introduced by Microsoft that is designed to enable websites to make content and services accessible through natural language interfaces for users and AI systems. By enabling conversational access to structured site content, NLWeb allows users and AI agents to retrieve information through plain-language queries rather than traditional link-based navigation. NLWeb is powered by standards like Schema.org and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), effectively turning websites into smart applications. The framework leverages widely adopted web standards to support structured, machine-readable interactions at scale.

The introduction of NLWeb support represents an evolution in the Company’s transformation from an execution-focused digital media operator into an AI-native, platform-oriented content infrastructure provider. By enabling structured, conversational, and scalable AI access to its digital media assets, the Company is positioning its content to be consumable by large language models, enterprise AI systems, and autonomous AI agents, rather than relying solely on traditional traffic-based discovery. By adopting NLWeb, the Company is enabling its digital media content to be not only consumed by people, but also directly understood, queried, and utilized by AI systems—positioning its media assets as on-demand content infrastructure for the AI era.

Marketing Technology News: CallRail Debuts Conversion Signals to Improve Ad Targeting

The shift materially expands the addressable value of the Company’s content beyond page views and advertising impressions, enabling future monetization models including AI content licensing, usage-based access, and deep enterprise integrations. As AI increasingly becomes the primary interface through which information is discovered and utilized, management believes that media companies capable of providing trusted, structured, and interoperable content will occupy a strategic position within the AI-driven web ecosystem.

NLWeb support enhances how the Company’s digital media content can be discovered, queried, and utilized by AI agents and large language models, improving interoperability across the AI ecosystem. By enabling conversational and structured access, the Company broadens potential applications for AI-driven discovery, enterprise integrations, and future usage-based or licensing models. Management views NLWeb support as a foundational capability aligned with the evolving AI-driven web, and with the Company’s long-term growth and AI platform strategy.

“As AI systems increasingly become primary interfaces to information, content that is not structured, contextualized, and machine-readable at scale risks becoming invisible. NLWeb is not simply a new access layer — it represents a strategic re-architecture of how our media assets are understood, queried, and trusted by AI systems. By adopting NLWeb, we are transforming our digital media from static destinations into intelligent, interoperable platforms designed for both humans and machines. This capability is foundational to our long-term vision of scalable AI-native monetization and deep integration across the AI ecosystem,” said Richard Lee, Chief Technology Officer.

Marketing Technology News: From Data to Impact: How AI is Transforming Interactive CTV Ads

“NLWeb is a critical tool to better interface our digital media assets with the AI ecosystem, increasing the utilization and impact of our content by AI and ultimately facilitating significant monetization opportunities. We’ve had a strong awareness of the benefits and opportunities AI presents to our business and are very focused on the continued rollout of our AI strategy. We’ve recently announced that our digital media has begun generating AI content licensing revenue, one of the key new frontiers in content monetization in our industry, and we are spending just as much time and emphasis on making our digital media assets fully interoperable using NLWeb. Long-term strategic alignment with the AI ecosystem is paramount for us, and you see that through our AI-based initiatives going forward,” said Joey Chung, Co-Founder & CEO.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Unusual Raises $3.6M Round as First Company to Help Brands Change How AI Talks About Them

0
Unusual Raises $3.6M Round as First Company to Help Brands Change How AI Talks About Them

Funds raised by BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator, Instacart Co-Founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital

Unusual, the first and only company to help brands understand and change how AI talks about them, announced today its $3.6M round of funding from investors including BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator, Max Mullen (co-founder of Instacart), and Phosphor Capital. The company will be using the funds for hiring and to continue building out its AI optimization platform for brands.

Unusual was founded by Will Jack and Keller Maloney. Jack, a second time founder, has worked in AI research since 2014 and is an alum of MIT and SpaceX. Maloney has worked in AI applications since 2019 for companies such as Gatsby and 8VC.

Jack and Maloney built Unusual to help brands understand and change how AI models talk about their products and services. Their complete AI optimization platform helps businesses improve both their AI visibility (often referred to as answer/generative engine optimization, or AEO/GEO) as well as their AI Brand Alignment. AI Brand Alignment helps AI models talk about brands the same way that brands talk about themselves.

“ChatGPT is quickly becoming an ‘influencer’ for many people’s buying decisions, but it constantly misrepresents products and services,” said Will Jack, Co-Founder of Unusual. “Businesses today have no control over how ChatGPT positions their brand or what it says to their customers. Unusual helps brands have a say in how they are represented by AI.”

Unusual surveys AI models like a brand might survey its customers. It asks AI models hundreds of questions like, “in your mind, is [brand] a better solution for startups or enterprises?” Then, the software analyzes the outputs to discover patterns in how AI models form their opinions. Based on this analysis, Unusual creates and hosts content to reshape AI’s perception of the brand.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Liat Barer, Chief Product Officer @ Odeeo

This methodology helped Unusual discover that AI models considered Reducto, one of Unusual’s customers,  a “high quality,” but “niche software for startups.” This was an unhappy surprise to Reducto, who serves enterprises in the Fortune 10. “ChatGPT’s perception of us was hurting us without our knowledge,” shared Raunak Chowdhuri, Founder at Reducto, “Unusual is helping us highlight our enterprise-readiness, and we now have more control over how LLMs represent us.” Unusual found that AI models’ perception of Reducto’s “enterprise readiness” increased from a score of 18/100 to 54/100 during their three-month initiative. 

Unusual’s competitors treat AI models like a new search engine. They have coined terms like AEO and GEO that allude to SEO (search engine optimization). In contrast, Unusual treats AI models like human influencers. “People use ChatGPT for more than just search,” said Jack, “the entire buyer journey–search, discovery, research, evaluation, and selection–is compressed into a single conversation with an AI chatbot. This presents a new, unique challenge for brands, and they need a more holistic solution than just AEO/GEO.”

Marketing Technology News: What Marketers Need to Know About the European Accessibility Act

“Will and Keller are taking on the next big challenge facing brands: delivering their message to customers who are increasingly relying on ChatGPT for their buying decisions,” said Kulveer Taggar of Phosphor Capital. “Unusual is taking a first-principles approach to the problem by treating models like key opinion leaders, and is growing rapidly as brands see AI models influencing their customers. We’re excited to help them build out their team and bring this solution to more businesses.”

Unusual is the first and only company to help brands change how AI talks about them. Its tool runs massive surveys on AI models and uses the results to understand how AI models perceive a brand. Based on this, Unusual creates and hosts content that shapes AI’s perception that aligns with the brand’s goals. Unusual is working with brands including Monarch, Reducto, Axia PR, Popl & dozens more. The company is funded by BoxGroup, Long Journey Ventures, Y Combinator, Instacart Co-Founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

MediaRadar Launches Data Cloud: Powering AI-Ready Marketing Intelligence, Everywhere

0
MediaRadar Launches Data Cloud: Powering AI-Ready Marketing Intelligence, Everywhere

MediaRadar Features | G2

MediaRadar’s Data Cloud unlocks direct access to AI-ready Marketing Intelligence, connecting into the data warehouses, modern marketing stacks and AI platforms teams use to train models, generate insights and automate decisions.

MediaRadar unveiled its Data Cloud, a breakthrough in advertising data interoperability that transforms how Marketing Intelligence is accessed, activated and scaled in an AI-driven market. As media fragmentation accelerates and decision cycles get quicker, marketers, publishers and platforms need intelligence that can be applied instantly across analytics, activation and AI workflows. The Data Cloud meets that need by making Marketing Intelligence immediately usable across the modern data and AI stack, so organizations can act faster, scale insight and outperform competitors.

MediaRadar’s Data Cloud puts mission-critical advertising datasets, including creative trends, competitive spend and media mix analysis, to work inside clients’ existing environments so teams can analyze markets, inform strategy and activate insights across planning, measurement and optimization. With this intelligence available where decisions are made, organizations can power AI-driven workflows that connect trusted advertising data to models and agents across platforms such as ChatGPT, Anthropic and Gemini. Future innovations, including built-in support for the Model Context Protocol, will further extend these capabilities with secure, consistent intelligence across teams and tools.

Advertisers need instant, pervasive access to trusted data to compete in today’s fragmented, fast-moving media landscape. MediaRadar’s Data Cloud delivers that advantage by enabling sharper media spend allocation, faster competitive intelligence and AI-ready insights that power better, data-driven marketing decisions.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Stephen Howard-Sarin, MD of Retail Media, Americas @ Criteo

These capabilities are built on MediaRadar’s unmatched Marketing Intelligence data foundation, spanning $280B in media spend, 35M+ creative assets and 30+ media channels, including social, digital video, programmatic, CTV, AVOD, linear TV and retail media. Together, this enables brands and agencies to:

  • Anticipate moves by pinpointing shifts in media spend and creative strategy and adjusting plans in real time
  • Compete more effectively across channels by identifying opportunities that maximize brand impact and marketing performance
  • Operationalize advertising intelligence by using AI-ready datasets inside analytics and AI systems to generate insights, guide planning and inform optimization

Publishers and adtech platforms need deeper commercial intelligence to compete for advertiser spend, prove value and grow revenue in an increasingly crowded marketplace. MediaRadar’s Data Cloud delivers that intelligence by enabling teams to target, position and sell to advertisers more effectively, unlocking new revenue opportunities and shortening sales cycles. With the Data Cloud, they can:

  • Identify high-propensity buyers to focus sales efforts, accelerate pipeline growth and drive revenue
  • Map brand- and product-level advertising activity to deliver more relevant, compelling pitches that resonate with advertiser priorities
  • Align sales strategies with emerging advertising trends to stay ahead of the market and win spend earlier in the buying cycle

“With the Data Cloud, we’ve removed one of the industry’s biggest obstacles: fragmented, siloed data that no one can act on,” said Tejas Desai, Chief Product & Technology Officer at MediaRadar. “Now, Marketing Intelligence flows where it’s needed most, at the speed of decision. This empowers our clients to access and apply intelligence effortlessly, fueling smarter decisions and better outcomes.”

Marketing Technology News: From MarTech Stack to MarTech Fabric: Weaving Brand, Content, and Conversion Into One Thread

Key MediaRadar Data Cloud capabilities include:

  • AI-Enabled Brand Identity System
    A comprehensive parent-child taxonomy acts as a single source of truth for media spend, creative and campaign assets across parent brands, sub-brands, products and co-ops. This gives teams a consistent, connected view of advertising strategy across categories and channels, enabling cleaner analysis, stronger benchmarking and more reliable AI-driven insights.
  • Accessible Wherever You Work
    A fully cloud-native ecosystem delivering Creative, Competitive, Commercial and Market Intelligence inside the tools teams already rely on. With data available directly in analytics, planning and AI environments, organizations can apply intelligence immediately to revenue, strategy and optimization decisions.
  • Context-Rich Semantics
    Standardized brand, creative and campaign metadata ensures consistent meaning across datasets, enabling more accurate analysis, stronger benchmarking and AI systems that perform with greater precision and reliability.

AI-Ready by Design
The MediaRadar Data Cloud is built to support AI at scale. By harmonizing media spend, creative and campaign data into a single interoperable framework, it delivers the high-quality context AI systems need to generate accurate insights and recommendations.

With clean, structured and consistently classified datasets, clients can:

  • Train AI models with higher-quality advertising data for more accurate predictions and insights
  • Accelerate outcomes across go-to-market strategy, product innovation and decision-making
  • Compete decisively by benchmarking share of voice and spend, identifying whitespace and anticipating competitor moves

The result: a Marketing Intelligence foundation that organizations need to compete today and scale confidently as AI continues to reshape the advertising industry.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

GigaStar Appoints Ex-Songfinch Founder & Media Entrepreneur Scott Kitun as Chief Business Officer

0
GigaStar Appoints Ex-Songfinch Founder & Media Entrepreneur Scott Kitun as Chief Business Officer

GigaStar Brings YouTube Creators and Investors Together (PRNewsfoto/GigaStar)

Kitun is a serial entrepreneur, operator, and investor with a track record of building and scaling innovative companies across media, technology, and private markets.

GigaStar, a startup bringing YouTube Creators and Investors together, announced that serial media company entrepreneur Scott Kitun has joined the team as Chief Business Officer. He will lead the strategic growth of GigaStar’s primary market and support the company’s secondary market launch, planned for March 16, 2026*.

Kitun co-founded Songfinch, a music-Creator platform that ranked as the #1 U.S. consumer tech company on the Inc. 5000 list in 2023, as it surpassed $100M in lifetime sales and paid ~$50M to artists, and raised capital from titans of music and venture capital, including the late Quincy Jones, The Weeknd, Doja Cat, Goodwater Capital, Corazon, and Valor Equity.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Meena Ganesh, Senior Product Marketing Manager @ Box AI

“GigaStar is a unique opportunity for me, and its mission to expand capital access for Creators aligns with the work I’ve done throughout my career,” said Kitun. “Many on the team have built companies together under CEO Hazem Dawani, whom I respect—and I’m excited to join and push the company forward.”

Before Songfinch, Kitun built and exited multiple media companies, including Technori. He is also an investor in 15 startups, including several unicorns, and has been an investor and advisor to Republic and Kingscrowd, where he helped bring the Hamilton Lane Private Infrastructure Fund to market.

Marketing Technology News: Feature-Rich to Functionally Effective: Adjusting your Martech Strategy

He also created and hosted the first live radio show to enable audience members to invest directly in startups via Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) and Regulation A+ (Reg A+) offerings, resulting in over $50 million invested across 100+ companies.

Kitun’s proven track record will help GigaStar expand Creator access to capital while opening up Creator Economy opportunities for investors through a full investor ecosystem.

*Securities purchased in GigaStar Market must be held for 12 months before trading in the secondary market. There is no guarantee of an active or liquid secondary market. Investments are subject to market risk and value fluctuation.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

OpenX Unveils OpenXBuild: A New Software Suite for Building Better Advertising Solutions

0
OpenX Unveils OpenXBuild: A New Software Suite for Building Better Advertising Solutions

OpenX: Programmatic Advertising | Supply-Side Platform

The APIs can be used independently or combined to power cross-channel reach, measurable outcomes, and increased efficiency, including a 70% improvement in CPC.

OpenX Technologies, Inc., one of the world’s leading omnichannel supply-side platforms, announced the launch of OpenXBuild, a software suite that gives advertisers unprecedented real-time control over ad performance, reach, and insights. Designed for brand and agency buyers, OpenXBuild offers a new way to leverage first-party data and deploy proprietary logic in real time to build high-performing, secure advertising solutions.

OpenX Technologies, Inc., one of the world’s leading omnichannel supply-side platforms, today announced the launch of OpenXBuild, a software suite that gives advertisers unprecedented real-time control over ad performance, reach, and insights.

While some solutions offer secure data collaboration, they are often expensive, complex to develop, and unable to support real-time decisioning. Today, buyers are demanding easy, cost-effective, and secure use of quality data to fuel custom AI-powered advertiser solutions that drive better ad performance.

Leveraging OpenX’s legacy of tech innovation and fraud-free, direct-to-publisher connections, OpenXBuild enhances ad performance while reducing operational overhead by enabling buyers to shape bidding strategies dynamically before the auction, so they bid on the most effective impressions. This work is particularly critical for brands and agencies using AI to build bespoke curation and decisioning frameworks.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Meena Ganesh, Senior Product Marketing Manager @ Box AI

The APIs, combined with OpenX’s rigorous quality standards and direct publisher relationships, underscore the distinct value of OpenXBuild:

  • Auction Insights API: Bidding Intelligence Data Set (BIDS), the first feature in this API, delivers easy access to key log-level data, giving advertisers clear visibility into exposures, supply signals, and auction outcomes. This transparency helps improve decisions, reduce adtech tax, and shift more budget to working media.
  • Identity Resolution API: Powered by OpenX’s proprietary identity graph, this API spans more than 237 million U.S. users and 150 million CTV devices, allowing buyers to target customers across channels and formats at scale using their own first- or third-party data and/or proprietary IDs.
  • Real-Time Bidstream API: By integrating and executing their own data and decisioning models within the OpenX bidstream before activating in their preferred DSP, buyers get better ad performance at lower cost compared to traditional bid-time media filtering and decisioning.

tvScientific, a leader in CTV performance advertising, adopted the Real-Time Bidstream API to deliver guaranteed results for programmatic campaigns. By combining their proprietary models with OpenXBuild’s custom decisioning capability and secure supply access, tvScientific is optimizing traffic to its DSP to achieve guaranteed outcomes across premium streaming inventory.

“With OpenXBuild, we can apply our audience enrichment and bidding algorithms directly inside the exchange. This low-latency integration unlocks optimization techniques that aren’t possible in a traditional DSP setup,” said Teddy Jawde, SVP, Product Management at tvScientific. “By evaluating impressions closer to supply and bidding more selectively, advertisers have seen a 70% reduction in cost-per-conversion on OpenX traffic compared to unshaped SSP inventory.”

Marketing Technology News: Feature-Rich to Functionally Effective: Adjusting your Martech Strategy

OpenXBuild supports low-latency and scalable privacy-first data processing, enabling sophisticated pre-auction filtering across CTV, mobile, desktop, and app. Now, buyers can safely bring their data to the cloud without costly, complex API calls, batch transfers, or manual workflows — and use custom decisioning to make real-time, predictive decisions that drive higher win rates and reduce wasted spend.

“With OpenXBuild, we’re addressing a growing demand for brands and agencies to differentiate their advertising solutions by cost-effectively combining their data with trusted supply, all without the traditional costs and latency,” said Joel Meyer, CTO at OpenX. “OpenXBuild addresses these key buyer challenges, empowering partners to enrich and act on audience and auction data instantly within a secure environment that’s already connected to ad supply.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Survey by Vibes Finds 65% of Consumers made a Purchase from a Brand’s Text Message in 2025  

0
Survey by Vibes Finds 65% of Consumers made a Purchase from a Brand’s Text Message in 2025  

Privacy Policy | Vibes

Vibes’ annual Mobile Consumer Insights report also finds that 81% of consumers think RCS messaging is even better – pointing the way to an explosive 2026 for mobile commerce

Vibes, the mobile-first engagement platform and North American RCS messaging leader, has announced the findings from its ninth annual comprehensive Mobile Consumer Insights survey for 2026.

Every year, Vibes surveys a broad range of over 1,100 mobile-centric consumers with the intention of understanding what their relationship with their smartphones looks like today; how this has changed over multiple years; how they prefer to interact with brands on their phones, and how these interactions impact their path to purchase.

Key findings in 2026 include:

  • 78% of consumers say they have made a direct purchase from a brand’s SMS or MMS text message (up from 75% last year), with 65% having done so within the past year

  • 81% of consumers showed a marked preference for RCS messaging over SMS

  • Consumers now prefer redeeming offers via text message more than email and apps – with 41% preferring text, 39% email, and only 20% via a brand’s mobile app.

  • This is the first time in Vibes’ nine annual surveys that text messaging has surpassed email.

Vibes’ survey also illuminates just how rapidly mobile wallets for coupons, offers and loyalty cards have gone mainstream over the past three years.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

76% of consumers now say they are “much more likely” to engage with brands that provide a mobile wallet option for offers & coupons, which is up from 60% in 2025. 75% of consumers also said they are much more likely to engage with a brand that offers a mobile wallet loyalty card, up from 57% in 2025.

This growing adoption of mobile messaging and digital wallets clearly opens an opportunity for brands looking to drive more foot traffic, given 98% open rates for SMS, MMS and RCS. Moreover, the excitement speaks to the ability to directly attribute the ROI that a digital wallet drives for their business.

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

Tellingly for 2026 message trends, 81% of consumers even showed a marked preference for RCS messaging over SMS, with particular enthusiasm shown for RCS product carousels, and the high-quality images & video visuals available within RCS messages.

“These results tell us that the shift away from mobile apps for transactions is accelerating”, said Alex Campbell, Vibes’ Co-Founder & CIO. “RCS will only accelerate this faster. Any brand that uses messaging will be well-positioned to shift their focus away from their app, and into the surging RCS messaging and mobile wallet channels.”

Bluefish Releases 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report: How Generative AI Rewrote the Holiday Marketing Playbook

0
Bluefish Releases 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report: How Generative AI Rewrote the Holiday Marketing Playbook

Jobs at Bluefish AI

Bluefish, the AI marketing platform for the Fortune 500, released its 2025 Holiday AI Commerce Report, offering one of the first in-depth looks at how generative AI shaped shopping journeys and brand visibility across the December holiday season. The report analyzes AI-native shopping journeys and millions of AI answers across leading platforms to show which content, sources and narratives most influenced what consumers saw when they asked AI what to buy and where to buy it.

The findings show that paid media had little direct impact on AI answers during the 2025 holiday period, confirming a similar conclusion from other reports that show as much as 95% of AI citations came from non-paid sources. Instead of rewarding ad spend, AI assistants favored brands with high-quality, clearly structured and consistent organic content, making AI visibility a leading indicator of demand capture in the most important sales window of the year.

Marketing Technology News: What is a Full Stack Marketer; What MarTech Matters Most to Full Stack Marketers?

“Holiday 2025 proved that AI commerce is now a major channel, which requires a fundamentally different playbook,” said Alex Sherman, co-founder and CEO of Bluefish. “This report shows that the brands winning here are those that have rewired their holiday strategy around high-quality owned and earned content.”

The report also highlights a major shift from a “best deals” AI narrative during Black Friday to a “best gifts” narrative in December, as AI assistants moved from surfacing doorbusters to curating thoughtful gifting recommendations. Bluefish observed that “best deals” content saw its impact on AI recommendations decline by more than 30% heading into Christmas, while “best gifts” guides – especially “best gifts under 100 dollars” – increased their influence as the month progressed.

Using its industry-leading Impact Score and Influence Rank analytics, originally introduced in Bluefish’s Black Friday report, the Holiday AI Commerce Report reveals that a relatively small set of high-signal pages drove a disproportionate share of AI holiday recommendations. Publishers like Reddit, CNET, RTINGS.com, PCMag and lifestyle titles such as Who What Wear and Vogue emerged as outsized shapers of AI answers. Bluefish’s metrics show that these sources often punched above their raw citation counts, exerting disproportionate impact on how AI described and ranked brands in key gifting categories.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Lee McCance, Chief Product Officer @ Adverity

Within this environment, several brands emerged as AI holiday “winners” by tightly aligning owned content, earned coverage and the narratives AI prioritized. In beauty, Ulta stood out for “best gift” messaging that was consistently reinforced across its own pages and third-party coverage. In luxury, brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Ralph Lauren benefited from decades of cultural relevance amplified by dense coverage in curated gift guides and editorial lists, positioning them as definitive answers for “best luxury gifts.”

The report notes that forward-thinking marketing organizations have already begun rewiring holiday planning around high-quality content, measuring AI visibility weekly and treating AI commerce as a distinct performance channel. Looking ahead to 2026, Bluefish expects that direct AI advertising will begin to formalize an even more complex reality. As a result, Bluefish is building their platform to support a shifting landscape, helping brands see how AI represents them, identifying the few sources that truly drive influence and taking systematic action to drive results.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

MarTech Interview with Michael McNeal, VP of Product at SALESmanago

0

In this MarTech Series interview, Michael McNeal, VP of Product at SALESmanago shares a few martech optimisation tips for SaaS marketers to thrive in 2026 and beyond:

____________

Hi Michael, tell us about yourself and your SaaS journey so far?

I’ve spent over 25 years at the intersection of marketing and technology, working across Fortune Global 10 companies, startups, and organisations of all sizes across industries such as software, travel, automotive, wireless, and video games. Throughout my career, I’ve been passionate about helping marketing teams leverage technology to drive measurable, business-focused results.

In my current role as VP of Product at SALESmanago, I lead the development and bringing to market of tools that empower marketers to make informed decisions and engage effectively with their customers to establish meaningful relationships.

What about today’s state of B2B SaaS marketing most inspires you?

What inspires me most is how far we’ve come in turning the wealth of available data into truly actionable insights. Today’s advanced marketing platforms allow us to build relevant journeys, test and learn quickly, and optimise performance in ways that deliver measurable growth and genuine engagement.

B2B marketing is no longer about pushing campaigns out and hoping for results, it’s about understanding your audience and using data intelligently to nurture them through the journey, building meaningful relationships along the way.

We’ve also seen a major shift from fragmented tools to intentional, data-driven and integrated systems. This evolution enables marketers to connect channels, apply AI-driven optimisation (AIO), and meet buyers earlier in their discovery journey. B2B buyers are now using AI in how they search, evaluate, and compare which means your brand needs to be present and relevant from the moment they start exploring solutions.

As they move into consideration, hyper-personalisation becomes essential. Experiences that were once the domain of B2C are now expected in B2B. Buyers want interactions that reflect their role, needs, and context, and that level of precision only comes from AI, automation, and high-quality content working together.

And of course, the relationship doesn’t end at conversion. The cost of retaining a customer is still far lower than acquiring one. What’s different now is the data available to power post-sale experiences – enabling service and support teams to access the full customer profile and account managers to engage in more meaningful, insight-driven conversations.

What inspires me most is the ability to bring marketing, sales, and service together around a single, unified view of the customer – turning every interaction into an opportunity to create value, deepen relationships, and drive long-term growth.

Can you talk about the current martech trends and innovations influencing the martech ecosystem today? What type of martech do you often rely on to drive goals?

You can’t talk about martech trends today without mentioning AI. While it’s a topic that can feel overexposed, its impact – both realised and potential – is undeniable. AI is now influencing every part of the martech ecosystem, from how existing platforms evolve to the emergence of entirely new AI-driven point solutions.

The real question for most organisations is no longer whether to use AI, but how to do so effectively. Should it be guided by a company-wide AI strategy? Should teams rely on the AI embedded in their current platforms, or look to specialised point solutions that solve specific use cases?

The key is understanding how to use AI to achieve measurable impact. Near-term value comes from using AI to enhance your existing processes, helping you do what you already do, but faster and smarter. The next level of innovation comes when you start redesigning processes around what AI uniquely enables.

That’s why I believe the most transformative advances are happening when AI is natively embedded within platforms and seamless for marketers to use, rather than requiring marketers to actively adopt complex new features, tools, or workflows. When AI simply becomes part of how the technology works, adoption accelerates – and so does value recognition.

We’re also seeing the rise of AI agents, which I view as one of the defining shifts in marketing technology. These aren’t just chatbots or recommendation engines; they can now act autonomously – integrating with APIs, triggering actions, completing workflows, even orchestrating campaigns.

The next evolution will be the interoperability and orchestration of AI agents across the martech stack (and customer stack) – allowing systems to collaborate intelligently to deliver the best business outcomes and more connected, adaptive customer experiences.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Aquibur Rahman, CEO of Mailmodo

What martech optimisation tips would you share with fellow marketers to help them drive better personalisation efforts?

I’d start with two simple but powerful steps: First, understand the data you have. Second, understand and fully use the capabilities within your current martech stack.

They may sound basic, but these are the foundations of effective personalisation. Once you know what data is available and how your tools can use it, you can identify the moments in your customer journey where personalisation will have the highest impact, and your ability to create meaningful, measurable results without major new investments.

Your data review shouldn’t stop with marketing. Look across the organisation – sales, service, even product – for data that can provide deeper context or actionable insights. Even if those data sources aren’t fully integrated today, simply understanding the broader data landscape is valuable for future strategy and planning.

Of course, data quality matters just as much as data quantity. Good data drives not only direct personalisation but also the AI models that create dynamic, one-to-one experiences – from tailored content to real-time interactions. A smaller, cleaner dataset can deliver more immediate value while you work toward a richer, larger, integrated dataset over time.

On the technology side, many marketers underutilise the personalisation capabilities already built into their platforms. It often comes down to time, training, and resourcing. Most martech vendors release new features several times a year, and when you combine that with a constantly evolving data available, new personalisation opportunities emerge all the time. The teams that invest in learning and enabling those capabilities are the ones that see the largest business impacts.

Ultimately, personalisation is optimised when your tools, data, people, and processes are aligned – when everything works together to turn insights into relevant, timely, and meaningful customer experiences.

How can modern marketers effectively measure the ROI of their martech investments and what do they often forget to consider when looking at new tools?

When it comes to measuring martech ROI, many marketers start with the wrong metrics. They focus on campaign performance (opens, clicks, conversions), rather than asking whether the technology is actually driving their desired business outcomes.

Every tool in your stack should have a clear, measurable link to a defined goal. The right way to think about ROI is through the martech value chain; understanding how your technology creates value from data capture, through customer experience delivery, to business outcomes like revenue growth, loyalty, and efficiency.

Another often-missed factor is total cost of ownership. A platform can look impressive in isolation, but if it doesn’t integrate smoothly with your ecosystem or requires heavy time and resource investment to implement and maintain, ROI quickly erodes. And with more vendors shifting to usage-based pricing models, costs can rise as usage scales or as new capabilities are activated – something that’s frequently underestimated, and a reason to monitor your true platform costs (initial investment plus ongoing usage costs).

Ultimately, measuring ROI isn’t just about the tools themselves, it’s about how effectively your technology, processes, and teams work together to deliver measurable business impact. Martech delivers its highest value when it enables the rest of the organisation; sharing customer data, automating workflows that support sales or services, and extending its impact far beyond marketing.

That’s when ROI becomes more than a number, it becomes a story of how technology drives growth across the entire customer lifecycle.

A few thoughts on the future of AI and martech before we wrap up?

It’s the most exciting and transformative time I can remember working in martech. The pace of change over the past few years has been extraordinary and AI is unquestionably the biggest catalyst.

Now more than ever, it’s important to think about martech strategically. Your marketing technology stack can’t exist in isolation. It needs to work as part of a broader customer technology ecosystem that includes sales tech and service tech, what I often think of as the heartbeat of the company. When these components are well integrated and orchestrated, they don’t just enable strategy they become a source of strategic advantage.

How AI will ultimately be integrated and orchestrated across that ecosystem is still unfolding. Standards like Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), Google’s Agent-to-Agent (A2A), and IBM’s Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) are early examples of how this new era of interoperability might take shape, and they’ll likely define the martech and customer tech landscape for years to come.

The future of martech is understanding it’s not only about martech it’s about your entire customer technology ecosystem: shared data and insights, AI-orchestrated personalised experiences across the lifecycle, and the ability to turn every touchpoint into measurable business impact.

SALESmanago is a European SaaS company offering a comprehensive Lifecycle Engagement Platform built for digitally-fueled eCommerce marketing teams. Trusted by 3,600+ mid-size businesses across Europe – including Victoria’s Secret, iSpot, Orbico, Vobis, Porta, Savicki, Pitbull, Würth, Vox, 4F – SALESmanago helps brands acquire, convert, engage, and retain customers with deep, AI-powered personalisation and orchestrated customer journeys.

About Michael McNeal

Michael McNeal is a dynamic marketing and technology leader with over 25 years of experience in marketing, product development, and programme management. Recognised for delivering award-winning client experiences, he helps organisations maximise the value of their marketing technology investments.

Omnicom Media Study Reveals New Rules for Brand Growth in the Era of Fragmented Influence

0
Omnicom Media Study Reveals New Rules for Brand Growth in the Era of Fragmented Influence

“Future Of Brand Influence” Outlines How Brands Must Balance Human Connection and Machine Intelligence to Drive Growth

Omnicom Media, an Omnicom Connected Capability, released a new research report – The Future of Brand Influence – revealing how the dynamics of brand growth are being reshaped by a fragmented and increasingly complex influence ecosystem, where traditional advertising now represents just one of many forces shaping consumer decision-making – alongside influencers, peer commentary, retail environments, and AI-driven recommendations.

Supported by research 1 conducted by Omnicom Media Intelligence, the report explores how the long-standing fundamentals of brand growth – physical and mental availability – must now be expanded to include emotional availability, as consumers exert greater control over how, where, and from whom they receive information.

“Influence used to be relatively linear and predictable,” says Joanna O’Connell, Chief Intelligence Officer, Omnicom Media North America and lead author of the study. “Today, brand messaging exists alongside everything from influencer opinions to AI-generated answers – and that means brands must earn emotional relevance and trust across a much broader set of touchpoints.”

The research provides context for several first-to-market collaborations between Omnicom and leading retailers and social platforms, which will be unveiled this week at CES. These partnerships are designed to help brands enhance influence at critical moments across the consumer journey—from discovery through purchase and loyalty.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Nicholas Kontopoulous, Vice President of Marketing, Asia Pacific & Japan @ Twilio

Who and What Really Influences Consumers

The study reveals a significant shift in how consumers form opinions and make decisions.

  • 71% of respondents say what people are saying about a brand matters more than its advertising.
  • Nearly half say AI (45%) and influencers (43%) matter more than advertising when shaping brand perceptions.
  • 54% trust people—such as influencers or peers on social platforms—more than publications or institutions; among Gen Z, that figure rises to 67%.
  • Only 32% of respondents say a brand’s advertising most affects their overall opinion of a brand, compared to 40% who cite what people online are saying.

“Trust is migrating from institutions to individuals, and increasingly to machines as well,” O’Connell says. “That shift fundamentally changes how brands need to show up if they want to remain relevant and influential.”

The GenAI Effect: Faster Paths from Curiosity to Action

Generative AI is accelerating the pace at which consumers move from inquiry to expertise to purchase.

  • 70% of respondents say GenAI enables them to become an expert in any product or service category, from researching pros and cons to comparing brands.

At the same time, attention is increasingly fragmented:

  • 63% of respondents say their attention span is just OK or not great.
  • Nearly 4 in 10 report not noticing ads on social media, even in high-ad-load environments.
  • Ad blockers, ad-free subscriptions, signal loss, and VPN usage continue to erode traditional advertising reach.

Marketing Technology News: The ‘Demand Gen’ Delusion (And What To Do About It)

Economic Pressure Is Competing with Emotional Loyalty

The report also highlights the growing tension between brand influence and economic influence:

  • More than 30% of respondents now report buying cheaper versions of their usual brands, up from 19% earlier this year.
  • 75% say brand relatability is essential when making purchase decisions – yet 72% believe brands care more about earning dollars than building loyalty.
  • And 55% feel brands no longer try to connect with them the way they used to.

Summarizing the collective impact, O’Connell says, “These findings reveal a media ecosystem in which brand influence is either being blocked, deprioritized, diluted, or self-sabotaged.”

Implications: Rethinking the Rules of Brand Growth

While physical, mental, and emotional availability remain critical drivers of growth, the study finds that the paths to achieving them have fundamentally changed:

  • Physical Availability now requires ubiquitous, frictionless products/services access across digital and physical channels.
  • Mental Availability depends on cutting through unprecedented noise and dis-intermediation in a marketplace where reach and frequency are just table stakes.
  • Emotional Availability has emerged as a decisive lever for building authentic connection at scale.

Says O’Connell, “These shifts are coming together to unveil a new marketing reality where brand influence is achieved by balancing the role of machines with the power of human connection in moments where brands are likeliest to capture people’s attention.”

Key Takeaways and Recommendations

To succeed in the new influence ecosystem, Omnicom Media recommends that brands:

  • Market to humans by tapping into emotion at scale.
    • Leverage live experiences to capture elevated attention and emotional engagement.
    • Invest in influencers as authentic brand ambassadors and scalable media channels.
    • Lean into retail media to surprise and delight shoppers throughout the purchase journey.
    • Treat search as a behavior—meeting consumers wherever they are, on their terms.
  • Market to machines by preparing for what’s next.
    • Adopt Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategies to prepare for AI’s growing role in shaping consumer decisions.

“The future of brand influence isn’t about choosing between humans and machines,” says O’Connell. “It’s about designing systems that serve both. Brands that do this well can turn discovery, consideration, purchase, and loyalty into a self-reinforcing growth flywheel.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

LG Electronics Unveils Its Approach to “AI in Action”

0
LG Electronics Unveils Its Approach to “AI in Action”

LG logo (life's good)

How LG Electronics Brings AI to Life Across Homes, Mobility and Infrastructure with Affectionate Intelligence

  • LG Electronics introduced its approach to “AI in Action,” built on three strategic pillars: device excellence, orchestrated eco-system and expansion of AI-driven solutions beyond the home to AI-defined vehicles and high-efficiency HVAC solutions for AI data centers.

  • LG CLOiD™, a home-specialized AI robot, was unveiled as an ambient care agent designed to reduce both physical and mental labor.

  • Product highlights included the ultra-slim LG OLED evo W6 Wallpaper TV with Hyper Radiant Color Technology and True Wireless technology, and an advanced LG SIGNATURE refrigerator that understands conversational language.

LG Electronics (LG) presented its approach to “AI in Action” at LG World Premiere, the company’s annual pre-CES event in Las Vegas. The company highlighted three core pillars behind its strategy: Affectionate Intelligence that has evolved into action-oriented AI, industry-leading products grounded in core technological excellence and a seamlessly orchestrated ecosystem that extends beyond the home to vehicles and commercial spaces – all focused on delivering tangible, everyday customer value.

Held under the theme “Innovation in tune with you,” the event welcomed approximately 1,000 guests, including global media, industry experts and partners, with many more joining via live stream around the world.

An annual tradition on the eve of CES, LG World Premiere serves as a platform for LG to unveil its latest innovations and long-term direction. Today’s event reaffirmed LG’s commitment to customer-centric innovation that genuinely makes life better.

From Affectionate Intelligence to AI in Action

LG showcased the next chapter of its Affectionate Intelligence, first introduced two years ago. At this year’s World Premiere, the company showcased how its AI now puts intelligence into Action – AI that moves beyond conversation to actively orchestrate devices, spaces and services, making everyday life more comfortable, efficient and intuitive.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Miguel Lopes, CPO @ TrafficGuard

Delivering Tangible Customer Value Through LG’s AI in Action

The event opened with CEO Lyu Jae-cheol taking the stage. Introducing the question, “What if AI could step out of the screen and start working for us in real life?” Lyu explained how LG’s approach to AI in Action is built on three pillars:

  • Excellence in device rooted in core technologies 
  • A seamlessly connected ecosystem
  • Expansion of AI-driven solutions beyond the home

This strategy culminates in LG’s Zero Labor Home vision – a future in which intelligent devices become agent appliances, and those appliances operate as a single AI system that manages daily tasks on the customer’s behalf. The goal is to give customers back their most valuable resource: time.

As the physical expression of this vision, LG CLOiD was introduced as a “home-specialized agent” capable of performing tasks with its two arms and five-fingered hands, learning the home environment and continuously optimizing it. Designed for real homes, LG CLOiD combines a safety-first structure with a mobility-optimized form factor, enabling stable, precise operation even when a child or pet suddenly pulls on it, while ensuring smooth, controlled movement throughout the home.

“As a global leader in home appliances, our deep understanding of customer lifestyles is a powerful advantage,” said CEO Lyu, sharing his ambition “to set a new standard for future home life through a variety of solutions, including robots.”

He added that he expects the customer’s AI experience “not to remain in the home, but to connect across various spaces such as vehicles, workplaces and commercial areas, becoming an integral part of their lives.”

Excellence in Device Powered by Exceptional Innovation

LG also introduced a wide range of core products, showcasing industry-leading technological innovations such as its next-generation OLED TV and the AI-evolved LG SIGNATURE lineup, which applies advanced AI to elevate performance and ease of use.

1.  LG OLED evo W6 Wallpaper TV

  • 9 Millimeters Class Thin Design: an engineering feat achieved by meticulous miniaturization of essential components and a complete re-engineering of its internal architecture to deliver a sleek Wallpaper Design.
  • Hype Radiant Color Technology: improving perfect blacks, perfect color and higher brightness while lowering reflection to deliver picture quality of the next OLED TVs.
  • True Wireless Technology: enables the Wallpaper TV to achieve its thinness, making it the thinnest OLED TV that is wireless.

2.  The LG SIGNATURE refrigerator

  • Conversational AI: understands conversational language and provides tailored recommendations. For example, if a customer asks, “Hi LG, what’s the best way to store meat for a week?” the AI suggests and sets the optimal mode.
  • Ingredient Recognition: enables personalized recipe recommendations based on what is inside.

3.  The LG SIGNATURE Oven Range

  • Gourmet AI: identifies ingredients and recommends from over 80 curated recipes, turning everyday cooking into a guided, intuitive experience.

Marketing Technology News: Is the Traditional CDP Already Out of Date?

LG CLOiD: AI in Action in the Zero Labor Home

Through a short vignette of daily life, LG demonstrated how its approach to AI in Action works in real life:

  1. Contextual Awareness and Proactive Suggestion: On the way home, a user says, “I’ll be home soon,” via the ThinQ™ app. Based on the user’s usual jogging routine and a rainy forecast, LG CLOiD suggests an alternative plan – “how about an indoor workout instead of jogging?”
  2. Orchestrated Task Handling: Before the user arrives, LG CLOiD adjusts the air conditioner and retrieves workout clothes from the dryer.
  3. Ambient Assistance for Daily Tasks: LG CLOiD folds laundry, organizes dishes and manages priorities – reducing both physical effort and mental load.

LG envisions the home robot evolving into an ambient-care agent that supports everyday life in the Zero Labor Home.

Expansion of AI-driven solutions beyond the homes to Vehicles and Commercial Spaces

LG also laid out how its Affectionate Intelligence is extending beyond the home to drive meaningful change across vehicles, workplaces and commercial facilities, with the goal of realizing a fully connected ecosystem.

  • LG AI-Powered In-Vehicle Solutions: As an Experience Architect, LG transforms vehicles into intelligent, personalized spaces powered by the company’s on-device multimodal generative AI platform. This includes gaze-tracking systems, seamless home-to-vehicle entertainment and adaptive displays – leveraging AI expertise from consumer electronics to create vehicles that truly understand their occupants.
  • HVAC for the AI Era: LG’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) solutions are being further advanced by AI. The company is strengthening its role in high-efficiency cooling for AI data centers, including business-to-government (B2G) projects in the Middle East and collaborations with companies such as GRC (immersion cooling) and Flex (data center infrastructure).

Closing the event, LG CLOiD reflected LG’s Life’s Good brand promise:

“The future we shared today is one where technology quietly supports people in meaningful ways. With LG’s approach to AI in Action, everyday life becomes better, more meaningful and more human.”

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.