New ABM Converter Solution from CaliberMind Turns Your Marketing Automation and CRM into an Account-Based Marketing Machine

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August 9, 2018

Yotpo to Offer the First Consolidated, AI-Driven Solution for User-Generated Marketing, Visual Marketing, Referrals, Loyalty, and Customer Data/Insights

In the era of fierce M&As in martech landscape, customer is the winner. Leading martech company for content, Yotpo, has scooped its first acquisition: Swell Rewards. Swell Records is a Boston-based provider of premium incentive marketing solutions for e-commerce and omnichannel brands. The move expands Yotpo’s suite of commerce marketing technology solutions preferred by top direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands like Glossier, 1-800-Flowers and Away Travel. Brands will be able to manage reviews, visual marketing, consumer insights, rewards, and referrals from a single platform uniquely designed to meet their customer content, advocacy, engagement, and retention needs.

Adding Swell Records into its brood will allow Yotpo to further get deeper into the mobile-focused customer-centric marketing ecosystem. Yotpo’s suite of integrated solutions for user-generated content marketing, loyalty and referrals help commerce companies accelerate growth by enabling advocacy and maximizing customer lifetime value.

Like Yotpo, Swell is a provider of cutting-edge technology that supported the rise of D2C brands and surge in e-commerce sales (now reaching upward of $450 billion according to Mary Meeker and Kleiner Perkins), boasting rewards and referrals programs that deliver an average 9x ROI. Since it was founded in 2015, the company has experienced an average year-over-year growth of 313% and serves thousands of brands including mutual Yotpo customers UNTUCKit, Third Love, Tomboy X, Soko Glam, and Quay Australia. Swell Rewards’ Co-founder and CEO Josh Enzer and Co-founder and CTO James Peerless will join Yotpo to lead strategy and product development for incentive marketing solutions.

Both companies would help brands to effectively leverage social proof to increase trust and sales, cultivate loyal customer advocates, and make better business decisions based on customer feedback.

So far, Yotpo has raised $101 million in funding and has over 300 employees globally.

At the time of this announcement, Tomer Tagrin, Co-founder and CEO at Yotpo, said, “The current commerce marketing stack is bloated—too many disparate point solutions are making brands less agile, efficient, and competitive than they could be.”

Tomer added, “By acquiring Swell Rewards, Yotpo will be able to offer a one-stop destination for activating customer advocacy and brand loyalty. And, using our AI, we’ll be able to unlock product and data synergies that will improve acquisition, increase sales, and maximize customer lifetime value. We’re thrilled to forge the next chapter of e-commerce with Swell, whose team, culture, priorities, and vision are a true complement to Yotpo’s.”

Yotpo and Swell have a pre-existing integration that enables commerce brands to reward customers for submitting and sharing user-generated content. The acquisition will enhance those capabilities and set the stage for new solutions that drive business growth. Yotpo’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) engine, which facilitates smarter and faster solutions for collecting, managing, displaying, and analyzing high-quality customer content, will be extended to optimize Swell’s existing product line and drive future innovation.

“Swell Rewards and Yotpo are on an accelerated path to deliver some truly amazing products for brands at the scale and speed that today’s commerce marketplace demands,” commented Swell’s Enzer and Peerless.

Josh and James added, “We are committed to redefining the way brands and consumers unite around loyalty and user-generated content while advancing AI-driven client solutions.”

The acquisition marks another milestone for Yotpo, which over the last three years has experienced an explosive period of growth–an 823% increase in annual recurring revenue, a 200% increase in annual contract value on average, and 487% increase in brand customers.

Currently, Swell Rewards, a Yotpo company, is an “incentive marketing” platform; their highly-customizable software has helped thousands of e-commerce and omnichannel merchants administer beautifully on-brand rewards, referral, and influencer marketing programs. Swell was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Boston, MA

Criteo Joins the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program, Enabling Merchants of All Sizes to Scale Their Businesses

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August 9, 2018

Criteo Joins the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program, Enabling Merchants of All Sizes to Scale Their Businesses

Retailers to Drive Sales with Dynamic Retargeting

Criteo S.A., the advertising platform for the open Internet, announced it has joined the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program to deliver Criteo’s scalable solutions to high-growth, high-volume retailers and merchants. Merchants of all sizes are able to take advantage of Criteo’s expansive global reach to target users across all channels and devices, and quickly scale their businesses.

“Criteo’s participation in the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program enables merchants to seamlessly benefit from Criteo’s performance based marketing strategies,“ said Len Ostroff, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, Criteo. “We’re confident that this will help Shopify’s merchants around the globe maximize sales and grow their businesses by re-engaging shoppers throughout the entire path to purchase.”

Merchants who are currently working with Shopify are able to explore engaging with Criteo as a certified technology partner for resources that complement and enhance their ecommerce strategy. While retailers often struggle to deploy new advertising technologies due to IT bandwidth, Criteo and Shopify are enabling commerce-oriented entrepreneurship by allowing them to easily work with Criteo without having to develop new or add pressure to existing internal IT resources.

Also Read: Criteo Invests $23 Million in Paris AI Lab to Define the Advertising Technologies of the Future

“Brands of all sizes are shifting from wholesale to online sales, so these rapidly growing businesses need additional resources to compete alongside the industry giants,” said John Shea, Vice President, Mid- Market, Criteo. “Being in the program empowers these retailers to successfully scale their business with technology that fosters commerce-oriented entrepreneurship.”

“As we’ve made changes to our site, Criteo and Shopify Plus make it super easy to update the tags so our retargeting doesn’t pause and keeps driving significant results,” said Kristin Gelches, Director, e-Commerce and Digital Marketing, La Colombe.

“We’ve tested other retargeting solutions in the past, but chose Criteo for the superior results,” said Pallavi Goel, Director of Digital Marketing, 2Modern. “Criteo and Shopify Plus have made it easy to grow our campaign; we’re now running dynamic retargeting as well as a re-engagement campaign using Criteo’s technology and the tags we have on our Shopify Plus site.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Criteo to the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program,” said Jamie Sutton, Head of Technology Partnerships, Shopify Plus. “This program recognizes the best-in-class solutions that, together with Shopify Plus, further enables the rapid growth and innovation possibilities of today’s modern merchant. Bringing Criteo on board recognizes the important role this technology plays in ensuring customer engagement and driving growth in ecommerce businesses.”

Shopify Plus’ platform makes it easier for merchants to rapidly deploy and test partner technologies. Participating in the technology partner program reduces the technical heavy lifting and creates a seamless test environment for retailers looking to explore retargeting opportunities.

TechBytes with Kevin Chew, VP, Corporate and Business Development, Seismic

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August 9, 2018

Kevin Chew
VP, Corporate and Business Development, Seismic

Sales Enablement is a sector that has seen rapid growth in the past few years. In this complex world of B2B sales, firms like Seismic make it easier for their clients to drive revenue with their flexible platform. We spoke to Kevin Chew, VP, Corporate and Business Development, Seismic, to understand the dynamics of their partnership with Microsoft and the challenges that a sales enablement platform must tackle to deliver ROI.

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Tell us about your role at Seismic and the team you handle.

I lead partnership strategy and business development at Seismic. Seismic’s customers are large, global companies with complex, multifaceted business needs and complex technology infrastructures. They often rely on a host of technology providers and consultants to ensure that they are wielding their industry’s best-of-breed technologies and best practices. My job is to locate and target those providers and experts that are interacting with our customers and target customers, find ways that together we can increase their value through the power of Seismic, and also how Seismic’s value can be bolstered through them.

How important is the B2B sales alliance for you in 2018?

Incredibly important. Some of our major partners, like Salesforce and Microsoft, have tools that are omnipresent in enterprise sales and marketing offices today. As the most customizable and flexible sales enablement platform, we offer a wide array of integrations that increase the value of those types of technologies for customers. The ability for us work closely with them opens up a world of additional opportunities for current customers to create a sales enablement program that fits their needs and achieves real results.

What are the core tenets of your recent partnership with Microsoft?

There are three core tenants of our relationship with Microsoft. They are:

Product capabilities: Seismic-Microsoft integrations exist throughout the entire sales enablement experience for customers. From the moment the content is being created in the Microsoft Office Suite to when it is being distributed to clients through our Outlook or Dynamics integrations, the combination of Microsoft and Seismic is a potent one for our customers.
Customer education: I believe that Microsoft sees a kindred spirit in Seismic in that we both share a fanatical devotion to guaranteeing that our customers stand with us at the forefront of business innovation, and we are taking positive steps to ensure that happens through joint education initiatives. For example, Seismic is now a prime exhibitor in the Chicago Microsoft Tech Center, showing how Seismic’s integration of Microsoft technologies benefits large enterprises. We also recently sponsored a webinar with Microsoft for customers on the theme of artificial intelligence and financial services. The webinar is the part of a series of co-marketing initiatives designed to educate the market on the how new and innovative technologies are helping marketing and selling teams be more effective at their jobs.
Go-to-market initiatives: We are actively working with Microsoft’s sales teams to further position Seismic as a preferred technology partner for Microsoft customers looking to increase sales productivity and marketing effectiveness. In fact, Seismic is now included in the Microsoft Technical Solution Professionals demo environment in the Americas, providing direct visibility into integrations for prospective Microsoft buyers.

How do you plan to extend the benefits of the partnership to your customers and technology partners?

As I just mentioned, the partnership is already positively impacting our customers in a host of ways. And we plan on continuing to work closely with Microsoft across the product, our customer base, and our marketing and sales efforts.

Regarding other technology partners, we see Seismic as a true platform, bringing on a host of other technologies to make the overall solution uniquely suited for each unique customer to derive the most power and value out of their sales enablement investments. Microsoft’s technology offerings is a key piece of that overall technology partner puzzle.

What does it mean to you as the winner of the inaugural MSUS Partner Award in the Power Business Intelligence category?

We are honored to have received a 2018 MSUS Partner Award. Microsoft has thousands of partners, and so many of them are doing incredible things with Microsoft’s applications. To be named among the best is very exciting.

We won for our analytics suite, LiveInsights, which has been built on Microsoft PowerBI. LiveInsights tracks sales content performance in aggregate—both from the perspective of buyer and sellers engagement– and in real-time so that marketers can measure what content is working for sellers, what is being engaged with by buyers, what content is directly contributing to revenue, and which content creators are created truly impactful content. The result is a much more intelligent sales and marketing engine, making improvements based on data.

Where do you see Seismic heading to in 2019, with the kind of AI-powered intelligence you deliver?

I will echo what our CEO Doug Winter said on Sales Tech Star: The intelligence we’ve built into the platform makes our users smarter and thus more effective at their jobs. Everything we build is done to really make an impact on how sellers sell and how marketers impact the bottom line, and expect to see us continue to push the envelope on that front as we move forward here in 2018.

Thanks for chatting with us, Kevin.

Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com

Wochit Partners with Newsflare, Grows Library of Pre-Cleared Assets by Adding Over 10,000 Newsflare Videos From Around the World

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August 9, 2018

Wochit Partners with Newsflare, Grows Library of Pre-Cleared Assets by Adding Over 10,000 Newsflare Videos From Around the World

Platform Users Throughout the Americas to Benefit from Vast Array of Eyewitness Videos Provided by Global Network of Contributors

Predictive video creation platform Wochit announced that content from Newsflare, provider of viral and breaking news videos to media and news organizations around the world, will now be available in the platform’s expansive library of pre-cleared assets.

The deal brings Wochit users in North and South America access to Newsflare’s archive of video content shot by amateur and professional eyewitnesses worldwide, better enabling them to grow and engage audiences with relevant content. As part of the deal, Newsflare expects to add 1,000 fresh videos to the Wochit library each month.

“As more media companies and other brands incorporate video in their audience engagement strategies, it’s imperative our library incorporate a depth and breadth of materials. Newsflare is an ideal partner to help us achieve this goal, and ensure our customers have the content they need when they need it,” commented Jo Schmaltz, VP Global Content Partnerships, Wochit.

Also Read: Interview with Dror Ginzberg, Co-Founder & CEO at Wochit

“It’s been an exciting year for our company, and we’re delighted to partner with Wochit,” said Jon Cornwell, CEO, Newsflare. “Following our recent expansion into the US, working with partners to bring our members’ videos to ever more publishers in the region is a critical part of our strategy. We see this deal as a great way to rapidly increase our reach throughout the Americas.”

As a provider of content to Wochit’s library, Newsflare joins an elite group that includes AFP, AP, Reuters, Getty, PA and more, who partner with Wochit, to increase reach and monetization opportunities.

Wochit is a predictive video creation platform that empowers any storyteller, regardless of experience or skill, to create unique high-impact videos at scale and with unprecedented speed. Used by hundreds of media companies, brands and agencies each month, Wochit’s holistic solution combines deep knowledge of digital video production processes and audience preferences with a super-intuitive interface, enabling them to quickly create unique, high-impact videos, that reflect their brand. Wochit’s cloud-based platform, augmented with a proprietary library of over 100 million commercial and editorial rights-cleared images and videos from top professional and social sources, is a complete solution for organizations looking to attract and engage audiences across owned and syndicated digital channels.

Interview with Ryan Hollenbeck, SVP, Global Marketing, Verint

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August 9, 2018

Interview with Ryan Hollenbeck, SVP, Global Marketing, Verint

[vc_wp_text]“As we look to AI-implementation, marketers need to understand their role as a nexus of these various data points and adjust accordingly.”

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[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/Verint” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-hollenbeck-9408b97/”]

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What galvanized you to join a marketing technology company?

In my role as SVP of global marketing, I lead the more traditional marketing functions, but also get to step outside the box as executive sponsor for our customer experience program. Sales enablement is also part of our team, which is outside the realm of most typical marketing organizations. Having the opportunity to work with so many people at Verint who are pioneers and thought leaders in their respective areas of expertise—including Nancy Porte in CX and Kevin Strange in sales enablement—is one of the things that keeps me energized here. They are both dynamos. I love partnering with them to bring the principles of marketing to our CX effort and to help our salesforce deliver great results for customers through sales enablement.

In everything we do, including our standard functions of content marketing, communications, digital marketing and regional marketing, we focus on what I call the three P’s: Passion—market awareness and making sure our brand is well-known and understood; Pipeline—generating leads and campaigns to close them; and Productivity—delivering the right combination of tools and skills to enable our sellers to represent Verint and our offerings effectively.

How did I get here? I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area—San Jose—and my dad was an engineer, so technology has always been part of my life. In college and the years that followed working with leading technology and marketing organizations, I knew the marketing side of technology was the right fit for me. The Verint acquisition of Witness Systems brought it all together—people with whom I had worked for years, including Nancy Treaster, now Verint’s senior vice president and general manager for strategic operations, joined another dream team of dynamos who were brilliant, diverse and innovative.

How is Verint different from other Customer Engagement platforms?

We’re focused on ROI and aligning new technology with the customer’s business values. While technology can often help in the achievement of financial goals, we always say that we’re customer first rather than technology first.

Always putting the customer first contributed to an overall evolution in the Verint business several years ago that created a culture called “Developing Customers for Life.” At Verint, it’s about how we view and treat our customers throughout their journey with us and serve as a trusted partner. We’re a customer-centric company with top commitment to success and really helping our customers gain maximum value from our customer engagement solutions.

What is the “State of Omnichannel Marketing” in 2018? How much of this state is influenced by the maturity of automation and 1:1 personalization tools?

For true omnichannel marketing to succeed, we need to create more personalized experiences across those channels. One thing has become clear: offering multiple communication channels is no longer a differentiator. It is table stakes that every organization should be minimally achieving. Omnichannel has evolved to the point that organizations must look beyond simply offering different ways to communicate.

If each of these communication channels is staffed with different employees using different tools and providing an inconsistent quality of service, then the channels don’t actually provide a benefit. Best-in-class organizations are seeking a unified strategy, with a unified view of the customer and centralized access to knowledge, data and processes.

How is mobile customer engagement different from when you first started? How do current analytics tools enable mobile marketers to outgrow their audience reach?

Mobile marketing has defined the past decade of customer engagement, but now we see the rise of voice interface and in-home assistants. While mobile marketing is still a valuable market, we’re always focused on what’s next, which is why we recommend our customers who truly want to grow their reach to invest in new technologies that align with their business goals and put them ahead of the crowd.

How do build an actionable customer interaction and communication model?

When thinking about customer interaction and communication, it all goes back to business intents. Each industry and company requires its own library of language and actions that the AI needs to understand. Since our technologies have been deployed to organizations for over 20 years, they leverage a huge library of business intents. This time and accumulation is crucial as each industry is unique—AI for financial institutions necessarily requires a different structure than healthcare, for example—and our library of intents allows us to drive customer interactions to be more than transactional. Once you have a real understanding of your customers’ needs through your intents model, that’s when you can achieve comprehensive communication that accomplishes task fulfillment and overall satisfaction.

Which startups in martech and adtech industries are you keenly following?

I’m on the board of advisors for a cool startup called SalesTing, which provides cutting-edge marketing and sales automation software powered by an AI engine. Like so many successful companies, it was incubated at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center. Its philosophy is that software has been linear for a long time. AI makes it intelligent and delivers higher value tied to business results—a philosophy that aligns perfectly with ours at Verint.

What marketing and sales automation technologies do you use?

Among many other tools, we use Eloqua for marketing campaign management, Demandbase for account-based marketing, HubSpot for inbound marketing and sales, and BrightEdge for web analytics.

Tell us about the new standards of martech Influencer engagements. Who does it best and how?

It all comes back to customer experience when discussing the new standards. Today, real martech engagement is not equivalent to social engagement. It’s not your number of followers or your customer touchpoints. Instead, it’s what you’re doing for the customer.

Fortunately, companies are more empowered today than they have ever been to help customers. That sounds crazy, but we know our customers better. We can meet their needs better, faster and with more sophistication than we’ve ever been able to. However, most companies still view the customer interaction as a problem to be solved, not an opportunity to excel. I’m proud that Verint doesn’t share that view.

What was your best digital transformation campaign? How did you measure the performance among your audience?

Rebranding Verint as “The Customer Engagement Company” was a huge success. The metrics tell the story. Best of all, it galvanized us under a single, vibrant and extremely positive new brand with a value proposition to Simplify, Modernize and Automate. It’s easy to understand and has been extremely well received by customers, partners and industry influencers. Of course, the key to its success was the way our team took the message to the market. They did a killer job with it. They continue to make it fun and engaging!

How do you prepare for an AI-centric ecosystem as a marketing leader?

I think the biggest change that AI will bring for marketers is a more integrated role across the organization. Marketing is a unique role that naturally touches so many different parts of an organization—spanning sales, product development, customer experience and success, business strategy and brand. That means marketers are already uniquely oriented to look at the information that is being collected across an organization and understand how to leverage it most effectively. As we look to AI-implementation in this field, marketers need to understand their role as a nexus of these various data points and adjust accordingly.

How do you inspire your people to work with technology at Verint?

The Verint team is naturally very tech-forward and curious, so it’s not a challenge to encourage tech adoption. However, ensuring coordinated tech adoption across an organization will always be one of the biggest challenges for any major enterprise. At Verint, we’re successful with it because we are focused on our customers, and we have a dedicated marketing operations team who does a stellar job of vetting through our tech stack. If new technology is going to take our customers another step forward, then there’s already enthusiasm for it across our company.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

A few apps that I use often are Fly Delta, ESPN, OpenTable, and Verint’s Engage conference app that was powered by Klik this year. Being a frequent flier, Delta really comes in handy by having all of my information in one place, showing me upcoming trips in a clean format, tracking my current status/mileage, and even following my bag if I happen to check that trip.

Having played college football and being a big sports fan in general, ESPN is kind of a given, but I found it especially useful when both of my kids played college sports. The app houses stats from all college divisions, men and women, making it easy for me to track their teams progress if I had a conflict preventing me from watching the game live.

OpenTable is awesome for scheduling business meetings on the go and on short notice. If a colleague or customer wants to meet for a bite, I can easily open the app, select my party size and desired time, and choose a restaurant with availability.

And I’d be remiss not to comment on how cool this year’s Verint Engage app was. We used a software company called “Klik” to power the US-based conference in Dallas, and the connection power this tool brought to the event put us on a whole new digital level than ever before. It housed our entire conference agenda, allowed attendees to “click” their badges together to easily share contact info and much more!

What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?

I get out early in the mornings to walk—with my dog at home, by myself when traveling. It’s a great way to get energized, to consider the day ahead and all the great things going on at Verint. Doing this while I travel, I always make it a practice never to backtrack. I want the entire time spent seeing new things, not repeating the experience of what I saw on my way out. When I did this in Dallas one time, I came upon the Rosa Parks’ memorial. It’s in a small plaza, and you can actually sit down next to the statue of her on the bus seat. I found it truly inspiring, and I wouldn’t have seen it if I had gone out and back the same way. I use this as a lesson for my approach to my professional life, as well. It’s what we do at Verint. We never backtrack. We are always looking for the next great thing.

What are you currently reading?

For current events, it’s a combination of print and online. I glance over the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on weekday mornings, as well as the online app. I peruse social media, too. I usually keep two books going at the same time—one on business and one just for personal enjoyment. Currently, the business book I am reading is Next is Now by Lior Arussy. The world of technology is full of constant, consistent change and evolution. This book outlines 5 steps for embracing change, and how to build a business that thrives into the future. The other book is Farewell to Manzanar, a moving account of life in a Japanese-American internment camp in the high mountain desert country of California during WWII. I read these books for my own personal growth and satisfaction, but it’s amazing how often “what are you reading?” can be an effective way to connect with customers and other colleagues.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“Just do the next dumb thing.” A college professor of mine who was a journalist with Time magazine said she knew we would get the basics of journalism in other classes. She wanted our major takeaway from her class to be how to survive in a real job in the real world. She said we’d face projects in those jobs that might seem overwhelming at first. How to survive? “Break down big assignments into little segments and focus on the next dumb thing,” she said. It was her way of taking the stress out of it and making it fun.

Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Terrie O’Hanlon, CMO at DefenseStorm. She is so smart and was a great mentor to me early in my career. Her brand skills in how to accelerate awareness and adoption of modern technologies are amazing. Her fresh thinking in branding and go-to-market strategies are perfectly relevant to today’s business world.

Thank you, Ryan! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

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Ryan Hollenbeck has served as the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Verint Systems since 2008. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Verint Witness Actionable Solutions.

Before joining Verint Systems, he was with Witness Systems and held various positions rising to Vice President for Corporate Marketing and Investor Relations. Earlier in his career, he held management and leadership positions with Dun & Bradstreet Software, Prentice Hall Professional Software, and Crescent Communications (now Ketchum Worldwide).

Hollenbeck graduated with a BS in Technical Journalism with a minor in Economics from Oregon State University.

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Verint Systems Inc. is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence® solutions. Actionable Intelligence is a necessity in a dynamic world of massive information growth because it empowers organizations with crucial insights and enables decision makers to anticipate, respond, and take action. With Verint solutions and value added services, organizations of all sizes and across many industries can make more informed, timely, and effective decisions.

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[mnky_heading title=”MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmartechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com%2Fcategory%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

Sightly Appoints Nielsen Veteran Nichola Karp as Chief Product Officer

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August 9, 2018

Former Director and Group Lead for Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s DMP to Lead Sightly’s Product, Engineering and Data Teams as Demand for Performance Video Advertising Grows

Sightly, a leading performance video advertising and analytics platform, has appointmented Nichola Karp to the role of Chief Product Officer. In her new role, Karp leads Sightly’s data, engineering and product teams, overseeing the company’s software and technology offering from vision through execution. Her primary initiative will be to automate and scale Sightly’s operations to support the company’s unprecedented growth as the demand for performance video accelerates, driving innovation and results for clients.

“As a pioneer in performance branding, we believe that strong leadership in AI, analytics and data-driven media buying is the most crucial part of effectively leveraging sight, sound and motion to deliver successful outcomes and achieve ROAS for our clients,” said Larry Harris, CEO, Sightly. “Our goal is to be the leader in performance video advertising, campaign optimization and analytics, and Nichola’s appointment to Chief Product Officer will be integral to achieving that goal. She’s an exceptionally talented adtech professional who has the drive, knowledge and experience to lead Sightly’s product team to new heights. We are thrilled to have her on board.”

Karp has more than eight years experience in digital ad tech and more than 15 years experience in software engineering. She joins Sightly from Nielsen Product Leadership, where she was a director and product group lead for the Nielsen Marketing Cloud’s DMP. Most notably, her team launched Nielsen AI, which won the R&D 100 Award as a Market Disruptor. Prior to Nielsen, Karp was Vice President of Product and Strategy at Reelcontent, a self-serve video marketing platform for SMB advertisers.

Also Read: Sightly Opens Two New US Locations, Makes Several New Hires to Serve Expanding Customer Base

Karp has also held positions at Pulsepoint, as Director of Product for the Open Exchange and Private Marketplace, and 24/7 Media, where she was Director of Platform Management and Operations.

“As brands realize the power of video advertising to drive successful outcomes, the market is absolutely exploding,” said Karp. “I am truly passionate about this space, which is why I am so thrilled to join Sightly and such an incredibly skilled engineering and product team. Sightly has a winning formula to drive real performance, and I am eager to help scale the company’s data and technology using People-Centered solutions that will bring new products and added value to even more clients.”

Karp’s appointment comes on the heels of several new hires Sightly announced last month.

“We’re constantly working to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving landscape of programmatic advertising in order to drive the most successful outcomes for our clients,” added Harris. “An critical part of this means increasing our industry knowledge, tech chops and leadership team. Nichola will be key in improving our software and our workflow across all facets of analytics, data and real-time decisioning.”

SalesHood Launches Expert System for Sales Managers to Accelerate Revenue Attainment

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August 9, 2018

SalesHood Launches Coaching Command Center

SalesHood Launches Expert System for Sales Managers to Accelerate Revenue Attainment with Advanced Team Dashboards, Coaching Workflows, and a Curated Library of Industry-Proven Coaching Templates and Huddles

SalesHood, the industry leading sales enablement platform is announcing the launch of SalesHood Expert System for Sales Managers. “Our Expert System provides automated coaching tips, content, and guides for managers to develop and motivate their teams to exceed their goals,” says Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood and former Senior Vice President, Sales Productivity from Salesforce.

The SalesHood Expert System for Sales Managers accelerates revenue attainment and productivity and focus with insights, workflows, and content recommendations learned through millions of videos, stories, and activities submitted on the SalesHood platform.

SalesHood Expert System for Sales Managers helps sales managers become great coaches and more effective leaders by enabling them with automated enablement tools and recommendations to develop their teams. Brian McGrath, Director Sales Enablement, SHI International Corp says “You’ve got to be in a position as a manager to observe your people and provide constructive feedback. SalesHood allows sales managers to move from being an armchair quarterback to being a trusted coach”

Also Read: Matrix Solutions Expands Customer Footprint to Latin America

Customers using SalesHood Expert System for Sales Managers will benefit from the following features:

Team Dashboard: Provide a concise summary of team progress, collective achievements, as well as simple click throughs to individuals on the team. Benefits to the Manager and the enablement team include:
Intuitive visualization of team progress
Correlate enablement activity completion to revenue attainment more easily
Improved Manager engagement and focus on enablement activities

Meetings in a Box: Access to a curated selection of sales enablement huddles that keep teams engaged, aligned and on target to the metrics that matter, both in terms of revenue attainment and personal skills development. Specific features include structured and unstructured team exercises such as role-plays and deal reviews and integrated video assets for call/meeting reviews and best practice sharing. Easily create custom recurring team meetings to provide team visibility, accountability and a culture of sharing throughout the organization.

Coaching Workflows: Managers receive automated coaching summaries highlighting areas of development and completion data of their teams. The summaries are pushed to managers 24 hours and 48 hours before team meetings and one-on-ones.

Library of Coaching Templates & Huddles: Managers can easily select from a collection of coaching ‘playbooks’ with prescribed workflows and activities to address common objectives or pain points such as: quota attainment, pipeline coverage, team engagement, QBR best practices etc.

Omnicom Precision Marketing Strengthens Its Management and IT Consulting Capabilities by Acquiring Credera

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August 9, 2018

Omnicom Precision Marketing Strengthens its Management and IT Consulting Capabilities by Acquiring Credera

Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG), the digital and customer relationship management (CRM) specialist group within Omnicom Group Inc., announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Credera.

Credera is a full-service provider of management and technology consulting services. With a core focus on marTech and ecommerce platforms, the company delivers solutions that increase customer engagement and drive sales growth.

“Credera works directly with the C Suite to help companies transform their business for the digital age,” said Luke Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, Omnicom Precision Marketing Group. “Credera has become a trusted business advisor to change leaders across an impressive roster of B2B and consumer companies. We welcome them to the Omnicom family.”

Credera’s best-in-class talent has expertise in developing and implementing customer-centric technology platforms. Along with Omnicom Precision Marketing Group’s global presence, depth in creative, and leadership in data and analytics, the combination will create a compelling offering for Omnicom’s existing client base and prospects.

Also Read: Omnicom Takes Data-Driven Marketing To The Next Level With Launch Of “Omni”

“Omnicom is an excellent strategic and cultural fit that gives us direct access to a much larger client base, suite of services and talent,” said Credera’s CEO and Chairman, Rob Borrego, who will continue at the helm of the management team and organization. “Credera and Omnicom Precision Marketing Group can take an idea all the way from its conception upstream, to its implementation downstream – from the white board, through development, to a consumer’s device. By joining forces, we can do this on a larger scale and accelerate our combined growth in management and marketing technology consulting.”

Credera was founded in 1999 and serves a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to emerging industry leaders including Southwest Airlines, National Geographic, EmployBridge, NRG, HomeAdvisor among others. Headquartered in Dallas, they currently employ over 300 consulting professionals with offices in Denver and Houston.

Sigstr Gives Marketers the Power of Relationships, Introduces Sigstr Pulse

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August 9, 2018

Sigstr Gives Marketers the Power of Relationships, Introduces Sigstr Pulse

SaaS Solution Launches New Relationship Intelligence Application

Sigstr, the leading email signature marketing solution, announced the launch of its new relationship marketing platform, Sigstr Pulse. The platform uses artificial intelligence to map the collective networks of all employees in a company, putting the power of their relationships at marketer’s fingertips.

With @Sigstr Pulse, sales and marketing teams can harness the power of relationships

With Sigstr Pulse, marketers can monitor sales’ engagement with marketing leads, review which accounts have growing relationships and measure how tactics are assisting sales teams in garnering new relationships at key accounts. By tracking and scoring the strength of relationships through analysis of employee email, calendar patterns and CRM data, business leaders can gain valuable and scalable insight into how their marketing and sales efforts are performing at the contact, account, and geographic level. Sigstr Pulse makes it easy for individuals to find and request warm introductions from trusted peers through a global search tool. Additional upcoming integrations with CRMs, marketing automation platforms and account-based marketing platforms like Terminus, allow marketers to easily target specific audiences and analyze how business relationships flourish.

“Sigstr Pulse gives our team a new way to calculate the most important metric in business: relationships,” said Sangram Vajre, co-founder of Terminus. “As marketers, everything we do is in effort to create authentic connections with our audiences and Sigstr Pulse helps provide guidance on the best strategies to accomplish that. Sigstr Pulse is ABM on steroids.”

Also Read: SaleScout Data Solutions and Demand Gen Report Team up on State of Database Quality Report

In addition to the launch of the relationship intelligence application, Sigstr released today new research on the importance of 1:1 relationships in sales and marketing in partnership with Heinz Marketing. The findings show that less than 14 percent of marketers are satisfied with the level of information they have on account-based marketing (ABM) targets and contacts — and although relationships are most important to ABM outreach, only 30 percent of companies use their existing network to mine relationships.

“Relationships are the lifeblood of every business, and no other system tracks who has relationships with whom better than a corporate email system. Sigstr Pulse allows marketers to effortlessly solve a problem everyone knows they have, making it easy to understand your organization’s complex web of relationships and take action on them. One practical example is in event marketing, as brands can send invitations to potential attendees based on the hierarchy of relationships within an organization,” said Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade. “Our platform is already in the email flow of hundreds of thousands of employees at some of the world’s largest brands, which means they can flip a switch to turn on relationship marketing via Sigstr Pulse. As we’re marketing in the era of GDPR, tapping into coworkers’ existing business relationships means less cold calling and more productive marketing.”

The report also found that 87 percent of respondents from high-performing companies cited authentic relationships as critical to their business success, but only 30 percent feel confident in their ability to develop authentic relationships at scale.

“Sigstr has expanded the opportunity for marketing and sales teams by allowing them to make the person-to-person connections they need through existing relationships within the organization,” said Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing. “Email is at the center of nearly every professional’s daily workflow, and now they can use those interactions to build their business beyond just the conversations they’re having.”

MessageBird Introduces Programmable Conversations

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August 9, 2018

MessageBird Enters $350 Billion Customer Service Market With Launch of Inbox.ai

New Omni-Channel Messaging Solution to Unify the World’s Most Popular Communications Channels through a Single API

MessageBird, the Amsterdam-based cloud communications platform company, announced Programmable Conversations, the API for unifying customer interactions across multiple channels into a single conversation thread. By consolidating a customer’s entire communication history, enterprises can create rich customer profiles and deliver the ultimate personalized customer experience. Starting today, enterprises can take advantage of Programmable Conversations to integrate WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Line, Telegram, SMS and Voice interactions into their communications workflows.

In recent years, an explosion of messaging and communications channels has radically increased options and reduced the cost of communicating with family and friends anywhere in the world. But, for businesses trying to communicate with their customers via these channels, the infrastructure for global business-to-customer communications is increasingly complex, expensive and inefficient. Added to this headache, is that implementing omni-channel communications comes with heavy technical lifting. Each channel requires extra developer time and resources to manage not only initial implementation, but also continued maintenance and upkeep.

Programmable Conversations enables enterprises to meet customers on the channels they already use. By adding and maintaining the connections to the world’s most popular channels, MessageBird does the heavy lifting so enterprises can focus on what matters most – delivering an experience that creates happy customers and brand loyalty.

Also Read: Hootsuite Adds New Features, Partnerships and Integrations to Help Enterprises Succeed With Social

“Enterprises require a single holistic view of interactions emanating from a diverse array of channels as an integral aspect of an optimized digital CX strategy,” according to Courtney Munroe, GVP of WW Telecom research at IDC. “MessageBird’s Programmable Conversations is an excellent and cost-effective tool that enables enterprises to reduce the complexity of managing the B2C omni-channel customer experience process.”

Programmable Conversations enables enterprises to:

Provide customer-facing teams with entire conversation histories regardless of the channel on which the conversation took place. Agents can pick up where they left off—cutting response times, streamlining workflows and creating higher customer satisfaction and retention.
Free up developer resources by taking away the time and pain of adding and maintaining the connection to all the channels your customers use, saving overhead and valuable developer time.
Move away from boxing customers in, to creating personalized customer journeys that reach consumers on the channels they prefer. All without dramatic cost increases.

“Delivering communications experiences that improve customer satisfaction and loyalty has to be a focus of businesses today,” said Robert Vis, MessageBird CEO. “Consumers today want to connect with businesses in the same way they do with their friends and family – on their own time, via their preferred channel with all the context of previous conversations. With Programmable Conversations enterprises can now easily build a modern communications experience while reducing the burden of their often over-tasked developers.”

Facebook Upgrades Metrics for the Video

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Nivedya Varma

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August 8, 2018

Facebook Has Announced Certain Changes to Video Metrics with the Aim of Maximizing Video Advertising Expenses so as to Balance It with User Consumption Behavior

Facebook announced that its new video metrics features are going to make an entrance soon.

The goal is to help businesses understand how people can respond better to Facebook videos and not limit it to only viewership numbers. The metrics which will be introduced soon to public look forward to incorporating additional information like unique video views, the average duration of a view and other features like audience retention.

The firm aims to maximize video ad expenses by incorporating these changes that hope to create a balance between user consumption behavior and video ads.

The 3-second and 10-second Video Rule Metric

Facebook will also update the way it measures three-second and ten-second video views by deducting views which are accumulated over-time as re-watched views.

Rewinding videos on Facebook can lead to the skewering of data since a person may watch the first three seconds several times thus being counted as a ten-second view. Facebook has now made changes to only count in views that are unrepeated watches.

The change however minor is significant. People might think that having a lot of ten-second views would be setting them at the right pace, but a video may be eye-catching for only the first few seconds and may not be so during the latter half. Provision of accuracy in video metrics is the key to creating engagement for audiences, and it also gives brands better planning requirements to keep up with the viewership demand.

Also Read: Ten Ways to Transform Your Employees into Social Ambassadors

The Metric for Video Plays

Facebook has noted that News Feed Videos play on a page at least 70% of the time, so a chunk of your users who see your video ads can also see these videos play alongside. Though, this may not always be the case; not everybody included in your audience can always see videos showcased by your business. It can be extremely helpful to understand the number of people within your audience who are affected by the above clause.

Thus, the Video Plays metrics feature can provide transparency by being helpful towards advertisers who are looking forward to connecting with people in low connectivity regions or audiences with restrictive data plans. This video playing metric feature can significantly boost engagement and filter out discounted numbers.

Milestone Metrics

The most noteworthy change bought about by Facebook video metrics includes Milestone Metrics which gives you a specific percentage of the video each user has viewed, thus segregating clusters for each viewer based on key points of content. This is a simplified version of reporting that can help understand the impact of an advertiser’s efforts better.

In addition to the above, Facebook has also omitted the 30-second video view and video percentage watched since the platform believes that this particular metric is redundant with the others and isn’t used as frequently.

Facebook has incorporated these additional changes to provide sufficient transparency in its Video Metrics features. It is also advantageous by gaining user insight for ad viewership and being as accurate as possible for advertisers.

Recommended Read: Five Ways to Create Great B2B Content

UnDigital Unveils Industry’s First Package Insert Marketplace

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August 8, 2018

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UnDigital Unveils Industry's First Package Insert Marketplace

Marketplace Empowers Retailers to Monetize Packages at Scale While Arming Advertisers with New, Highly Effective Channel for Awareness and Sales

UnDigital, the industry’s first package insert marketplace, launched giving advertisers of all sizes access to an inventory of over 300 million packages for insert ads, while empowering retailers to transform package overhead into a bottom-line business driver. Dozens of retailers like Barnes & Noble College and Lands’ End have already joined the marketplace to take advantage of the newfound revenue opportunity.

With billions of packages shipped annually, insert advertising is a greenfield opportunity that the UnDigital marketplace is bringing scalability to for the first time ever. It lets growth marketers reach new consumers in a measurable, testable channel with positive brand association and guaranteed viewability. It lets retailers monetize shipments, create a new revenue stream and provide an additional offer curation service to their customers.

Using UnDigital, retailers post a monthly listing with the number of expected package shipments and the maximum number of inserts they will accept for each package. Advertisers can specify the number of packages that they’re willing to take at a preset purchase price per package that the retailer determines and upload the accompanying campaign creative. The retailers see all purchases in real-time and can approve which advertisers can insert ads into their packages.

Also Read: Outside TV Features Boosts Distribution Gains by Adding Top Cable, Satellite and vMVPD Providers

The marketplace is just part of the value that UnDigital introduces to retailers and advertisers on the platform. The company also manages printing and payment logistics. Within a week of accepting the advertising purchase, UnDigital will ensure the package inserts are delivered to the retailer’s shipping facility, ready to be inserted into the appropriate packages.

Comments on the News

“Building brand association with leading retailers and getting your message in front of active buyers is a tremendous opportunity, but package inserts traditionally had complicated logistics and neither the retailer nor advertiser knew where to begin,” said Ryan Millman, co-founder and CEO of UnDigital. “UnDigital strips the process of unnecessary friction, allowing retailers to turn packages into profit and providing advertisers with a new channel to reach engaged consumers with an impactful ROI. We guarantee a 100 percent open rate in a digital world where advertisers have grown used to diminishing click-through rates.”

“While consumers of all ages are reliant on screens, that doesn’t negate the power of a piece of paper. In-package inserts distributed via UnDigital’s unique platform will aid our ability to capture the college consumer brands covet,” said Lisa Malat, VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Barnes & Noble College. “UnDigital adds another vehicle for us to seamlessly inform students about products and deals to enhance their college experience. The ease of execution of the platform takes logistics out of the equation and gives Barnes & Noble College oversight to curate messages that reach the six million students served across college campuses nationwide. A win-win all around.”

Adobe Appoints Judith Hammerman as Head of Audience Manager, Americas

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MarTech RADAR 2018: Top 150 B2B Technology Companies You Should Follow

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August 8, 2018

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Programmatic Advertising Veteran from Time Inc., Judith Hammerman Joins Adobe as Head of Audience Manager for the Americas

Data Management Platforms (DMPs) are the most sought-after technology in the current martech stack. Modern CMOs are increasingly building their tech stack around DMPs to keep their marketing campaigns relevant to current definitions of engagement, experience, and sustenance. Considering the changing landscape of DMPs and the growing role of customer data in modern marketing campaigns, Adobe has announced a key addition to their leadership team. Today, former Time Inc programmatic advertising veteran Judith Hammerman joined Adobe as Head of Audience Manager for the Americas. Judith will be piloting Adobe’s Audience Manager business through a very dynamic time in digital transformation.

Judith Hammerman Will Pilot Adobe’s Audience Manager Business Through a Very Dynamic Time in Digital Transformation

Last month, Salesforce acquired Datorama to change the data management equation in the Martech ecosystem forever. We predict that more Martech companies would realign their budgets to make their DMPs and Audience Data platforms more relevant to meet modern customers’ needs. In a competitive DMP and analytics landscape, Adobe, with its powerful Analytics platform, remains the go-to technology for modern CMOs looking to deliver omnichannel customer experience to audiences.

The leadership addition was announced via Adobe’s official blog. The blog said, “At Adobe, we’re constantly investing in our leading data and audience management platform, Adobe Audience Manager (part of Adobe Experience Cloud), to make understanding and connecting with those high-value audiences as streamlined as possible.”

Judith’s Tech Background and Experience in Programmatic and Data are Great Assets for Audience Manager in Americas

Judith is a tech veteran in the programmatic advertising ecosystem with nearly two-and-half decades of sales and marketing experience. She is regarded as an early champion of data-centric sales and marketing decision-making.

At the time of this decision, Judith mentioned data staying and growing as a pillar in real-time customer experience. She emphasized on the need to build DMPs that help marketing and advertising teams to “organize, connect, predict and use data in a privacy-compliant way.” With GDPR and other data privacy regulations in place to safeguard customer data, it is obvious that Judith’s experience in the data-related world will keep Adobe’s banner flying high and safe from any data breach issues.

Read More: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

In her current role as the Head of Audience Manager at Adobe, Judith would be responsible to lead the company into a brand-safe ecosystem, driving Adobe Audience Manager’s sales with key customer segments. Apart from strategizing and piloting programmatic campaigns, we could see Judith help customer brands better best tap into the audience data with the industry-recognized DMP.

Judith holds a dual M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley as well as a B.B.A. from George Washington University School of Business.

Arm Acquires Treasure Data to Set the Stage for IoT Transformation

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August 8, 2018

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Arm Acquires Treasure Data to Set the Stage for IoT Transformation

Technologies from Treasure Data, the Acquisition of Stream and Arm Mbed Cloud Will Be Combined to Form the Industry’s First End-To-End Iot Connectivity, Device and Data Management Platform

The Internet of Things (IoT) will give businesses superpowers. Whether it’s an energy provider drawing data from its infrastructure to sense failures; a sensor-equipped building anticipating and then proactively dealing with occupants’ needs; or a retailer using data streams from its stores and warehouses to streamline operations – IoT systems can be transformational.

But unlike fictional superheroes who’re often born with their abilities, any business wanting to develop IoT superpowers requires help. That must come from the technology sector, and three specific elements: investment, solutions and ecosystems.

IoT investment is evident, with the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund being a prime example of major support in advanced technologies. For solutions, we need to make it easy for organizations to provision, update, connect and manage devices, as well as make sense of the incredible amount of diverse data that the IoT is generating. Lastly, IoT requires a strong ecosystem of companies working together to deliver value – one company cannot solve everything alone.

Also Read: SPLICE Software’s Dialog Suite Shortlisted for Business Intelligence Category in SaaS Awards

Dealing with data is hard

An Information Age article summed up the massive data explosion, when they cited IDC predictions that 163 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created or copied by 2025. That’s ten times the 16.1ZB of data generated as of 2016. However, according to a 2018 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Arm, 67 percent of organizations face challenges with data silos and more than half struggle with data preparation.

To deal with data volumes and complexity, businesses need to be able to seamlessly connect and manage their IoT devices, as well as manage their data flows. Arm has focused on supporting companies with this for several years, but a full solution taking care of all of a company’s data needs, from device-to-data, has only become possible today after we acquired Treasure Data.

What will the Arm Pelion IoT Platform do for devices and data?

The Pelion IoT Platform will enable companies to seamlessly and securely connect and manage IoT devices and data at any scale. It’s designed to work on public and private clouds, on-premises and in hybrid environments, delivering ultimate flexibility in IoT system architectures. This will allow companies to quickly turn IoT and enterprise data into insights capable of unlocking new opportunities for them and their customers. The Pelion IoT Platform will also provide unified billing that lowers infrastructure costs, increases operational efficiency, and eliminates integration headaches.

Also Read: PubMatic Announces Tech Veteran Thomas Chow As New General Counsel

What will Arm Pelion IoT Platform do in practical terms?

The Pelion IoT Platform will make IoT outcomes real by delivering:

Device Management – Secure and consistent IoT device provisioning, identity and access management and updates for any system set-up;
Connectivity Management – Support for a range of wireless connectivity standards for any device, region or use case, including enablement of eSIM secure identification;
Data Management – Analysis of trusted data, from individual devices to enterprise-wide big data deployments, including third-party data (works horizontally across apps and use-cases).

The Pelion IoT Platform delivers a strong combined partner ecosystem of 140+ partners spanning silicon, mobile, network operators (MNOs), channel, technology providers and more. It incorporates much of the technology that propelled Treasure Data’s cloud-based Enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) into the market-leading position it enjoys today. Treasure Data provides the unique ability to handle massive amount of streaming web, mobile, and IoT data. It enables their 300+ customers to work with mindboggling amounts of device data points. Today, Treasure Data’s platform handles two million events a second and processes hundreds of thousands of queries and 50 trillion records a day, blending that data into other existing enterprise analytics tools to unlock massive value.

Still growing Treasure Data’s CDP business

We are bringing Treasure Data technology into the Pelion IoT Platform, but the Treasure Data Platform will also continue as a leading standalone technology service for existing and new customers. It will remain an important part of industry IoT enablement, providing the ability to harness new, complex edge and device data within a comprehensive customer profile to personalize their products and improve their experiences. Treasure Data customers will see the CDP continue to evolve. They now also have an opportunity to work with the Pelion IoT Platform. Read more about Treasure Data.

Eyeota Expands ANZ Team with Two Appointments

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August 8, 2018

Eyeota Expands ANZ Team with Two Appointments

Eyeota, the global leader in audience data, announces the appointment of two new staff as the company’s presence in the market continues to expand.

George Henshaw joins Eyeota as Senior Supply Manager, responsible for data acquisition and account management. Previously, George spent five years as Programmatic & Yield Manager with British Telecom in London, where he helped the company establish itself within the publishing sector. He managed BT’s publisher portfolio, which included BT.com, sports, mail, Wi-Fi, and phonebook, and helped to onboard a data management platform to sell the company’s first-party data to agencies. Prior to BT, George was Campaign Manager with Rocketer and Account Manager with TradeDoubler UK.

“It’s widely known that data is ‘the new oil’ and is a hugely valuable commodity for publishers. I’m excited to be part of a company that is at the forefront of data monetisation with a real focus on publishers. I look forward to working closely with our partners to help monetise their valuable data assets and create new revenue streams,” George said.

Also Read: Eyeota Hires Experienced AdTech Leader Pieter de Zwart as CTO

Laura Widdowson comes to Eyeota as Senior Manager – Demand. Laura has over 10 years of experience working for top global media and ad tech companies in London and Sydney. Her experience spans programmatic, digital, print and creative solutions across a multitude of platforms.

Prior to joining Eyeota, Laura was Account Director with Signal, the global marketing technology leader in real-time customer identity resolution. She also worked at Xaxis, where she managed clients’ programmatic campaigns and budgets, as well as held roles at IPC Media, BBC Worldwide and Hearst Magazines UK.

“I am very excited to have the opportunity to be part of such a successful business and an ever-growing team. With extensive knowledge of agencies, I look forward to amplifying Eyeota’s audience solutions and driving further revenue growth in this market,” Laura said.

Peter Hunter, General Manager – ANZ, Eyeota, said: “We are thrilled to have George and Laura join Eyeota. Their experiences in the market are valuable as we increase our investment and continue to build momentum across the region.”

Versium Partners with LiveRamp to Launch AI Powered B2B Audience Segments

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August 8, 2018

Versium Partners with LiveRamp to Launch AI Powered B2B Audience Segments

Solution Solves Long-Term Industry Problem of Effectively Targeting Business Decision Makers

Versium, a leading AI predictive analytics technology company, announced a new partnership with LiveRamp, an Acxiom company and leading provider of omnichannel identity resolution. As part of the agreement Versium will launch powerful new AI-driven business decision-maker segments as part of a new B2B DMP. This fills a critical market gap by enabling offline business professional data, often contained within a company’s own CRM, to be targeted online. The partnership also provides LiveRamp customers with access to Versium’s modeling engine to create custom audiences, optimized for the maximum propensity to engage. Versium’s capability to cross index business and consumer personas, ensures that the resulting digital audiences have sufficient reach. As a result of this partnership, business consumers will experience fresher, more relevant digital engagement from brands, and more easily discover offerings that meet their needs.

Versium launches new AI-powered B2B buyers on LiveRamp DMP

As part of the partnership, Versium will also power unique business and consumer audiences built from Versium’s extensive LifeData warehouse, which contains more than 1 trillion consumer and business data attributes sourced through proprietary means.

Also Read: Informatica Launches Industry’s First Unified Customer Success Offerings to Help Customers Achieve Faster Time to Value

“Historically, marketers have faced challenges targeting business decision makers across social platforms and broader digital display, because most targeting parameters are associated with consumer data, resulting in low onboarding match rates to digital inventory,” said Chris Matty, CEO of Versium. “We solve this problem at scale by helping companies increase match rates—often by as much as 400%, unlocking superior reach and greatly improving the effectiveness of online campaigns that target business decision makers.”

“The success of delivering robust and actionable B2B campaigns hinges on being able to derive actionable insights from high-quality data,” said Grant Ries, CEO of LiveRamp B2B and GM of LiveRamp’s Data Store. “Our partnership with Versium will allow us to expand our capabilities in B2B that resonate strongly with our mission moving forward.”

Google Marketing Platform May End ‘Church and State’ Separation in Programmatic (Here’s Why That’s Okay)

By

Greg Sobiech

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August 8, 2018

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Google Marketing Platform May End ‘Church and State’ Separation in Programmatic (Here’s Why That’s Okay)

Last month, Google surprised the adtech world by rebranding AdWords and merging two of its best-known brands — DoubleClick and Google Analytics — into what it now calls the Google Marketing Platform (GMP).

The move is a sign of how dramatically digital marketing has changed over the last few years.

Google first launched its cash-cow AdWords product in 2000, four years before Facebook arrived on the scene and seven before Twitter and the iPhone. It acquired Urchin in 2005, rebranding it to Google Analytics, and grabbed up YouTube in 2006, DoubleClick in 2007, and Invite Media in 2010, adding a display bidding exchange to its portfolio.

Hardly haphazard acquisitions, Google’s roadmap led squarely to this moment.

RETHINKING SEARCH

According to eMarketer, 2017 was the first year investments in display advertising exceeded those in search. In other words, money shifted away from AdWords, which represents roughly 70 percent of Google’s annual advertising revenue, and toward video and other rich-media display formats.

Search clearly remains vital to Google’s strategy, but the company has had to adapt to new realities. It has renamed DoubleClick Search to Search Ads 360 and enabled both Google and Bing ads to be managed from the same platform using algorithms not before available in AdWords. It has also divvied up AdWords into Google Ads (for SMBs) and Search Ads 360 (for enterprise) and integrated DoubleClick with Google Analytics 360. These are all nods to the shift in marketing budgets from TV to online, the emergence of social media as a primary channel, and the ability to track conversion rates and measure ROI across all channels.

THE END OF ‘CHURCH AND STATE’

A major implication of these shifts is that it effectively ends the traditional separation between media and analytics (commonly known in adtech as church and state).

Also Read: Amazon Versus Google Search: Who Is Winning the Battle and How?

In the past, it made sense that brands wanted to maintain a clear separation between the people who buy the media and those who measure its effectiveness – preventing the problem of ‘grading your own paper.’ With sizeable marketing budgets at stake, you want a team that can independently and objectively measure the ROI from media investments without any conflict of interest or alternative agendas.

With the arrival of the all-in-one GMP, this clear demarcation is gone. However, there is every indication that GMP has enough inherent transparency to reassure stakeholders and prevent conflicts. Just as important, GMP offers marketers much-needed tools for embracing the customer journey, attribution, and audience activation.

Also Read: Google Marketing Platform Gets a New Enriching Destination for Content and Analytics

GMP offers two key features that effectively obviate the need for separation between media and analytics:

CHECKS AND BALANCES IN MEDIA ALLOCATION:

Media traders and analysts alike can connect the search or display modules to analytics inside GMP, allowing everyone to view cost, impression, click, conversion, and ROI data and run different scenarios.

ADVANCED ANALYTICS FOR A COMPLEX MEDIA LANDSCAPE:

As the customer journey grows increasingly intricate, accurately measuring ROI across multiple platforms and channels becomes an even greater challenge.

GMP will also enable marketers to address some of the complexity and risk of juggling multiple partners to manage buying and reporting in separate silos. The world of digital marketing has become too complex and fast moving for walls to remain between media and analytics.

WHAT’S NEXT?

GMP’s unified reporting tools make it easier for marketers to measure post-click and post-view impact from programmatic display or video ads. In the past, programmatic analytics tools could only measure post-click value, often using a last-click attribution model and thus undercounting programmatic’s contribution.

That ability to see the full value of programmatic display or video (including post-view and post-click conversions and revenue) is a significant benefit of GMP.

The confluence of capabilities that enabled Google to launch GMP positions the tech giant well for a future where media and analytics are merged, silos give way to omnichannel marketing, and audience is king. Advertisers, agencies, and publishers will have to adapt to and embrace this new reality.

Also Read: Google and Unity Partner to Boost Mobile Game Advertising

Drift Launches Intel to Eliminate Friction for B2B Buyers

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August 8, 2018

Drift Launches Intel to Eliminate Friction for B2B BuyersDrift Launches Intel to Eliminate Friction for B2B Buyers

Conversational Marketing Leader Unveils New Technology That Gives Businesses All of the Information They Need to Provide a World-Class Buying Experience to Every Website Visitor — Without Relying on Lead Forms

Drift, the world’s leading conversational marketing and sales platform, brings B2B marketers one step closer to a world without forms with the launch of Drift Intel. This powerful new feature — included in the latest update to the Drift platform — changes the game for B2B buyers who are looking to provide a frictionless, personalized buying experience for potential customers.

.@Drift Intel gives businesses all of the information they need to provide a world-class buying experience to every website visitor – without relying on lead forms

B2B buying has undergone a massive transformation: 73% of 20- to 35-year-olds are now involved in product or service purchasing at their companies according to a recent report in Harvard Business Review. This shift has made buyers more reluctant to jump through the hoops of a B2B sales process or respond to traditional lead-generation efforts.

“One clear impact from the change in buying behavior has been on lead forms — which are now being ignored by more than half of companies we surveyed in the 2018 Drift Lead Response Report,” said Drift CEO David Cancel. “But until now, marketers have not had a better way to capture the data they need to fit their sales process — let alone create an amazing buying experience on their website. With Drift Intel, this is now possible, and we are one step closer to a world without lead forms.”

Also Read: Drift Named a “Cool Vendor” in Conversational Marketing by Gartner

Powered by an integration with Clearbit, Drift Intel enables marketers to turn anonymous website visitors into qualified leads for their sales teams in real-time — eliminating the friction that comes with filling out forms.

Perfect for businesses doing account-based marketing, Drift Intel gives sales and marketing teams everything they need to deliver a world-class experience to every website visitor, including:

Real-Time Company Profiles. When an anonymous person comes to a website, Drift Intel automatically generates a rich company profile that includes details like company name, employee count, funding, industry, and more—giving sales and marketing teams all the context they need to start meaningful conversations in real-time.

Intelligent Lead Routing. By using the company profile, Drift Intel can identify businesses with specific demographics for smarter lead routing. For example, based on your team’s segmentation, a company in the Boston area with 500 employees and $30M in annual revenue can be instantly routed to the right account team or salesperson to get them the answers they need in real-time.

Personalized Messaging at Scale. Marketing and sales teams can also personalize real-time messages by using details from a visitor’s company profile. Instead of serving a one-size-fits-all message, Drift Intel allows for highly personalized messages that create a VIP-level buying experience for every single website visitor.

“When we first eliminated forms and called on other companies to do the same, the loudest question we heard was, ‘How will we get the information we need as a business to market and sell to that person?’” said David Cancel, Founder & CEO, Drift. “Our goal with Drift Intel was to answer that question and give our customers the tools they need to create an amazing experience for buyers, remove friction, and continue on our mission to make it easy for businesses to buy from businesses.”

Nielsen’s Connected Partner Program Becomes The Industry’s Largest Curated Partner Community For FMCG Retailers And Manufacturers

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