Knock Knock Raises $2 Million Seed Round, Led by Raine Ventures, to Redefine Chat Gaming

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July 28, 2018

PEOPLE Magazine Announces "50 Companies That Care"

PEOPLE Partners with Great Place to Work to Identify Top US Companies Caring For Their Communities, Their Employees, and the World

Meredith Corporation’s PEOPLE reveals its second annual list of “Companies That Care,” spotlighting 50 US companies that have succeeded in business while also demonstrating respect, compassion, and concern for their communities, their employees, and the environment. PEOPLE once again partnered with research and consulting firm Great Place to Work to identify the top US companies that best fit the criteria. Salesforce, the San Francisco-based cloud computing company that sells customer relationship management tools, landed the No. 1 spot for the second year in a row for leveling the playing field regarding pay equality.

Salesforce has long been known for its lavish benefits and “family” culture among its 30,000 employees. But it was chief personnel officer Cindy Robbins who first raised the issue of pay equality with CEO Marc Benioff in 2015. “I had been discussing the wage gap for months with my colleague Leyla Seka,” says Robbins. “We wanted to figure out what we could do to help other women at Salesforce.” Benioff admits he was stunned when a subsequent analysis revealed a pay gap between men and women at the firm—and he stepped up to fix it, dedicating $3 million that year to correct the discrepancy, then another $3 million in 2017 to correct compensation differences by gender, race and ethnicity across the company.

Also Read: Easy Data Portability Comes to Town With Google’s Data Transfer Project

Salesforce, in addition to the 49 other companies that made the list, will be featured in the August 6^th, 2018 issue of PEOPLE, which hits newsstands nationwide on Friday, July 27.

To identify the “50 Companies That Care,” PEOPLE teamed up with Great Place to Work to produce the list using the research firm’s extensive database and inside knowledge of outstanding workplaces around the globe. Rankings are based on surveys representing over 4.5 million employees’ experiences of how their workplaces have made a difference in their lives and their communities. Rankings also reflect Great Place to Work’s assessment of the generosity of each organization’s benefits, philanthropic and community support, with focus on activities occurring in the last year.

PEOPLE’S 2018 TOP 10 “COMPANIES THAT CARE”

View full list at PEOPLE.com/50CompaniesThatCare

Salesforce
Deloitte
Ultimate Software
Comcast NBCUniversal
Edward Jones
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Intuit Inc.
Genentech
SAP America
Cisco

Interview with Michele Pilgrim, VP, Integrated Marketing, Delphix

By

Rohan Jagan

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July 28, 2018

[vc_wp_text]“There is a huge amount of convergence between sales, marketing and advertising with how buyers engage with a brand.”[/vc_wp_text]

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/delphix” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelepilgrim/”]

Tell us a little bit about your role at Delphix?

As Vice President of Integrated Marketing at Delphix, my focus is revenue-based marketing, which encompasses demand generation, integrated marketing and sales in a way that is interlocked with all other aspects of the Delphix business. Ultimately, it’s my goal to build a brand that customers want to interact with and to make those engagements feel seamless.

Delphix has built a different kind of data platform to provide self-service data to accelerate workflows for developers and analysts. Delphix enables data to flow freely, securely, and at a lower cost, so enterprises can better leverage it as a strategic asset.

Previously, I worked at several companies in similar roles, including time at SuccessFactors (SAP) developing cloud alliance relationships and VMware expanding the Alliance/Channel business through global programs and technology demand platforms. And most recently, I spent time at Alteryx, an end-to-end analytics platform company and during this time, I saw firsthand the rapid growth Delphix was having in the red-hot data industry and knew I had to join.

What are the core tenets of Delphix’s Dynamic Data Platform?

The amount of data being moved around within the enterprise continues to accelerate rapidly and be leveraged by multiple teams for multiple applications. Data is the new oil, the fuel for innovation. But a tension currently exists between the desire to rapidly access it, and the need to provide privacy and security. Delphix enables enterprises to unleash data for innovation, despite this tension. Our unique Dynamic Data Platform virtualizes, secures and manages data in on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments to deliver self-service access to data consumers.

How does Delphix enable its users to comply with GDPR?

Today, every business is a data business. Delphix makes it simple for data controllers to identify sensitive information, provide the right governance for distribution and secure the data via masking—all while retaining its value for development and testing. As a marketer, if you can’t use data in the right way then it has very limited value. This is the case for many businesses dealing with data that is locked away, and GDPR threatens to continue that path and make innovation difficult unless you have the right tools to securely manage, control and distribute data while also navigating privacy regulations.

What is ‘data privacy by design’? How does Delphix deliver this?

Currently, there is this push-pull dynamic for companies between the need to work faster and innovate, but also to protect sensitive personal data as well. The Delphix Dynamic Data Platform designs data masking into automated data delivery, which means developers, testers, analysts and administrators can order-up a self-service Data Pod containing their own complete copy of masked data. For users, that’s eliminating so much of the pain around data, all the way from visibility and control for privacy to deploying rapid test environments needed for innovation to reducing the costs associated with additional infrastructure and manual intervention. That’s what “data privacy by design” means to Delphix, security and compliance without compromise.

How do you see the B2B marketing landscape evolving, in the years to come?

The future of B2B marketing is more of a closed ecosystem supported by one continuum. There is a huge amount of convergence between sales, marketing and advertising with how buyers engage with a brand. With this comes new challenges, including the growing need to understand an exploding number of new technologies, and how they come together in the field to provide a consistent experience for the buyer. Successful marketers also know how to set up analytics to provide insights and actionable data, so that the goal is to provide teams with a simple set of data to accelerate decision-making.

How do you foresee the future of Managed Data Services?

Data pipeline from multiple sources will continue to increase and access complexity will compound. While cloud adoption for a portion of these services provides enablement, analytics as a service, data pipeline as service, and other higher order services layered on top of the fundamentals will grow.

What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

I’m interested in startups that are leveraging data to solve unique marketing challenges that are cropping up. That includes startups utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to automate what were formerly lengthy, complex processes in order to help marketers move faster or more strategically. Some companies I’ve had my eye on lately are people.ai, an AI platform for data driven sales and marketing, and Drift, an AI-powered chatbot that empowers business implementing a conversational marketing platform for B2B purposes.

What is the one piece of advice, you have for B2B marketers in 2018?

It’s the same piece of advice I have for all companies right now: understand your data. Many enterprises are getting better at actually acquiring the data they want, but they’re not doing a good job of interpreting it. More than just running a report, you need to understand the data behind it that led to the findings. Otherwise, you’re left with results without context, which makes it difficult to figure out what is driving success or how you need to adjust your approach.

What does your martech stack currently consist of?

I love this question! Our newest additions are Alooma, Acquia Lift, Drift (in process),and Hushly, and we have the following Hotjar, Drupal 8, Snowflake, Tableau, Leandata as well. Salesforce, Marketo, and Google Analytics make-up the foundation of our marketing platform.

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

While AI seems poised to touch so many aspects of marketing, the risk so many practitioners face when it comes to this new technology is misunderstanding how (and where) it will be incorporated into marketing workflows. Marketers need to define the process that will lend itself naturally to AI, as well as those that still require a human touch. They also need to understand the potential pitfalls tied to the tasks they’re attempting to automate.

Think about AI as a forensic approach, part of it is science and analytics, but there is still a deeply personal, artistic side to marketing. Teams can’t just process everything through AI tools while most marketing operations are still focused on compiling a digital stack that works well together.

Overall, the role of AI in marketing is still in the early days. So, from a practical standpoint, teams should be focused on building a platform that addresses the current needs, before moving onto new technologies.

One word that best describes how you work.

A handful of people have described me as “a builder.” That’s as good a word as any for what I think we do at Delphix and marketing more broadly. We’re working collaboratively to show leadership, partner with sales, product and customer teams and build cohesion across the entire brand. When we lead by example to build relationships across teams, we’re able to unify our vision into a singular, powerful message for the company that resonates with our current and potential customers.

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

Like most people, I can’t live without my phone. Everything is connected to it. I can pretty much operate almost entirely from my mobile if needed. In addition to that, I think a data visualization layer is so key to the projects I’m working on today. If you don’t have one, you’ll never know how you lived without one once you get it!

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

How to deploy investment across marketing technology and people to get results is key. It’s an analytical model, so the ability to utilize an interactive marketing budget that allows teams to plan dynamically can be an immense time saver. Our team orchestrates program and budget planning collectively. Items populate automatically and are tied to business outcomes, which ultimately shifts the time spent scouring over data at the end of the month from hours to minutes.

What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

Aside from staying up-to-date on the latest industry news through publications like McKinsey&Company Insights, CIO Journal – WSJ, and The Economist. I’m also a huge bookworm. Right now, I’m scratching that itch with Artemis by Anthony Weir, which is a follow-up to the more well-known novel called the Martian—as well as the third book in the Kingsbridge Series: A Column of Fire by Ken Follett. Both are fantastic so far!

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

“Be true to yourself.” In order to thrive at whatever you’re doing, you need to know what your own value proposition is and always strive to follow your interests. The best way to be great at your work is to find enjoyment in the things you’re accomplishing on a day-to-day basis.

Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

One thing I’m always pushing my teams to understand is where all the business variables intersect, and how they work together to drive the growth of the company. For example, that means understanding the corporate priorities, the sales structure, customer success, product and how those teams work and what success looks like for them. From there, we can determine how those goals align with our marketing objectives to promote cohesion across the brand and pave a clear path forward to drive growth.

Tag the one person, from the martech sector, whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Hari Abhyankar He has an amazing level of understanding the interdependence of technology, people operations and processes and how to structure to drive business outcomes.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Michele” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68db8f-23cb5faf-edf9″]

Michele thrives at driving business growth by accelerating direct and partner– influenced revenue through creation of a digital marketing strategy centered around a technology platforms. Skilled at digital demand generation, marketing and performance analytics, Ms. Pilgrim creates an actionable user experience to help drive platform marketing efforts and accelerate ROI on marketing investment.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Delphix” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68db8f-23cb5faf-edf9″]

Delphix connects data to people and accelerates innovation With an unfathomable growth in data comes an unquenchable thirst to use that data for business advantage. Delphix’s mission is to connect people with the data they need to accelerate that innovation. The Delphix Dynamic Data Platform allows data to be securely delivered to every stakeholder, across on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments at the speed and scale required to enable rapid development and delivery of applications and solutions. The platform provides the industry’s most comprehensive dataops solution, enabling companies to easily deliver and secure data, wherever it exists. It reduces data friction by providing a collaborative platform for data operators (such as DBAs, InfoSec & IT Operations teams) and data consumers (such as developers, QA, Analysts and data scientists), ensuring that sensitive data is secured and that the right data is made available to the right people, when and where they need it.

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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.

Why Data Orchestration Is a Big Deal for B2B Marketers

By

Michael Burton

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July 27, 2018

2

Why Data Orchestration Is a Big Deal for B2B Marketers

The MarTech industry peddles an integrated utopia where all the pieces are connected and working together in harmony, but the reality is quite different. More often than not, human intervention is needed to connect the dots across a sales and marketing organization and its attendant martech stack.

As B2B marketers deploy their data-driven strategies, the biggest obstacle is now clear. Enter data orchestration. Orchestration is the process of setting up data-driven workflows that generate positive business outcomes on a repeatable basis. Orchestration is moving data ‘”from the brains to the veins’” of a marketing operation, as JJ Kardwell of Everstring likes to say.

Think of the five core use cases that almost all B2B organizations deploy in the traditional sales funnel. At the top are the three cases that all B2B marketers use:account-based marketing (ABM) advertising, paid social, and lead generation. Then, email sent through marketing automation. Sales is at the bottom. These five activities are practically universal for B2B organizations.

Also Read: Embracing the Bow-Tie Funnel: Why Marketing is Most Important After the Win

Orchestration is using the same data, consistently, across all of these disciplines to drive leads and identify demand, especially the three top-of-funnel areas. Automation, via ad- and mar-tech, nurtures that demand and salespeople can harness it. What we see across the B2B ecosystem is that, many times, sales and marketing teams aren’t doing that much with data to begin with, let alone using the same data sources for their efforts. In fact, some organizations may be actively leveraging all five tactics, but may not even know if they’re successfully orchestrating.

The main struggle, whether a company is succeeding at it or not, is the oft-cited misalignment of sales and marketing. These two disciplines have long lived in siloes. The concept of ABM has broken down those walls because both teams are focused on specific, named accounts. Thus, successful ABM requires a centralized data source as a foundation for orchestration across sales and marketing. The sales team is often the superuser of data of data within a B2B company, especially if there is an inside sales organization. These teams will use intent data to determine who is in-market, whether that comes from a third-party source or from their own active monitoring of target accounts’ social media presences, press releases, hirings, layoffs, funding rounds, acquisitions, technology installations, and other public activity.

Also Read: What Data Orchestration Solutions Mean for B2B and B2C Marketers

Using Sophisticated Marketing Data

Many sales teams will use any tool they can get their hands on, and data is a tool that is used daily. On a B2B marketing level, data may not be used every day. Maybe it’s used to determine an ABM target list, but not many B2B organizations are making use of sophisticated marketing data. It’s important here to make use of the same data sources that are driving sales. The best thing that marketing teams can do is focus on what’s working for them and do more of it, rather than focus their attention on what’s not working.

If you’re finding that targeting certain companies with email messages is working, then targeting those same companies with display advertising makes sense. It shouldn’t require a big leap within the organization to say “yes” to bringing the successful strategy to a new discipline. Yet this often goes wrong, thanks to the deep entrenchment of siloes. Larger companies will have a team or agency running paid social or all the programmatic media, with their own best practices. This makes it difficult for anyone in the organization to say “this data source is working over here, so let’s use it over there.”

Also Read: Need for Data Orchestration for Contextualizing Customer Experience

The Idea of Orchestration

Third-party data may be doing wonders for inside sales, but it will never catch on with the programmatic team if the pride of ownership gets in the way. B2B companies that are struggling with the idea of orchestration should focus on the first step in establishing a data-driven workflow. Ironically, this involves taking one single activity and proving that using data leads to the desired outcome. Demonstrating a data-driven win will grease the skids to open things up and collaboratively work use data with other teams throughout the organization. Orchestration is the process of alignment. The outcomes, and ongoing goals, are improved sales and marketing results and business growth. This benefits everyone, including sales and marketing, but most of all, it benefits the customer.

Also Read: 5 Ways Smart Sales Managers Optimize 1:1 Coaching Time

Productivity Hack: HubSpot’s OOO Email Generator is Out of this World

By

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July 27, 2018

Productivity Hack: HubSpot’s OOO Email Generator is Out of this World

Working with martech giants has taught me one thing – never miss responding to your email; it could be your next investor. Ask any modern marketing and sales teams and they are most likely to attribute their success to quick email responses and responding to emails in shortest time. HubSpot, aah, they know how to keep their customers in the winner’s list. Knowing what it takes to win the market, the leading marketing automation platform has announced a free email tool for those who are taking that ‘annual vacation’ or are signing off on their honeymoon. Nothing beats this… an Out-of-Office email generator that turns your inbox into a friendly auto-responder.

Emails are treacherous, as they can spiral out of your control if you are not in the habit of answering to them in time. According to a Randstad report in 2014, a large number of employees find themselves obligated to answering emails even when they are on a vacation. Bummer! However, most businesses know that emails during the vacations go unused. In the US alone, the number of unused emails during vacation days stood at a whopping 705,000,000!

The solution, HubSpot’s Out of Office Email Generator.

In their official blog, HubSpot announced the launch of their OOO Email Generator. Since then, the news has set Twitter on fire. Largely because of their influencers and loyal customer!

Taking a long weekend? Get a personalized, witty OOO reply with our new Out of Office Email Generator. Your inbox will thank you! https://t.co/dVDptefMhv #TGIF #OOO #hubspotlife pic.twitter.com/ZjkW5NIWYA

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) July 27, 2018

Benefits of using HubSpot’s OOO Email Generator

I could find at least five benefits of using HubSpot’s email automation tool for vacation. These are:

You are saying cheerio to those OOO emails that used to put off our consistent customers and partners.
It gives the user a favorable amount of time to cool off from the vacation and respond to important emails first.
You would no longer be bothered by ‘limited access to Wi-Fi’ during your vacation.
It comes with customized lines for recipients and respects an inclusive culture that makes working with HubSpot fun
It’s free!!!

HubSpot has just given me a reason to go on a vacation –

Oops, any competitions to OOO Email Generator?

Will Facebook Upstage Slack by Acquiring Redkix?

By

Shalaka Nalawade

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July 27, 2018

1

Will Facebook Upstage Slack by Acquiring Redkix?

Facebook Buys Israeli Enterprise Messaging Company Redkix to Enhance Workplace by Facebook

Facebook has acquired Redkix, an email startup that combines email, messaging and calendar features into one app. Redkix will be joining the Workplace by Facebook team.

The social networking platform did not declare the details of the deal, but a source close to the transaction told news agency Reuters the value of the deal was less than $100 million. Redkix raised $20 million in seed round from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Wicklow Capital and SG VC as well as angel investors Oren Ze’ev, Ori Sasson and Amnon Landan.

Also Read: What’s Cooking at Salesforce? SessionM’s 23.8 Million Series E Funding Led by Salesforce Ventures

In the company blog announcing the acquisition, Redkix Co-founders Oudi and Roy Antebi said that the Redkix application will “wind down”. “When we launched our enterprise application, our vision was to build a centralized, inclusive, and modern platform for work. By embracing email as part of the solution, we set out to open up participation, eliminate silos, and connect everyone at a company. As a result, we’ve seen how companies thrive when people work together. Bringing people closer together is at the core of Facebook. Workplace brings this mission to enterprises to make them more connected and productive. We’re aligned with their vision and excited to work with them to help companies collaborate and get work done,” said the brothers.

With Slack eliminating some of its major competition after buying Hipchat and Stride from Atlassian, the gap between Slack and other enterprise messaging apps like Microsoft’s Teams platform, Google’s Hangouts Chat, and Workplace by Facebook has increased. With Microsoft launching the free version of Microsoft Teams, it was apparent that Facebook would want to haul its position in the enterprise messaging space. But will Facebook’s acquisition of Redkix give the social media giant the upper hand?

Also Read: Facebook Introduces Five New Features in Ads Manager App

Venture Beat reported that Facebook’s investment might have been a direct way of gaining hold over Slack’s domination in the enterprise messaging space. “Facebook made Workplace, its answer to the fast-growing enterprise software startup Slack, publicly available to any company in 2016. As of October, 30,000 businesses used the product. Meanwhile, Slack said in May that it now has 70,000 paid teams on the platform, and Microsoft Teams had about 200,000 organizations using its platform as of March,” said the report, adding, “Today’s acquisition comes as an acknowledgment that businesses aren’t going to conduct all of their communications on Facebook.”

To date, Facebook claims 30,000 organizations are using the Workplace, Microsoft claims 200,000 organizations use Teams, while Slack claims 500,000 active organizations. So Slack’s clearly winning this one, will the others catch up soon?

Cherry Creek Now Streaming with WideOrbit

By

MTS Staff Writer

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July 27, 2018

Cherry Creek Now Streaming with WideOrbit

Small Market Radio Station Group Launches WideOrbit’s WO Streaming to Monetize Digital Audio Station Streams

WideOrbit Inc., the platform for connecting ads and audiences everywhere, said that Cherry Creek Media radio stations are now offering digital audio streams online of their broadcast content with WideOrbit’s WO Streaming platform.

Cherry Creek Media owns and operates 52 music, news and talk radio stations in twelve markets in Washington, Utah, Arizona, Montana, and Colorado. While some of its broadcast content was already streamed over the internet, changing audience behavior and the desire to serve a higher quality listening experience fueled its decision to tap WideOrbit as its technology partner for digital streaming.

Also Read: IAB Tech Lab Launches Phase Two of OpenRTB 3.0 Public Comment, Releasing Tech Specifications & Kicking-Off Beta Tests

“Thanks to smart speakers and improved wireless connectivity in the Mountain states, our audiences are increasingly consuming radio content with digital devices. Our job is to help listeners access our stations on any device, then provide advertisers with robust tools for engaging them,” said Travis L. Cronen, VP, director of operations and information technology at Cherry Creek Media. “WO Streaming will help us deliver a high-quality listening experience, monetize listeners across platforms, and generate reporting on our audiences that will make our stations’ programming and advertising inventory more valuable.”

“Cherry Creek’s corporate team are radio veterans who recognize that the business potential of digital audio streaming isn’t just for the largest media companies any more. By offering more options to reach audiences and inviting listeners to access their content in new ways, Cherry Creek is set up to continue its success as a provider of local media far into the future,” said Eric R. Mathewson, founder and CEO at WideOrbit.

Mathewson continued, “Radio stations in markets of all sizes need to find ways to reach audiences and advertisers on every platform. We are honored that media companies that operate in smaller markets like Cherry Creek see WO Streaming as a basis for revenue growth and technical excellence.”

The Year of Advanced TV: Leveraging Data in New Ways

By

Anupam Gupta

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July 27, 2018

In 2018, more than 50 percent of marketers are likely to include Advanced TV buys in their schedule. But for many traditional television advertisers, Advanced TV remains a daunting concept. That’s understandable. Advanced TV, as an umbrella term that encompasses everything from data-driven targeting to programmatic placement, is a fast-moving yet nuanced opportunity. (For more background on the market forces driving Advanced TV, as well as the requirements for advertising execution in this realm, check out part 1 and part 2 of this series.)

The good news: although daunting, Advanced TV is anchored in one of marketing’s most mature channels, and most of the tried-and-true best practices of television advertising still apply. In essence, Advanced TV is an innovation built on top of a traditional, linear broadcast model with all the benefits and capabilities of digital.

These days, new technologies and data are available to help planners and buyers improve their TV advertising strategies through audience-based buying and some of the same programmatic tactics leveraged by digital marketers. Advanced TV is comprised of strategies that leverage:

Workflow automation
Data and technology
Advanced targeting and measurement

These tenets are exactly what has fueled the meteoric growth of digital advertising over the last 20 years, and today’s television advertisers are excited to appropriate them to modernize the TV value proposition. It’s time for TV advertisers to put data to use in a way that lets them target their true audiences, not just vague proxies for the real consumers they are trying to reach. That moment is finally here.

Also Read: Accenture, Agencies and the Ad-Buying Battlefield

Social Data Leads the Way

The most impactful way to implement Advanced TV is to infuse data into the entire linear buying process from the onset, and one of the best sources of insights to inform Advanced TV buys comes in the form of social media engagement data.

These days, brands and agencies have the opportunity to manage their TV initiatives using the same tools available for digital marketers across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and Twitter. By leveraging such integrated options, marketers can easily optimize their TV plans for the best networks, programs and dayparts based on relevant social affinities. And the benefits don’t just exist for marketers. TV networks can capture more ad spend by making their inventory available in the ways that digital buyers have become accustomed to. According to research from 4C and Advertiser Perceptions, 84% of marketers say their brand would increase TV spend if same level of accountability, transparency and understanding about the consumer that is available with digital advertising.

Fortunately, this scenario is becoming a reality.

Social data often tells a different story than more traditional sources of intelligence, such as TV ratings. For example, consider some of the takeaways from NBC’s Upfronts this year. Executives at NBC spent a great deal of time touting its classic programming like “Project Runway,” “America’s Got Talent,” and “This is Us.” However, according to 4C data, NBC’s biggest hits aren’t necessarily the ones experiencing the most social media chatter. Between May 2017 and the 2018 Upfronts, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Today Show,” and telenovela “El Senor de los Cielos” garnered the most social media engagements.

Social engagement data can be leveraged to inform Advanced TV purchases in multiple ways, including the following.

Also Read: How ‘More of the Same’ Threatens the Future of Digital Advertising

Audience Discovery

To date, many traditional TV buyers haven’t had the need to delve much deeper than basic demographics like age and gender when it comes to their audiences, but Advanced TV opens up a whole new realm of audience-based targeting. Social engagement data can help marketers to uncover new dimensions to their audiences, such as interests they have and hobbies they enjoy. Social data can help identify which social causes a brand’s audience already cares about and actively engages with, and it can also help marketers understand the notable people, brands, retail stores, TV networks and TV programs an audience is engaging with. These vital insights can inform Advanced TV buys at a more granular level.

Also Read: Visualizing Machine Learning: How Do We Humanize The Intelligence?

Competitive Intelligence

Today’s integrated platforms and social engagement data can also give marketers a bird’s-eye view of their competitors. Advertisers can understand not only how competitors are performing, but also how that performance relates to their own brands. By gaining an overview of how competitors’ audiences are consuming media across channels, advertisers can better tailor their Advanced TV campaigns for prospecting among these highly relevant individuals.

Creative Insight

Finally, social media engagement data can help advertisers understand the stickiness of their TV creative by comparing metrics like social impact and TV completion rates across networks and programs. In short, social engagement can help identify which ads are sparking the biggest response. Furthermore, in the Advanced TV realm, unlike traditional linear TV, advertisers can view how performance varies for a specific creative by network and daypart.

Marketers who have started putting together the people, processes and products for TV audience targeting are going to benefit greatly in the near and long-term. While the Advanced TV space still has a lot of growing and evolving to do, the ability to harness social engagement data for improved audience discovery, competitive intelligence and creative insight in TV buying is a real, actionable opportunity that can be put into motion today.

Also Read: How to Evoke ‘Analog’ Emotions Using Digital Technology

Kollective Announces Integration with Microsoft Stream

By

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July 27, 2018

5

Kollective Announces Vimeo Partnership to Scale Enterprise Video Communications

New Capabilities in Microsoft Stream Will Allow Users to Host and Record Live Events for Large Audiences

Enterprise content delivery company, Kollective, has announced the upcoming integration with Microsoft Stream. This integration will mean that Stream users can easily connect to their Kollective eCDN solution from within Stream to optimize network bandwidth for live events and on-demand video.

“As video becomes widely adopted within an enterprise, strains on network bandwidth can become an issue. Enterprise content delivery network providers like Kollective can help customers who need to deliver high-quality video across their entire organization, without impacting network performance.”

The new integration will help enterprise users provide the best possible network experience for live and on-demand video sharing. Through the use of Kollective’s software-defined network, businesses will be able to share video securely and at scale, regardless of the size of their workforces or the quality of their existing physical network infrastructure.

Also Read: TrueCommerce Introduces New B2B E-Commerce Solution for Manufacturers, Distributors & Wholesalers

Commenting on the integration, Dan Vetras, CEO of Kollective, said: “When it comes to live or on-demand video, delivery optimization is vital to ensuring collaboration tools work effectively and in a user-friendly manner. In addition, whether during small or enterprise-wide live events, it’s essential that businesses consider the potential impact on their network. Through our integration with Microsoft Stream, we will help enterprises optimize network bandwidth by making it easy to connect to our eCDN solution. This, combined with our unique software-only delivery platform, helps guarantee that businesses are making the most of their video technology.”

At the heart of the integration is Microsoft Stream, a video service designed to democratize access to, and discovery of, videos at work. Stream allows users to easily share live and on-demand video content across their organizations, as well as creating a highly searchable video library which can be accessed on any device.

Vishal Sood, Partner Group Program Manager, Microsoft, added: “As video becomes widely adopted within an enterprise, strains on network bandwidth can become an issue. Enterprise content delivery network providers like Kollective can help customers who need to deliver high-quality video across their entire organization, without impacting network performance.”

Twitter Acquits Itself of Shadow Ban Antics

By

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July 27, 2018

Twitter Acquits Itself of Their Shadow Ban Antics

Twitter Clarified on This Week’s Issues and Has Officially Acknowledged the Technical Issues Leading Users to Believe It Was Deploying Shadow Ban Tactics

This week, there is a certain meltdown in the social media ecosystem. Yes, these are hard times for social media platforms, with issues like the purge, data portability, Facebook shares’ debacle, and Scroll-Free September making big news during the week. Some say this is an Apocalypse Week for social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. Well, we believe in facts and numbers, and those are optimistic, despite both companies going through some really hard times.

Accused of shadow banning, Twitter has taken to its official blog to clarify their stance and their operational efficacy. According to the blog, Twitter doesn’t ‘shadow ban’ their customers.

What is Shadow Banning?

Twitter revealed shadow banning as ‘deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster.’

Is it a political vendetta or harpooning at an oncoming battle between government and social media companies?

Not exactly, though it’s impacting a large number of political groups globally. Twitter has clarified that they don’t shadow ban anyone based on their political viewpoints or ideology.

In May this year, Twitter had encouraged their users to promote ‘healthy conversations’. This would generally improve public to address engorging challenges on Twitter, including social bullying and troll-like behavior. The new approach, powered by AI and machine learning, would help identify social bullies to ensure healthy public conversations on Twitter.

Twitter provided how they rank any account and tag it as a deviation from their healthy conversation algorithm.

Factors considered are:

Tweets from accounts that are active and audience are particularly interested in evidently rank highly
Tweets about popular events, interesting topics rank higher
Tweets from bad-faith actors, manipulative forces and fake news sources that are focused on dividing ‘healthy conversations’ are ranked lower

Twitter did agree that a part of their shadow ban saga could be connected to “ issue where some accounts weren’t auto-suggested in search even when people were searching for their specific name”. The company acknowledged it in their blog and have assured that the issue is now resolved.

The challenges to shadow ban and social bullying are massive, yet we are optimistic about using technology to make the space better, healthier and safer for all – people, businesses and political parties.

At the time of this post, no comments were available from Twitter officials.

NCC Media Taps TV and Digital Pioneer Bob Ivins as Chief Data Officer

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July 27, 2018

Also Read: adsquare Implements Unacast’s Transparent Location Data to Build Cutting-Edge Mobile Marketing Measurement, Insights and Targeting Solutions with Unprecedented Clarity

NCC Media Taps TV and Digital Pioneer Bob Ivins as Chief Data Officer

NCC Media, the national advertising sales, marketing and technology company owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox, announced it has named Bob Ivins as chief data officer. In the newly created role, Ivins will be responsible for developing and extending the company’s advanced television and media offerings, helping brands intelligently connect with viewers across NCC’s unparalleled collection of linear and addressable inventory. Ivins will report directly to Nicolle Pangis, president and CEO of NCC Media.

“Due to its ownership, NCC is in a unique position in the TV ecosystem and can offer advertisers unmatched inventory and harmonized data to improve efficiency and effectiveness of television campaigns”

Ivins has played a pioneering role in the development of the data-driven advertising ecosystem over the past three decades, holding executive roles at comScore, Mindshare, Comcast, Yahoo and Nielsen. He served as the first chief data officer for media agency Mindshare where he led the firm in putting data at center of the company, linking real time insights to marketing that adapted on the fly. As VP, data products at Comcast, Ivins led the development of the Audience Interconnect database underlying Comcast Spotlight’s cross-platform ad offering. Prior to Comcast, he was SVP/MD, Europe for comScore where he led the company’s Europe operations from launch to pan-European leader in web measurement and web analytics.

Ivins joins NCC from Rakuten-owned, digital commerce company Slice Technologies, where he served as SVP/GM. He got his start in the digital ad space in the mid-nineties as VP, research for advertising startup I/PRO where he developed some of the world’s first tools to measure the effectiveness of online advertising. At NCC he will play a central role in advancing the company’s position as the leader in bridging the worlds of traditional and addressable television within a single platform.

“Bob has tremendous experience developing large-scale, data driven technology platforms that improve the media experience for brands and consumers alike,” said Nicolle Pangis, president and CEO of NCC Media. “We look forward to his leadership in partnering with advertisers to maximize the effectiveness of their linear and addressable TV buys through the growing slate of advanced media offerings on our platform.”

“Due to its ownership, NCC is in a unique position in the TV ecosystem and can offer advertisers unmatched inventory and harmonized data to improve efficiency and effectiveness of television campaigns,” said Ivins. “I look forward to helping lead the company in the next stage of its development.”

Quotient Technology Names Christy Wyatt to Board of Directors

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July 27, 2018

Quotient Technology Names Christy Wyatt to Board of Directors

Quotient Technology announced that Christy Wyatt, President and CEO of Dtex Systems, has been appointed to its Board of Directors.

Quotient Technology Names Christy Wyatt to Board of Directors

“We’re thrilled to have Christy join our Board of Directors,” said Mir Aamir, President and Chief Executive Officer of Quotient. “Christy’s deep experience in technology will prove invaluable as we continue to expand our digital solutions for our retail partners and CPG customers while enhancing our flagship consumer property, Coupons.com.”

“It’s an exciting time for retailers and CPG brands as they look to transform their businesses to compete in today’s environment,” said Christy Wyatt. “I look forward to bringing my experience in technology and mobile to Quotient as the company continues to innovate and stay in front of this large technological shift. I can’t think of a more exciting time to join Quotient’s board of directors.”

Also Read: Opt-In Video Advertising is Preferred Ad Choice for Consumers According to New Nationwide Survey; Adoption May Deter Ad Blocking

Prior to Dtex Systems, a behavior intelligence and insider threat detection security company, she served as President and CEO of Good Technology, a mobile security company that was acquired by Blackberry in 2015, and she has held leadership positions at Citigroup, Motorola, Apple, Palm and Sun Microsystems.

Inc. Magazine named her one of the Top 50 Women Entrepreneurs in America in 2015. She was also on the 2011 list of “Most Influential Women in Wireless” by FierceWireless.

In addition to Quotient, Wyatt serves on the boards for Centrify, a leading identity and access management solution provider and Abilities United, a nonprofit that works with individuals with developmental disabilities and their families.

Wyatt is Quotient’s eighth board member. The others are: Steven Boal, Mir Aamir, Jody Gessow, Steve Horowitz, Michelle McKenna, David Oppenheimer, and Scott Raskin.

Fireside Chat with Lindsay O’Neill

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July 27, 2018

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/MamaONeillCooks” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/mamaoneill”]

Lindsay O’Neill talks about her journey in The linknexus, her reputation as a ‘Storyteller’ and how she stays on top of every marketing and sales trends.

Tell us about your role at linknexus and how you got here.

I run sales and business development for linknexus. Last November I attended a small surprise party for one of my best friends and got seated next to this cool dude, John Lim (linknexus’ CEO). We started chatting about his “job” and he told me all about linknexus.

Fireside Chat with Lindsay O'Neil

As the former VP of the Enterprise group at RocketFuel, and GM of Aperture at PulsePoint, I was intrigued. My focus shifted after the RocketFuel IPO to content marketing, and I took a few years off from AdTech/MarTech. After speaking (and drink lots of wine) with John, I begged him for an account for my blog MamaONeill.com. I tested the platform and fell in love with it. In March John asked me to join his team as the SVP of Business Development. I could not be more excited to lead the charge in bringing linknexus to the marketplace… and don’t tell John this, but the platform really sells itself. My job is fun and easy!

How do you leverage your reputation as a ‘Storyteller’? How do you stay on top of every marketing and sales trends?

My reputation as a ‘Storyteller’ allows me to maintain relationships with contacts throughout my career. I’m not your typical salesperson, I truly care about every client and their business. So I use my storytelling mentality to find the best strategies for growth for my clients (personally & professionally).

With linknexus, I get to give a tremendous amount of power to marketers, and so the stories of transparency, optimization, and productivity are sure to flow! Oh my, there’s no way to stay on top of trends – and I never quite considered myself a follower of trends. I have a great group of young and motivated sales and account managers whom I could not do my job without. They help me identify what trends we could follow, and which we can create… you could call us the linknexus ninja trend-setters!

Why did you join linknexus? What do you cook and brew at linknexus to keep your peers motivated?

In 2009 the LUMAscape slides were starting to get out of control. There were tech companies popping up on the daily. My reason for joining ANY company, especially linknexus, is a belief that I can help bring value to the marketplace. It’s very similar to the reason I decided to become a chef.

Fireside Chat with Lindsay O'Neil

I love to feed people, make them happy, soothe their soul, spark creativity, give them energy and stabilize their health… I believe technology can do the same. I recently grilled chicken wings and made a homemade sauce. We had so many leftovers I brought them in for the linknexus team, and they loved it. I look forward to grilling more delectable treats for my new work family!

Tell us about the company’s growth and your plans for the future?

Linknexus is on fire. Every call and meeting we have turns into a new client. In July we’re hosting 2 roundtable discussions with CEO/CMO’s in the NY Metro area… both events sold out within minutes. We are closing out our BETA this month, and are moving at the speed of light to onboard new customers. By the end of 2018, linknexus will have dozens of big brand name clients, new Rockstar team members, and a strategic plan to (positively) disrupt the marketplace like never before.

Are marketing technologies pushing the boundaries of present-day brand engagement and customer experience?

How often do you measure the performance of your marketing analytics and sales reporting? Okay, my answer may sound a little existential, but I believe we are all put on this planet to experience happiness. Technology as a whole is causing our society — anxiety and fear. We consume more information, faster, and with less validation and truthful oversight.

Consumers, which we ALL are, are bombarded with messages. Marketers have to find ways to break through that clutter and tell compelling stories that drive awareness and action. Then, once they get those consumers to engage, the brand gets stuck in the walled garden of data. The big companies who control the internet… who sell ads and provide reporting, do not give marketers the full picture.

So we ALL lose.

Fireside Chat with Lindsay O'Neil

The marketer cannot make decisions on how to engage with prospective customers, so they waste time and money. The customers either get creepily targeted or vague experiences, which is frustrating. And the technology is always trying to catch up and help both sides, inside of a black box. So how do we make EVERYONE happy? That is exactly what we set out to solve at linknexus, and what we’re doing for our customers.

What are the dynamic elements driving your B2B customer engagement model? How do you execute Engagement Economy vision, Strategy, Product and Corporate development at linknexus?

Not gonna lie, this question confuses me. I get really deep in the weeds on many things, but with linknexus, we keep it simple:

Know your cost per customer (not click) on your site, by a media source.
Know how many people are “in play”, and there they are in their journey.
React at the speed of the customer (without technical engineers) to drive sales faster, provide a better customer experience, and save time and money.

Know My Team

How big is your team and what drives them to succeed in meeting small-term and long-term goals at linknexus?

Our team is growing quickly. We have an office in NYC, Stamford, and Europe. We have a similar mentality to the Marines – if we are all performing at our highest level, we will all be kept at our highest level. If someone is dipping in performance, we work together as a team to bring the collective performance up. However, a single individual will not be allowed to sink the ship. We are moving fast, and we have to be productive while having fun and growing our work family.

How tech-savvy is your marketing, sales and branding teams? How do you rate them on a scale of 1-10?

We all eat, breathe and live linknexus. Even our janitor is tech-savvy. We employ the best, attract the best, and will settle for nothing less.

How do you think young sales professionals should train themselves to master MarTech skills?

As sales professionals I think we get too concerned with what we say, or how well we know the pitch. I tell my team to ASK QUESTIONS. Take notes. Come back with ideas. Be strategic. No one wants to buy something they don’t need, but everyone wants to buy something they want – something useful, valuable.

How far do you think AI/machine learning can take a start-up company in achieving business goals?

Like all things, I think AI needs to evolve. John talks about “micro AI” all of the time… and it makes so much sense. AI and Machine Learning is vital in many aspects of business but gets really valuable when you get down to the micro level in marketing decisioning.

Marketing and Sales Alignment: Social Media and Content Marketing Strategies

What are the tools and strategies you use to create effective B2B content at linknexus?

Our marketing team comes up with some crazy stuff! Like David and Goliath, where we (linknexus aka David) take on Google & Facebook (Goliath) in fun and engaging content… stay tuned.

Could you provide us a sneak peek into your MarTech acceleration strategies? Our main strategy is to STAY HUMAN. We create technology for the human because the internet lacks common sense. Our acceleration strategies are mostly centered around having powerful conversations – hence our roundtable events and webinar with eMarketer on the State of the Industry: Trust at the Crossroads.

What are the types of content (web and social) you create in a day, week, month, and a quarter?

We have all of the typical content (listed below), but as trendsetters, we have to innovate new ways to tell stories. Events and one-on-one conversations, customized presentations and decks have gone a long way to prove a point and get marketers drooling over linknexus.

Out of all marketing collateral, including whitepaper, brochures, e-book, playbook, case studies, webinar, research reports, and infographics, which resonates the most with our customers — Well, we believe in customized demos and personal conversations… we all want to feel special because we are special, so we try to make our clients feel special from the first meeting all the way through our partnership.

Customer Success and Technology Insights

From a tactical standpoint, how often does your organization revisit the automation stack?

John tries to put us out of business daily, so I would say every morning 🙂

How does the technology involved impact your customer building/partnership model?

Our tech is built for the human, so the two are intertwined.

How do you see the technology you use impact the customer acquisition and success rate?

We are opening the kimono on data that has always been hidden and protected. Technology does that. The marketer can choose what to do with that… and the technology enables them to turn that choice into action.

Do you see sales and marketing technologies unifying or evolving together to deliver higher ROI to CMOs?

That would be awesome! We could all sit around this fireside chat together and sing Kumbaya! Sorry, my new yorker just came out with the sarcasm. I think there will be some strategic acquisitions and mergers… but I LOVE working in co-opertition (competition + cooperstaion) with companies in the same space. The executive team at linknexus is not an ego-driven group, so we would love to entertain any and all partnership opportunities.

What is that one piece of advice you received that you would like to pass on to the MarTech industry?

Anyone that tells you “you can’t have it all!” is full of sh*t. I have a wonderful husband, 3 little girls, 2 full-time jobs, and love to volunteer to help out people in my community. Each day you have to prioritize your health and happiness first, then the rest falls into place.

Tag a living person from the industry that you would like to read answers from, in our Fireside Chat:

I would LOVE to have you interview my husband, Eric O’Neill!

Thank You, Lindsay, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again at MTS, soon.

Google Stops Allowing Direct Uploads of Public URLs

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Viraj T

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July 27, 2018

Google Stops Allowing Direct Uploads of Public URLs

Google Announced That It Is Stopping URL Uploads for Indexing with Immediate Effect. What Might Have Prompted Google to Do So?

When Google Webmasters tweeted about blocking public URL submissions, the news spread like wildfire. This feature was a hot favorite among Google users because it truly opened the world’s biggest search engine for people.

What Is the Exact Change?

Prior to this announcement, Google had enabled people to upload weblinks directly into the search engine. This permitted users to get their web pages indexed in the Google Search Engine, in turn, facilitating such links to be valid search entries. This was promising for users to appear as answers to search queries.

Most of these weblinks were being submitted by individuals who were trying to promote their work, products or services. This was a brilliant opportunity for users to showcase themselves hassle free and without any expenses.

Individuals and enterprises have to route themselves via SEO methodologies in order for their ranking to improve in Search Engines. This process is usually costly and time-consuming.

Users can still upload web links for free but Google is not promising that these links will be a part of their database.

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

Why Is This Change Needed?

Google has been politically correct to not dictate the exact reason for such a huge decision. However, only if anybody would scratch the surface the evident reasons seem to be that of spamming and abuse.

Changing times have empowered people to speak discreetly but freely about controversial issues. The emergence of such content in Google’s search results jeopardizes Google as a brand and hampers people’s trust.

This has also become very important due to Google’s dominance and authority about being the primary source for people to find information about everything. Hence, Google has a huge responsibility towards its global audience to not mislead them. Google processes 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.

Google is realizing that eventually, it might become impossible for them to control data exchange. Hence, they have started to take measures in resisting data that might turn out to be unsolicited.

This move is similar to what Google is doing with content quality on its search engine. Google employes 10,000 ‘Quality raters’ globally. Google intends to get critical feedback about the quality of search engine answers from this ‘reviewing army.’ The data insights are helping them to strengthen their algorithm to keep knowledge seeking authentic.

Hence, most industry stalwarts believe that Google wants to scrutinize content before agreeing to publish it.

What Does This Mean?

2012 was the last time that Google had updated its rules about content submission tools.

The current situation is such that Google has asked people to submit content only through Search Console’s Fetch as Google tool or via sitemaps.

For users habituated to easy uploads, this may sound like bad news. Although, this move is promising in the context of safeguarding information.

Ater making this announcement, Google took down the public submit URL section, completely.

WOM Welcomes Key Strategic Advisors, Including Coinstreet’s Sam Lee, to Its Impressive List of Board Members

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July 27, 2018

WOM Welcomes Key Strategic Advisors, Including Coinstreet’s Sam Lee

The WOM Token, Which Introduces a New Way to Incentivize Honest Word-Of-Mouth Content, Will Debut on Yeay, a Video Commerce Platform for Generation Z and Millennials

WOM Token Ltd., the company enabling brands to tap into the 2.1 billion peer-to-peer recommendations that happen online everyday, announces the addition of strategic advisors to its advisory board. The WOM Token connects content creators and loyal “fans” with their favorite brands through blockchain technology.

Boasting experts from the finance, tech, and blockchain world, WOM’s advisory board members add substantial industry expertise to the company.

The key advisory board members include:

Samson (SAM) Lee, Founder & CEO of CoinStreet, has over 20 years’ experience in numerous positions in the AI and blockchain sphere including Founding Chairman of Belt & Road TechFin Association, Co-founder of the Blockchain Centre of Hong Kong and Co-founder of Ethereum south China community.
Björn Wagner, Co-founder of Parity Technologies – one of the leading blockchain technology providers. Parity has been commissioned by the Web3 Foundation to build the Polkadot network, a brand new protocol that will allow independent blockchains to exchange information.

Also Read: Epiphany Selects Amobee for Ad Tech Collaboration

Hartej Sawhney, Co-founder and President of Hosho – one of the global leaders in blockchain security and smart contract auditing.
Christopher Emms, CEO of TokenSky and MP of fullstack blockchain provider, Decentralised Ventures, has worked in Europe’s most exciting technology startups and is currently advising companies on blockchain ecosystems, design and architecture.
Timothy Armoo, 23-year-old CEO of Fanbytes, a video influencer company that helps global brands like Universal, Warner and Apple Music reach Generation Z on Snapchat and Instagram.
Jan Denecke, CEO and co-founder of WENN Digital, the company behind the KODAKOne platform. Jan is a serial-entrepreneur with more than 10 years’ experience as a copyright lawyer.

YEAY, a video commerce platform for Generation Z and Millennials, will be the first platform to partner with WOM, to create a brand new ad-free marketing channel that incentivizes and rewards honest word-of-mouth recommendations. Now, with WOM Token Ltd., brands have a way to optimize their marketing through user-generated content, while ensuring content creators and curators are fairly rewarded for the value they bring to brands.

“We are thrilled to welcome Sam Lee, a highly respected expert, to our team of advisors. With the support of Sam, we are excited to continue growing our network and to let our customers continue doing what they do best – promoting their favorite products to one another through creative and honest content,” said Melanie Mohr, founder of YEAY and creator of the WOM Token.

“An ad-free future for marketing – that’s powerful. Who wouldn’t rather listen to a real recommendation from a friend over a self-serving advert? WOM finally gives brands a way to turn word-of-mouth content into a scalable, measurable marketing channel, while making sure that everyone receives their fair share of the reward,” said Sam Lee, Founder and CEO of CoinStreet.

TechBytes with Kevin Dean, President and General Manager, Experian

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July 27, 2018

Kevin Dean
President and General Manager, Experian

In this interview, Kevin Dean, President and General Manager at Experian, explains the extent to which Product Innovation teams have managed to bridge the gap between UX and CX and how Experian delivers it to the customers.

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Tell us about your role at Experian and the team/technology you handle.

My role at Experian is to lead the vision and strategic direction of our Marketing Services division. We are committed to helping brand advertisers put consumers at the heart of their strategies. We use data and technology to help advertisers better understand their audiences, make more informed marketing decisions and have more meaningful interactions with people across multiple channels.

What is the current state of Identity Resolution in 2018?

Most marketers view identity resolution as a significant challenge in 2018 – primarily because hundreds of digital attributes exist for almost every person. With so many different touchpoints, it can be difficult for marketers to gain a single customer view. And, because of the difficulty in solving for identity, some brand advertisers may limit themselves to the context of a single touchpoint. Unfortunately, any “one” single touchpoint isn’t an indicator of a person or their interests.

How did you find the gaps and opportunities in Identity Resolution before launching MarketingConnect? What was the driving force behind this latest launch?

People consume information and perform daily activities through a variety of portals, whether it’s mobile, desktop, in-store or email, among others. And, this creates hundreds of offline and online touchpoints for marketers. Now multiply that by millions of people. The challenge becomes, how do marketers consolidate this information and accurately identify customers to deliver relevant communications to them?

The solution has long been to use disparate tools to properly solve the identity challenge. Oftentimes, that leads to the use of different data sets and conflicting platforms. With MarketingConnect, we set out to enable marketers to achieve identity resolution via a single platform, make better marketing decisions and more easily connect with people on a personal level.

How do personalization and hyper-personalization fit into your technology suite?

It is fast becoming mission critical to link together disparate systems of audience insights and engagement metrics to create a more seamless and personalized customer experience across all channels. Whether you’re an agency, advertiser, publisher, media platform, or data owner, Experian’s MarketingConnect provides the extensive and diversified toolset to solve identity challenges with precision and repeatability, enabling marketers to reach their prospects and customers on any device, in real-time, with personalized messaging.

In 2018, to what extent do Product Innovation teams manage to bridge the gap between UX and CX? How do you achieve that at Experian?

An important first step here is understanding the distinctions between UX and CX, and defining these practices as key components of the guiding principles of the product innovation mission. For example, if CX suggests an expansive relationship with a brand (e.g. B2B or B2C customers of a company), UX might imply a somewhat smaller but critically important subset relating to said customer’s relationships and engagements with a company’s products and solutions.

We constantly source feedback from our internal teams, clients and market research to better understand how we can align our product and solutions to help brands move the needle on CX and UX.

How do you connect every customer data with marketing automation and targeting tools?

As a recent Forrester report highlights, accurately establishing and maintaining customer identity is one of the most perplexing challenges facing marketers today. Customers have footprints in the offline and online worlds and tend to seamlessly transition across various channels and devices – presenting a unique challenge to truly understand who they are. But, the ability to stitch these disparate components of information together means marketers can make better decisions and can have more meaningful interactions with their customers. And for customers, that means advertisements that matter to them.

Like most competitive differentiators, the mission-critical components to accurately determine an identity reside within the suite of identity management tools at the marketers’ disposal and the expertise required for proper execution – a struggle for most marketers.

To properly implement from the get-go, and to avoid having to bolt on disparate technologies down the road, emerging industry trends and success stories suggest marketers need a neutral technology service provider that can provide each of these solutions via a single, unified platform. A vendor that can build a solid identity management foundation comprised of omnichannel targeting and attribution, cross-device resolution, online-offline linkage management, and data onboarding form the nexus of a cohesive identity strategy, built to last.

What does your product and solutions roadmap look like for Mobile Marketing and Omnichannel Customer identification?

While the subject of identity resolution continues to garner increased attention, there ought to be an emphasis on shifting the paradigm from point solutions to more holistic identity resolution management platforms. Omnichannel customer identification and cross-channel marketing are effectively table stakes for the marketer seeking to attain a single-customer view.

Falling short of making these identifying connections, data loses value as these fragmented attributes lead to blind spots in true customer identity. Despite our recent launch of MarketingConnect, we continue to explore new data advancements and technology to help brands create a single-unified identity and make better marketing decisions.

What technologies in AI/machine learning have you deployed, or plan to deploy in the coming?

We’re constantly exploring and testing new technologies and use cases for AI and machine learning. Through our research and development group, Experian DataLabs, we’re helping brands better understand what is possible with their data and giving them greater insight to make better decisions.

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

Marketing Architects Meets Massive TV Demand with New Hires

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July 27, 2018

Marketing Architects Meets Massive TV Demand with New Hires

Ad Agency Increases Staff by 12% to Support Its Rapid Growth of Tv Advertisers

More digital marketers are seeing firsthand what TV advertising can do. With the right strategy, a single TV spot can cause a dramatic lift in every relevant online marketing metric. Minneapolis-based Marketing Architects, the broadcast advertising agency, has refined their attribution models to quantify TV’s online impact, allowing advertisers to confidently grow budgets. Marketing Architects announced four new hires to keep up with demand for the agency’s services.

“By bringing on so much new talent, we’re enabling disruptors to reshape their online marketing with TV.”

Ryan Van Der Meide was hired as a Senior Application Developer for the technology team. In his new role, Ryan will be developing proprietary technologies that streamline agency operations and enable more detailed results reporting. He’ll be optimizing the agency’s programmatic buying platform and the response engine that handles text messaging, as well as building what’s next to come to help clients. Prior to joining Marketing Architects, Ryan worked for The Nerdery and Virtual Radiologic.

Also Read: ResponseTap Appoints David Turner as the New VP of Engineering

Chloe Holton and Greta Larson were hired as Account Associates for the Client Services team. They’ll be managing projects for advertisers in categories like interior design, insurance, hair loss, education, debt consolidation and mobility. Prior to joining the team at Marketing Architects, Chloe worked for Tailormade by Design, and Greta worked for Tweak Social Media and Marketing.

Alicia Verchota was hired as a Media Associate for the media team. In her new role, Alicia will utilize state-of-the-art media buying tools, network with stations and help Media Buyers pinpoint national TV intersections that generate the biggest return for advertisers. Prior to joining the team at Marketing Architects, Alicia worked as a Traffic Manager for Novus.

Marketing Architects also increased staff by bringing on interns to support Business Development, Analytics and Media Buying Services. They’ve also announced several open positions: Media Director, Senior Director of Business Development, Senior Media Buyer and Vice President of Client Services. The agency is now accepting applications for all of these positions.

“TV has always made a massive impact online, but now we’re able to quantify the lift with more precision,” said Chuck Hengel, Chief Executive Officer. “By bringing on so much new talent, we’re enabling disruptors to reshape their online marketing with TV.”

How Often Do You Oil Your Social Media Strategy?

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July 27, 2018

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How Often Do You Oil Your Social Media Strategy?

What Stops Modern Marketing Teams from Oiling their Social Media Strategy Regularly Compared to Their Marketing Automation and Email Marketing Stack!

Way back during my college days, I read a post somewhere on a popular social pin-up board – “If you want to sell ice-creams to your audience, start from Social Media.” Today, social media strategy is more than just selling ice-creams, I am sure.

Time has flown since then, and it shows in the numbers for social media popularity. YouTube is cool, Facebook is newsy, Twitter never sleeps, and Instagram is the new queen bee of social media. All these social media platforms have their own ways of engaging customers. Yet, they are all tied with that single thread of ‘attention’ that everyone craves for, audience and businesses alike.

Social media is the new family album, the customary office hangout, the novel from your life’s pages and in some cases, your favorite place to read the news and watch videos. People have learned classic culinary styles, driving and flipping on bikes, and what not. It’s a crazy place, agreed? But, is social media the place today that it could have been for businesses as predicted at the start of the decade? Probably not yet…

Most businesses online have a sizeable social media presence, and they stash out billions to keep their presence healthy, clean, and active. Yet, not many social media teams can justify their effectiveness or how productive they are in turning a loyal audience base into a sustainable customer base. For most, it’s a good thing to have – just because your competition is doing it – or for that matter, everyone loves doing it.

Yeah, right!

As the MarTech landscape continues to grow at a brisk pace, the number of new social media platforms actually saw a significant jump compared to the regular technologies. This makes it much harder for marketing teams to identify what’s hot and what’s not unless the social media platforms themselves have results to show.

Even in 2018, measuring the social media performance remains a hard metrics to analyze. Apart from the number of followers, automated posts and time spent on the posts, it’s a plain field beyond these numbers. Most marketers continue to see how much revenue a particular Facebook post has brought, or how audiences react to a YouTube video.

It does not take a rocket scientist to say that the number of likes, shares, and followers, are in no way telling how the content is working and how it could convert attention into dollars.

Based on our interactions with global marketers, business leaders, and CMOs, we have identified the top challenges that hinder social media ROI.

Today’s marketers face seven interesting things we learned about social media and their role in turning into sizeable revenue streams –

Social Media is a good thing to have in a CMO’s tech stack.
Most marketing teams would prefer a tool or a generalist human marketer to handle social media channels. Specialists in social media are still hard ROI governors.
Beyond Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, most companies have not made any solid social media plans to grow.
Social media strategy for LinkedIn for businesses remains the most organized, effective and value-based medium to connect with customers, partners, and other businesses in general.
If you do Instagram advertising right, chances are higher you would sail through the next phase of disruptions in the industry. It’s got everything that other’s missed in 2018, including live video streaming.
Content and social media marketing teams are working in silos. The ownership lies with social media teams, but content rules. Does that affect ROI? Yes, it does.
Social Media is like a goalie. It’s not how many you saved, but how many goals you let in. Well, we are referring to those fake news, memes, offenses, and political comments you made and later repented. Plus, are you following those chatbots, aye! Red card…

In our numerous posts on social media marketing, quantifying social media success could be connected to audience data and making it more personalized. It is lagging, but that does not mean it is failing. Marketers love social media, and they are firmly in line tracking their social media efforts regularly.

Nobody gets it right the first time on social media. Social media strategy still depends on a lot of try-and-test approaches. To succeed with social media effectiveness, find your right approach and use technology (AI, data science, etc) to track social media’s impact on your bottom line. It’s worth an investment.

Slack Eliminates Competition, Buys Hipchat and Stride from Atlassian

By

Shalaka Nalawade

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July 27, 2018