Walmart is Knock Knock Knocking on OTT’s Doors

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July 19, 2018

Yarden Malka Joins Optimove as Chief Operating Officer

Yarden Malka Joins the Company to Support its Next Phase of Growth

Optimove has announced that it has hired Yarden Malka as the Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Yaren Malka will lead the reshaping of Optimove’s organizational structure to accommodate the next stage of growth; enhance the company’s technology DNA; and strengthen the core departments—R&D, product and IT.

Yaren Malka joins Optimove at a pivotal point in its journey. The company experienced record growth in 2017 with five new product features, a new CTO, and a new Tel Aviv headquarters. 2018 has also been a momentous year for Optimove so far: it acquired PowerInbox’s DynamicMail, a leader in email engagement and personalization; is expanding into the APAC region; it has already increased its customer base by 40% so far in 2018.

“I joined Optimove because it has the makings of the next martech unicorn: audacious goals; a smart customer base; and exemplary leadership,” said Yarden.

Yarden Malka is an established leader with experience leading both startups and large companies. Prior to joining Optimove, he was the Vice President of Engineering at Earnix, which provides advanced analytics solutions for financial services. Before that, he spent 14 years in various leadership roles at Model N, a publicly traded company with the current market cap of more than $500 million that specializes in revenue management solutions. Malka helped grow the company from its inception through its public offering at NYSE.

At the time of this announcement, Pini Yakuel, founder and CEO of Optimove, said, “Optimove’s growth so far can be attributed to a small, talented and nimble group of employees, but as we enter our next stage of growth, we need someone who has implemented efficiencies at scale— Yarden has done exactly that in the Mecca of tech.”

Pini added, “His record and know-how will help us further innovate our product for our 300+ global customers, and grow our culture for our almost 200 employees.”

Yarden Malka holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Israel Institute of Technology and will be based out of the Tel Aviv office.

A Science-first Relationship Marketing Hub, Optimove combines the art of marketing with the science of data to autonomously generate actionable insight, empowering marketers to deliver highly-effective personalized customer marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

GotChosen Launches First Ever Social Content SSP

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July 19, 2018

GotChosen Launches First Ever Social Content SSP

GotChosen, the first of its kind social content SSP, announces the general availability of its social content monetization platform for publishers. GotChosen now enables publishers to create an on-site social experience where their readers can view and engage with their proprietary social media content from all of their social media channels, creating a programmatic marketplace supporting display, native, and video advertising.

Oz Silva

Oz Silva, GotChosen’s CEO, defines the opportunity, “For most publishers, publishing to social media sits at the very center of their audience development strategy. However, publishers have spent years building their monetization strategies around on-site tech stacks. Therefore, we saw a need to bridge these two experiences for users AND advertisers. We basically enable publishers to monetize their own social media content by bringing the social media business model to websites.”

Also Read: 2018 Content Marketing Awards Winners & Top Finalists Revealed

With Facebook pivoting away from editorial-based publisher content in their News Feed, publishers are already feeling an impact from reduced site visitation traffic. By presenting users with social media content, publishers increase engagement and revenue per session without adding additional editorial or technology costs. Blending aggregated social media content dynamically in the page provide readers with a “social content hub” that acts as an easy-to-use portal for social media, without ever leaving the site. Built from a consumer-first perspective, GotChosen delivers a vertical-scroll, mobile-first format that creates an opening for advertisers to engage with users in a manner not normally found outside of typical social channels.

Silva goes on to add, “Publishers want high impact, highly engaging content – not just more ads. They want to increase both revenue and profit per session, and the days are long gone where simply increasing the number of ad slots per page gets a publisher what they need. Publishers must address multiple issues with single-source solutions, and do it in a way that also enhances the user experience. Our social content SSP does precisely that.”

OneTrust Announces Mobile App Consent Solution for GDPR and IAB Europe Compliance

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MTS Staff Writer

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July 19, 2018

OneTrust Announces Mobile App Consent Solution for GDPR and IAB Europe Compliance

OneTrust, the global leader in privacy management and marketing compliance with 1,500 customers, including 200 of the Global 2,000, announced OneTrust Mobile App Consent, a solution that integrates mobile consent and preference management into the market-leading OneTrust Marketing Compliance suite. OneTrust Mobile App Consent will be available in August and helps companies collect and document user consent on mobile apps, supporting compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ePrivacy Directive, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other global privacy regulations.

OneTrust Mobile App Consent helps companies integrate the following capabilities into native mobile apps:

Initial Consent Acceptance on App Load: Some organizations, for example publishers, have requirements to capture consent prior to the user accessing the app in order to comply with targeted advertising or other data processing related requirements.
Just-in-Time Consent Interfaces: Rather than ask for consent up front, many app developers and user experience professionals prefer to have consent requests be more contextual and provided “just-in-time” when the user is accessing a certain app feature that requires access to an additional set of data that the user must consent to.
Mobile App Privacy Preference Center: Consent and preferences indicated by the end user is centrally maintained and can be accessed from within the app, or outside the app in a centralized preference center.
Proof and Records of “Content Receipts”: To support compliance with regulations such as GDPR, all consent history provided by the user is maintained in a central consent receipt database.
Consent and Marketing Analytics Dashboards: Dashboards and metrics help organizations understand the overall effectiveness of their consent program.
Sync Consent Preferences to Integrated Systems: Changes to a user’s consent are reflected within the OneTrust consent database and synced with any integrated systems, such as marketing automation and CRM tools.

Also Read: OneTrust Announces Adobe Cloud Platform Launch Extension

OneTrust Mobile App Consent is highly tailorable to allow organisations to build custom on-brand user interfaces and fully integrated into the OneTrust Universal Consent and Preference Management solution for a consistent consent experience across an organisation’s web and mobile platforms. OneTrust Mobile App Consent also leverages the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework so companies can deliver targeted mobile ads based on the user’s consent preferences. OneTrust Consent for Mobile is available for native and web apps and can be easily deployed via the OneTrust Mobile App Consent Software Development Kit (SDK).

Blake Brannon

“Organisations globally rely on OneTrust to power the backbone of their marketing compliance activities,” said Blake Brannon, VP of Product, OneTrust. “Our size, scale and maturity in the online marketing consent, enterprise preference center and cookie consent use cases make this new mobile app solution an obvious extension to our market leading platform. In addition, our partnership with IAB Europe added a deeper layer of support for publishers globally who are looking to comply with data-driven advertising consent standards.”

Tru Measure Adds Andrew McFadden as Director of Sales and Marketing

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July 19, 2018

Tru Measure Adds Andrew McFadden as Director of Sales and Marketing

Andrew Mcfadden, a Local Media Advocate Joins Tru Measure to Accelerate Sales Growth Across New Verticals

Tru Measure, a digital marketing services platform, has named Andrew McFadden as Director of Sales and Marketing. “Andrew brings a unique combination of innovation, marketing and sales experience to our team,” said John Hoeft, General Manager of Tru Measure.

John added, “His vast knowledge of marketing automation, lead generation and analytics will serve as a great resource for our clients and help support our growing customer base. His experience developing and launching a new advertising and marketing products will accelerate our growth across new verticals.”

In this critical role, Andrew McFadden is responsible for developing and executing Tru Measure’s marketing and communication strategy. His primary role will be to focus on brand development and lead generation for Tru Measure’s customizable dashboard solution, campaign performance reporting, and outsourced ad operations and fulfillment services.

At the time of this announcement, Andrew McFadden, said, “Tru Measure’s success over the past nine years offers a unique opportunity to leverage customer knowledge and relationships to take the company to the next level.”

Andrew added, “Digital marketing, attribution and proof of performance continues to evolve, and Tru Measure’s partners will look to us to help them deliver results to their clients.”

Andrew McFadden has more than 10 years of experience in the local media industry, having led the innovation and business development efforts for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. Most recently, he led the business development efforts at OwnLocal, a digital advertising company, launching new products and industry verticals. Over the past 10 years, McFadden has advised several technology startups with product market fit and helped secure local media clients. He has published several articles for the International News Media Association (INMA) and the News Media Alliance (formerly the Newspaper Association of America) on the intersection of audience and advertising.

Andrew McFadden earned an MBA at the University of California, Irvine, and an undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego.

Currently, Tru Measure provides media companies and advertising agencies with guidance on the audience, customer engagement and action since 2009. These insights tell the full campaign story from impression to conversion by displaying post-click analytics in a dashboard solution.

Braze (Formerly Appboy) Named a Leader in 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms

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July 19, 2018

Braze Named a Leader in 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms

Report Recognizes Braze (formerly Appboy) for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision

Braze (formerly Appboy), the leading global customer engagement platform, has been recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s inaugural 2018 “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms” research report with the highest placement on the ability to execute axis in the entire Magic Quadrant.1

According to the report, “Mobile interactions now play a dominant role across customer journeys, with mobile marketing platforms enabling marketing leaders to optimize engagements at any touchpoint.” The report further states, “Consumer demand for mobile engagements creates new, identifiable and predictable moments of opportunity. Sophisticated marketers are capitalizing on them. According to Gartner, mature multichannel marketers apply 22% of their channel marketing budget toward mobile marketing, while less mature marketers apply just 12%.”2

Also Read: Braze (Formerly Appboy) Urges Brands to Keep Shifting at Cannes Lions

Bill Magnuson

“We believe that our Leader position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms is a testament to our purpose-built product and its ability to uniquely manage the complete customer lifecycle with just-in-time personalization capabilities,” said Bill Magnuson, CEO and Cofounder of Braze. “This recognition, we feel, is further evidence that a modern mobile-first approach to cross-channel engagement drives transformative business results and better brand-customer relationships.”

Mobile is the remote control to cross-channel experiences. The continuous shift toward ambient environments further highlights the importance of mobile in the fast-changing customer engagement landscape and its impact on brands and their organizations. In the latest Braze study of 300 million user profiles, findings highlight increases in customer engagement of 179% with messages sent in one channel compared to a control group that received no messages. However, customers who received cross-channel messaging from brands saw engagement rates as much as 844% higher than those who were sent no messages at all. The future is device—and channel—agnostic, and the Braze technology connects messages seamlessly across the customer journey to humanize the relationships between people and the brands they love.

PubMatic Launches PubMatic Cloud to Evolve the SSP Business Model

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July 19, 2018

PubMatic Launches PubMatic Cloud to Evolve the SSP Business Model

New Offering Provides Publishers and Tech Companies with a Transparent Alternative to Revenue Shares

PubMatic, the publisher-focused sell-side platform (SSP) for an open digital media future, announced the launch of PubMatic Cloud for publishers and tech companies looking to implement and control their own programmatic technology. By accessing PubMatic’s technology, global infrastructure and demand connections on a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) basis, clients are able to achieve full transparency and achieve greater control over their programmatic monetization.

As programmatic trading becomes mainstream, innovations such as header bidding and fraud controls have resulted in gains for publishers. However, it has also contributed to the ballooning of infrastructure costs and overhead to manage integrations with the buy-side and third-party technology vendors as well as continuously evolving technology. The ability to keep pace with innovation has become more challenging for publishers and technology providers alike at the same time as the industry is increasingly turning to programmatic across media channels and brand spend budgets.

Also Read: PubMatic and Ringier Partner to Drive Programmatic in the Romanian Market

According to reports, 86 percent of marketers plan to take some portions of programmatic in-house this year as the industry attempts to address the challenges of the ‘ad tech tax’. Publishers are in the position of requiring technology to adapt to this changing ecosystem. Both digital content creators and the technology companies that serve them are faced with the choice of continuing to transact via revenue share models or to make significant investments in engineering to build a complete SSP in-house. PubMatic Cloud offers an alternative.

With a rich set of APIs in a fully-vetted, configurable solution, PubMatic Cloud provides full transparency and control. Publishers can ramp up a fully-supported and integrated programmatic solution and technology providers can enhance their offerings at a fraction of the cost and time it would take to develop the technology in-house. PubMatic’s out-of-the-box SSP offers integrations with over 200 demand-side platforms (DSPs) and other buyers, delivering unparalleled access to demand. Plus, PubMatic Cloud includes the company’s robust ad scanning, fraud detection and brand safety tools so clients can ensure quality control.

Jeff Hirsch

“For over a decade, PubMatic has been fine-tuning our platform, building a global infrastructure, integrating hundreds of demand partners, attracting and retaining engineering talent, incorporating machine learning and more,” says Jeff Hirsch CMO & head of US publisher development at PubMatic. “Wanting to replicate that from scratch is like wanting to start your own search engine from scratch. We are able to provide an attractive, alternative pricing model with PubMatic Cloud because we have already aligned our business to be able to ramp up publishers quickly and ensure our clients’ ongoing success.”

Lacework Selected by Brightcove for Automation of Security at Scale for Its AWS-Hosted Video Service

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July 19, 2018

Lacework Unifies Entitlements Management and Threat Detection for Simplified Cloud Security

Using Lacework, Brightcove Automates Security and Compliance Across Multiple AWS Accounts Covering Development, Testing, and Production

Lacework, the industry’s first solution to bring automation, speed and scale to cloud security, today announced that Brightcove Inc. has selected Lacework to provide continuous security for its cloud-based online video platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). With Lacework, Brightcove automates security monitoring and host-level intrusion detection at scale across its thousands of servers in AWS. Brightcove joins other fast-growing companies including Veeva Systems, Snowflake Computing, Guidebook, and Vera in leveraging Lacework for the security and compliance of their cloud on AWS.

“The size and diverse nature of Brightcove’s AWS fleet required us to find a solution that we could easily incorporate into our DEVOPS culture and scale to our variable AWS usage,” Eric Kelson, Senior Security Engineer at Brightcove, said. “Lacework gave us the ability to monitor our thousands of AWS hosts, quickly detect and assess threats across hosts and AWS services, and identify AWS configuration compliance gaps, all without customized security rules.”

Also Read: Amobee Acquires Videology Assets in a Court-Supervised Auction

The speed, scale, and transient nature of public cloud environments requires a completely new approach to security. The Lacework Cloud Security Platform captures and analyzes the millions of pieces of behavioral data emanating continuously from any large AWS environment. Applying machine learning to this mass of data, Lacework generates actionable insights on abnormal behavior and alerts on any indications of compromise.

Kelson adds, “With Lacework, we were able to efficiently obtain a comprehensive view of our AWS cloud footprint, including containers. We are quickly able to identify and respond to security events without substantial impact to time and resources.”

Dan Hubbard

“Brightcove is leading the way for cloud-based online video platforms and we are thrilled to be helping them attain enhanced, continuous security hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS),” said Dan Hubbard, Chief Security Architect at Lacework. “With thousands of Brightcove’s servers in AWS, Lacework Cloud Security Platform is helping automate security monitoring and host-level intrusion detection at scale.”

Renegade Successfully Integrates OTT Offering for Client Success

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July 19, 2018

Renegade Successfully Integrates OTT Offering for Client Success

Hunt Valley-Based Marketing Agency, Successfully Integrates Ott to Increase Client ROI

With a growing number of video platforms available to consumers, Renegade Communications is pleased to announce the launch of their OTT offering, further increasing their capabilities in media strategy, placement, and insights.

OTT is streaming media content delivered online, directly to consumers. This platform is a favorite of cord-cutters, an increasingly large group of consumers who cancel their subscriptions to cable in lieu of getting their content from the internet. The customer base for traditional pay TV shrank by 3.7% in 2017, according to data by S&P Global Market Intelligence firm Kagan, with a total of 98 million households reporting as Cable + Streaming and an additional 5.4 million as broadband only.

To target these audiences, Renegade’s media house focuses on incorporating OTT platforms as part of an integrated omni-channel strategy, which often includes traditional, digital, social media, and search platforms as well. This robust team has a unique proficiency in multi-channel video marketing, utilizing content from television spots on streaming services, OTT platforms, and within social media. With over $10M in spend by mid-year, Renegade is notably one of the region’s largest media agencies in 2018.

Also Read: Roku Introduces Audience Marketplace for OTT Ad Sellers and Buyers

Tim Watkins

“Having an intelligent media offering means you aren’t simply saturating every platform with singular messaging,” says CEO Tim Watkins. “We see the importance of omni-channel marketing piece with targeted multi-message content. It is crucial to getting the right message to the right audience at the right time. Renegade is committed to delivering the media solutions that fit each client’s goals and optimizing each channel to guarantee the greatest ROI.”

Renegade has invested in the latest software, analytics and media intelligence programs to aid in the tracking and optimization of its client’s marketing portfolio in real-time, recognizing data transparency is key when examining new tactics and building trust. Renegade’s media house continues to focus on being proactive and responsive as these shifts in the landscape continue, to stay in touch with new platforms and technologies as well as consumer preferences.

Stefanie Nimick

The agency, which celebrates their 30^th anniversary this year, has been optimizing brands and maximizing client returns since their start in 1988. Today they count several Fortune 100 companies as media clients, including Starz, NBCUniversal, Animal Planet, and Hallmark.

“Renegade’s expertise, steady reliability and focus, and how they embedded with the Starz team to execute on campaign elements was truly amazing,” remarked Stefanie Nimick, SVP of Distribution at Starz. “This campaign broke records and genuinely stunned us all. Really incredible.”

Location Data and Machine Learning Form the Hilt of New-Age Cross-Screen Advertising Attribution

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July 19, 2018

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Location Data and Machine Learning Form the Hilt of New-Age Cross-Screen Advertising Attribution

Walle and McNichols Said That By Taking the Human Element out of the Attribution Model, the Machine Learning-Based Approach Was the Only Way to Measure Cross-Channel Media

Is TV advertising industry truly entitled? We keep hearing that TV advertising is not up to the mark in delivering results proportional to the media budget. A part of the problem lies in the gaps in TV performance analytics. The latest partnership between TVadSync and Unacast changes this dynamic, combining cutting-edge cross-screen media and transparent location data to measure footfall traffic and help advertisers fully quantify the impact of their combined TV and digital advertising. To better understand how TV advertising is set to change the multi-touch attribution model for advertising with data and analytics, we spoke to TVadSync’s Head of Product, John McNicholas and Unacast CEO, Thomas Walle.

What is the state of location data in cross-screen advertising? How do you enable customers to benefit from location data technology?

Thomas Walle: The use of location data in cross-screen advertising is picking up steam – after several years of “cord-cutting” left advertisers uncertain of where their spend is really going, a partnership like the one between TVadSync and Unacast provides the kind of full circle customer journey measurement that advertisers need. With location data assisting in the ability to quantify the combined effect of digital and TV advertising, advertisers can be confident in their campaign metrics, once again bringing the TV to the forefront of their minds.

At Unacast, we’re excited about the possibilities of location data with the TV space – in the past, although advertisers could get a good idea of how many sets of eyes were seeing a commercial, they couldn’t connect that directly with in-store traffic. Location data makes that possible.

Would you define ‘transparency’ in location data optimization? How does Unacast deliver committed transparency?

Thomas Walle: We believe that transparent location data is the foundation of building better products and making smarter decisions. If you can’t trust your foundation – or worse, your foundation is shaky and built with questionable construction – you’ll have a hard time building anything worthwhile on top of it. That’s why transparency in datasets is so important.

At Unacast, we define transparency as a clear understanding of the origins of any given location data set and which attributes are included in the data. We’re committed to delivering radical transparency. That means we provide the source IDs, latitude, and longitude, dwell time, timestamp, venue, category, and the number of nearby venues in our datasets, so partners can feel conﬁdent about the authenticity of the data.

What are the key takeaways from your recent partnership with Unacast and how does it benefit your adtech customers?

John McNicholas: The partnership helps prove out how effective TV and digital are –when combined, at driving the store and location visits. It offers total clarity for advertisers as to which channels and creatives provide the best ROI in terms of foot-fall, and it forges a real, attributable connection between upper and lower funnel activity, re-connecting the marketing funnel from end-to-end.

What is your roadmap to build readily-adaptable location data adtech platforms? How do you leverage/ work with audience data platforms?

Thomas: Unacast provides transparent, contextualized location data that helps marketers build out their audiences – in essence, a vital tool in the targeting and attribution toolkit. Our team of engineers and data scientists consolidates billions of disconnected data points and raw signals, vetting and analyzing each point before grouping it with like points and ultimately delivering a Visit – a clear understanding of a device’s activity, location and time spent at that location, among other attributes. Armed with this information, marketers can more easily and accurately build out audiences.

In the GDPR era, what changes to location data strategy have you made? How does the post-GDPR impact the ecosystem?

Thomas: As a company founded in Norway, where the transparent sharing of information is part of the fabric of our culture, Unacast has always worked to provide data transparency to our partners. In fact, “Trust through Transparency” is one of our core company values.

We’ve always felt the importance of an equal focus on privacy as well (that’s where the “trust” part of our company value comes in), which meant that GDPR didn’t necessitate any major changes to our strategy or the principles that govern our business. That said, although we currently collect data in North America only, we plan to expand into Europe soon, and still made the choice to become GDPR-compliant.

We believe that GDPR can and should have a positive impact on the location data ecosystem – wiping out smaller players that don’t treat privacy and transparency in the right way and leading to higher-quality data, even if we see a temporary decrease in quantity.

How do you work with AI/Machine learning in making Location Data-based TV advertising and adtech personalization more effective?

John: TVadSync’s Multi-Touch Attribution model uses machine learning to correctly attribute performance value to cross-channel media. The attribution model is not trained with any historical or market data. It is totally blind as to whether it’s viewing a digital ad or a TV ad, and so no bias exists. It learns from mapping millions of touch-points across thousands of user journeys across TV and Digital media and calculating using a probabilistic method, which channel/placement/creative, or TV spot were most influential at driving conversions.

Traditional attribution models were based on pre-determined, often position based biases which are prone to human error, and positively skew lower funnel advertising such as digital media, leading to inaccurate attribution and huge optimization inefficiencies. By taking the human element out of the attribution model, the machine learning-based approach is the only way to measure cross-channel media and is providing huge gains to TVadSync’s clients.

What are the opportunities and risks you foresee in the way location data is shaping for 2020-2025? How do you prepare for these disruptions?

Thomas: The focus of location data is moving away from individuals and more toward trends-based data. There is a major opportunity there to take location data from micro to macro, opening up the industry to solve big picture challenges and better plan for the future of the human movement.

We’re already working on that shift in data collection and analysis. It’s also an exciting time to move from tracking the 30% of time people spend online, which up until recently has been the main focus of marketing technology, to tracking the 70% of the time they spend in the real world through location data. Moving forward with that in mind, it will be key for companies within our space will need to dig deeper into client needs to make sure we’re able to deliver products that help them achieve their goals.

Thank you, Thomas and John, for chatting with us about your recent partnership and the impact it could have on the TV advertising industry.

European Commissioner, Věra Jourová to Speak at Data Protection World Forum

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July 19, 2018

European Commissioner, Věra Jourová to Speak at Data Protection World Forum

Věra Jourová, the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality will speak at the Data Protection World Forum (DPWF).

The landmark data protection conference and exhibition will be held on the 20th and 21st of November 2018 at the ExceL London and will be attended by a global audience of data protection and privacy practitioners, C-Suite executives and senior business decision-makers.

Commissioner Jourová has played an instrumental role in reshaping data protection and ensuring the swift adoption of the EU data protection reform which came into effect on May 25th.

The commissioner has also negotiated internationally for the protection of EU citizens data. Yesterday, the European Commission and Japan successfully agreed to create the world’s largest area of safe data flows. They agreed to recognise each other’s data protection systems as ‘equivalent’, which will allow data to flow safely between the EU and Japan.

Also Read: Zone·tv Studio Introduces a Revolutionary AI-Powered Predictive Personalization Platform

In addition, the commissioner negotiated the Privacy Shield, a data protection framework to ensure that private companies such as Facebook and Google and public organisations such as the American security forces cannot misuse personal data sent from Europe across the Atlantic.

Taking place six months after the 25th May GDPR deadline, the two-day conference will feature six conference streams, two masterclass rooms, and one keynote theatre, in addition to a round-table agenda; all delivered by the world’s leading data protection and privacy experts.

The event will host over 100 leading subject matter experts including;

Sir Rob Wainwright, Senior Cyber Partner at Deloitte, and former Executive Director of Europol
Marloes Pomp, Head of Blockchain Projects, Dutch Government
Jamie Bartlett, Author, and Journalist of the Dart Net and BBC 2 series on Silicon Valley
Russell Marsh, Managing Director of Accenture
Chiara Rustici, Independent EU Privacy, and GDPR Analyst
Nicola McKilligan Regan, Senior Partner, Privacy Partnership
Nirvana Farhadi, Global Head, Regtech, Risk & Regulatory Compliance Affairs
Paul Nemitz, General for Justice and Consumers, European Commission
Steve Wright, Data Privacy and Information Security Officer, John Lewis Partnership

Nick James

Nick James, Founder of Data Protection World Forum, said:

“We are delighted to have Ms Jourová speak at Data Protection World Forum. Ms Jourová has played a key role in implementing the GDPR and putting data protection rights to the forefront, not only in Europe, but on a global scale too.”

Future To Gain US Market Leadership With Proposed Acquisition Of Purch’s Consumer Division

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July 19, 2018

Future To Gain US Market Leadership With Proposed Acquisition Of Purch's Consumer Division

Global specialist media platform, Future plc announced the proposed acquisition of the consumer division of Purch, the next generation digital publishing and marketplace platform, operating in the consumer technology and science verticals.

The acquisition will give Future the number one position in consumer technology publishing in the US Purch has successfully grown its digitally-led business through titles such as Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware and Top Ten Reviews. Bringing Purch’s consumer brands and digital platforms into the Future business will further cement Future’s position as a growing, global platform for specialist media.

Combining Future’s track record of growth with Purch’s US market presence will give a market-leading US position and more diversified revenue sources for Future moving forward. Purch’s cutting-edge technology will also help deliver on Future’s mission to be a technology-enabled global platform for specialist media.

Also Read: Future Announces Christine Shaw as Managing Director & Senior Vice President, B2B

Acquisition highlights & rationale

Future proposes to acquire Purch’s consumer division in a deal worth $132m
Purch is a next generation digital publishing and marketplace platform
It’s leading consumer tech titles, such as Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware and Top Ten Reviews, give Future the number one slot in the consumer tech space in the US
Purch’s ad technology, RAMP, compliments Future’s technology platform, opening up further opportunities for our partners
Opportunity to significantly increase the scale of Futures science and knowledge divisions, through Purch’s titles such as Space.com and Live Science

Zillah Byng-Thorne

Future CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne commented, “Future’s mission to be a technology-enabled global platform for specialist media takes another big step forward today with this announcement. I’ve been impressed by the strength of Purch’s technology platforms and the expertise of its people. Together we can build a combined organization that has scale and growth opportunities ahead.

The two businesses share similar cultures – we both share our audiences’ passion, we’re data-driven, ambitious and both have an innovative mindset. From day one Future will be number one in the US consumer technology sector, and beyond this we see clear opportunities for combined growth.

Also Read: Future Publishing Acquires US Content Business NewBay Media

We have developed a strong track record in acquiring and integrating complementary businesses and this deal further accelerates our strategy for delivering growth both organically and through acquisition.”

Greg Mason

Purch CEO, Greg Mason said, “Future and Purch have clear synergy and this acquisition represents a tremendous opportunity to join forces with a like-minded publisher that sees the future of special interest media and publishing in much the same way we do.

“Like Purch, Future places emphasis on strengthening their market position in key verticals, leveraging content and commerce to drive diverse revenue streams, and serious investments in technology to control monetization and drive continual knowledge and insights. Future’s acquisition of the B2C and Publisher Service business units will enable these units to grow more rapidly and to realize their full potential.”

TeamSupport Secures Significant Growth Investment from Level Equity

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July 19, 2018

TeamSupport Secures Significant Growth Investment from Level Equity

Investment to Accelerate Growth and Expansion of Leading b2b Customer Support Software

TeamSupport, the industry’s top B2B customer support software solution, today announced it has obtained a significant growth investment from Level Equity. The investment will enable the company to accelerate the expansion of its technology, customer success, sales, and marketing initiatives.

The funding comes at a perfect time, as Gartner recently announced that Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which includes Sales, Marketing, Customer Support and Customer Success, was the largest software market in 2017. Gartner also predicts CRM will continue to be the fastest growing software market through 2018 and beyond.

Robert C. Johnson

“Customer support is a critical piece of business success, and our unique focus on the needs of B2B organizations has been extremely well received in the market,” said Robert C. Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of TeamSupport. “We have seen tremendous growth over the past several years and as a result have had a great deal of interest in our business. We took a very strategic approach to our decision to bring on an investment partner that would share our vision and help accelerate our growth in this rapidly expanding market. Level’s investment enhances our commitment to providing the best customer success platform for B2B and we’re excited to continue building and expanding our distinctive solution.”

Also Read: 8×8 Announces General Availability of X Series

Founded in 2009 to address the unique pain points facing B2B technology support teams, TeamSupport grew organically for several years before raising a modest Series A investment round in 2014. As expected, this funding helped the company grow to become one of the industry’s leading customer support software suites, making a name for themselves among industry competitors like Zendesk, Freshdesk and Salesforce Service Cloud in the rapidly growing customer support software market.

Sarah Sommer

“We’re excited to partner with Robert and the rest of the management team at TeamSupport to accelerate their growth,” said Sarah Sommer, Partner at Level Equity. “The customer support and success marketplaces are expanding rapidly, and TeamSupport is uniquely positioned to become a dominant player in the space.”

The company has realized many accomplishments over the years and introduced innovative features that are especially valued in B2B including a Visual Support suite, best-in-class Service Level Agreement (SLA) function, and most recently the addition of IBM Watson-powered Sentiment Analysis.

Meet ReloQuest’s Newest Rainmaker!

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July 19, 2018

An accomplished Corporate Housing business development professional, Kim Schimenek brings over 20 years of sales and hospitality experience which will serve her well in her new position as Executive Vice President of Business Development at ReloQuest Inc.

Kim Schimenek

In her previous role, Kim Schimenek developed a key Strategic Accounts division and managed a very successful team responsible for sales growth and partnerships within the corporate housing and relocation industry.

Kim is a passionate leader that believes in conducting business with core values and leading with integrity. Her can do/will do attitude, acute business acumen and her contributions earned her the award for “Individual Professional of the Year” from the Corporate Housing Providers Association. Furthermore, Kim was voted into the CHPA Board of Directors by her peers for her outstanding reputation and industry accomplishments.

Also Read: Storyful Announces the Integration of Snap API into Newswire

“When the opportunity to join ReloQuest presented itself I saw a once in a lifetime chance to be a part of a revolutionary business solution. I have known and very much respected Darin Karp and Jeff Mahoney for the last 18 years which reinforced my career move. This opportunity allows for me to stay within the industry I love and adore, apply what I’ve learned through the years, and be a part of new innovative business solutions. I’m looking forward to growing a world-class sales team and contributing to ReloQuest’s continued game-changing success.”

Creativity is integral to solving complex problems, facilitating innovation, and driving growth within an organization. With extensive business development and management experience, Kim will help ReloQuest grow a world-class dynamic salesforce, to achieve and exceed sales and revenue goals. Kim’s ability to cultivate and support new client relationships, combined with her success in development strategies will provide valuable direction for ReloQuest’s business development team.

Darin Karp

Darin Karp, ReloQuest Founder, and CEO stated, “Innovation is not only about creating new products, but it’s also about listening to clients’ needs and identifying multiple solutions. With Kim’s successful track record, leaderships skills and her unwavering commitment to excellence, we are thrilled to have her join the ReloQuest Dream Team. Kim brings a genuine concern for both her clients and colleagues success. We are confident she will drive exponential growth.”

ClosePlan Launches To Streamline Team Workflows And Transform Sales Cycle

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July 19, 2018

ClosePlan Launches To Streamline Team Workflows And Transform Sales Cycle

Executives and Sales Leaders Buoyed By Innovative Platform That Provides Sales Efficiency and Transparency

ClosePlan, an innovative Sales Optimization Platform, launched with a tool designed specifically to streamline and support the efforts of sales teams while simultaneously presenting real-time updates on critical revenue streams throughout organizations. An app integration for Salesforce, ClosePlan is a comprehensive project management tool with precision Gantt plans, Kanban workflows, drag and drop visualizations, and deal scorecards charting opportunity health with a consistent taxonomy across the entire team.

Scott Johnson

“Enterprise Sales is changing. Over my 25-year sales career, I’ve watched the pressure to deliver revenue growth increase dramatically while amateur sales representatives are hired and given less training. Even more challenging is that buyers are better informed prior to engaging with vendors,” said CEO Scott Johnson. “To keep pace with the rigor of today’s business world, successful sales teams need to work optimally, collaboratively and with process efficiency. Simply put, ClosePlan is a new tool for teams to mitigate risks and close deals faster.”

Also Read:Bright Pattern’s Latest Release Delivers Effortless, Personalized, Omnichannel Customer Experiences

ClosePlan’s innovative platform solves two seemingly simple, yet critical challenges that ail most organizations by closing the communication gap between sales leaders and, the rest of the company while also supporting sales managers through their process. Real-time updates inform executives on the status of each sales opportunity while generating actionable insights to improve forecasting, drive behavior, and identify coachable moments. With a combination of both qualitative and quantitative data to score the health of every sales opportunity, managers also understand the likelihood of securing a deal in a single glance. Sales leaders can apply these insights to forecasting reports to further refine and inform their forward-looking revenue projections and also fine tune towards an optimal process.

ClosePlan brings sales teams three key elements that combine to drive sales deal momentum:

Sales Events: Sales leaders set a completely customized sequential series of events that ensure the best sales process across the organization. With a single click, reps can create an event-driven sales execution plan that syncs data bi-directionally with Salesforce.
Deal Scorecards: Continuously qualify and measure the health of each opportunity throughout the sales process to deliver insights and drive required deal activity. Scorecards are completely customizable and support any methodology.
Stakeholder Maps: Map contacts from Salesforce to visually connect the key stakeholders with easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality. Inform your deal team with added depth to your contact data including support status, relationship health, and decision-making power.

Essentially, ClosePlan improves performance at the bottom of the sales funnel by reinforcing best-in-breed processes across an organization, enabling quick and consistent execution. ClosePlan highlights the series of critical events through which each sales opportunity should progress. Real-time updates make the entire process transparent throughout the organization. To further empower the reps, ClosePlan also includes easy-to-use project management tools including Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and visual reporting.

“Close plans are essential tools in the sales cycle because they involve the larger team and get everyone on the same page with a clearly defined process. I expect my teams to use them and I have seen them in every form imaginable – paper and pen, spreadsheets, docs. Automation and transparency is important so I am happy to see ClosePlan bring a powerful solution to the market,” said Chief Revenue Officer Gary Littlefair, a 30-year sales veteran who has held sales leadership roles at companies such as Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, Oracle and Jive Software.

The CX of the Future

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Sanjay Sarathy

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July 19, 2018

Customers want deeply immersive experiences that give them a truly authentic connection to the brands they love. From retailers to sports teams to music and beyond, brands of all kinds can secure lifelong customer and fan affinity by delivering creative experiences that drive better engagement.

Maximizing customer engagement is critical to the backbone of any brand. Research has shown that consumers are five times more likely to check out products and services from brands they trust, four times more likely to refer brands to others and two times more likely to purchase from a favorite brand even when competitors entice with better offers.

The consequences of a poor and predictable CX are major, and a subpar CX can be detrimental to brands on a number of fronts. Around 88% of customers are less likely to revisit a website after a suboptimal experience, 52% are less willing to engage after a frustrating mobile experience and only one-third are retained when brands provide inconsistent experiences.

Also Read: Commit Your Company to CX Improvements in 2018

With so much at stake, how can companies create and nurture deep, engaging, interactive and personal customer experiences both now and in the future?

Immersive Experiences and Brand Affinity

Customers want – and sometimes demand – deeper engagement with the brands they love. A few examples: Movie lovers want to engage with their favorite actresses and actors, comic fans want to get closer to their superhero writers and music aficionados will go to rock-star lengths to immerse themselves with bands and musicians in ways that weren’t even possible heretofore.

In regards to the latter, augmented reality and virtual reality – while still fairly niche globally – can enable music artists to engage with fans like never before. From current limited edition box sets chock-full of original goodies that go far beyond providing an hour’s worth of music on a plastic disc to the future potential of AR and VR to revolutionize the live concert experience, music act’s abilities to connect with fans on a deeper level is limited only by the artist’s imaginations

Over in the sporting arena, rapidly advancing technologies in the mobile space are enabling fans to know not just their favorite athlete’s stats, but also what she or he had for breakfast. This ability to engage and keep close tabs on one’s favorite athlete 24/7 is not without its pitfalls, but sports stars and brands across all verticals possess the ability to go down the rabbit hole with their followers as shallow or deep as they desire.

Also Read: Native Advertising and the Rebirth of Creativity

Authentic Connections: Old School Versus New School

Countless old-school methodologies for creating a positive CX are as tried and true as grandma’s homemade pies. One such tactic is the use of visual content, and the stats tell the story themselves: Colored visuals drive consumer interests in reading content by 80%; Content with images (think social media posts on Twitter, Facebook) increase views by a whopping 94%; Images embedded in posts receive 180% more engagement; and shoppers are 85% more likely to buy items if a video accompanies the product.

These stats might state the obvious, but think about something like the online car-buying experience. If you’ve ever clicked on a model you’re interested in only to get a “Photo Not Available” image instead of the actual automobile, then you can probably relate to the lightening speed in which you clicked the back button to view other vehicles.

While new-school ways of creating a positive CX are still in the gestation stage, some leading brands are currently employing everything from VR headsets to pushing the limits of mobile to give consumers immersive, even three-dimensional experiences. Still others are leveraging the power of interactivity in videos to increase engagement across verticals as diverse as enterprise to education.

While the future of creating the ultimate CX is still up in the air, what’s not a mystery are the tremendous pitfalls for brands that fail to implement strategies and immersive experiences that keep fans engaged. An inability to do so may send your otherwise loyal customers to your competition.

Also Read: The World Beyond Social Media

OK Google: Why Your Brand Needs to Talk?

By

Shalaka Nalawade

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July 19, 2018

OK Google: Why Your Brand Needs to Talk?

Voice Searches Need You to Step Up Your Game When It Comes To Content Marketing

In the month of May, at Google I/O 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated Google Assistant AI placing a realistic phone call and having a ‘real’ conversation with a human being for an appointment.

Earlier this year, Amazon was forced to explain how Alexa recorded a private conversation and sent it to an Echo user’s colleague without their knowledge.

These two separate incidents only demonstrate the power of voice search and our relationship with technology. And for marketers, voice search is going to be the biggest challenge as they try to reach their target audience.

The future is voice

Way back in her Internet Trends Report 2016, Mary Meeker had noted that voice searches had increased by more than 35X between 2008 and 2016. This year’s Internet Trends Report also pointed out that Google’s Machine Learning speech recognition accuracy had reached 95 percent, the same as the human threshold, and that there’s a lot of mainstream adoption of smart speakers and voice assistants. Amazon Echo’s install base sales rose from 10 million to 30 million in 2017, pushing developers to build more voice skills.

A 2016 Gartner study predicted that by 2020, 30 percent of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen. The report claimed, “New audio-centric technologies, such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo, are making access to dialogue-based information ubiquitous and spawning new platforms based on “voice-first” interactions. By eliminating the need to use ones’ hands and eyes for browsing, vocal interactions extend the utility of web sessions to contexts such as driving, cooking, walking, socializing, exercising and operating machinery. As a result, the share of waking hours devoid of instant access to online resources will approach zero.”

Also Read: Amazon Leads Home Voice Control Assessment, Says Study by ABI Research

What’s voice search and how does it work?

A voice search is a command or set of commands presented to a device – either smart speakers like Google Home or Amazon Echo, or a mobile phone assistant like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, or Microsoft’s Cortana.

For example, you want to buy some dress shoes for an upcoming wedding. A more traditional way would involve you browsing through an e-commerce app on your phone, or making a quick Google search for footwear stores nearby. A voice search, you’ll be asking for help from the AI to look for dress shoes.

And that’s where lies the challenge for brands; the focus and direct approach of the voice search eliminates possibilities and SEO rankings have little to do with the results. Each assistant/device uses a different approach to SEO. While Google Home uses your Google data, Siri looks through your Bing data, and Alexa uses both your Bing and your Amazon data for optimized search results. Also, factors such as your geographic information and browsing history become more important in generating an answer.

Also Read: 5 Pinterest Hacks That Can Be Used For B2B Marketing

It’s time to speak up

When it comes to your brand’s content strategy, the approach to voice search requires you, as a marketer, to orient your content according to voice search queries. Merely relying on keyword search won’t help you top the search results.

Your content strategy must now be able to speak for itself (pun intended). It must be able to answer specific questions because assistants mine for direct answers to questions. Your content should now be able to appear in the Featured Snippets on Google, as Google Home will read that out when answering a voice search question. You could also make use of ‘long-tail keywords’ for better optimization of your content.

Remember content optimized for voice search does not focus on keywords, but on semantic search and building the context related to answering a question. So if your content is written in a conversational manner, it’ll show up in the search results that answer questions. Using structured data and schema mark-up can help the search engines pick up your content efficiently.

Voice search does not belong to the fictional world of The Jetsons. It’s real and it’s here! And consumers are quickly adopting it. So let’s make sure that we’re there, ready to help digital assistants deliver what consumers want.

Leanplum Named a Leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms

By

MTS Staff Writer

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July 19, 2018

Leanplum Named a Leader in Gartner's 2018 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms

Leanplum, announced it has been named a Leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms.

Born in the mobile world, Leanplum is an engagement platform uniquely built for today’s forward-looking brands to meet the real-time demands of their customers. The platform captures and transforms data into an understanding of users’ context, empowering brands to deliver unified experiences that are timely, relevant, and tested — creating the customer loyalty that fuels business growth.

In this report, Gartner evaluated 15 different vendors on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to Gartner, companies in the Leaders quadrant “possess the resources and acumen to deliver extensive mobile marketing capabilities guided by a clear, comprehensive view of mobile marketing’s crucial role as the dominant engagement point for customers and prospects. Leaders have executed a substantial number of implementations across a variety of industries. They push their customers toward more advanced states of mobile marketing capabilities. Leaders are equally successful in B2B and B2C marketing scenarios.” In our view, Gartner recognizes the importance of mobile marketing in monumentally shifting the way brands engage their customers. The report further states, “Mobile interactions now play a dominant role across customer journeys, with mobile marketing platforms enabling marketing leaders to optimize engagements at any touchpoint.”

Also Read:Leanplum Reveals Emojis in Marketing Messages Lead to 254% More Engagement

Momchil Kyurkchiev

“We believe that being recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms is a testament to the transformative work we are doing to help brands build the customer loyalty that fuels business growth,” said Momchil Kyurkchiev, CEO and co-founder of Leanplum. “While legacy marketing solutions batch and blast, Leanplum helps marketers respond to in-the-moment signals from their customers so they can deliver highly personalized campaigns with context and relevance.”

Leanplum continues to gain momentum globally, opening new offices in Amsterdam, Japan, New York, and Singapore, and helping innovative brands like Grab, Tinder and TED drive mobile engagement and growth. Last month, the company announced the acquisition of Connecto, an AI-powered conversational marketing platform. Leanplum recently raised $52 million in Series D fundraising and has tripled revenue year-over-year for the last three years. We believe that being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant further cements this market leadership.

Yext Named a Top 10 Workplace on Fortune’s 2018 Best Workplaces in New York List

By

MTS Staff Writer

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July 19, 2018

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Yext Named a Top 10 Workplace on Fortune's 2018 Best Workplaces in New York List

Great Place to Work and Fortune Recognize Yext as One of the Best Companies to Work for in New York City

Yext, Inc., the leader in Digital Knowledge Management (DKM), has been named a top 10 workplace on the list of Best Workplaces in New York by Fortune and Great Place to Work for the small and medium-sized businesses category.

Howard Lerman

“Yext has come a long way since we started the company right here in New York. We founded a new technology category, became a public company, and expanded around the world. None of it would be possible without our amazingly talented team,” said Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext. “Our culture of ‘Think Big, Learn Fast, Get Stuff Done’ is core to who we are, and we are very proud to be recognized as a great place to work.”

Also Read:Yext to Deliver Insights on How Voice Technology Is Changing Business at VOICE Summit

Headquartered in the historic Metropolitan Life Insurance Clocktower building in downtown Manhattan, Yext offers everything from stocked kitchens, to a game room, inter-company sports, in-house yoga classes, frequent Lunch and Learns, and internal mobility opportunities. The New York office feeds the exciting energy of the company, with an open layout to encourage collaboration and team-building.

Michael Bush

“New York’s diversity of people and industry are a beacon for those seeking opportunities around the country and the world,” said Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. “Organizations like Yext stand out from the crowd, intentionally growing their businesses by creating great places to work for all.”

The ranking considered more than 33,000 employee surveys from companies across New York State and the New Yorkmetropolitan area. Great Place to Work, a global people analytics and consulting firm, evaluated more than 50 elements of team members’ experience on the job. These included the extent to which employees trust leaders, the respect with which people are treated, the fairness of workplace decisions, and how much camaraderie there is among the team. Rankings are based on employees’ feedback and reward companies that best include all employees, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization.

TechBytes with Ben Gaines, Group Product Manager, Adobe

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July 19, 2018