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Tunity Launches B2B Analytics Division to Measure Uncaptured OOH TV Audiences

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MTS Staff Writer
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Tunity Launches B2B Analytics Division to Measure Uncaptured OOH TV Audiences

Tunity Analytics Provides Data and Insights on Overlooked Tv Audience to Networks and Advertisers

Tunity, a technology that allows users to hear live audio from muted televisions directly on their mobile device, announced the debut of Tunity Analytics.

An industry first, Tunity Analytics captures minute-by-minute OOH audience data on consumer usage of linear channels. This enables broadcast companies and advertisers to see next day (and soon real-time) estimates of these numbers for all major competitive channels by venue. Until now, this level of viewer insight has never been made available to networks.

The product analyzes extensive OOH data pulled through Tunity’s consumer app, including the start and end time of a tuning session, age and gender data, and precise measures of location.

Also Read: Tunity Strengthens Leadership Team with Former Nielsen and MGM Heavyweights to Build Analytics Product

Highlights of the product include:

  • Picks up viewing of linear channels on muted TV sets and regardless of the venue’s ambient noise – a viewing segment that audio-based methods are currently missing
  • Measures the dynamics of shifts in attention as people change from channel to channel in multi-channel environments
  • Reports on individual networks by age/gender and venue on a near real-time basis (additional segments beyond age and gender will be available shortly)
  • Delivers user-friendly reporting with data consistent with GRP’s and Impressions as has been looked at traditionally in the video ad sales marketplace
  • Acts as an add-on to Nielsen’s In-Home Measurement, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of how and where content is consumed

This data is used to calculate “Tunity Shares”— a relative measure showing the amount of tuning during the average minute to a program, network, or daypart compared to the total OOH usage during the average minute from a benchmark month. This allows for direct comparisons across all events.

Also Read: Nielsen Launches Audience-Based Forecasting Solution For Linear Television

“We realized that these insights were valuable, so we created a model of the data which can be used in combination with traditional video metrics and fill in this missing piece,” said Yaniv Davidson, CEO. “There is an increased importance in audience efficiencies, targeting, and segmentation for TV networks and advertisers. Tunity Analytics bridges this massive gap in the marketplace, delivering a new method of measurement and a new metric to truly reflect these audiences.”

Most measures in the OOH measurement space identify programming using audio methods – but muted viewing accounts for more than half of OOH usage to linear channels. Additionally, in a multi-channel environment, audio is not distinguishable between the channel playing in the background and the one that is actually being viewed. Tunity Analytics creates a true OOH measurement, which gives a clear distinction between those who view content in a bar, gym, or airport while not reporting those who are viewing TV as a guest within someone else’s home.

Tunity Analytics provides this competitive knowledge and insights to both the buy and sell side of the advertising business on this previously overlooked and unreported audience.

“It’s time for TV networks and advertisers to think about OOH in a new way, rather than just as expanded in-home,” said Paul Lindstrom, Head of Research and Analytics. “Consumption habits have changed and the value of OOH in the video landscape is undeniable. Let’s stop treating these viewers as if they were non-existent.”

Recommended Read: 3 Innovations Driving Out-of-Home in 2018

UnGagged TechBytes with Greg Gifford, Vice President of Search, DealerOn

By
Rohan Jagan
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Greg Gifford
UnGagged TechBytes with Greg Gifford, Vice President of Search at DealerOn

Greg Gifford
Vice President, Search, DealerOn

The much-awaited UnGagged conference is to be held in London from 11-13 June, 2018. Designed to uncover some of the biggest and most profitable opportunities in digital marketing, UnGagged features a host of speakers and experts who would give the latest on SEO and how to leverage it to boost your business. We spoke to Greg Gifford, Vice President of Search, DealerOn to figure out the latest trends in local SEO and how SMBs can benefit from it.


Tell us about your journey at DealerOn? What is the biggest SEO challenge that DealerOn faces?

I started at DealerOn just shy of 3 years ago. They’re primarily a website provider for car dealers, but they wanted to start selling SEO, and they came after me really hard because I was pretty visible in the automotive space as “the SEO guy”. I started in June of 2015, and we started selling SEO shortly thereafter. I didn’t want to move to company HQ in Washington, DC, so they opened a satellite office in Dallas. Fast forward to 3 years later and we’ve got almost 30 people working at the Dallas office!

The biggest SEO challenge we face is twofold – most dealers don’t understand how SEO works, or trust that it’s important, yet it’s the source of the majority of their website traffic and leads. You’ll have dealers that have no problem spending 15 to 20 grand a month on PPC, but then they freak out at spending a few thousand on SEO. So, there’s a lot of education that needs to happen to bridge that gap. The other side of the challenge is that there are a ton of vendors who sell super cheap SEO that won’t really do anything for dealers, but since dealers don’t know the difference, they go with the cheapest option. Again, there’s a lot of education necessary so that dealers understand what’s important for SEO and what’s going to make a difference for their site and traffic, so they’re able to avoid wasting money on the vendors who won’t really be helping them

How can small businesses benefit from focusing on local SEO?

Since Google uses a different algorithm to determine local search results, any small business with a physical location (or that serves customers in a particular geographic area) would be best served with Local SEO. There’s quite a bit of overlap between Local and traditional SEO, so there’s going to be some benefit regardless… But if a business invests in the extra aspects included in Local SEO, they’re maximizing their chances of showing up in local searches. If you’re missing a few key elements, you might not show up in the map pack at all. In many cases, there are far more than 10 competitors in a local area, so Local SEO is absolutely necessary for any business that wants to show up at the top of page one results.

Could you give us three tips for local brands to optimize their website to leverage Local SEO?

  1. Test everything yourself. Local is incredibly intricate and complicated – what works in one city won’t necessarily work in another… And what works for one business won’t necessarily work for another. It’s important to test things to make sure that you’re optimizing things that will really move the needle.
  2. Localized content is key. I’m not talking about packing in city keywords to some magic percentage – I’m talking about truly localized content. Think of it this way – if you can take the content from your site and change the business name and city and put it on another similar business’ website in another city, does the content still work? If it does, then it’s not really localized for your city or neighborhood, and you’ve got some work to do. Actually talk about the local area, and make sure you emphasize what your business actually does.
  3. Blog regularly, and don’t just talk about yourself. Share interesting/useful info about the local area. People will get bored if you’re only ever pushing out thinly-veiled marketing posts. Writing about the local area will keep people interested in what you’re writing, and has the added benefit of increasing local relevancy for the whole site.

Register Now Use Promo Code – itech10 (for a 10% discount)

What metrics do you track to determine the success of an SEO campaign?

It’s important to realize that what we, as marketers, interpret as success doesn’t usually line up with what business owners consider to be success. Perfect example – we had a client quit at the end of his 12-month contract, and were blown away because we had doubled his organic traffic and more than doubled leads from organic traffic… but he was selling fewer cars than he was selling a year ago, so there was no ROI for him. Regardless of the fact that we were clearly successful in our eyes, we were a failure in his. You’ve got to talk to clients and see what’s important to them. In most cases, you’ve got to figure out how to tie your efforts into their bottom line. Ranking data doesn’t mean squat… The only thing that affects someone’s bottom line is organic traffic and organic leads, and how they increase over time.

If you’ve got a client that will share sales data with you, it’s awesome to tie in traffic and leads to actual dollars. If you know their close rate and what an average sale is worth, you can assign a dollar value to increased traffic and leads, and that will make any business owner incredibly happy.

What do you believe are the main factors that determine relevancy for Local SEO?

Local links and website content are by far the most important factors. GMB info is important as well, and reviews are also a big piece of the puzzle. Proximity and location are huge factors, but business owners can’t optimize for those factors.

How would you describe UnGagged as a Movie Title?
I’d probably go with Baadasssss!

What drew you to UnGagged? Which Sessions are you looking forward to?

I got asked to keynote… but after going to UnGagged last year in Vegas, I’m definitely pumped to hit up the original in London. I’m always psyched to hear Marty Weintraub, and I’m excited to see Dawn Anderson, Aleyda Solis, Kristine Schachinger, and Hannah Thorpe – their sessions all look awesome. Plus I’m excited to get a photo with Bartosz Goralewicz and Joe Sinkwitz, cause Facebook always confuses the 3 of us since we’re all so damn handsome.

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

engage:BDR Enters into New Programmatic Advertising Agreements with Two of Asia’s Largest Programmatic Advertising Companies

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MTS Staff Writer
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engage:BDR Enters into New Programmatic Advertising Agreements with Two of Asia’s Largest Programmatic Advertising Companies
engage:BDR Enters into New Programmatic Advertising Agreements with Two of Asia’s Largest Programmatic Advertising Companies

Continues the Rapid Expansion of Its Programmatic Advertising Business into the Fast-Growing Chinese and Indian Markets

engage:BDR has announced that it has signed agreements with two of Asia’s largest programmatic advertising companies to integrate them into the engage:BDR programmatic platform. The first of the two Company’s is Chinese based Yeahmobi and the second has requested that its identity remain confidential for commercial reasons. The projected 2018 calendar year revenue for these two contracts is AUD $4 million to AUD $8 million.

At the time of this announcement, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Ted Dhanik said in relation to the new contracts, “We are very excited to be working with two of Asia’s largest programmatic advertising platforms representing advertisers who can now connect with the publishers on engage:BDR’s programmatic platform. engage:BDR believes they will make a significant contribution to the revenues and earnings of the business very soon, and for the years ahead.”

Yeahmobi is an advertising platform designed to help mobile technology companies achieve global growth, acquire active users and better monetise their inventory. It is headquartered in China and also has offices in Japan, the USA, and Germany.

Yeahmobi focuses on technology, data, and innovation and has assisted the internationalisation of a number of Chinese enterprises through marketing technological solutions and financial services directed towards building a global business ecosystem with their international partners.

Yeahmobi operates in the field of consumer apps, mobile games, cross-border e-commerce, internet finance, lifestyle, travel and other industries, covering over 200 countries and regions and delivering global coverage at significant scale.

Yeahmobi reported USD $97 million in revenue and a profit of USD $11 million in the first half year results of 2016 as financial disclosure for a capital raising it was conducting. As a private company, it does not generally disclose its financial results.

Yeahmobi CEO and co-founder, Xiaowu Zou was recently included in 2017 “Forbes 30 under 30 in Asia”, the annual ranking of Asia’s brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers.

Yeahmobi has client and partner agreements with a number of well known international brands including Sega, Yahoo, Baidu, and Gameloft.

The second company is one of India’s largest mobile-first digital advertisers. Although headquartered in India the company has about 20 offices around the world with over 1,000 employees and is a true global digital advertiser. The company is a private company and accordingly doesn’t generally disclose its financial results. However, recent media reports on the company have suggested that the company has current revenues of over USD $300 million and reaches over 1.6 billion unique mobile devices worldwide.

The company is investing heavily in the acquisition of App publishers through openRTB as well as the development of a proprietary in-app header bidding solution.

This focus is mainly attributed to the huge growth of the “App economy” seen in recent years, which is expected to grow to USD $950 billion in 2018.

The company has previously reported that its customers include; Adidas, BBC Radio, Canon, Lancôme, Macy’s, Microsoft, Nokia, and Yamaha.

How Programmatic Advertising Works

Programmatic advertisers primarily act for either advertisers or publishers of digital media. An advertiser is any company that wishes to advertise on the internet (eg. Toyota) and a publisher is the operator of a website (eg. TMZ.com).

engage:BDR provides an automated platform for advertisers (e.g Toyota) to participate in an auction to buy space on a publisher’s website (e.g TMZ).

engage:BDR’s clients are digital media publishers. Yeahmobi, and the other company with whom engage:BDR has recently entered into an agreement, act for digital media advertisers. Advertisers need to diversify their media publishers and hence need to work with groups like engage:BDR to gain access to unique publishers or audiences that they don’t already have connections with.

Accordingly Yeahmobi and the other Asian group will be integrated onto the engage:BDR platform, so that their advertisers can participate in auctions for media space on engage:BDR’s publisher websites.

As the USA is the world’s largest consumer market, Asian advertisers need to enter into agreements with USA-based programmatic companies, like engage:BDR, to gain access to the US market.

By integrating on to the engage:BDR platform, thousands of these two company’s advertising clients will have access to engage:BDR’s publisher network. These clients will essentially be bidding for advertising inventory across engage:BDR’s publisher network and adding to the approximately nearly 70 billion daily auctions currently conducted on the engage:BDR platform. This additional demand will significantly increase sell-through and success-rates on these auctions and increase engage:BDR’s revenues.

The incremental demand from these two companies will scale across multiple geographies, not just the Company’s USA advertising inventory. In addition to the USA, engage:BDR has significant reach, publisher relationships and advertising inventory in Europe, Australia, South America, Asia and Canada, and it will also enable it to increase revenues being derived from these markets.

Video Streaming Dominates Subscription TV in Customer Satisfaction, ACSI Data Show

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PRNewswire
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Twitter Rebounds From Disastrous Year, While Google Loses Grip on Search Engines, ACSI Data Show

Netflix, PlayStation Vue, and Twitch Lead are Among Streaming Services Atop the Telecommunications Segment, says ACSI Report

Customer satisfaction with video streaming services far eclipses that of subscription TV service, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) 2018 Telecommunications Report. Video streaming services make their debut in this year’s telecom report with an ACSI score of 75, far and above subscription TV’s score of 62 – a 3.1 percent decline over last year. By nearly every measure, customers are more satisfied with streaming options, but some brands stand out more than others.

“Video streaming services significantly outperformed subscription TV,” said David VanAmburg, Managing Director at the ACSI. “Streaming services don’t have the hidden fees and six-month rates that subscription TV does, not to mention they’re cheaper and simpler. But because consumers don’t have many options when choosing a subscription TV provider, those businesses don’t see a lot of risk in customer dissatisfaction, and we’re unlikely to see dramatic changes any time soon.”

Video Streaming Dominates Subscription TV in Customer Satisfaction, ACSI Data Show
The American Customer Satisfaction Index results for the telecommunications sector in 2018. (PRNewsfoto/American Customer Satisfaction)

Video streaming services avoid the downsides of other telecom companies

With an ACSI score of 75, video streaming services are the highest-performing telecom industry measured. Netflix, Sony PlayStation Vue, and Twitch all lead the pack, tying at a score of 78. Apple iTunes and the Microsoft Store take second place at 77, with YouTube Red in third at 76.

Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Hulu, and Vudu all sit at the industry average of 75, followed by the network channel subscriptions: CBS All Access at 74, and HBO Now and Starz at 72.

Bringing up the rear are Sling TV (71), DIRECTV NOW (70), Showtime Anytime (70), and Sony Crackle (68). It’s worth noting that even Sony Crackle in last place rates higher than nearly all subscription TV services.

Video streaming services receive high marks for ease of understanding the bill (80), website satisfaction (80), and call centers (75), but customers ding them on availability of the current season’s TV shows (71) and availability of new movie titles (69).

Also Read: Vidgo Chooses Harmonic to Power Next-Generation OTT Services

Subscription TV continues losing ground

Customer satisfaction with subscription TV falls 3.1 percent to 62, an 11-year low for the industry.

AT&T’s U-verse TV tops the list with a 70, one of only two scores that stayed the same instead of dropping. Verizon Fios falls 4 percent year over year to a 68 for second place, while DISH Network holds steady at 67 for third.

In the middle of the pack, DIRECTV and Optimum both fall 6 percent to 64 and 62, respectively. Cox Communications sheds 2 percent to 60, while Spectrum and Suddenlink both plunge 8 percent to 58.

Comcast Xfinity decreases 2 percent to 57, Frontier Communications drops 7 percent to 56, and Mediacom places last with a 55, down 2 percent.

The top-rated part of the subscription TV experience is HD picture quality, which holds steady at a score of 80. Picture quality is close behind, down 1 percent to 78.

While courtesy and helpfulness of store and service center staff have a relatively good score of 77, and speed of store and service center transactions receive a 76, call center satisfaction continues to be the scourge of the industry, slipping 3 percent to 63.

“If you look at retail, airlines, and many other industries, companies like to reward customer loyalty, offering perks or discounts for doing business with them,” said VanAmburg. “Telecom is the exact opposite. In many ways, loyalty is punished because subscription TV is focused on customer acquisition and offering the best deal to lure customers away from competitors. In the long run, that doesn’t leave customers very satisfied.”

Also Read: SpotX Provides Total Campaign Audience Insights for CTV

Video-on-demand service debuts lower than streaming at an ACSI score of 68

Among video-on-demand services, AT&T’s U-verse TV takes the top spot with a 74, followed by DISH Network at 73, and Verizon Fios at 72. At 70, AT&T’s DIRECTV comes in far below its U-verse offering, but ahead of the industry average.

Optimum leads all cable companies in video on demand at the industry average of 68, while Cox Communications and Xfinity tie at 67, and Spectrum comes in last at 64.

Video-on-demand viewers are pleased with the number of TV shows (75), current seasons (74) and variety by category (74) available. However, the availability of a past season’s shows is lacking (69) as are free on-demand content (69) and new movie titles (68). Call centers receive the lowest marks (67), but call center service performs better for on-demand customers than for internet and subscription TV.

Also Read: Conviva Measures Explosive Growth in Streaming Video on the Internet

Internet service providers hit an all-time low

While video streaming services receive much better customer satisfaction scores than subscription TV, viewers still need internet access to get it. Unfortunately, internet service providers (ISPs), along with subscription TV, have the lowest customer satisfaction of all industries tracked by the ACSI.

ISPs are down 3.1 percent to 62, and while customers clearly aren’t satisfied with their service, more than half of Americans have only one choice for high-speed broadband. Every major ISP deteriorates this year except Xfinity, which remains unchanged.

Verizon Fios stays in first place at 70 after a 1 percent dip. AT&T Internet also falls 1 percent for a second-place score of 68, followed by Optimum, which drops 6 percent to 64.

Suddenlink and Spectrum both plummet 8 percent to 61 and 60, respectively, followed by Xfinity, unchanged at 60. Mediacom places last with a 53 after a 9 percent free fall year over year.

Call center satisfaction, already low, falls another 3 percent to 59. Customers are also less satisfied with overall data transfer speed, which sinks 3 percent to 67, and the variety of internet plans available, which shed 3 percent to 64. The one bright spot: Courtesy and helpfulness of store and service center staff, and speed of store and service center transactions both rated well, at 76 and 74, respectively, though both are down from last year.

The ACSI Telecommunications Report 2018 includes data on subscription TV services, video streaming, video-on-demand, internet service providers, fixed-line and wireless telephone services, and cell phone manufacturers. It’s based on 45,292 customer surveys collected between April 19, 2017 and March 17, 2018.

Recommended Read: SteelHouse’s Unique Targeting Technology Allows For Connected TV Audience Extension

CleverTouch Helps Marketers ‘Level up’ with Marketo and Pardot Training

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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1
CleverTouch Helps Marketers ‘Level up’ with Marketo and Pardot Training
CleverTouch Helps Marketers ‘Level up’ with Marketo and Pardot Training

New Comprehensive Training Initiative Provides Bespoke Marketing Automation Training to Guarantee Platform Certification

CleverTouch, a leading Marketing Automation consultancy and service provider, has announced its ‘Level Up’ Marketo and Pardot certification program. The program provides expert Marketo and Pardot training for marketers looking to become the internal experts and to further progress their careers.

Recommended Read: Salesforce Einstein Analytics Unveils Conversational Queries to Simplify Data

With the Level Up program, CleverTouch will provide expert training in digital assets and data in the client’s platform, allowing marketers to develop relevant experience in a familiar environment. CleverTouch builds bespoke training agendas that focus on the specific requirements of businesses and marketing teams to maximize their Marketing Automation investment and then provides a mentoring approach to guarantee certification success.

CleverTouch ‘Level up’ Training Will Come with a Certification Guarantee 

Beginning with an online assessment to understand the marketer’s level of knowledge, the ‘Level Up’ training will come with a certification guarantee (or your money back), such is the quality of CleverTouch’s knowledge and training and mentoring program.

Tim Creak, Marketing Automation Specialist at Fujitsu, commented “CleverTouch has been instrumental in supporting me and my colleagues in the central Ops team in becoming Marketo Certified Experts (MCE). The mix of in-person classroom training inside our platform instance and ongoing bespoke mentoring was the perfect practical balance to help us achieve success. With their support, we were able to pass the Marketo Certified Exam 85% faster than if we’d just relied on self-learning, and best of all they guaranteed to support us all the way to MCE status!”

Read More: Transform Your Marketing Team Into A 3D Organization

Julian Evans, Marketing Automation Manager at Invesco, also commented, “The CleverTouch Team were instrumental in helping me to achieve my Salesforce Pardot Specialist Certification. They created a bespoke training program that was ideal for my needs and provided a rigorous understanding of Pardot that I wouldn’t have been able to obtain had I self-taught. I would recommend CleverTouch’s Pardot Certified training program to anyone looking to rapidly establish their knowledge of Pardot.”

CleverTouch Would Fill the Gap in Marketing Automation Knowledge with the Comprehensive Training Initiative

While some organizations look to outsource their Marketing Automation delivery for expertise and guaranteed resources, others like to develop the skills in-house. For these organizations, there is a growing Marketo and Pardot knowledge gap which CleverTouch are looking to fill with the comprehensive training initiative.

Currently, CleverTouch Marketing is Europe’s leading Marketing Automation consulting and service provider and is the first winner of Marketo’s International Partner of the Year Award 2018. Created by marketers with Marketing Automation in mind, its mission is to help clients optimize their investment in marketing technology through change management, organizational re-thinking, marketing insight and technical capabilities. It currently serves over 400 clients across multiple verticals including technology, business, media and financial services.

Recommended Read: TechBytes with Tom Rassweiler, VP, Content Reinvention, Arkadium

Panopto Announces the Easiest Way to Consolidate Video Collections

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PRNewswire
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Panopto Announces the Easiest Way to Consolidate Video Collections
Panopto Announces the Easiest Way to Consolidate Video Collections

The Latest Product Release by Panopto Also Expands Support for Video Management, Editing, Analytics, and Quizzing

Panopto announced the latest update to its enterprise video platform. The release continues Panopto’s focus on making it easy to centralize, search, and manage video content. As part of this update, Panopto has announced a new public specification that enables organizations to consolidate disparate video collections into secure, centralized repositories. Panopto has also further enhanced its video content management system with new features focused on video curation and interactivity.

An open standard for integrating video collections

In recent years, businesses and universities have amassed vast quantities of video content from recorded online meetings, webinars, lectures, training videos, product demos, marketing videos, and more. Yet in most of these organizations, video assets are scattered across employee hard drives, file shares, general-purpose content management systems, and other web portals. As a result, they remain undiscoverable and yield little value to the organization.

To address this challenge, Panopto is introducing the Universal Content Library Specification (UCLS). The UCLS is an open, XML-based format for describing collections of videos so that they can be imported into a central repository and streamed securely to any device. It is the first open format for describing large, organized media collections of heterogeneous video file types, library metadata, and rich media presentations.

Also Read: Panopto to Apple: “Let Us Live Stream Tuesday’s Event”

With its support for the UCLS via RESTful APIs, Panopto provides organizations with an easy path to consolidating their video collections regardless of how and where they’re currently stored. For example, a business could import its web conference recordings from Zoom and BlueJeans, training videos from SharePoint, corporate communications videos from Google Drive, and marketing videos from a network file share.

During import, Panopto validates video collections for missing files and individual video files for corruption. Once imported, videos are then indexed for search and transcoded for playback on any device using the HLS protocol.

The UCLS builds on the Universal Capture Spec, which provides an open format for describing individual media files and their associated metadata (audio, video, slides, attachments, captions, timeline events, and metadata). The specifications are published to Github and available to developers at no cost.

Eric Burns Panopto
Eric Burns

“The UCLS helps organizations consolidate their video assets into living libraries of institutional knowledge,” said Eric Burns, co-founder and CEO of Panopto. “Video libraries are strategic, long-term investments, and the companies and universities building them want control and flexibility. The UCLS provides an open format for all video platforms to interoperate, improving customer choice and control of data. We invite all providers of video content management solutions to help improve the UCLS and collectively ensure the portability of organizations’ private video libraries.”

Also Read: Panopto Introduces the Easiest Way to Manage, Search, and Replay GoToMeeting Recordings

Enhancing video curation, interactivity and user engagement

As part of its continuing efforts to simplify content curation and enable users to actively engage with video, Panopto is introducing a range of additional updates to its video content management system.

In large businesses and universities, multi-departmental use of Panopto is driving demand for video management at the business unit level. To address this need, Panopto is introducing departmental home pages. This enables individual departments to curate their own YouTube-like landing pages that highlight featured and new videos.

Panopto is also expanding the ways in which customers can interact with videos during playback.

First, Panopto’s video quizzes are now supported in the embeddable video player. This enables users to take quizzes directly from within their learning management systems (LMS), content management systems (CMS), and other web portals. The embeddable video player can be accessed from desktop web browsers and mobile devices.

In addition, Panopto now supports threaded discussions with moderation in the interactive video player. When users reply to a video comment, Panopto will automatically create a “thread”, or a visual grouping of the comment and its replies. Video creators can moderate discussions and delete off-topic or inappropriate comments.

All of the updates in today’s release will be available to existing Panopto customers at no additional cost.

Recommended Read: Panopto Slashes Cost Of Video Captioning

Solvvy Puts Self-Service at the Forefront of Customer Experience with its New and Improved Conversational Platform

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PRNewswire
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1
Solvvy Puts Self-Service at the Forefront of Customer Experience with its New and Improved Conversational Platform
Solvvy Puts Self-Service at the Forefront of Customer Experience with its New and Improved Conversational Platform

San Mateo-based Intelligent Automation Company Debuts a More Intuitive and Engaging Support Flow Along with Upgrades to Its Existing UI and Dashboard

Solvvy announced a major enhancement to its AI-powered conversational platform. Businesses can now use the Solvvy platform as the initial touchpoint with customers, empowering them to self-serve their issues and reach resolutions quickly and effortlessly. The enhanced platform delivers a higher ROI because businesses can handle a higher volume of support tickets and better engage with customers before it reaches an agent.

After incredible adoption of its platform and based on user feedback, the company has also rolled out upgrades to its UI and dashboard along with a Support Widget. The widget enables businesses to launch Solvvy whenever and wherever customers need help, putting self-service support at the forefront of the online experience.

 

Solvvy Puts Self-Service at the Forefront of Customer Experience with its New and Improved Conversational Platform
The dashboard (PRNewsfoto/Solvvy)

 

Solvvy’s customers can use the new dashboard to gain strategic insights on knowledge usage and view KPIs such as the self-service rate, cost savings, and average resolution time.

Also Read: OJO Labs Raises $20.5 Million in Series B Financing to Propel its Conversational AI, OJO, to Millions of Consumers

“I find the Solvvy dashboard extremely insightful. It lets me download a report of all questions and use a training tool to vote for correct answers,” said Steph Telesco, Director of Customer Care at Invaluable. “We averaged a 45% self-service rate in Q1 after implementing Solvvy.”

The new platform delivers issue resolution time of less than a minute along with a 15-20% increase in operational efficiency. Solvvy now supports more than 250 million end users of the world’s leading brands such as Atlassian, Under Armour, Vimeo, MailChimp, GoFundMe and Upwork.

“Our upgraded conversational platform brings us closer to our long-standing mission of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide the best in class customer experience in an omnichannel world,” said Mahesh Ram, founding CEO of Solvvy. “Our new platform puts the users firmly in control — empowering them to self-serve with immediate answers and equipping them to contact support in their preferred channel.”

Recommended Read: Artificial Intelligence Learns and Builds Conversational AI Chatbots Autonomously

Engineerica Releases New Version of Its Conference Management Tools

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PRNewswire
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Engineerica Releases New Version of Its Conference Management Tools
Engineerica Releases New Version of Its Conference Management Tools

In Addition to Handling the Conference Registration, Badging, Check In, and Attendance Tracking, the Suite Offers an Attendee App with an Electronic Conference Guide and Social Network

Engineerica Systems Inc. is thrilled to announce a major new release of Conference Tracker and its Conference Attendee and Conference Leads apps. This cloud-based software suite is designed to help conference and event planners in the time-intensive and sometimes complex work of organizing conferences. In addition to handling the conference registration, badging, check in, and attendance tracking, the suite offers an attendee app with an electronic conference guide and social network. It also offers an exhibitor lead retrieval app to help exhibitors collect leads.

This latest release of the conference management suite includes numerous new features and improvements designed to enhance the user’s experience. Here are the highlights of the improvements in this release:

Conference Tracker Software Improvements

  • Registration Discounts Code: Offer online registration discount coupon to both attendees and exhibitors.
    Picture Gallery: Project conference photos from the social app on your wall.
  • Multi-Badge Design: Useful in identifying registration status. For example, you can have a different badge design for attendees who have an Expo pass but no session access.
  • Email Log: Allows you to track outgoing messages including automated emails, attendance certificates, etc.
  • Linking to Past Conferences: Allows you to copy the online registration form, badge design, certificates, CEU report, and admins from a past conference.
  • Other Improvements: These include enhancements to the online registration form, Email Broadcast tool, Badge Designer, and more!

Also Read: Attendify Presents A New Registration System To Heighten Attendee Experience

Attendee App Improvements

The attendee app enhances your attendees’ experience by offering them an online conference guide, exhibit guide, social network, session ratings, personal notes, and more! The latest update offers many improvements including:

  • Quick and Easy Sign-in: Conference attendees will get an automated email message with a link that attendees can click to download and sign in to the app without needing to type a sign-in ID and password.
  • New App Analytics: You can now get app insight for sessions, exhibitors and sponsors including # of times viewed and # of times bookmarked.
  • Enhanced conference social network. This includes post flagging and moderation.
  • Other improvements including “Popular Now” view of social posts, automatic reminders for bookmarked and registered sessions, easier photo update, and cross-linking to session info, speakers and attendees.

Leads App Improvements

The exhibitor lead retrieval app, Conference Leads, was updated with the following:

  • New simplified sign-in option via email link. With the click of a button, the system will send all registered sales reps an email message with a link that allows them to download and sign in to the Conference Leads app.
  • Display of attendees’ photos uploaded via the Attendee app. Exhibitor can also take the photo if they like.
    Ability to turn on/off the custom qualifier questions from the app.
  • New ‘Conference Information’ screen.
  • New Conference Leads Report that shows the Conference Leads app sales.
  • Many other improvements including enhanced user interface.

The attendee app and the leads retrieval app are available for both the Apple iOS and Android devices.

Recommended Read: Artesian Continues to Refine Sales Intelligence Platform with New AI-Powered Capabilities

Outreach Secures $65 Million In Series D Funding To Increase Revenue Team Productivity And Return

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MTS Staff Writer
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Outreach Secures $65 Million In Series D Funding To Increase Revenue Team Productivity And Return

More Than 2,400 Companies Use Outreach’s Machine Learning Technology to Generate High-Quality Leads, Close Deals and Retain Customers

Outreach, the leading Customer Engagement Platform, has secured $65 million in Series D financing, more than doubling the company’s valuation over its Series C round. The round was led by Spark Capital and includes investment from Sapphire Ventures as well as from existing investors DFJ Growth, Four Rivers Group, Mayfield, MHS Capital, Microsoft Ventures and Trinity Ventures, bringing Outreach’s total funding to $125 million. The funding represents another major milestone for the company, following a stellar year in 2017 that saw a doubling of overall customers and more than 100 percent revenue growth.

Outreach’s Customer Engagement Platform provides the entire revenue team – from sales development representative to account executive to customer success manager – with a system for managing and automating interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. Outreach also records data about each interaction and uses analytics and machine learning to surface insights and recommendations that drive increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Also Read: Outreach Joins LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP)

“The customer engagement category is experiencing explosive growth, due in large part to high rates of usage, a rarity for enterprise software which is often used as a data repository or even worse, purchased and forgotten. Our north star isn’t the number of customers, it’s the number of Weekly Active Users. This metric is proof we have created a technology that not only drives revenue but also is viewed as indispensable to every member of the revenue team,” said Manny Medina, CEO, and co-founder of Outreach.

Outreach’s new financing will be used to accelerate product development, with a specific focus on machine learning and extending the platform beyond the sales team to every customer-facing role. Outreach recently announced Amplify, a program that uses machine learning to scientifically test, measure and optimize the performance of sales teams, while also automating non sales-related tasks. The company also hired Pavel Dmitriev, former Principal Data Scientist, Analysis and Experimentation at Microsoft and one of the few world experts in large-scale experimentation, to lead its data science team.

Also Read: Outreach Meetings Simplifies Scheduling Workflow With Prospects

“Outreach has been instrumental in creating and evolving the customer engagement category, which is growing at an exponential rate. Outreach’s technology, approach and leadership team make it poised to capture this multi-billion dollar opportunity and we are excited to have the company as part of our portfolio,” said Alex Clayton, Investor at Spark Capital.

“Customer Engagement is a rapidly growing market and Outreach is the dominant player in the enterprise, where they continue to gain momentum. With our deep enterprise relationships and our proven history of taking companies public, this is an ideal partnership.  We look forward to joining Outreach on their journey to become the next category-defining software company,” said Rajeev Dham, Sapphire Ventures Partner.

Outreach, which has been recognized by Forbes as one of its “Next Billion Dollar Startups”, closed FY2018 up 100+ percent and now has 245 employees (doubled FY2018 to FY2019). The company supports more than 2,400 sales teams and 22,000 users worldwide. Outreach was also recently named one of Seattle Business Magazine’s Best Places to Work and one of the 50 Highest Rated Private Cloud Computing Companies to Work For by Battery Ventures.

Also Read: Outreach Announces Winners Of First Annual Nucleo Customer Awards Recognizing Sales Excellence

Apps Ahead in the Race as Mobile Advertising Continue to Grow Worldwide

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Sudipto Ghosh
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Apps Ahead in the Race as Mobile Advertising Continue to Grow Worldwide
Apps Ahead in the Race as Mobile Advertising Continue to Grow Worldwide

PubMatic’s Q1 2018 QMI Report Highlights 84% Y-o-Y Increase in Mobile App Monetized Impression Volumes Globally

PubMatic, the publisher-focused sell-side platform (SSP) for an open digital media future, today released its first Quarterly Mobile Index (QMI) of 2018, which delved into key trends in mobile advertising for Q1. The report includes highlights around mobile app advertising growth, the continued expansion of header bidding adoption across mobile inventory, and the expansion of cross-channel monetization.

Recommended Read: Mobfox Introduces Audience Analytics for Better In-App Monetization

Apps Now Account for a Firm Majority of Mobile Impressions Monetized by PubMatic

There has been a significant shift in monetization opportunities for mobile app developers as in-app header bidding is introduced to the market. Already mainstream for mobile web inventory, as indicated in previous QMI reports, the introduction of header bidding technology for app inventory unlocked significant growth potential. Global app impression volumes monetized by PubMatic rose 84 percent year-over-year in Q1 2018, outpacing the 28 percent growth rate for mobile web inventory over the same period. Apps now account for a firm majority of mobile impressions monetized by PubMatic, with a 59 percent share.

Recommended Read: TechBytes with Andreas Gnutzmann, Chief Technology Officer, FotoWare

“With advancements in monetization technology, such as server-side header bidding integrations, app developers can now experiment with their demand partner setups to find the optimal yield,” explained Nishant Khatri, VP of product management, ad serving at PubMatic and board member of the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence.

Nishant added, “We are proud to be at the forefront of programmatic innovation, proving not only increased monetization opportunities but also improved user experience, particularly for impressions served on handheld devices.”

A Notable Growth of Mobile Advertising Driven by PMPs and Protection Against Frauds

The data from PubMatic’s Q1 2018 QMI also highlights a notable growth of mobile advertising via both PMPs and the open exchange. PMPs and other programmatic direct channels offer safeguards against fraud and brand risk as well as increased control for both publishers and buyers.

As a result, mobile PMP impression volumes have expanded 43 percent year-over-year in Q1 2018. This trend towards quality has also infiltrated the entire programmatic ecosystem. As a result, mobile impressions monetized via the open exchange also experienced growth, rising 56 percent year-over-year in Q1 2018.

Read More: Transform Your Marketing Team Into A 3D Organization

More highlights from the Q1 2018 Quarterly Mobile Index include —

  • Header bidding impression volumes rose 70 percent YOY, with mobile driving the majority of the growth (110 percent YOY).
  • Technology, News and Entertainment & Leisure were the top verticals for mobile monetization across both the open exchange and private marketplaces.
  • Average mobile PMP eCPMs offered a 170 percent premium over those for the open exchange in Q1 2018.
  • Mobile video advertising continued to rise, with nearly four in ten video impressions monetized through PubMatic technology being served on handheld devices in Q1 2018.

METHODOLOGY

PubMatic’s yield and data analytics team analyzed over ten trillion advertiser bids on a monthly basis, utilizing the company’s best-in-class analytics capabilities. The Q1 2018 QMI incorporates impressions, revenue and eCPM data from these reports to provide a high-level analysis of key trends within the mobile advertising industry. Data is from the first quarter of 2018, as well as the corresponding prior year periods. “Monetized impressions” or “paid impressions” are defined as impressions that were sold through the PubMatic platform, and “eCPM” is defined as the effective cost per one thousand impressions.

Currently, PubMatic offers a publisher-focused sell-side platform for an open digital media future. PubMatic’s publisher-first approach enables advertisers to access premium inventory at scale.

Mapping Capabilities Added to Futuri Media’s TopLine, Designed to Drive Additional Revenue for Radio Clients

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PRNewswire
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Mapping Capabilities Added to Futuri Media's TopLine, Designed to Drive Additional Revenue for Radio Clients
Mapping Capabilities Added to Futuri Media's TopLine, Designed to Drive Additional Revenue for Radio Clients

Futuri Media’s TopLine delivered $100 Million in Incremental Revenue Clients in 2017; New TopLine-MapIt Feature Expected to Further Drive Revenue

Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, today announced that its TopLine system has added the TopLine-MapIt feature, which creates custom maps showing stations’ geographic reach relevant to a potential client’s business. TopLine-MapIt is now available to display sales research for business categories for TopLine subscribers.

Futuri’s TopLine is designed to give sales professionals their time back, so they can focus on what they do best – developing business. TopLine provides resources for sales teams in the field at every step in the sales process, from positioning to presenting and closing. Earlier this year, TopLine also announced a new Appointment Prep Report feature, which includes Decision-Maker Personality Profiles: Information to help determine the best way to communicate with prospects and key decision makers. The report includes an overview of their personality-type, tips to communicate effectively, and how to set the agenda for the most compelling meeting.

Also Read: Futuri Media Makes a Broader Set of Patented Interactive Features Available for Licensing

Now, the TopLine-MapIt feature, which is included in all TopLine subscriptions, provides audience and consumer mapping capabilities. These maps overlay the stations’ geographic reach with data that is specifically relevant to a client’s business.

The end goal is to provide buyers with a highly effective visualization to demonstrate how station audiences geographically relate to a sponsor’s brand and business goals. These are critical visualizations to help tell the story of why local radio advertising works.

Futuri Media Makes a Broader Set of Patented Interactive Features Available for Licensing
Daniel Anstandig

“Data is a crucial tool for making decisions, but there’s just so much of it. We built TopLine on turning that data into insights, and that helped us deliver more than $100 million in revenue to our partners in 2017,” said Daniel Anstandig, Futuri Media CEO. “As data-visualization becomes an increasingly important part of the broadcast marketing sales and engagement landscape, we’re committed to providing even more tools to develop and close business.”

Recommended Read: Futuri Media’s Real-Time Story Discovery System TopicPulse Hits Record-High Subscriber Base

Survey Shows North American and APAC Companies Unprepared for New Data Protection Law GDPR

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Survey Shows North American and APAC Companies Unprepared for New Data Protection Law GDPR
Survey Shows North American and APAC Companies Unprepared for New Data Protection Law GDPR

The Survey Was Conducted by Data Management Company ioFABRIC Inc

A new survey of IT professionals reveals more than half of North American companies have not taken steps to prepare for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which takes effect May 25, 2018.

The survey was conducted by data management company ioFABRIC Inc. Respondents represented companies across a broad spectrum of industries. Because GDPR affects all organizations possessing personally identifiable data of EU residents, regardless of where the organization is located, North American and APAC companies are subject to its rules. The survey shows a critical need for businesses in these regions to take additional steps toward data security.

Also Read: What Does GDPR Mean For Martech?

Location, location, location

While IT pros in South America, Africa, and Europe are all aware of GDPR, those in other global regions were drastically less informed. Fifteen percent of North American respondents and nine percent from the APAC region said they are not familiar with GDPR at all.

Along with the surprising result that 53 percent of North American companies have not taken any steps toward GDPR compliance, 37 percent of these respondents feel they are not adequately informed about how its regulations will impact their business. In APAC, 71 percent said they are not adequately informed, and 43 percent have failed to take steps to manage GDPR regulations.

In contrast, 83 percent of respondents from South America, Africa, and Europe report they have taken steps, and 70 percent are confident they are prepared.

Also Read: How the GDPR Affects American Retailers like Whole Foods and Amazon, and What Businesses Can do to Mitigate Their Risk

Changes implemented

Worldwide, the primary ways companies are preparing for GDPR is updating their privacy policies and developing new procedures for data management. More than one-third reported they have taken each of these steps, and almost as many said they have adopted new procedures for storage management.

Respondents were much less likely to use professional resources, with only 13 percent hiring an outside consultant, less than 15 percent purchasing new software, and 17 percent purchasing new hardware. However, nearly 20 percent say they consulted an attorney about their business risks.

“It’s alarming that there isn’t more awareness in North America, and that there’s a huge preparedness gap in different global regions, even though we’re all obligated to comply with GDPR,” said ioFABRIC CEO Steven Lamb. “What’s still missing is bringing in expert consultants and/or adding hardware and software to deal with GDPR. If I can offer any advice to those whose companies are unprepared, it’s this: don’t wait because the fines for non-compliance are high.”

Recommended Read: GDPR Compliance Isn’t the End of the World for Your B2B Marketing

Socialbakers Adds AI-Powered Audience Segmentation to its Marketing Platform

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PRNewswire
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Socialbakers Adds AI-Powered Audience Segmentation to its Marketing Platform

The New Addition to the Platform Helps Marketers to Convert Data into Productivity

Socialbakers, the leading AI-powered social media marketing platform, has added next-generation Audience Segmentation into the Socialbakers Suite. By integrating social and other digital data sources, the new offering provides marketers with insights into their audience personas, the content they engage with, their main interests and the influencers they trust at the click of a button.

Today, marketers are aware that the one-size-fits-all approach to marketing no longer performs and they are looking for a solution to help them navigate this complexity. Socialbakers’ Audience Segmentation identifies the different personas within an audience based on their behavior and interests. By integrating social with other digital data sources and leveraging the power of AI and machine learning technologies, Audience Segmentation helps marketers better understand each unique audience, so they can reach them with relevant content in the right channel at the right time.

Also Read: Socialbakers Named in the 2018 Inc. 5000 List of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in Europe

“By adding AI-powered Audience Segmentation to our platform, we are turning data into productivity. We are solving key challenges faced by many brands today, such as what does my audience engage with, what interests do they have and who do they trust? Marketers are pulling in audience data from multiple sources like social, web and their own e-commerce, but combining it to identify audience personas is a real challenge. With Socialbakers Audience Segmentation brands can not only identify the personas of their current audience, but they can look one step further, at the consumers who have some affinity with their product but haven’t yet engaged with their content. This presents a really exciting opportunity for brands to grow their audience base, build higher quality relationships with their existing audiences and ultimately get more impact from their digital activities,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO, Socialbakers.

“We have been testing the beta version of Socialbakers’ Audience Segmentation and engaging with their support and product team and we were stunned by how we were able to start deriving value from the tool immediately. We are gaining autonomy in our approach to audience definition by leveraging our own data and what the platform brings us. Until now, when we launched a vehicle, we had to purchase studies to define which audiences we should be targeting. Now, thanks to Socialbakers’ Audience Segmentation, we have access to more detailed and actionable insights into our audiences and their unique personas so that we can reach them with more relevant, engaging content,” said Francois-Xavier Pierrel, Corporate Director Data, CRM & Social, Renault Group.

Also Read: Socialbakers Named a Leader in Social Media Marketing Suites, Analytics, Management and Monitoring

GoodData Unveils New UI Capabilities to Make Analytics Pervasive

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Sudipto Ghosh
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GoodData Unveils New UI Capabilities to Make Analytics Pervasive
GoodData Unveils New UI Capabilities to Make Analytics Pervasive

With GoodData Spectrum, Businesses Can Leverage Data and Insights to Support the Complete Range of Business Decisions

GoodData, the leader in embedded and distributed analytics, has launched GoodData Spectrum, a suite of user interface (UI) capabilities to deliver the right insights to line-of-business users to support a full gamut of decision-making, from transactional to strategic, all at their point of work. Spectrum fundamentally changes how analytics are used and adopted throughout the organization.

Recommended Read: Contextual Content and AI: The New Wingmen for Email Marketing Campaigns

At the time of this announcement, Roman Stanek, CEO at GoodData, said, “Analytics within organizations today is no longer about one-size-fits-all with low adoption rather, analytics is now critical to everyday business success.”

Roman added, “With GoodData Spectrum, we now enable data and insights to support the complete range of business decisions.”

Billions of dollars are spent on a data infrastructure, strategies, and talent annually, yet organizations still view data as a cost instead of a point for competitive differentiation and disruption.

Business users don’t want more spreadsheets, static dashboards, or reports; rather they want only the information that is relevant to the decision at hand, presented in a way that is personalized, contextual, intuitive, and actionable.

Read More: Interview with Jon Lombardo, Global Brand Strategy Lead, LinkedIn

The GoodData platform provides insights in the form of recommendations and predictive analytics and takes the guesswork out of identifying mission-critical insights by delivering the analytics that matters most for real-time decision-making.

As Gartner* states, “Analysis will become increasingly embedded in processes, devices, and applications; it will, therefore, be both more pervasive and less visible — flipping the burden of prompting its use from the user to the machine.”

“GoodData Spectrum offers unlimited potential to design with our end users in mind. We aren’t limited by traditional rigid Business Intelligence functionality with an overabundance of static dashboards and no interactivity,” shares Cody Alton, Partner Solutions at Zalando.

Cody added, “With GoodData Spectrum we can roll out customized features based on our product vision and roadmap to ensure we exceed the needs of our customers.”

GoodData Spectrum includes three user interaction frameworks —

GoodData.UI enables the building of custom applications from thousands of ready-made, commercial, open source, and custom components. Data visualizations can be embedded and customized in a few lines of code, no iFrames involved.

KPI Dashboards arms users to track KPI changes over time, comparing current values to previous periods. Users can also set alerts and be notified when KPIs reach a certain threshold. Interactive dashboards can be saved and published to other users and embedded into Web applications.

Analytic Designer allows business users to easily explore curated datasets and discover new insights. Using pre-packaged or custom visualizations and automated actions, no training is needed to support strategic decision-making and publishing.

Currently, GoodData provides an integrated set of data management, analytics, and insight application deployment and management tools as a leader in the Insight Platforms-as-a-Service category. We support the enterprise-wide data adoption by embedding insights into applications and workflows to provide a full spectrum of data-driven decisions – from transactional to strategic – at the point of work.

*Gartner Predicts 2018: Analytics and BI Strategy, Gareth Herschel, Alexander Linden, Rita L. Sallam, Svetlana Sicular, Jim Hare, Jorgen Heizenberg, Erick Brethenoux, Douglas Laney, 26 March 2018.

Recommended Read: TechBytes with Shouvick Mukherjee, Chief Technology Officer, Amobee

Verve Announces Additions To Executive Leadership Team

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Verve Announces Additions To Executive Leadership Team
Verve Announces Additions To Executive Leadership Team

Erin Madorsky and Joseph Galarneau Sign on as Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Product Officer at Verve

Verve, the leader in location-powered mobile marketing, announced the appointment of two executives to its leadership team: Erin Madorsky, to the position of Chief Revenue Officer, and Joseph Galarneau, to the position of Chief Product Officer. Both assume their new roles immediately, reporting to Verve CEO Tom Kenney.

Madorsky joins Verve from a ten-year tenure at Viant, a division of Meredith where she was most recently Senior Vice President of Sales. A member of the core team that launched the Viant brand, she oversaw the growth of its people-based platform and was instrumental in the marketplace adoption of new products including the beta launch of a Data Lake that offered marketers and data scientists unprecedented access to powerful data assets rivaling Facebook and Google. At Verve, Erin will put her expertise in data, analytics, and identity to work in bringing Verve’s managed service and programmatic advertising solutions to an expanding roster of brands and agencies across a wide variety of industries, including retail and CPG, telco, tech, and travel.

Verve Announces Additions To Executive Leadership Team
Erin Madorsky

“The ad industry is at a pivotal moment,” said Madorsky. “True leadership in this space now turns on delivering highly relevant mobile advertising to consumers without comprising even one iota of our industry’s necessary and critical focus on consumer privacy. The only means of achieving that combination — authentic value for the user coupled with the protection of their personal information — is a judicious application of first-party data to targeting, messaging, and creative. This approach has been a core tenet of Verve’s philosophy since its earliest days and I’m thrilled to join a team that truly understands what the future holds for both consumers and our industry.”

Also Read: Verve Hires Mobile Industry Veteran Mark Fruehan to Lead Enterprise Platform Initiatives

Galarneau joins Verve from OpenX, the largest independent ad exchange for publishers and demand partners, where he served as VP of Product. Directly prior, he founded Mezzobit, an audience optimization platform acquired by OpenX and he has held executive positions in the publisher world, including COO and digital GM for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and CTO and Head of Product for New York Magazine. An industry veteran with expertise in building digital media, SaaS, and adtech products, Joseph will lead development of Verve’s mobile marketing platform with an emphasis on programmatic; advanced ad products (including video, AR, VR, and IoT); and mobile identity intelligence.

Verve Announces Additions To Executive Leadership Team
Joseph Galarneau

“Thanks to consumers’ passion for their mobile devices, Moore’s Law remains relevant in the world of advertising technology: keeping pace with the user’s elevated expectations means that our industry must continue to advance with exponential speed,” said Galarneau. “The companies that thrive in this environment of constant change will be those that continually evolve, not just in response to the demands of advertisers but to the seismic shifts that consumer behavior is creating. Verve’s commitment to performance-driven product innovation attracted me to the company, and I’m honored to lead such a critical facet of its business.”

Also Read: Verve Study: Mobile Creative Powered by Location Drives 2X Consumer Engagement

These appointments signal Verve’s commitment to leading mobile marketing innovation and exceptional client service in a market experiencing a tremendous uptick in demand — in 2018, mobile marketing ad dollars are predicted to reach $75B in the United States, alone. As brands demonstrate mobile marketing maturity by doubling down on first-party mobile device data and mobile content, the opportunities within this expanding market will only increase.

Verve Hires Mobile Industry Veteran Mark Fruehan to Lead Enterprise Platform Initiatives
Tom Kenney

“Location data fuels our mobile platform, but it’s our deep bench of innovators that drives our success,” said Kenney. “Joseph and Erin will play key roles in driving even more innovation, helping us achieve our strategic plan as we meet the needs of our growing client and partner base. The Verve team and I are excited to welcome them into the fold as 2018 is proving to be a tremendous year of growth as we launch new programmatic, data, and video products.”

Recommended Read: Verve Releases New Research Quantifying Advertiser Adoption of Data and Analytics

Yext Spring ’18 Release, Including 15 New Knowledge Assistant Skills, Now Available for General Access

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Yext Spring '18 Release, Including 15 New Knowledge Assistant Skills, Now Available for General Access
Yext Spring '18 Release, Including 15 New Knowledge Assistant Skills, Now Available for General Access

Yext’s Spring ’18 Product Release is Now Available for General Access, Featuring New Capabilities for Yext’s Conversational UI, Competitive Intelligence, Reviews, and More

Yext Inc., the leader in Digital Knowledge Management (DKM), announced its Spring ’18 Product Release is now live for all Yext customers and partners. The Spring ’18 Release, previously launched for early access, includes 15 game-changing new Knowledge Assistant skills and additional enhancements across the Yext Knowledge Engine.

The Knowledge Assistant is an intelligent, conversational user interface that allows Yext users to use SMS text messaging or Facebook Messenger to manage the public facts about their brands and understand how customers engage with them.

Also Read: Yext And Trustpilot Partner To Offer New Customer Reviews Integration

Yext Launches Conversational UI In Winter '18 Release
Marc Ferrentino

“The Yext Knowledge Assistant is smarter than ever,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer, Yext. “Since we launched our conversational UI, we’ve seen businesses across industries diving in and updating key information about their brands on the go by text, and that has only accelerated with the new features we added this spring. The Knowledge Assistant can now answer crucial questions about how your customers see and interact with you across the digital universe.”

Yext customers can also use the Knowledge Assistant to update their standard business hours and featured messages displayed in search, add new types of images to their profiles on Google and Facebook and other Yext-powered properties, and ask for new answers and actions, like:

  • “Update my hours.”
  • “Update my Featured Message.”
  • “Update my logo.”
  • “Update my headshot.”
  • “Add a photo.”
  • “Update my Facebook profile photo.”
  • “Update my Facebook cover photo.”
  • “Update my Google profile photo.”
  • “Update my Google cover photo.”
  • “Show me my hours.”
  • “Show me my phone number.”
  • “Show me my analytics.”
  • “What’s my average rating?”
  • “How many reviews do I have?”
  • “Show me my reviews.”

Also Read: Yext Powered Billions of Customer Actions over the Last Year

Additional features in the Spring ’18 Release include:

  1. Automatic Competitor Detection: Yext’s Competitive Intelligence feature now automatically identifies the competitors that show up most frequently alongside a brand.
  2. Templated Review Response: Businesses can create and leverage a library of review responses in order to respond to customer feedback rapidly.
  3. Enhanced Uploads & Notifications: New capabilities enable Yext users to update digital knowledge in bulk and stay informed on their own schedule.

“Businesses are quickly recognizing the value of leveraging conversational UIs like chatbots to perform key behind-the-scenes business functions, like managing the facts about their brand online. We built the Knowledge Assistant to bring a new level of speed and ease to Digital Knowledge Management, and we’re constantly growing its skills and capabilities,” Ferrentino said.

Recommended Read: Yext Launches New Preferred Partner Program

Talkdesk Spring 2018 Release Expands Platform with New Capabilities to Optimize Customer Journey

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Talkdesk Spring 2018 Release Expands Platform with New Capabilities to Optimize Customer Journey

Context Awareness, CX Manager, Intelligent Routing Configuration and GDPR Compliance Allow Brands to Deliver a Better Experience for Savvy, Self-Service First Customers

Talkdesk, the enterprise contact center platform and fastest growing Contact Center as a Service provider, announced its Enterprise Contact Center Platform Spring 2018 release. With this release, Talkdesk continues to execute its vision to disrupt and transform the contact center to meet the expectations of today’s digital “self-service first” customers and help them thrive in the customer experience-driven economy.

“Customers today first attempt to resolve issues through online self-service mobile apps. When they need to reach out for a live interaction, customers expect the agent to know who they are, what they need and to provide a solution right away,” said Tiago Paiva, CEO of Talkdesk. “With these new tools, Talkdesk is accelerating the contact center evolution to meet the increased expectations of today’s discerning customers.”

Also Read: Talkdesk Delivers ROI Exceeding 300 Percent According To Independent Consulting Study

Talkdesk Enterprise Contact Center Platform Spring 2018 release delivers several new features and enhancements to route interactions to the right agents and empowers them with real-time customer information to provide the most efficient and effective service. This increases the brand value and profitability of each interaction by helping agents to:

  • Access Web and Mobile Context in real time to facilitate more personalized interactions and seamless experiences as customers transition from their digital environment to live support.
  • Resolve issues faster by routing the right call to the right agent with CX Manager; an intuitive and powerful interaction routing engine that allows companies to visually design customer journeys without code or expensive IT resources.
  • Leverage Salesforce Data with Intelligent Routing Configuration to expedite how companies route customers to the best agents or reps based on Cases, Leads, Accounts or Contact records.

Talkdesk’s Enterprise Contact Center Platform Spring 2018 release helps customers comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) by offering Data Processing Agreements, updated product features and added security and privacy measures such as unified authentication ID and masking of the last four digits in cost reports.

In addition to the new platform capabilities, Talkdesk has launched the Talkdesk AppConnect Developer Portal, which provides developers with a single destination for on-demand information and documentation to develop and integrate apps with the Talkdesk Platform.

Recommended Read: Talkdesk Hires Michael Reed As New Head Of Engineering To Accelerate Innovation

Why You Need Engagement-driven Marketing in the Digital Era

By
Tim Johnston
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0
Why You Need Engagement-driven Marketing in the Digital Era
Why You Need Engagement-driven Marketing in the Digital Era

If marketers want to master the data high-seas, they’ll need to focus their energies on driving engagement. That’s where webinars come into play.

ON24For marketers, data is difficult. It’s easy to get, yes, but being able to draw out any meaningful insights or actions can be an exercise in pulling the hair out of your head.

Why is extracting insights from data so stressful? There are a few theories. First, our jobs are on the line. We need to be able to provide sales with qualified leads and context to land business. Failing that, we risk our positions. Second, we’re trying to divine the wants and needs of a large group of professionals through one of the most obtuse methods ever devised — abstracted numbers and maybe a few pie charts if you’re lucky.

And these numbers, generally, don’t get any easier to read over time as most data comes from superficial, automated interactions. These interactions do little other than giving sales a phone number to cold call.

Also Read: Webinar World Techbytes with Paul Dolan, Research Director APAC, SiriusDecisions

We need to change how we approach data — how we perceive our audience. Marketers need to learn to engage — not just interact — with their prospect and clients to get a better picture of what they need. Through engagement-driven marketing, marketers can find the leads ready for a sales conversation — complete with what content that particular lead interacted with last, what they may be hung up on about a solution and how sales can keep the conversation going. Best yet, this helps marketers to tie their actions to revenue.

There are a few ways marketers can realize this engagement-driven method. For example, one of the best tools available today are webinars (coincidentally, we’re hosting a nearby event to discuss just how webinars and marketers can drive engagement). Webinars work as an engagement-marketing tool not just because they can hold an attendee’s attention for a half-hour to an hour, but because they offer audiences the opportunity to talk and interact with their hosts. In-webinar tools — like questions, polls, surveys, social media and more — give marketers the opportunity to not just make their event more interactive, but to also gauge interest and, yes, generate more data on an audience member’s content consumption habits.

Also Read: Webinar World Techbytes With Sabeh Hassan, Product Marketing Manager, Cloud, Microsoft

At ON24, we’ve built our platform to provide marketers with a tool to engage their prospects and customers, and then turn those engagements into insights their sales team can use. Every webinar generates more than 40 data points per attendee. Combined with data over the course of a prospective or client relationship, and you’ve got a much better picture of the human behind the screen.

Register for the free, full-day event here.

So how can your organization start moving toward an engagement-driven model? It’s not just about getting a webinar tool — it’s about how your organization approaches marketing, data, and empathy with your customers. You’ll need to take-in data with a purpose, or as we call it, engagement-driven data. This is what we’ll discuss at Webinar World 2018 APAC, on 31 May. Hosted at Doltone House in Hyde Park, Sydney, our day-long event will examine what it means to engage on a personal level in today’s digital world.

If you want to learn more about how to take your marketing efforts and webinar campaigns to the next level, join us and hundreds of other marketers at Webinar World at Doltone House in Hyde Park, Sydney on 31 May.

Also Read: Webinar World TechBytes with Matt Heinz, President, Heinz Marketing

Braze (Formerly Appboy) Opens New International Office in Singapore

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MTS Staff Writer
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Braze (Formerly Appboy) Opens New International Office in Singapore

Leading Marketing Automation Company Braze (Formerly Appboy) Expands Global Footprint in APAC with New Singapore Office

Braze (formerly Appboy), the leading customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, apps, and more, announced the opening of its new office in Singapore. This physical entry into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region further cements the company’s commitment to its investment to continue delivering and supporting our existing customers and expanding further into the region.

APAC_Braze
Braze APAC team

The Braze official expansion into the APAC region is a collaboration with The Economic Development Board of Singapore (EBD) and follows a successful incubation period, where Braze serves over 50 locally headquartered clients, including global electronics company, LG; Lazada-owned online grocery delivery company, RedMart; and e-commerce marketplace, Kaidee from Thailand.

The strategic investment in the region positions Braze to offer localized support for its existing client relationships and introduce its world-class product offerings to new companies. Braze has experienced over 2.5x year over year growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) since 2016 in the APAC region.

Also Read: Braze (formerly Appboy) Announces Integrations with Microsoft and AccuWeather to Expand Partner Ecosystem

Bill Magnuson
Bill Magnuson

“Braze is committed to growing our presence in the APAC region, where some of our most strategic customers are based,” said Bill Magnuson, CEO and Cofounder of Braze. “Our continued global growth comes on the heels of our Series D funding, with our Singapore office opening at the core of our expansion strategy in Asia. We work with more than 400 clients in 35 countries and are eager to continue expanding our global presence so we can more effectively support our customers and bring brilliant messaging experiences to new audiences across the world.”

Ben Glynn, who will be heading the Singapore office as Senior Director of Braze APAC, has more than 10 years of experience providing solutions across categories from mobile payments to marketing automation and most recently held a strategic post at Emarsys Marketing Cloud. Ben’s digital marketing technology and knowledge of the APAC region will enable Braze to better serve the existing customer base and accelerate growth in key markets.

“Out of all the platforms we’ve assessed, we found Braze to be very robust in its capabilities. We believe Braze is the partner to help us scale our marketing efforts across customer onboarding and retention, delivering the best experience in emails and push notifications,” said Jean Thomas, Marketing Director of RedMart.

Also Read: mParticle, AppsFlyer, Amplitude, and Braze Come Together to Launch OpenGDPR Initiative

“Braze is an integral part of Kaidee’s customer engagement strategy as it gives us the ability to send the right message, at the right time, to the right person at scale. For us, it’s not just a marketing tool, but rather helps improve the overall user experience of our platform,” said Tiwa York, Head Coach and CEO of Kaidee. “Braze brings us the ability to translate our data into marketing actions. Since the integration, we have seen a significant increase in engagement with our customers. We are incredibly excited that Braze is opening office in SEA showing their long-term commitment to the region.”

“Working with best-in-class technology companies globally, we value Braze as a generational innovator and support their expansion into the APAC market,” said Rajeev Natarajan, Head of Asia of ICONIQ Capital. “Braze is very well positioned to continue growth in APAC and we look forward to supporting their ongoing success in Singapore and beyond.”

In addition to its new Singapore location, Braze has offices in New York, San Francisco, and London. The company has been on a fast track for growth over the past year and raised $50 million in a Series D funding round led by ICONIQ Capital in Q3 2017, which put Braze’s valuation at more than $400 million. The company also rebranded its identity from Appboy to Braze, as a strategic move to better communicate its commitment to building relationships between brands and consumers at scale across a variety of platforms.

Recommended Read: Interview with Bill Magnuson, Co-founder & CEO of Braze (Previously Appboy)

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