Mid-Year Trend Update Shows Negative Sentiment Towards Online Advertisement Is on the Rise
Choozle, self-service programmatic advertising platform, released the findings of its 2018 Digital Advertising Trend Survey. The survey, which included 502 randomly-selected US consumers, explores consumer experience with the trends predicted to impact the digital advertising industry in 2018 – including the most influential advertising platforms, consumer behavior, and data privacy.
“The survey showcases a broad shift in the digital advertising landscape since the start of the year”
The results revealed that consumer sentiment opposes many of the trends predicted for 2018, including the rise of video, voice, and ad blockers. It also brought to light that many consumers are unaware of how these developments affect them. Some of the key results were as follows:
Mobile has continually been predicted as the leading digital advertising channel in 2018, but only 45 percent of respondents said they were more likely to click on mobile ads, the majority of which were in the younger age group (18-29).
Facebook (54 percent) and Google (44 percent) remain the most influential platforms for advertising followed by Instagram (23 percent), Spotify (28 percent), and Pandora (24 percent).
Despite video being a major predicted trend in 2018, 72 percent of consumers do not prefer video ads over other types of online advertisements.
Consumer Sentiment and Behavior
Contradictory to industry reports and predictions, 54 percent of respondents have not used an ad blocker in the past six months.
Forty-three percent of consumers report feeling negatively towards advertisements, compared to a similar survey conducted by Choozle from April of 2017 where only 34 percent reported a negative sentiment.
Reasoning behind the negative sentiment include being shown the same advertisement multiple times (25 percent) and advertisements slowing down the webpage (19 percent).
Forty-four percent of respondents reported that they are not very knowledgeable (26 percent) or not at all knowledgeable (18 percent) about what personal data online companies have about them.
Eighty-nine percent do not think companies are doing enough to protect their personal data.
Sixty percent of consumers did not know what the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are or how they could be affected. However, 78 percent of respondents think the US government should adopt stricter privacy and security standards.
Jeffrey Finch
“The survey showcases a broad shift in the digital advertising landscape since the start of the year,” said Jeffrey Finch, Choozle co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “While consumer sentiment opposed the vast majority of predicted trends for 2018, results did reaffirm that consumers are expressing a greater affinity towards connected devices and being served advertisements through streaming services like Spotify. However, it may be in the best interest of advertisers who have pillared their efforts in trends such as video or voice to revisit their strategies if they wish to stay ahead of ever-changing consumer behavior.”
The Head of Marketing of a Leading Tech Marketing Company Discusses the Challenges and Opportunities in Pulling off a Successful Acquisition in 2018
Martech companies have understood the importance of continuous innovation, and dedicated customer success to stay on top of their competition. One of the key trends in martech is the rise of mergers and acquisitions, especially among the unicorns and start-ups that provide platforms for marketing automation, email capabilities, social media analytics and data management and analytics. Lifecycle Marketing company, Optimove is sprinting on this track of tech acquisitions; it acquired Powerinbox DynamicMail business. To better understand how the acquisition would benefit tech marketing company Optimove’s B2B customers, we spoke to their spokesperson Amit Bivas, Head of Marketing.
How did you prepare your company for the acquisition?
First and foremost, we focused on the people. We interviewed all of the employees that were planning to join Optimove to ensure they shared our values, believed in our mission and fit our culture. We were committed to transparency throughout the process and briefed all department managers that would have new employees join their teams to make sure all team members were aware of the incoming additions.
When it came to the new and exciting technology we would be integrating into our platform, we focused on allocating the required development resources to ensure as seamless an integration as we could, so both our employees and users could start leveraging this powerful technology as soon as possible.
How do you plan to extend the benefits of this acquisition to your existing customers and prospects?
This acquisition increases the overall emotional intelligence of our platform, expands our customers’ email capabilities and underscores Optimove’s commitment to bring our clients best-in-class technologies.
Our customers can now automatically render personalized, interactive content within emails in real-time; for example, excluding products that are no longer in stock, or adjusting content to reflect the weather at a customer’s specific location. This will put our customers well ahead of the curve, as only a quarter of email marketers are currently using automation for personalization through dynamic content.
Emotional intelligence is a key element in all that we do, and dynamic email will empower the 300+ brands we work with to communicate more effectively with their customers and provide outstanding customer experiences in email campaigns.
Optimove believes that all communication between a brand and customer should be as relevant and personalized as possible, both in terms of content and timing, and this acquisition will help marketers make sure this principle is followed in all email communications. As 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with brands offering personalized experiences, we expect this to result in not only more loyal customers, but more engaged customers.
What is the state of Relationship Marketing in 2018? How does this acquisition refine your platform?
As people are increasingly inundated with marketing messages (experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each day) relationship marketing is more important than ever.
Brands need to stand out from the pack, and how can they do that?
By focusing on relationships. 63% of Gen Z and Millennials agree they have many choices of where to shop, so a brand must show them loyalty to earn their business.
Rather than trying to be all things to all people, brands should be focusing on segmenting customers into highly-specific groups and offering the right messages for each group. Loyalty is a two-way street, meaning a brand cannot expect a customer to be loyal to them if they are not loyal in return. In practice, this means rewarding loyal customers with things like personalized promotions, emotionally intelligent communications, and loyalty programs; customers will continue purchasing from brands that make them feel valued and wanted.
Our acquisition of the DynamicMail business from PowerInbox arms customers with yet another tactic to form and foster long-lasting relationships with customers. By bringing personalized, interactive content within emails, we are able to expand upon and reinforce our existing email “muscle,” Optimail.
Overall, this acquisition is just another example of our commitment to empowering marketers with the tools they need to take a scientific approach to relationship marketing.
What major challenges did you overcome in your Marketing, Sales and Product Innovation roadmap for the past two years?
Most importantly, we were able to consistently deliver on our data-driven marketing promise. Optimove was born as a left brain solution, empowering brands to model their customers, predict their behaviors and anticipate their preferences. We quickly came to an understanding that insight is not enough.
Marketers need the ability to intuitively execute based on insight. This led us to develop our “right brain” capabilities, empowering marketers to take action based on insight, in the form of campaign execution.
However, this still was not enough, we felt, to fully deliver on the promise of data for our customers, as the vast (and growing) amount of customer data can be overwhelming for marketers. That is what drove us to build a connection between the right and left brain in the form of artificial intelligence and the creation of Optibot. Rather than having marketers manually dig through data, Optibot combs through it for them, and most importantly, surfaces recommendations and insights based upon the data.
Examples include identifying which segments are being neglected or too general, which customers are overexposed to marketing materials and what campaigns work best for each customer.
Most recently, we have extended the definition of relationship marketing by introducing the visitor lifecycle stage, enabling brands to target anonymous users with CRM campaigns.
As a marketing company, what new geographies and markets are you aiming to expand your business?
We have an established brand and presence in North America and EMEA. This year, we have started investing in expanding into APAC and Oceania, particularly Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, and Australia.
What are the major areas of improvement you expect to see in the tech startup ecosystem?
Today, you see many marketing initiatives focusing on selling big promises that ultimately lag behind actual product capabilities. I expect to see many startups moving forward to do a better job of closing the gap between promise and delivery — a crucial step to maintaining long-term, sustainable success as a business. There is still plenty of room to grow, but with technology buyers becoming more advanced and technology providers more creative, I believe we will see more and more companies successfully shrinking this gap.
Should new startups or any incubating marketing company jump over the AI bandwagon?
As we’re all aware, the hype around artificial intelligence is only growing and startups are rushing to adopt it into their organizations. And we don’t blame them! AI is a powerful, needle-moving tool. At Optimove, we employ science-driven AI, which allows customers to take advantage of AI-driven segmentation capabilities and predictive data tools.
For example, by employing our AI technology, Adore Me was able to cater highly targeted campaigns to specific customer groups, increasing relevancy and probability of purchase. Tangible results included 2.3 times growth in active customers, a 22 percent increase in average order amount and a 15% increase in monthly revenue generated specifically by Optimove-driven campaigns.
However, before jumping on the bandwagon blind, first and foremost it’s essential to make sure a startup is employing AI for the right reasons (i.e. to benefit your customers), opposed to just so they can say they “do AI.”
Many startups also significantly underestimate the expertise and time required to fully implement and adapt to a new way of doing things. In order to successfully implement new technologies like AI, marketers need to recruit more sophisticated AI talent to oversee complicated R&D processes, traditionally not managed by CMOs. Many will need to seek out more advanced expertise to select between AI technology vendors and their sometimes vague, fluffy marketing collateral. Finding out if a vendor is actually using science-driven AI can be incredibly difficult if your team is not equipped with the proper expertise.
Effective planning to guide decision-making and implementation of AI technologies is not only beneficial to marketers but to the overall brand and customers, as getting it right means marketers can effectively leverage AI to communicate with customers better than ever before.
Thank you, Amit for chatting with us on your product roadmap and marketing game plan for the future!
Premium and Live Sports TV Inventory Supply Rapidly Scaling to Meet Growing Agency, Marketer Demand
dataxu, the leading provider of programmatic marketing software for marketing and media professionals, announced a record 40x year over year increase in TV purchased through its TouchPoint DSP in Q1 2018. dataxu’s software enables audience-based TV buying from a range of premium providers, including network groups such as A+E Networks, live TV streaming services including Sling TV, and Video on Demand platforms for movies and TV like Tubi. In addition to long-form TV content, dataxu also provided its customers with access to live sports inventory such as the Winter Olympics, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, and the NBA Playoffs in 2018.
dataxu experienced an exponential rise in total available OTT impressions, with more than 11 billion ad opportunities in Q1 2018; notable in a market widely believed to be supply-constrained. This dramatic increase in supply is coupled with new increases in demand from marketers and agencies. According to recent research from Forrester and the ANA, “15% of ANA members report incorporating addressable and advanced TV buying techniques into plans today, with another 20% to 30% testing these approaches this year.”
“2018 has already proven to be dramatically different from 2017 in terms of premium OTT inventory availability and demand for that inventory,” said Sandro Catanzaro, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, dataxu. “Our most innovative customers have already embraced OTT in their media plans–in fact, we are regularly seeing the successful delivery of 7-figure budgets–to tap into advanced audience targeting capabilities and supplement traditional TV buys with incremental reach, particularly when advertisers are having trouble reaching younger consumers or occasional TV viewers.”
Adam Lowy
“Advertisers are searching for innovative, brand-safe ways to reach targeted audiences,” said Adam Lowy, head of Sling TV advertising sales. “Working with Advanced TV leaders like dataxu allows us to give advertisers real-time access to those targeted audiences that aren’t subscribed to traditional TV.”
dataxu has stepped up its advanced TV offerings over the last several years, including through the introduction of its self-service platform for OTT TV buying powered by data from the Oracle Data Cloud, as well as a first-to-market attribution solution, which allows customers to directly tie TV investments to specific business outcomes. In May, dataxu hired a new head of Engineering and CIO, Ben Katz; a technology industry veteran brought on to lead dataxu’s product development, including its Advanced TV product efforts, with a focus on innovation and consumer data privacy.
“The myth that OTT inventory is still scarce or of low quality is just that–a myth, perpetuated by other companies in the space who don’t have their own OTT attribution or inventory systems figured out yet,” continued Catanzaro. “Our customers are jumping in with both feet, as evidenced by the increasing number of customers we’re onboarding daily. We certainly don’t see any sign of demand slowing down.”
Eyeota Strengthens Its Focus on Key Markets and Verticals
Eyeota, the global leader in audience data, appoints Jamie Jager to Director, Agency Sales, to accelerate the company’s growth and further support clients across the Midwest and Toronto, Canada.
The addition of Jamie allows Eyeota to strengthen its endeavors in key markets and verticals, including automotive and retail. Jamie manages strategic agency relationships in the region and supports client campaign initiatives. Her experience spans 10 years, executing digital campaigns for top automotive brands, such as GM, Chrysler, Ford and Lincoln. Over the course of her career, she has opened and developed new sales territories across Ohio, including Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo and Cleveland, as well as within Detroit, Michigan. She is based in Detroit.
Kevin Tan
“It is an exciting time for us as we further establish our presence in the U.S. With consumer confidence and spending on the rise, there is an opportunity for us to increase our efforts in other markets,” said Kevin Tan, CEO, Eyeota. “We are thrilled to have Jamie on board to support our growth through her expertise and experience with brands and agencies in the region.”
Jamie worked at leading advertising and digital media companies, including Drawbridge and RadiumOne, where she was instrumental in both ad tech companies’ expansions into Michigan and Ohio. While at Drawbridge, Jamie generated over 25 new accounts within her first year, producing more than $1.5 million in revenue. At RadiumOne, she generated $5 million in requests for proposals and initiated more than 30 accounts within a year.
Jamie Jager
“We see a shift in advertising where data is the driving factor for strategy and execution. With over four billion unique audience profiles, Eyeota delivers quality data that helps marketers reach their target customers at the right time,” said Jamie. “I’m excited to join Eyeota and look forward to helping the company strengthen its presence in the region.”
Previously, she led and secured multi-million dollar programs with top automotive brands to promote the Huffington Post’s native advertising platform. Prior to that, she was at GTB for five years where she managed the Ford account, helping to optimize its strategic communications and cost reductions across national and local campaigns.
Jamie holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwood University and a master’s degree from Northwood’s University DeVos Graduate School of Management.
Scout by Miller Heiman Group, Powered by the New Strategic Selling with Perspective Methodology, Helps Sellers “See the Move That Moves the Deal”
Miller Heiman Group launched a new sales analytics platform that combines the company’s iconic Strategic Selling methodology with powerful technology to recommend the next steps sellers should take to close a deal.
Scout by Miller Heiman Group, powered by the Strategic Selling with Perspective sales methodology, leverages data and analytics to predict which seller actions will improve the odds of winning. The subscription-based software utilizes the Strategic Selling Blue Sheet – a strategic analysis tool for managing complex sales – in a cloud-based, mobile-first platform that guides sellers through the methodology and provides suggestions for active opportunities.
Scout by Miller Heiman Group
The introduction of Scout comes as part of the biggest update to Strategic Selling in decades. Now called Strategic Selling with Perspective, the methodology includes new approaches that help sales teams bring insights and expertise to buyers throughout the sales cycle. The methodology continues to put the customer at the center and directly addresses the struggle salespeople have to distinguish themselves as trusted partners and problem-solvers in the eyes of buyers.
The combination of proven sales methodology and technology built for sellers addresses many of the frustrations organizations still have with CRMs. Scout can be used as a standalone product or integrated with an existing CRM via two-way web services integration to improve data quality.
Byron Matthews
“Today’s sales technology isn’t helping sellers close more deals,” said Byron Matthews, president and CEO of Miller Heiman Group. “Unfortunately, many sales reps still see CRM as an administrative task and a mandate that’s taking time away from selling. We developed a solution that helps sellers win more and specifically reinforces their sales training in the moment. It exchanges the CRM stick for a carrot and incentivizes sellers to embrace technology.”
In addition to driving seller actions, Scout gives sales managers real-time insights into opportunities to more effectively coach sellers in a structured and personalized way. The platform also shows sales leaders the seller activity that most closely correlates with higher win rates, larger deal sizes and faster close times, enabling them to replicate best practices across the organization.
“Scout helps sellers see the move that moves the deal,” said Dana Hamerschlag, chief product officer at Miller Heiman Group. “The technology offers helpful data-driven suggestions to sellers and sales leaders based on the strategies that have proved effective for decades. Investments in technology without alignment to a sales process often disappoint. We are arming sales teams with a direct link between technology and methodology that drives transformational change in performance.”
For four decades, the Strategic Selling framework and the Blue Sheet have provided sales organizations a repeatable, consistent and scalable framework for winning complex sales that involve multiple decision-makers. Expanding this proven methodology, Strategic Selling with Perspective arms teams with an approach to add value earlier in the sales process and better distinguish themselves with buyers. Scout encourages adoption of the methodology at each stage of the sales process.
“Buyers are getting better at buying faster than sellers are getting better at selling,” Matthews said. “To win in today’s changing selling environment, sales professionals have to provide ‘perspective,’ whether that’s relevant research, an alternative solution or an unconventional idea. They must bring a point of view that challenges the customer to think about their objectives in a different way.”
Solution Enables Addressable Advertising to up to 1 Million Locations per Campaign Across Mobile, Desktop, and OTT/CTV Devices.
Simpli.fi, the programmatic advertising platform built for the scale of localization and personalization, announced Addressable Geo-Fencing, an addressable programmatic advertising solution that uses plat line and GPS data for precise location targeting at scale. For Simpli.fi, Addressable Geo-Fencing is the next logical step in the localization and personalization of programmatic advertising, and is built on Simpli.fi’s highly scalable technology stack.
Addressable Geo-Fencing is a highly efficient way to deliver programmatic advertising using household and business address data in CRM systems and offline data bases. The solution is an excellent complement to other address-based marketing initiatives such as addressable TV and direct mail as it provides extended reach, increased frequency, and improved attribution.
Simpli.fi’s solution meets a significant market need at a time when advertisers increasingly want to localize and personalize their campaigns, and when solutions like IP-based targeting are being hobbled by truncation of IP addresses in the programmatic bid stream.
“This is the ideal solution for any advertiser who has customer or prospect address lists that they would like to target digitally, and also those who measure increases in store visits by households that are exposed to their ads,” said Simpli.fi CEO Frost Prioleau. “Through plat line and GPS data, we can be certain that campaigns deploying Addressable Geo-Fencing are only served to the specified addresses. This is now one of the most accurate and most scalable addressable targeting solutions available.”
Delivers an Audience-First Approach of Accurate, Highly-Qualified Prospects
Social media is a top strategy for marketers to reach audiences, but it can be challenging to target the right professional users on social media platforms. Audience Extension Social combines Informa Engage‘s greatest asset – it’s audience of 30 million professional decision makers – with social media, a platform where a marketer’s audience spends a lot of time. Audience Extension Social can be added to a marketers existing program of banner advertising and email campaigns to create more robust engagement. On average, Audience Extension Social performs two to three times better than traditional banner advertising.
Seventy-one percent of B2B marketers rely on social media to engage decision makers and get buyers into the sales funnel. (Informa Engage) Audience Extension Social allows marketers to target a specific audience of highly-qualified prospects via social media platforms to drive engagement. Two Audience Extension Social capabilities are available to marketers: in-feed native ads on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and video ads on Facebook.
Audience Extension Social is a simple, quick solution to reach the engaged audiences Informa Engage interacts with daily. With only two steps the program is up and running: marketers submit their content and pick the target segment of professional users to receive content posts in their feeds. Also, a marketer can bring credibility to an Audience Extension Social campaign by associating with a respected Informa brand.
“Data is a strategic asset for Informa Engage. Marketers come to us because of our self-reported first-party database in dozens of industries and our audience quality,” said Joann Kropp, Vice President, Global Data Solutions, Informa Engage. “We’re able to direct our marketing solutions across industries to deliver marketers with a targeted audience. For example, if a marketer is looking to target engineers, we have a breadth of data to reach this audience across many Informa markets. We reach engineers in agriculture, automotive design, infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT). Our strong audience engagement across our websites, data products and events allows us to drive results for marketers.”
Examples of Audience Extension social media capabilities:
A leading manufacturer of nutritional supplements was interested in reaching buyers outside of retail environments. They chose Informa Engage due to its deep reach into the natural products and supplement industry and its ability to identify consumers with an active interest in the healthy lifestyle market through the New Hope Network. The supplements manufacturer used Informa Engage’s Audience Extension across the web, Facebook and Instagram to target individuals with a demonstrated interest in natural nutritional products. The program’s Facebook and Instagram click rate was 24 times traditional display and the Audience Extension click rate was six times traditional display.
A leading importer and distributor of lighting products wanted to promote a new video series. The goal was to drive awareness and continue to build on their strong and respected name in the industry. They chose Informa Engage because of its deep reach into the lighting and live entertainment industry through Live Design. Informa Engage created a highly targeted multi-channel marketing program to lighting designers utilizing email, video pre-roll and Audience Extension Social through Facebook. The program’s email campaign open rate was two times the standard open rate, the video pre-roll click rate was four times traditional display and the Facebook click rate was four times traditional display.
Socialbakers Analytics Report Predicts a France versus England Final?
With Belgium and Croatia lagging far behind, could this mean we have our World Cup finalists written in the social media stats?
The semi-finals kick-off today!
FIFA World Cup 2018 — the most watched live sports event on the planet is down to the semi-finalists fighting it out. With three matches to go to decide the World Champions in Russia, social media is bursting with excitements and fan-fights. With the top contenders out, it’s mostly left to choosing a team that has the most recent experience of winning the Cup- France.
Based on social media interactions, according to Socialbakers, France are hot favorites to win the FIFA World Cup for the second time in twenty years.
Socialbakers has recently released the report titled “2018 Social Media World Cup“.
In an hour’s time, Belgium would be contesting against Les Bleus to enter their maiden Final. Yet, we haven’t taken our eyes off what’s happening in Martech and FIFA- related analytics. Based on social media interactions, according to Socialbakers, France is going to win it for the second time in twenty years.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what transpired from social media analytics.
Semi-final Analytics from Socialbakers
Among the semi-finalists, France is still on top with over 4 million interactions, followed by the English team. Though England is nipping at their heels, having racked up 1.2 million interactions since their last win in the quarter-finals, they have a tougher fight against the ’98 semi-finalists, Croatia.
England players also had a strong weekend on social, with Harry Kane bumping Toni Kroos to take 4th place by doubling his overall interactions in just 5 days.
And Dele Alli didn’t only score on the pitch but also on social media, jumping three places to 13th with almost 250,000 interactions over the weekend.
The England team’s emotional celebrations both on the pitch and on social media clearly played into the hearts and minds of their fans – let’s see what Wednesday brings…
Scala Content Accelerator Helps Ensure Media Players Are Successfully Delivering Dynamically Changing Rich-Media Content to Any Screen
Scala announced the addition of a powerful content acceleration device, the Scala Content Accelerator, to their digital signage portfolio. Scala, part of the STRATACACHE family of digital media/ad tech solutions companies, is including the cache server solution to help clients optimize the digital signage experience by guaranteeing reliable, timely delivery of content to media players. The device was designed with the guidance of SuperLumin, a fellow company in the STRATACACHE family, and features a small footprint that can fit seamlessly into any network.
Scala Content Accelerator helps ensure media players are successfully delivering dynamically changing rich-media content to any screen without having to worry about network bandwidth issues and content delays, keeping an entire digital signage library accessible on a local LAN. As digital signage continues to evolve, becoming more dynamic and interactive, frequently changing media relies heavily on internet connectivity for content delivery.
“Current solutions and hardware options can lead to playback and performance issues due to content volume and network bandwidth,” said Joe Sullivan, Scala COO. “For retailers, especially those with lower network bandwidth, this problem can lead to a frustrating or interrupted customer experience and increased wait times. We’re solving this by providing instant access to content even during periods of high network congestion, decreasing money spent on extra bandwidth, while at the same time optimizing the customer experience.”
Chris Riegel
The addition of Scala Content Accelerator follows the news of last November’s launch of Scala-branded media players, which drew on the experience and expertise of STRATACACHE to develop and distribute the hardware, similar to SuperLumin’s role in Scala Content Accelerator coming to market.
“SuperLumin and Scala product teams quickly identified the benefit content acceleration can bring to Scala’s customers, particularly with the focus Scala has on providing retailers with intelligent visual and consumer engagement solutions. The team worked quickly to bring this digital signage solution to market in less than six months’ time,” said Chris Riegel, STRATACACHE CEO.
Seasoned Software Executive Brings Diverse Background in Data Management, Virtualization, and Artificial Intelligence
MapD Technologies, the Extreme Analytics platform provider, announced the hiring of Silicon Valley engineering executive David Besemer as Vice President of Engineering. Besemer is a veteran of prominent technology companies including Cisco, Composite Software, and NeXT, as well as founder of two successful firms.
David Besemer
Besemer comes to MapD from Cisco Systems where he was Chief Technology Officer for Data Virtualization, a position created through Cisco’s acquisition of Composite Software in 2013. Composite Software pioneered data virtualization, helping complex companies seamlessly leverage data from across the enterprise. In his time at Composite Software, as VP of Engineering and then CTO, he oversaw the engineering team that built the award-winning Composite Information Server; led product strategy, and evangelized the benefits of data virtualization to the market.
Prior to his time at Composite Software, Besemer served as a principal of two software consulting firms that served major enterprises, including The Walt Disney Company and Apple Computer. He also founded and sold the online company Cognitio Products, and served in software management and/or engineering positions with NeXT Computer, Kidder-Peabody & Company, and General Electric.
“David is an expert in the fields of data management and data virtualization. He takes great pride in developing leading-edge, high performance technologies, as well as the teams that make those technologies possible,” said Todd Mostak, co-founder and CEO of MapD. “David’s executive experience of scaling teams with great cultures, combined with his deep knowledge in big data, will be of immense value as we continue to build on our strengths in GPU-accelerated analytics.”
“GPU processing is changing the equation for companies faced with an overwhelming amount of data. MapD is unique in its ability to query and analyze large amounts of data in real-time,” commented Besemer. “By building a system from the ground up to fully harness the massive parallelism of GPUs, MapD is empowering its customers to extract the full value from their data. It’s my goal to contribute to this success by attracting and inspiring the kind of world-class engineering talent that will further strengthen MapD’s open-source software core.”
Besemer holds a master’s degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Michigan State University. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on the subjects of data analytics and the Internet of Everything.
FindBestSEO Has Released Its July Rankings for the Best Seo Agencies in the Industry, with Boostability, Digital Marketing Agency, and Ignite Digital Topping the List. The New Monthly Award Is Designed to Highlight Companies That Have Proven Themselves to Be Leaders in the Digital Marketing World
FindBestSEO continues its practice of new ranking of the 10 best SEO firms each month, and the winners always represent a range of unique services and statistical analysis. The top three SEO firms for July 2018 are Boostability, Digital Marketing Agency, and Ignite Digital.
Search Engine Optimization is a key element of growth for every modern business. And while it can be difficult to select the right partner to improve your SEO, few investments will provide a greater return for an online business. The goal of FindBestSEO is to rank the most influential and fastest-growing agencies in the search engine marketing space, a goal that we take very seriously.
Boostability ranked number one once again in the July 2018 list of Best SEO companies on FindBestSEO. As a top SEO agency, Boostability is dedicated to providing excellent digital marketing and search engine optimization services. Their marketing professionals can do anything from market analysis to keyword research, optimizing each aspect of a client’s whole online presence. They can do local search engine optimization for small businesses, as well as run global campaigns for e-commerce sites and bigger companies with a larger customer base.
Digital Marketing Agency, a leading search engine optimization firm, ranked as the second best online marketing agency for July Digital Marketing Agency is fully dedicated to learning about and understanding their client’s business. By building a relationship with each of their clients, they can ensure the marketing strategy is built with the sole focus of solving the problems the business faces. Each of DMA’s marketing campaigns are built with the client’s needs in mind to solve the greatest marketing problems.
As a leading search engine optimization firm, Ignite Digital has been providing digital solutions to companies for over a decade. Their solutions combine content marketing, social media (community managers), WordPress/Magento Website development, enterprise mobile applications to enrich the client’s campaigns. Ignite Digital rounded out the top three on July’s list of best search engine optimization companies.
New Premium Data from the Highest Quality Available Offline Data Sources Offers Marketers Plethora of Targeting Options
Leading online data marketplace Datonics has nearly doubled its data taxonomy from 550 prepackaged segments to over 1,000 by onboarding premium data from the highest quality available offline data sources. These offline data companies have chosen to offer their data via Datonics on a white label basis under the Datonics brand.
Complementing Datonics’ existing offline data pool, these new segments offer marketers enhanced targeting options. For example, new transactional past-purchase data and household data can be used widely in many campaigns, while more specific data sets such as financial data and life-trigger events data allow marketers to more precisely reach their desired audiences.
The data can also be used by marketers in specific industries to reach niche groups. An outdoor product company can target homeowners with home values over $250k and length of residence over three years who have purchased gardening supplies before. A toy company can reach parents who have an affinity to be influenced by children, and a technology company can reach “digital dads.”
“Marketers are increasingly looking to data to drive campaign results and achieve not only maximum reach but also engage with the right consumers,” said Michael Benedek, CEO, Datonics. “We are happy to expand our data taxonomy and be able to offer marketers more data segments and an increased variety of data to help them achieve the best ROI possible on their programmatic campaigns.”
The Datonics data now available to advertisers includes 1,000+ pre-packaged and an unlimited number of custom keyword-derived segments, based on high-quality search, purchase intent, life-stage and B2B data on 200+ million North American users. Datonics data is available in all of the leading DSPs and DMPs including Adobe, Amobee, AppNexus, Centro, Google Ad Manager, Krux Salesforce, MediaMath, Neustar, Oath & more.
Retreaver Announced That It Has Joined HubSpot as a Connect Certified Partner. the Retreaver Integration for HubSpot Makes It Possible for Customers to Fetch Contact Details About Callers and Track Calls from Any Source Through to the HubSpot Contact’s Timeline
Retreaver announced that it has joined HubSpot as a Connect Certified Partner. HubSpot, a leading CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service platform, works hand-in-hand with Connect Partners to help grow their business through co-marketing and business development campaigns to increase shared customers. Connect Partners are independent software vendors who have built an integration with HubSpot and passed certification.
Retreaver allows HubSpot customers to integrate inbound phone calls with their marketing campaigns like any other inbound channel; Fetching contact details about callers from HubSpot CRM, and track calls from any source through to the corresponding HubSpot contact timeline. In addition, customers are able to add contact data to their inbound calls in real-time to inform Service Hub agents, drive Marketing Hub workflows and trigger Sales Hub automations.
“We’re very excited to have Retreaver join our Connect Program,” said Brad Coffey, Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot. “Their integration adds meaningful value to the inbound ecosystem and we’re thrilled to have them onboard. The integration will make it even easier for our customers to meet and exceed their growth goals throughout all stages of the flywheel.”
HubSpot’s Connect Program is an ecosystem of valuable third-party integrations. Certified Partners comply with a set of requirements in addition to hitting set milestones for amount of installs and positive reviews from customers to receive the HubSpot stamp of approval.
“We’re very excited to be working with HubSpot and to be launching as a Certified Integration Partner,” said Jason Jay, CEO at Retreaver. “We believe our Retreaver Integration for HubSpot delivers the most complete inbound call tracking solution for our mutual customers and partners.”
Personalized Product Popularity, Trending and Review Messaging Drives Online Sales
N Brown has seen a massive 12% uplift in new visitor conversion using the combined eCommerce software platforms Monetate and Taggstar, to optimize and personalize its social proof product messages. The online retailer has been using the advanced testing, segmentation and geo-location capabilities of Monetate to tailor the real-time Taggstar messages on its power brands JD Williams, SimplyBe and Jacamo, since 2017.
Taggstar’s social proof software pulls crowd-sourced real-time data about product popularity and other trends derived from N Brown customers’ browsing history. The messages include the number of people viewing an item, product reviews and ratings, top-trending items and product scarcity.
Using Monetate’s segmentation and personalization tool, N Brown can now change the look and feel of the Taggstar messages, their style, the text and the color, according to different customer groups. New customers and returning customers, male or female shoppers, and customers buying a one-off item, for example, will see different social proof messages. These optimized messages are proven, through A/B testing, to increase engagement and sales and to reduce basket abandonment.
During a three-month trial, N Brown tracked additional revenue of c.£2 million ($2.6 million) using Taggstar alone, with Simply Be conversion rates rising by up to 2.7%.
Paul Hackett
Paul Hackett, UX Testing & Optimization Manager at N Brown Group said, “It’s very easy to change the Taggstar experience for our different brands. A simple JavaScript, applied via Monetate, allows us to adapt the look and feel of Taggstar messages to suit our different customer segments. Taggstar helped us to define the best message combinations, and that’s pushed our results to add another 12% to Simply Be new visitor conversion rates.”
Taggstar and N Brown have already received eCommerce award short-listings in the last year from Drapers, and Retail Systems and was the silver medal winner at the Tech.Awards 2017 by Retail Week for its work with N Brown. Monetate is a Top-Rated Personalization tool by Internet Retailer and TrustRadius for several years running.
The Golden Link Awards, Organized by Rakuten Marketing, Recognized and Celebrated Excellence and Innovation of the Industry’s Top-Performing Digital Marketing Leaders
Rakuten Marketing, a leading technology company that enables brands to increase sales through data-driven marketing, announced the winners of the 16th annual Golden Link Awards that took place June 27 at the Rakuten Marketing 2018 DealMaker event in New York. More than 350 leading advertisers, publishers and agencies in the Rakuten Marketing Affiliate network attended the awards ceremony.
The Golden Link Awards – hosted by New York-based actor and Saturday Night Live stand-up comedian, writer and cast member, Alex Moffat – recognized and celebrated excellence and innovation of the industry’s top-performing digital marketing leaders. Golden Link Award category winners include the following:
Advertiser and Publisher Collaboration: Gilt & Dealmoon
Affiliate Manager of the Year (Advertiser): Neil Baker – JP Morgan Chase
Affiliate Manager of the Year (Publisher): Jillian Posada – TopCashBack
Best Global Strategy: MatchesFashion
Best Multi-Channel Performance: PacSun
Lifetime Achievement Award: Kevin Joyce – Brad’s Deals
“It is exciting to celebrate so many of our valued clients as this year’s Golden Link Award winners,” said Stuart Simms, President of Rakuten Marketing. “Recognizing the innovation and hard-work by all of our advertisers and publishers in the Rakuten Marketing Affiliate Network is absolutely priceless, and we are thrilled to play a part in their success.”
Golden Link Awards judges are composed of leading industry influencers, experts and executives. Winners were selected based on nominations from staff and clients. This year’s judges included:
Melissa Campanelli, Editor-in-Chief and Content Director, Total Retail, Co-Founder, Women in Retail Leadership Circle
Susan Borst, Vice President, Interactive Advertising Bureau
At the event, Rakuten Marketing leading retail client, Footlocker, teamed with Rakuten Marketing to hold a Footlocker.com ‘Sneaker Cam’ contest. Attendees ‘dressed to impress’ with their best cocktail attire and ‘coolest kicks’ for a chance to win the ‘hottest sneaker/cocktail attire combo’ prize. The two lucky winners received a $250 Foot Locker gift card.
The Rakuten Marketing global affiliate network empowers marketers to engage shoppers across the entire consumer journey. Rakuten Marketing provides the innovative tools, technology and strategy to enable advertiser and publisher partnerships to reach new audiences and influence repeat purchases while driving incremental revenue.
New True Reach Metric Finally Gives Marketers Influencer Campaign Measurement Equivalent to Other Media Types
Buzzoole, the leading influencer marketing platform and service in Europe, announced the launch of Buzzoole True Reach.Buzzoole becomes the first influencer platform to provide information on the true reach of influencers’ posts thanks to its collaboration with Nielsen, market leading global measurement company.
True Reach is based on a proprietary algorithm designed by Nielsen to help brands and agencies understand the true reach of influencer marketing and establish a metric that can for the first time define how many users were actually reached during an influencer marketing campaign.
This new measurement activity – independently developed by Nielsen to create a set of variables – will be implemented by Buzzoole combining a number of key social media performance indicators including (but not limited to) follower base, post frequency and engagement rates with a custom survey that determines the effective readership.
The new True Reach model is able to provide an estimate of how many people an influencer marketing activation actually reaches and enables advertisers to get a more precise estimate of the impact of their campaigns.
The algorithm implemented by Buzzoole in its IT systems establishes a ratio between editorial activity on social media and gross reach (‘opportunities to see’) as determined by the survey results. The variables considered for this activity include:
Social following: number of followers an influencer has on each social channel
Effective readership: a visibility metric based on data collected through brand surveys and the number of followers who claim to have seen a message
Influencer interaction rate: number of interactions on a single post by followers
Influencer activity: number of posts made per month by the influencer
Data collected through the model is then pushed through Nielsen’s proprietary ad recall index, which illustrates the number of followers who state to have seen a post published by an influencer. This allows brands to create clear ROI metrics for influencer campaigns including true reach, engagement and ad recall. The result is a measurable media buy metric that is clearly reported through the Buzzoole client dashboard.
Jenni Morrison
Having recently launched a new office in the US, Buzzoole finds this metric of influencer measurement crucial for success within the industry.
“It is clear that influencer marketing works, but what has been missing is a Nielsen-powered metric that lets those campaigns stand shoulder to shoulder with more traditional media buys,” says Jenni Morrison, US Country Manager at Buzzoole. “Our new True Reach metric provides detailed information that brands can use to inform campaign spend and effectively measure ROI for the very first time.”
Empower Yourself to Feel, Express, and Share More Deeply and Freely Without the Clutter and Noise of Today’s Social Media
Avalon, a new social networking app from Twiin Inc., is an evolutionary step forward with a more human, streamlined, and private way to communicate and connect online. Tapping into extensive research in the science of human responding and emotion, Avalon recreates real-time social feedback by modeling the real world experience of face-to-face sharing with a close contact. Unlike other social media apps, it gives you a deeper understanding and the ability to communicate independent of spoken and written language. It’s an alternative to current social networks that are rife with privacy breaches and distant connections. It has no unsolicited ads, does not sell its data, nor does it offer programming interfaces to third-party companies. Digital privacy has been one of the most controversial and polarizing issues of 2018. From numerous scandals to Europe’s sweeping GDPR legislation, consumers are more aware of and more concerned about their privacy and data usage than ever before.
Avalon’s founders at Twiin, Inc. were inspired to start Avalon after years of identifying a trend in escalating anger and isolation among consumers that was correlated, in large part, with their increased use of digital social networks that are structured to focus users on comparing their lives rather than exchanging meaningful information with others. Avalon also attributed this negative trend to social media companies not prioritizing privacy concerns, and not offering consumers peace-of-mind, without their having to deep dive into complicated settings, ad blockers, or other cumbersome data management procedures.
Avalon also provides users with an experience that better reflects natural offline interactions and emotional states. Twiin, Inc. CEO and Founder James Mercs and his team have created a next-generation social network that propagates the positive aspects of human understanding in relationships while assuring users that privacy is paramount and simple to achieve: “Awareness and happiness are the bottom line of why we created Avalon. A key part of happiness is meaningful trusted connections which lead to better awareness of yourself and others; and ultimately, we hope more mindfulness.”
Mercs is a creative technologist with decades of experience in technology and entertainment, including leading teams to several Emmy and Technical Oscar awards. At Twiin Inc., he has assembled an exceptional group of innovators with a history of creating some of the most iconic, and successful products in use today. By design, Twiin Inc.’s team is an eclectic collection of disciplines and includes researchers, content creators, and technologists from all over the world. “We wanted to represent everyone and provide them with a service to better understand their own experiences and each other,” Mercs said. Individually, members of the Twiin Inc. team have pioneered the gaming industry, mobile devices, space systems, entertainment, healthcare, and digital communication.
“People have been thrown into a digital communication environment in the past ten to twenty years without any human evolutionary consideration,” says Mercs. “Digital communication is not going to go away, but we can radically change its forward trajectory for the better. Avalon aims to put human context into online communication.”
For the first time, users can understand their thoughts, physical, and emotional responses to the massive amount of input they receive from social media. Mindfulness will now be within daily reach for many, and not just an elusive concept.
Sentiment Feedback is Avalon’s proprietary, patent-pending technology that can securely extract sentiment consistently and accurately from any message, media or text. Avalon’s Universal Icon Language (UIL) represents human emotions scientifically and accurately, removing the ambiguity of user interpretation of emojis, “likes,” and other icon-based reaction systems.
Avalon’s privacy-based architecture is based on a mechanism called the Bubble, which is the building block behind its mobile architecture. While the Avalon app can be installed by anyone with a mobile phone, each unique user can define their Bubble to identify established real-world relationships from casual associations. This powerful tool puts the user in control of their data and relationships. At any moment, users can be as open or as private as they choose to be with only a simple flick of a switch.
Users can also join Communities. A Community is a large number of users, who may or may not share a close relationship, but who share a common interest. Communities are created and managed by an influencer, brand or artist. Avalon users can search and join public Communities or be invited to a private Community by someone in their Bubble. The activity in a Community, or even the Community’s existence, is never visible or discoverable by non-members unless specified. “It’s the best of both worlds, you can explore and interact with the entire planet while keeping your private life isolated,” Mercs added.
Unmatched in its dual role of footballing holy grail and financial black hole, the Panini Sticker Book helps to connect fans to the World Cup, attracting thousands of fans around the world each year. In order curb my sticker collecting obsession – I am only 50 stickers away from completing the book – I wanted to utilise my excitement in more interesting way.
Enter Fred Maude, Performance Manager at NMPI and the genius behind previous efforts of Machine Learning. He has been busy hoarding reems of player data to apply to his new footballing-based algorithm.
His method involved adopting the random forest technique, which looked at previous games with known results and supplied the algorithm with only the team’s line up data. Using this data, the machine then made a decision based on what it thought the result would be. Then able to match these against the real results, the tests logged a success rate of 64%. Considering the volatility of football, as I am sure anyone who watches the game understands, we considered this as a sign of success.
Alongside Fred’s machine, we’ve asked two very different figures to put their theories forward.
Man – Max Flajsner, Head of Performance
With a solid footballing background and a leading role in my sticker book efforts, Max is perfectly placed to represent all of humanity.
In explaining his approach, Max revealed “My strategy mainly rested on Mousa Dembele. I just love him. So to hear he won’t be starting had a huge impact on my decision-making. Belgium out in the quarters, Germany to ruthlessly defend their title.”
2nd Round – Columbia v England, Uruguay v Portugal, France v Croatia, Brazil v Mexico, Germany v Poland, Spain v Egypt, Argentina v Peru, Germany v Costa Rica
Q’ Finals – England v Germany, Portugal v France, Brazil v Germany, Spain v Argentina
Eight years ago, Paul the Octopus shot to fame by successfully predicting the results of the 2010 World Cup. Unfortunately, in this endeavor there are very few publicly accessible predictive octopi left.
My final option was my girlfriend. Upon being asked about her predictive strategy for this year’s tournament, she replied, “If I’m completely honest Alex, I just want this all to be over.” Perfect.
After some negotiations around where I would buy dinner, I managed to seek out an infographic. My goodness! I hope she’s right.
2nd Round – Columbia v England, Uruguay v Portugal, France v Argentina, Brazil v South Korea, Belgium v Japan, Spain v Russia, Nigeria v Denmark, Germany v Costa Rica
Q’Finals – Germany v England, Portugal v Argentina, Brazil v Germany, Spain v Nigeria
Finally, the one we’ve all been waiting for. Get your betting apps at the ready, because this one’s the winner. Here’s Fred…
“The algorithm was designed to account for individual player performance over the last 12 months, along with national team form and results. This included a penalty bot should a knock-out game end in a draw. From my testing against Premier League games, I was right more often that not in the predicted outcome. I’m confident I won’t be far off.”
With Croatia and Morocco in the semi-final, and Argentina not making it out of their group, Fred’s machine has put its neck on the line. However, if he is right, we’re in for one hell of a tournament.
2nd Round – Senegal v England, Russia v Morocco, France v Nigeria, Brazil v Sweden, Belgium v Poland, Spain v Uruguay, Croatia v Australia, Germany v Costa Rica
Q’Finals – Germany v Senegal, Morocco v Nigeria, Brazil v Belgium, Spain v Croatia
S’Finals – Germany v Croatia, Brazil v Morocco
Final – Germany vs Brazil
Winners – Brazil
And there you have it. Tune in in four weeks’ time to see who triumphed in what Netflix is already touting as its next feature film – Man vs Octopus vs Machine.
Today, Forrester announced that it has acquired FeedbackNow, a maker of physical buttons and monitoring software that companies deploy to measure, analyze, and improve customer experience. Forrester also acquired GlimpzIt, an AI and machine-learning provider based in San Francisco.
Forrester’s Aim is to Give Companies the CX Cloud Tools and Analytical Capabilities to Identify and Fix Experiences Immediately
At the time of this announcement, George F. Colony, Forrester Chairman and CEO, said, “CX can be a powerful competitive and operational weapon, but CX teams are burdened with insights that are too late and too limited.”
The acquisitions of FeedbackNow and GlimpzIt are part of Forrester’s plan to build a real-time CX Cloud, integrating a range of inputs to help companies monitor and improve the experience.
The Forrester CX Cloud would now deliver —
Real-time customer feedback from the social sites, physical devices like mobile and desktop, specialized apps,
Insights from embedded digital versions in the websites and on mobile devices
Priority-based feedback with analytics
A real-time distribution of critical feedback to operational sites
FeedbackNow represents a high-volume input source for the real-time CX Cloud, generating over 200,000 pieces of feedback per day from its “smiley boxes.”
The Latest Acquisitions Pit Forrester with Top, Intelligent CX Cloud Makers
Currently, Forrester is a dominant physical feedback player in Europe, with sizeable growth-rate in the. The GlimpzIt technology will be deployed to extend the analytics engine in the real-time CX Cloud. This engine will enable companies to analyze and correlate incoming feedback to identify the insights that matter most and the actions they must take immediately to have the greatest impact on customers.
In the age of the customer, companies must continuously monitor and improve the experience or risk repelling and offending their clientele. Long checkout lines in a retail store or poor service from a financial services provider will no longer be tolerated — the real-time CX Cloud will give companies the tools and analytical capabilities to identify and fix experiences immediately.
The risks are high.
Forrester has documented that companies with highly rated customer experiences increase revenue at twice the rate of those with poorly rated experiences.
George added, “The market has reached a point where customers expect companies to rapidly respond to feedback, wherever and however that feedback is provided. In a market where companies win or lose on the battleground of customer experience, the real-time CX Cloud will enable clients to realize the full potential of their CX efforts.”
Through the acquisitions of FeedbackNow and GlimpzIt, Forrester is changing the CX game. It is expanding the range of CX inputs, enabling immediate insights, and prioritizing those experiences that will create the greatest financial value. The most important element is speed, enabling CX to work at the velocity of customer expectations.
Currently, Forrester is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. We work with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies that drive growth. Forrester’s unique insights are grounded in annual surveys of more than 675,000 consumers and business leaders worldwide, rigorous and objective methodologies, and the shared wisdom of our most innovative clients.
Acquisition Expands Mimecast to Offer Cybersecurity Awareness Capabilities with Leading Training Content, Risk Scoring and Real-World Simulation Attack Scenarios
Mimecast Limited, a leading email and data security company, announced it has acquired Ataata, Inc. Ataata is a cyber security training and awareness platform designed to reduce human error in the workplace and help enable organizations to become more secure by changing the security culture of their employees. The acquisition will allow customers to measure cyber risk training effectiveness by converting behavior observations into actionable risk metrics for security professionals. The addition of security awareness training and risk scoring and analysis strengthens Mimecast’s cyber resilience for email capabilities.
According to research Mimecast conducted with Vanson Bourne, 90 percent of organizations have seen phishing attacks increase over the last year, yet only 11 percent responded that they continuously train employees on how to spot cyberattacks. This spans organizations of all segments and sizes including major airlines, government, healthcare – or any other industry. Training is considered hard to implement as these organizations often lack resources and the right content to help raise the awareness of what to spot. The acquisition of Ataata will offer customers a single, cloud platform that is engineered to mitigate risk and reduce employee security mistakes by calculating employee security risk based on sentiment and behavior while connecting them with relevant training that is content based on their score and recommended areas for improvement. The solution is designed to allow security teams to dial up security settings at the employee level by leveraging real-world data to train employees to spot threats that are targeting them today.
“Cybersecurity awareness training has traditionally been viewed as a check the box action for compliance purposes, boring videos with PhDs rambling about security or even less than effective gamification which just doesn’t work. As cyberattacks continue to find new ways to bypass traditional threat detection methods, it’s essential to educate your employees in a way that changes behavior,” said Peter Bauer, chief executive officer and founder of Mimecast. “According to a report from Gartner, ‘the security awareness computer-based training market will grow to more than $1.1 billion by year-end 2020.’ The powerful combination of Mimecast’s cyber resilience for email capabilities paired with Ataata’s employee training and risk scoring will help customers enhance their cyber resilience efforts.”
Michael Madon
“Human error is involved in the majority of all security breaches, and these casual mistakes can cost organizations money, their reputation – and employees, potentially their job,” said Michael Madon, chief executive officer and co-founder of Ataata. “Organizations need to understand that employees are their last line of defense. Cybersecurity training and awareness doesn’t need to be difficult or boring. Training and awareness is needed to help mitigate these internal risks. Our customers rely on engaging content at the human level, which helps to change behavior at the employee-level. We’re excited to join forces with Mimecast to help customers build a stronger cyber resilience strategy that includes robust content, risk scoring and real-world attack simulation — going way beyond basic security awareness capabilities.”
