Ahead of Digital NewFronts, YouTube and Hulu Reign Supreme, Finds Matrix Solutions

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April 25, 2018

Marketo Names Vertify a Revvie Finalist for 2018 Lauchpoint Technology Partner of the Year Award

This Revvie Enhances the Already Robust Partnership Between Marketo and Vertify

Vertify Inc., a smart integration software company, recently announced that they have been named a finalist for the Revvie Launchpoint Technology Partner of the Year Award. This award recognizes partners who are delivering exceptional value to Marketo customers through technology and innovation. Winners will be announced at Marketo Nation Summit in San Francisco, April 29 – May 2, 2018.

With over 100 mutual customers, Vertify’s goal is to be the market leader in helping Marketo customers find the true potential of their customer data. “Vertify is the fuel to feed data to the Marketo customer engine,” said Dean Dzurilla, CEO of Vertify. “Our next-gen multi-point integration platform makes it possible to get all customer data, spread across an entire organization, into Marketo. We can’t wait to see how this partnership expands knowing that both sides are innovating for the future.”

Fueling this dynamic partnership is an unparalleled commitment to customer and partner success on both sides of the table.

“The Vertify team has been a consistent resource for helping the entire Solutions Consulting and Marketo Sales Teams. Vertify represents the values of Marketo as part of our extended family of solutions, solving challenges for customers, opening up new opportunities to engage audiences, and delivering consistent innovation. They are a trustworthy resource that we can rely upon to help our customers deliver results,” said Patrick Groover, Senior Solutions Consultant at Marketo.

“Customer data lives all over the place, not just in the CRM,” said Matt Klepac, Vice President of Marketing & Sales at Vertify. “With our growing partnership, marketers will finally get to own the customer journey by making it possible to connect Marketo to every system the customer interacts with.”

The Revvies include 14 categories. Each award recognizes and celebrates companies who are leveraging Marketo to drive the future of marketing and customer experience.

Founded in 2009, Vertify’s singular mission is to help marketers unlock the true potential of company data. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Vertify makes it easy to get customer data into marketing software by connecting apps and sharing data across a company’s tech stack.

Conversica Partners With Microsoft to Bring Conversational AI to Microsoft Dynamics 365

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April 25, 2018

Conversica Partners With Microsoft to Bring Conversational AI to Microsoft Dynamics 365

Conversica’s AI-Powered Sales Assistants Now Available on Microsoft AppSource to Help Microsoft Marketing and Sales Customers Automatically Convert More Leads Into Sales Opportunities

Conversica, the leader in conversational AI for business, announced that its AI-based sales assistant technology is now deeply integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is available from the Microsoft AppSource online marketplace.

The Conversica AI Sales assistant integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables Microsoft customers to easily leverage Conversica’s state-of-the-art conversational AI technology to automatically follow up with leads in their CRM and marketing automation systems. Conversica assistants, powered by advanced natural language processing and machine learning technology, carry on natural, two-way conversations with leads to engage and qualify them for sales. This automated lead follow-up ensures that 100 percent of marketing’s leads are contacted 100 percent of the time and results in more meetings and, thus, more opportunities for sales.

Also Read: Conversica Customer CenturyLink to Present at B2B Marketing Exchange Conference

“Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers are some of the most sophisticated marketing and sales teams; however, they can still struggle with ensuring all the leads generated by marketing are qualified and handed off to sales at the right time,” commented Victor Belfor, Senior Vice President of Business Development of Conversica. “With the powerful integration of Conversica’s conversational AI and Microsoft Dynamics 365, these customers are now able to eliminate the lead qualification bottleneck, boost pipeline creation for sales, and deliver more ROI on marketing demand generation investment. The partnership between Conversica and Microsoft creates this win-win combination for our joint customers.”

Also Read: Conversica, an Oracle Partner, Now Deeply Integrated with Oracle’s Customer Experience Suite

Coming soon, Microsoft customers will be able to access the Conversica listing in the Microsoft AppSource marketplace to access detailed information on the integration and begin utilizing Conversica AI assistant technology with Microsoft Dynamics 365, in both the cloud and on-premise versions.

Conversica is the leader in AI-powered business conversations and the only provider of AI-driven lead engagement software for marketing and sales organizations. The flagship Conversica® AI Sales Assistant helps companies find and secure customers more quickly and efficiently by automatically contacting, engaging, qualifying and following up with leads via natural, two-way conversations.

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

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Stephanie Kidder

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April 25, 2018

GDPR Compliance Isn't the End of the World for Your B2B Marketing

Probably no IT-related deadline since Y2K has loomed as large as the impending implementation of the GDPR, the relatively benign-sounding acronym for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Some, but likely not many, marketers have had their countdown clocks set to May 25, 2018 for a few years now (indeed some estimates say as few as 15% of all marketing organizations are adequately prepared). Everyone needs to understand it and adapt accordingly and ignorance of the law excuses no one.

A very quick primer: GDPR is a broad sweeping set of rules by which the EU will strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within that jurisdiction. To give you a sense of scale, that’s about 750 million people – twice as large as the US. At its core, GDPR requires companies to ask for explicit consent before using personal information. Think of it as a type of opt-in rule on steroids – far more encompassing than just scrubbing email lists and one-time generic opt-ins. It covers things like consumers’ right to be forgotten and to withdraw consent, which means they could request that their personal data be completely deleted from companies’ computer servers, including that collected, managed and used by B2B marketing technology providers on their behalf.

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

So, you’re a marketer in Palo Alto or Peoria and you’re thinking – great for Europe, but what does that have to do with me? Even though it’s being enacted “across the pond,” it’s important to understand if GDPR affects your company and the way you market your products and services. Should you pay attention? If you are selling, promoting or otherwise trying to reach customers in any of the 28 EU member countries with data you have collected or acquired about them – no matter where you are based – then the short answer is yes.

And if you need a good reason to take it seriously, the EU has 20 million of them as that’s how much the fines can be, for failure to comply (it can be even higher as the regulation allows for fines to be based on a percentage of revenue as well).

Also Read: GDPR: Developing a Proportionate Response

GDPR Compliance Doesn’t Mean Curtailing Your B2B Marketing

When people think about personal data and direct marketing, email is the first thing that comes to mind. Almost every company has some sort of email program, from simple newsletters to more elaborate drip campaigns. So without sugar coating it, that’s a problem in the GDPR era. Email marketing relies on having individuals’ contact information, something that is much more restrictive in GDPR and now applies to B2B contact data. Under GDPR, the opt-in process is significantly more specific and restrictive, indicating companies need affirmative consent that is “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” in order to be compliant. On top of that, more specific information must be provided to the customer, including informing subscribers about exactly who is collecting the consent as well as providing information about the purposes of collecting personal data.

In short, a lot of boxes to check before you can become GDPR legal.

You can still use email marketing, but you had better have a clean house. That means both you and your marketing supplier. GDPR places equal liability on data controllers (the organization that owns the data) and data processors (outside organizations that help manage that data, such as your email marketing solution provider!). Simply put – a third-party processor not in compliance means your organization is not in compliance. The new regulation also has strict rules for reporting breaches that everyone in the chain must be able to comply with.

So maybe, GDPR is a good reason to look at other ways to reach your customers, ways that are not only compliant, but – surprise, surprise – perhaps even more effective. Account Based Marketing (ABM) is an ideal workaround to the regulation since it’s IP-based, and not dependent on personal data. That’s not just great for avoiding the heavy hand of the law, but also for targeting anonymous buyers, whom you know frequent your web site but don’t have the courtesy to opt-in to your pesky email registration requests.

Also Read: GDPR: Take a Long, Hard Look at Yourselves in 2018

As a company based in Europe, we know the importance of developing solutions to be purpose-built to adhere to privacy regulations. Being a supplier of IP-based solutions, a lot of that comes by default. An ABM platform drives revenues by serving personalized and relevant content to anonymous buyers at target accounts. As a complement to Marketing Automation and CRM systems, Azalead targets employees at target accounts and tracks engagement based on company IP address, rather than something specific to an individual, like an email address.

As importantly, your marketing supplier is responsible for making sure that you will be compliant with the letter of the law. The GDPR lays out 7 clear principles that companies must abide by, from consent to individuals’ data rights to monitoring and breach notification. Azalead, for example, allows marketers to adhere to the regulation and we provide on-going assessments and compliance monitoring as well.

Take a step back and forget GDPR for a minute. At the end of the day, it’s all about building trusted relationships. So, in fact, there are some upsides to everyone being on the same page with regard to data privacy, including a greater degree of trust by customers that their personal information will only be used in a way that they specifically want.

Also Read: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

Front Row Solutions Recommended as a Top Sales Enablement Partner by Selling Power Magazine

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April 25, 2018

Front Row Solutions Recommended as a Top Sales Enablement Partner by Selling Power Magazine

Selling Power Magazine Highlighted That Front Row Solutions’ Innovative Mobile Data Collection Solution Enhances Sales Rep Productivity, Drives Real-Time Reporting, and Can Be Implemented as a Standalone Platform or Integrated With Any Legacy CRM or ERP System

Front Row Solutions, the creator of a class-leading CRM platform that enables organizations to track and improve mobile worker efficiency, compliance and performance, announced that it has been recommended as one of the world’s top sales enablement partners by Selling Power Magazine.

Commented Etien D’Hollander, President of Front Row Solutions: “We are pleased that Selling Power has recommended Front Row Solutions as an elite sales enablement partner. We take pride in being part of the solution that today’s sales organizations need to succeed and thrive.”

Also Read: Class-Leading CRM Platform Front Row Solutions Significantly Improves Integration Capability

Launched in 1981, Selling Power Magazine is the leading digital publication for sales executives and managers, and one of the internet’s most trusted sources for B2B professional selling skills, motivation, and sales management knowledge. In its recommendation, Selling Power Magazine highlighted that Front Row Solutions’ innovative mobile data collection solution:

Enables sales reps to easily submit a new sales report, or update a previous report, immediately after a customer interaction — and in less than 60 seconds.
Drives real-time reporting that enhances information flow and provides deep insight across all sales rep and customer activity.
Can be implemented as a standalone platform, or integrated as a user-friendly front end with any legacy CRM or ERP system.

D’Hollander added: “Studies reveal that the average sales rep spends a staggering 64.8 percent of their time on non-revenue generating activities, and a massive chunk of this is wasted hunting down customer data and manually submitting reports and updates. At the same time, today’s sales managers are expected to meet increasingly aggressive targets, but often lack the essential tools they need to track and optimize their distributed sales force. Front Row Solutions clearly solves both of these challenges. Sales reps dramatically increase their active selling time, which much means more time engaging with customers and far less time on tedious administrative tasks. And sales managers get the real-time visibility they need to ensure compliance, optimize performance, and put their mobile sales reps in a position to succeed quarter after quarter. Everyone wins, including satisfied and impressed customers.”

TechBytes with Alex Wright, Head of Insight, Blis

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April 25, 2018

Alex Wright
Head of Insight, Blis

In the digital world, data is the new oil. Segmentation and acquiring the right datasets are critical to the success of omnichannel marketing campaigns. We spoke to Alex Wright, Head of Insights, Blis, to understand how data is verified and the criticality of location data in marketing attribution.

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

My role as Head of Insight is to take the huge volumes of data we collect, understand its origins, use it to test hypotheses or challenge preconceptions, and turn it into a tangible story that answers a brand’s questions and contributes to how they solve their business problems.

This role didn’t formally exist at Blis before I joined the company, so firstly I needed to understand what the business is about, where it fits into the location mobile ecosystem, where mobile location fits within the mobile ecosystem, and where mobile fits into the wider media context. I want to find the best way to portray our qualities and the unique work that Blis does.

Prior to Blis, I worked on the Google account at a media agency, which was my first step into digital media. I learned there that the real challenge is to keep up rather than catch up (which seemed like a convenient viewpoint!), but more importantly that the digital ‘exhaust fumes’ of people’s natural behavior create a lot of passive information we can use to better understand them.

At Blis, how do you verify the authenticity of data? How does it impact your ability to build better products for marketing technology companies?

We capture data via GPS, wifi, and beacons and pass it through our quality control technology to filter out inaccurate and fraudulent points, meaning that we’re only working with sources we can trust. With 50-70% of GPS data being inaccurate, these publishers need to be removed which leaves the data sets at a fraction of the size with the need to be scaled up again in order to identify actionable insights. Want we do is use verified GPS data and then scale it out to public wifi. With our level of accuracy and CPV model, brands are getting the best of location-based services by using Blis.

What is the ‘State of Location-based Data’ technology in 2018?

Location-based services are expected to be worth around 34.8 billion in 2020. Compared to two years ago, marketers now better understand the magnitude of the data-quality problem facing the industry but are having issues with understanding what is inaccurate or how to make up for the data lost.

The increased scrutiny on mobile location data is a positive thing – the industry’s willingness to unpick and understand the data and its origins not only reflects its level of potential, but will also hopefully lead to an increase in data quality as inaccurate and fraudulent players get found out and squeezed out of the market.

Consumers have become more comfortable sharing location data, but they are also selective about when they want to share that information. According to our research as well as eMarketer’s report from earlier this year, consumers have also become more confident in demanding value in exchange for providing their data, prompting many marketers to have to explain how data will be used.

What are your predictions for location-based behavioral marketing? How does Blis help customers to build better behavioral marketing campaigns?

We believe the cost-per-visit is the future of location-based advertising. Leading the development of this technology, Blis is pioneering campaigns where brands will only pay for actual site visits. This level of transparency and performance-based compensation model keeps agencies and technology companies honest, while potentially rewarding them for effective campaigns.

Location-based behavioral profiling could be a great complement to the existing audience profiling tools currently utilized by client-side marketers and their agency partners. If behavior – and decision-making – are the actions we as advertisers want to influence, then profiling based on behavior, and attribution using behavior as the key metric makes a lot of sense.

How do you define ‘Customer Experience’ at Blis?

We define Customer Experience as an engagement with a brand that is messaged at a relevant moment in time. This engagement provides value to a customer based on where they are and is amplified cross-channel in a meaningful way, ensuring alignment on all channels from OOH to digital.

Why do marketers find it hard to attribute customer success to experience management? What are your recommendations to overcome these challenges?

It will often boil down the disconnects in the media / behavioral transfer – essentially, we apply labels and models to behavior in order to help us understand and explain them, but consumers don’t apply these same labels to themselves.

This ends up meaning that the profiles we create (whether through 1st party data, proprietary research, audience segmentation, syndicated sources etc.) are never truly representative of the audiences we hope to reach, which in turn means the media we buy becomes a loose mix of over-indexing channels. We then pick whichever attribution model (first-click, last-click etc.) seems to work best – which will often be dictated by the channel that delivers it! – which results in a very restricted view of a consumer’s brand touchpoints (whether they’re advertising, prior experience, personal recommendations, reviews etc.).

Being able to tie physical attribution (through store footfall) to digital exposure (across screens, and across publishers) is a real leap forward.

How would you define Personalization- Segmentation- Optimization, and Automation at various stages of your digital campaigns?

Segmentation first – define, then identify an audience based on passively observed location behavior.

Personalization next – through creative. Whether this is message, format, or time/day/location for delivery.

Optimization and Automation – these work together, depending on the buying route.

How do you leverage AI/ML and data science at Blis? What AI companies are you particularly interested in?

Last year we released Blis Futures, an AI-powered, predictive location modelling solution. It identifies consumers most likely to visit specific locations, then provides advertisers a guarantee they will only be charged per consumer visit. Blis Futures uses machine learning and predictive analytics to group like data sets and identify patterns. The solution builds audience segments based on their predicted conversion rates and indicates when and where to target this audience group to achieve the advertisers’ business objectives. This ultimately eliminates waste in spend and increases campaign performance.

From my point of view, I think those more commercially driven businesses have a far harder task trying to predict consumer behavior – which is not to say they won’t do a good job influencing it! I think using AI in medical/pharma – where cause and effect are well understood – is where real progress will be obvious sooner. Decision-making is too often impulsive and irrational, which is partly what makes it so interesting and intriguing – the allure of the ‘impossible’ task!

Thanks for chatting with us, Alex.
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

Amplitude Unveils ‘Portfolio’ to Empower Companies Build Better Products

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April 25, 2018

Amplitude Unveils 'Portfolio' to Empower Companies Build Better Products

In an Industry First, Amplitude Enables Companies to Create Better Customer Experiences across an Entire Portfolio of Software Products

Amplitude, the product analytics company, has announced the launch of ‘Portfolio’. Amplitude’s Portfolio is an industry-first solution that will enable product leaders at Fortune 500 brands and large enterprises to optimize the customer experience across a product suite. By tracking user behavior and engagement across multiple digital applications, product teams can use Portfolio to see how customers are interacting with multiple applications so they can create better products, build deeper relationships with customers and grow their business.

“Amplitude is on a mission to give these product leaders the tools they need to grow their business efficiently.” – Amplitude CEO, Spenser Skates

Previously, enterprises with multiple digital products had to combine siloed data, rely on incomplete metrics or work with a central analytics team to merge data on a one-off basis. Product teams lacked a holistic understanding of their customers’ relationship with their product offerings.

With Portfolio, user data across a company’s entire product suite is automatically synthesized in real-time, allowing multi-product companies like video-sharing technology platform Dailymotion and international media company Schibsted to understand customer behavior in a single view. Now, product leaders can see business critical KPIs such as engagement, retention, and conversion without needing time from analytics teams or engineers.

At the launch of Amplitude ‘Portfolio’, the CEO Spenser Skates, said, “Product teams have more influence than ever before and are responsible for important business metrics like revenue, customer engagement and long-term retention. And yet VPs of Product and Chief Digital Officers can’t see how their customers interact with their full product portfolio.”

Amplitude Portfolio Helps Optimize Customers’ Experience Across a Product Portfolio

Portfolio enables product leaders to —

Get a single click executive view on a company’s product health.
Organizations can standardize metrics and benchmark KPIs between multiple products.
Optimize customers’ experience across a product portfolio.
Companies can focus on and build cross-product experiences that drive incremental growth and revenue.
Understand how users retain and engage across applications.
Product teams can visualize customers’ cross-product paths and track the impact of features that span multiple products.

For example, Portfolio has given product leadership at Dailymotion, a global video-sharing site with 300 million monthly users, a clearer picture of the health of its platform. Executives can now see KPIs for the entire platform, in real-time, which helps the team make quick decisions and track towards business goals.

“Amplitude’s Portfolio has enabled us to very quickly compare retention for each platform – simplifying what was once a painful process to a single live dashboard,” said Rachel Wignall, Product Lead at Dailymotion.

Rachel added, “This is more insightful and digestible for our management team, helping us focus on work that matters.”

Currently, Amplitude provides product analytics that helps companies build better products. Launched in 2014, and backed by IVP, Battery Ventures and Benchmark Capital, Amplitude is the analytics solution of choice for product-led companies who want to understand user behavior, ship great features faster and drive strong business outcomes.

Dailymotion Player Technology Updated to Empower Digital Publishing

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April 25, 2018

Dailymotion Player Technology Updated to Empower Digital Publishing

The New Features from Dailymotion Led to a 17 Percent Lift in Views Per Session in Beta Test

Dailymotion, a leading video player technology and content discovery platform, has released a new version of its online video player offering for publishers. The Dailymotion Player allows companies to deliver flawless streaming experiences across their owned properties and automatically syndicate their content to a broader audience via Dailymotion’s global publisher network.

Player Customization, viasa Dailymotion — *Player Customization, via Dailymotion*

Publishers Using Dailymotion Player could Witness Built-In Audience Growth and Monetization Opportunities

Building upon Dailymotion’s industry-leading player technology, the features are designed to boost user engagement and improve publishers’ ability to customize video experiences within their own websites and mobile apps. In beta tests of the new player technology, partners saw a 17 percent lift in views per session and a 10 percent lift in viewable ad inventory.

At the time of this announcement, Guillaume Clément, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Dailymotion, said, “This evolution of the Dailymotion Player underscores our attentiveness to the evolving needs of today’s publishers, who must shift their strategies to optimize for audiences on their own properties and across third-party platforms.”

Guillaume added, “This update is designed to increase viewer engagement and help publishers expand their audience via our premium publisher network.”

New features included in this release —

– Up Next Queue: Keep site visitors entertained and engaged by automatically queuing up a relevant video after each completed play.

– Enhanced Branding Options & Watermarking: Make your player your own by changing the seek bar, settings, and highlights to align with your brand. Add a hot-linked watermark directly to fully customize your player’s call-to-action.

– User Engagement Tools: We’ve made it even easier for users to spend time with your videos. Expanded accessibility features include touch navigation on mobile (slide backward or forward), full keyboard navigation controls, publisher-enabled subtitles, customizable video playback speed, and compatibility with assistive technologies.

Dailymotion Player Platform Enables in Discovering the Events and Ideas That Keep the World Engaged

Today, Dailymotion commands a global audience of 300 million entertainment-seekers who frequent the site and its dedicated mobile experience to surface the most relevant professional video content based on their unique tastes and interests. Dailymotion is owned by Vivendi, a Paris-based multinational media company.

Publishers that utilize the Dailymotion Player benefit from built-in audience growth and monetization opportunities via syndication tools that surface premium videos to 300 million people globally across desktop (dailymotion.com), mobile (iOs and Android), and OTT (Apple TV, Android TV, Xbox One, and Amazon Fire TV).

Currently, Dailymotion is the player technology and video platform for discovering the events and ideas that keep the world surprising and diverse on four main topics: news, sports, music, and entertainment, as well as comedy skits, political debates, fashion shows, gaming live-streams and more.

Read More: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

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

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April 25, 2018

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

Award Winners to be Honored at Unleash 2018, Outreach’s User Conference Taking Place May 6-8 in San Diego

Outreach, the leading customer engagement platform, announced the winners of the company’s first annual Nucleo Awards, recognizing those Outreach customers who have achieved sales excellence through their use of Outreach’s customer engagement software. The winners will be formally recognized next week during Outreach’s annual user conference, Unleash, taking place May 6-8 at Paradise Point in San Diego.

Outreach Expands Management Team With New COO And SVP Of Customer Success — Manny Medina

“We developed the Nucleos as a way to recognize the central role our customers play in everything we do at Outreach,” said Manny Medina, CEO and co-founder of Outreach. “These seven customers have used Outreach to drive incredible sales success at each of their organizations and are showing no signs of slowing down. They are fierce advocates for our brand, a continual source of inspiration and we couldn’t be more proud to call them customers.”

Also Read: Outreach Expands Management Team With New COO Anna Baird And SVP Of Customer Success Mike Zinne

The 2018 Nucleo Award winners include:

The Outreach Wizard Award: Lisa Goldsher, Director of Business Development at FinancialForce. The Outreach Wizard has a gift for making Outreach work like magic and uses the platform to simplify and improve their (or their team’s) life.
The Gold Miner Award: Nichole Vine, Content Marketing Manager at SurveyMonkey. The Gold Miner is a strategic expert who delivers content that helps their team connecting with prospects illustrate the value of their product immediately.
The Outreach Outside the Box Award: Ed Sellitto, Director, Customer Success Operations at Newsela. The Outreach Outside the Box is awarded to a customer who knows Outreach so well that they’ve developed a use case or strategy that takes their sales process to completely new levels.
The Rookie of the Year Award: Alex Hudzik, Director of Inside Sales at Nasuni. The Rookie of the Year award recognizes a superstar user, admin, or sales leader who has been using Outreach for less than a year but has already seen evidence of increased success.
The No Sequence Unreplied Award: Marya Dzmitruk, Sponsorship Manager at Talkdesk. The No Sequence Unreplied is awarded to an Outreach customer who has a knack for developing incredible content and sequences that lead to high engagement and reply rates.
The SuperHero Award: Ryan Schertzer, Director of Inside Sales at Seal Software. The SuperHero award goes to a customer who has helped build Outreach’s customer community from the ground up.
The Power Couple of the Year Award: Tyler Bench, Director of Demand Generation at Lucidchart and McClain Smith, Manager of Sales Development at Lucidchart. The Power Couple of the Year award goes to a marketing and sales leader pair who has ensured that all leads are followed up with, sales is enabled with the best language and assets, and both teams are kept outstandingly happy.

“At SurveyMonkey, listening to existing and potential customers and making impactful data-driven improvements is core to who we are as a company. Outreach provides a fool-proof way of making sure each prospect gets the proper communication, and since implementing it, we have seen great results in engagement and an increase in meeting conversion,” said Nichole.

Unleash 2018 is a unique opportunity for more than 500 sales leaders to connect with like-minded professionals, gain new insights into sales excellence, and learn new techniques for driving higher levels of performance and success.

Interview with Anne Gretland, CEO, FotoWare

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April 25, 2018

Interview with Anne Gretland, CEO at FotoWare

[vc_wp_text]“Digital innovation is about how we no longer have to do many small tasks to get the job done or to make something happen.”

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[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/annegretland” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-gretland-304846/”]

Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be part of FotoWare?

I fell in love with technology when I started working for Microsoft in 1998. I had never before experienced such a passion for technology or seen up close how technology so fundamentally can affect our everyday lives. That’s when knew I belonged in the IT-world, and I have never looked back. It is important for me to represent a company and a solution that I believe in and trust, in addition to working with people that share my values. So, when I was approached about becoming CEO of FotoWare, I immediately felt this was right for me. Their values, their story, and their mission was something that I could identify with, and I knew they had great potential for the future. I think that Digital Asset Management is an essential tool for every organization, as the future is digital, everybody has digital assets, and FotoWare has the solution to manage it.

How do you define “Digital Transformation’ and “Digital Innovation” respectively?

For me, they are both equally important and co-dependent. Certain times innovation drives transformation, and other times during digital transformation companies drive innovation. Digital innovation is about how we no longer have to do many small tasks to get the job done or to make something happen. It just makes our lives easier. Before, we had to park our car, find a meter, put coins in, get a note, and go back to the car to insert it in the window. Now, I drive into the parking space and my car gets automatically registered; where I park, for how long, and the fee is automatically deducted from my card, via an app, that I approve once a week. This transforms the way I live my life and perform my everyday tasks.

I love how digital innovation transforms the world by removing cognitive (human) bias. The Norwegian IT company, Evry, is using robots to hire IT-consultants, and because they are programmed to look for skills and expertise, they do not care about gender, cultural background or names. It only focuses on the hiring criteria. Because of that, Evry increased female hiring. 33% of the 600 hires in the last year, were women. That is an increase from 20% to 33% in a year. And that is pretty amazing.

Digital innovation has also distributed power from a selected few to all. All you need now is the internet and a device, and you can live anywhere in the world and find any information online, read free books and get an education. Now knowledge and education are available to more people, and with knowledge and education comes prosperity. That to me is one of the most critical changes that technology can drive.

What is your company roadmap to lead FotoWare into the highly disruptive Customer Experience landscape?

We strongly believe in innovation, and at the same time make stable, secure and user-friendly solutions. We want to deliver products to the users before they realize the need for them, in the ways they need it. In our road ahead, we aim to keep evolving, keep up with innovation, and continue to either be disruptive or learn from the disruptiveness.

FotoWare’s software helps people create and share stories across the world. We are proud to make a difference in the everyday lives of users handling a large volume of visual files, and we will always need disruptive technology to improve. We need great competitors so that we can continue to outperform each other; continue to make innovative and user-friendly products, and continue to win the customers’ hearts and minds. That way the customer can get the best solution for their needs. The Digital Asset Management industry is one of the most exciting right now because in today’s world, individuals make some of the most stunning and important content! Nowadays, we are all professional photographers, writers, and brand builders and need professional and innovative tools.

What are the major pain points for B2B marketers in the adoption of DAMs for corporate communication?

Adoption barriers are very low for a DAM system, especially in the case of B2B marketing users. Corporate communication departments are already facing the issue of inconsistent branding and wasting time on being a service provider (of the latest logo, PowerPoint slide or product photos). With a central repository, the B2B marketing team could be more organized and ensure that their company’s visuals always look stunning.

There are no requirements for adopting FotoWare – just a couple of hours on getting the system personalized to your needs either by yourself or together with a FotoWare expert. We have online videos, tutorials and technical documentation that are free.

We advise the customer to get involved across the organization, to maximize user adaption and get the most value for money. We have designed our product for multifunctional use because we believe that a user should not need to exit their favorite tool to gain access to marketing materials, photos, videos or other elements. That is why FotoWare has designed a ready plugin for Microsoft Office, and InDesign, which can integrate with a couple of lines of Java code to any web CMS. In this way, a salesperson would always have the latest, approved and correctly licensed marketing graphics available while they are building their presentations. Likewise, a designer would directly access the licensed stock photos or product photoshoots in their InDesign document. And most importantly, your brand will be up to date at every digital touchpoint. This ensures smooth and frictionless adoption.

What are the key metrics you use to measure your B2B customer success?

First: customer wins, customer satisfaction, and customer renewal. Our current customers have become our ambassadors, and that is our most significant success factor.

Technology adoption is also a success rate. When we solve challenges that the customer had; that they are so passionate about the product that their eyes shine. We love to enthuse our end-users, and when customers become our fans – that is the best metric to measure.

Our products help our customers achieve their goals -e.g., in a marketing department – that everyone talks and presents the brand in an up-to-date and consistent way, in addition to increasing the lifecycle of the content.

From a sales perspective, we believe that our product helps in creating new business opportunities – when using FotoWare. The customer has a full overview of all their historical archives, how the content is used and the data/information that goes with the content. With FotoWare, a file becomes content and transforms into an asset that can add value to the business.

What are your predictions for DAMs in 2018? How does FotoWare prepare for these?

I think we are at a turning point; DAM is becoming more relevant for customers, and for consumers as well. In the beginning, it was mostly used by large publications, then large marketing departments and retail, but now, we see that “everybody” needs a DAM system. With the increasing number of pictures and videos, and holograms and 3D images stored in folders on the employee’s PC or a server, is just not effective enough in today’s fast-moving, cloud-first, mobile-first world. In addition, we believe that more affordable and accessible offerings will increase the market potential and that smaller and more generic DAM vendors will be acquired by larger entities, resulting in fewer but larger vendors. New niche offerings will emerge, tailored for specific market verticals.

What startups in the martech industry are you watching/keen on right now?

‘No isolation’ is a Norwegian startup that makes robots sit in the classroom instead of a student, who is on leave. That way the student can be at home in bed, and via a tablet or PC watch the class and not miss out on the learning. I believe in the technology that changes the world for the better, and that helps people make their lives easier, all over the world. That is why I welcome robots into our lives with great enthusiasm. Robots could work in healthcare and take care of patients, and the elderly, without suffering from back-pain from lifting people, or feeling burnt out from working nights. Drones could deliver medicine to people not able to get to the pharmacy or that live far out in the countryside. AI is going to make millions of people’s lives easier, both for those who need the help and for those who give the help.

What marketing and sales tools and automation technologies do you use?

Our first stop for driving marketing and lead generation is Hubspot – it is an enabling tool that gives marketers the data they need in one place to create content-driven strategies. We need to educate, inform and entertain our website visitors and social media followers, because we no longer live in a B2B marketing world but in H2H.

Secondly, FotoWare is a crucial part of reaching our marketing goals. We operate through resellers and product specialists in 41 countries while driving global marketing. With FotoWare we can have a full overview of how our branded materials are used and a complete overview of a 20-year archive of marketing materials. This significantly increases the lifecycle of our content marketing and can serve as an inspiration for recycling and reusing content in new creative ways. FotoWare is the tool we use to distribute our global and localized materials to our resellers on time and with the correct guidelines.

Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign at FotoWare?

I believe that people want to read about real people. Consumers are too smart to be tricked into thinking that it is not a sales campaign when it really is. We want to let customers know who we are and what we do, and what we have to offer. We want to be there in the “moment” when customers’ needs us. It is about building a relationship, and that must be done in an honest and transparent way. This takes time and requires always to be willing to share information. This also puts you in a vulnerable situation of course. Anyone can take your selling points or steal your knowledge. However, we have to think that by sharing, we are contributing to building a stronger Digital Asset Management industry. Making Digital Asset Management a word that everybody knows about, builds our industry and our common business.

How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader? How do you leverage AI capabilities at FotoWare?

For our users, the most important role of AI is to edit and organize content. This helped us set it up as a high priority at an early stage. FotoWare offers to automatically add keywords and crop photos in a new way. With FotoWare, you can understand what people search for in an archive of photos. A marketing person wanting to run a specific campaign and would not necessarily know to search for a picture by its location, photographer, or product SKU. Instead, a user will often search for a descriptive keyword that the AI can identify. It is estimated that as much as 10% of images in a collection become unsearchable because of no or inadequate keywording, making them impossible to retrieve. FotoWare users can considerably reduce the time it takes to tag photos, and their collections become more accessible with additional searchable information using AI.

In the future, it will not just be about auto-tagging images, but how do give your user the content they are looking for, without knowing what they are looking for. Providing navigation models based on automatic tagging will be an essential AI-powered feature.

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

Since FotoWare is a technology company, and we make our own software, tech is in our DNA. We take pride in our vision of being pioneers in innovation and having a growth mindset. We need to fill the needs of the customers we have today, and at the same time make a product that will inspire customers in the future. We all have a passion for technology, and that means also staying on top of what happens in the market; to be a part of the change. We want to be early adopters and drivers. That certainly involves an element of risk. Being the first, you never really know if it will stick – but that is the risk we must take. In the past, our ability to look into the crystal bowl has been positive, and a lot of this, I believe is using plain common sense and thinking about usability, in addition to keeping informed about what the large tech companies are doing, and their prediction for the future.

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

Me personally, cannot live without my public transportation app, and my money transfers app. At work and as a team, our organization is dependent on sharing information cross-border and groups effectively, and we use Slack, Teams, and Confluence. Having partnered with Imagga has been a great collaboration for us, because having auto-tagging in our product, makes it easy both for our customers and us.

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

The simplest of them all: turning off all sound, notification, and indications of incoming mail. I never see or hear when mail is incoming, not even in the taskbar. That way, I do not get distracted by the urgency. I go to my mailbox when I am ready, not when I see a notification on my screen. I have also set my Outlook to open in calendar view so that I have an overview of my day before I turn to see the inbox.

What are you currently reading?

I read a lot of books about leadership because there is always something to learn in this very exciting field. Leadership and management roles are very important, as you are responsible for your coworkers work life, and that responsibility should not be taking lightly.

I just finished The First 90 Days, by Michael D. Watkins – I read this book to prepare myself for my new job. Before that, I read The Phenix Project, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, a book about Dev/Opps and leadership and how to structure a business

Right now I am reading Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg. This might not seem like a leadership book, but personal sacrifice and life-changing situations are somethings that help you grow as a person and become more empathic towards other people.

However, I find fascinating articles online, via my social media feeds. I follow CEOWorld, Harvard Business Review, Lean In, and several other international leadership hubs and magazines. In addition, I get a lot of information and learning from my mentors and my network. I am part of an international learning network with people from England, Germany, Norway, and Ireland, and we share leadership and technology knowledge on a regular basis.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
It is better to take a chance on something and fail, (and learn from that) than not try at all. If you never go outside your comfort zone, you will never grow or understand what you are really capable of. Don’t let your comfort zone hold you back.

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

What makes a great leader? – Birger Steen

What is the next big technology thing? – Daniel Newman

What will the future be like for marketing and sales – Gary Vaynerchuk

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Anne” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68ffaa-a956″]

Anne features in the list of Norway’s 50 leading IT women. She has a passion for technology and what it can do for people all over the world. She belive ins diversity and that we are better if we make our colleagues better.

She has been working in the IT industry in different leadership roles since 1998, when she started in Microsoft Norway. Anne is the co-founder of the largest network for Women working in the IT-sector in the Nordics, ODA (formerly Nora Nettverk) that has 8000 members, 32 partners and 30 people working on a volunteer basis.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About FotoWare” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68ffaa-a956″]

FotoWare is a software company based in Oslo, Norway, with offices in Hamburg, Sydney and Gothenburg, and resellers in 41 countries. Established in 1994 as a result of the growing demand to handle large volumes of digital photos and videos, the company has since then provided 2000+ companies with enterprise-class Digital Asset Management solutions. FotoWare has built one of the most efficient and productive solutions found on the market today for finding, processing and sharing videos, photos, graphics, audio, presentations, and documents. The solution is praised among users for the user experience and functionality, and the modular system is very cost efficient for both small and large companies, and is available for private-cloud, hybrid or on-premise deployments.

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

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

Criteo Direct Bidder Reaches Widespread Adoption as Publishers Embrace Header Bidding Technology to Maximize Revenues

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MTS Staff Writer

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April 25, 2018

Criteo Direct Bidder Reaches Widespread Adoption as Publishers Embrace Header Bidding Technology to Maximize Revenues

Commerce Marketing Leader Further Enhances Publisher Integrations by Joining Prebid.org.

Criteo S.A., the leading commerce marketing technology company, announced that Criteo Direct Bidder has been adopted by 2,000 premium publishers in less than one year in-market. The solution directly connects publishers’ inventory to the demand from Criteo’s extensive base of more than 18,000 retail and brand clients globally.

The widespread implementation of Criteo Direct Bidder demonstrates two clear trends. First, publishers desire more control over their inventory and who has access to it, while also wanting to maximize its value and eliminate third-party fees. Criteo Direct Bidder delivers on all fronts. Second, advertisers are benefiting by leveraging the only agnostic buying platform with scalable direct-to-publisher integrations, making Criteo Direct Bidder one of the largest and most preferred programmatic supply sources for Criteo.

Marc Grabowski

To further publisher adoption and industry standardization, Criteo has also officially joined Prebid.org, an independent organization designed to ensure and promote fair, transparent and efficient header bidding across the industry. As a contributing member, Criteo will work to make integrations more seamless for publishers and fully supports PreBid 1.0.

“Criteo Direct Bidder’s 2,000 publisher milestone is a testament to our continued innovation in developing inventory and publisher solutions that support their long-term monetization and customer growth strategies. said Marc Grabowski, Executive Vice President, Global Supply, Criteo.

Marc added, “By connecting our partners’ valuable inventory to our premium demand, we are creating a win-win scenario for our clients and publishers who collectively want to provide compelling content to readers. Further, it is a natural fit for Criteo to join the Prebid community to create a streamlined header bidding experience for publishers.”

Stephen Mummey

AccuWeather, a current Criteo partner using Criteo Direct Bidder via Prebid, saw ad spend increase by 116 percent year-over-year with a 57 percent increase in impressions bought and a 51 percent increase in win rate.

“We added Criteo as one of our first header bidding partners within Prebid, basing our selection on Criteo’s proven track record,” Stephen Mummey, Vice President, Programmatic Sales and Operations, AccuWeather. “The results have been very positive thus far, and we’ve already seen higher campaign performance. Criteo Direct Bidder’s incredibly fast response time allows us to avoid latency, significantly increasing revenue.”

Flexible and seamless integration capabilities are paramount for today’s publishers as they execute against extremely competitive performance metrics and quality demands.

Mark-Olaf Winter

“We chose to work with Criteo because of its demand from high-quality advertisers, as well as its commitment to transparency,” said Mark-Olaf Winter, Deputy Director, Digital, SPIEGEL MEDIA. “The Criteo team worked closely with us to optimize set-up for Criteo Direct Bidder, and we saw immediate success. Criteo Direct Bidder has helped us to serve fewer ads, of a higher quality, to both improve the user experience and also drive significantly more yield.”

Matt Leardini

“At Synacor, we are focused on maximizing yield across our publisher partnerships and delivering value to buyers,” said Matt Leardini, Vice President, Search and Advertising, Synacor. “Our relationship with Criteo plays an important role. By leveraging Criteo Direct Bidder, we are gaining frictionless access to Criteo’s unique demand helping us optimize the value of our inventory.”

Natham Jelovich

“Criteo Direct Bidder was extremely easy to get setup and running,” said Natham Jelovich, Director of Customer Marketing, Zulily. “The account team was helpful and walked us through the entire process. Even better, CPMs are very competitive and adding the Direct Bidder has definitely delivered strong results.”

Michael Richardson

“We’re incredibly excited that Criteo has joined Prebid.org,” said Michael Richardson, Chairperson, Prebid.org. “Criteo is bringing its long-standing and deep expertise in header bidding to the open source tools and techniques that we champion at Prebid. By joining, Criteo is demonstrating its collaborative spirit in an effort to enhance the overall good of the advertising ecosystem—helping to drive more transparency, accountability and true innovation.”

Tableau Introduces New Subscription Offerings to Help Organizations Scale Analytics to their Entire Workforces

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April 25, 2018

New Tableau Creator, Explorer, and Viewer Offerings Are Tailored to User Needs, Empowering Everyone From the Sophisticated Analyst to the Casual Business User With Tableau’s End-To-End Analytics Capabilities

Tableau Software recently introduced new offerings that combine new and existing analytical capabilities into packages appropriate for everyone across an organization, regardless of skill level. With a new way to buy and scale Tableau’s best-in-class analytics platform, organizations now can cost-effectively achieve a critical objective: enabling the data-driven enterprise by putting the data in the hands of everyone.

Tableau Creator, Explorer, and Viewer subscriptions provide tailored combinations of sophisticated analytics and drop-dead simplicity. This allows every customer to create the appropriate mix of analytics capabilities to meet the specific needs of their entire organization. From consuming data and performing ad-hoc analysis from curated data sources, to preparing and developing advanced analysis, the new price offerings cover a wide breadth of powerful capabilities. They also include the newly released data preparation application Tableau Prep, new web authoring capabilities, and the renowned Tableau Desktop. Customers can choose to work on-premises or in the cloud.

Also Read: United Nations Establishes Tableau as Visual Analytics Standard, Streamlines Global Adoption of Platform

Customers can choose to migrate their existing Tableau Server and Desktop installations to the new subscription offerings, available today in the Tableau 2018.1 release. Once migrated, administrators will be able to assign a specific option — Creator, Explorer, or Viewer — to each user in their organization, completing the transition process.

“With the unprecedented and accelerating growth of data that customers are experiencing, the need to see and understand data is more important than ever before. Professional analysts, teachers, doctors, project managers, marketers, sellers, developers, factory line workers, recruiters – everyone needs data to make better decisions. Organizations are facing the urgent need to empower their entire workforce to help drive more revenue, reduce costs, provide better service, increase productivity, discover the next scientific breakthrough and even save lives,” said Adam Selipsky, CEO at Tableau. “Our new offerings will help entire organizations make analytics ubiquitous, enabling them to tailor the capabilities required for every employee.”

Also Read: Tableau Appoints Gerri Martin-Flickinger, Starbucks CTO, to Board of Directors

High-Value Offerings for Everyone

Tableau’s new tailored offerings are designed to deliver more value than ever before, leading with Tableau Creator, which gives full analytics capabilities to analysts and power users. For organizations looking to scale analytics, Tableau Explorer allows self-service analysis of governed data, and Tableau Viewer enables casual users to consume dashboards and visualizations created by others. Tableau’s new offerings, available on-premises, in the public cloud or via SaaS, and make it easy to start and to scale. Combined, these offerings provide a complete end-to-end platform with no hidden costs.

Tableau Creator

Tableau Creator provides the full power of the Tableau platform. It helps people uncover insights faster by combining a suite of products for visual and direct data prep, powerful analytics on the web and desktop, and secure collaboration to support their end-to-end analytics workflow. It includes Tableau Desktop, and, at no additional charge, Tableau Prep, a new data preparation product designed to help customers get their data ready for analysis. It also includes a license for Tableau Server or Tableau Online, allowing people to publish and share their work.

Also Read: Tableau Acquires Natural Language Query Startup ClearGraph

Tableau Explorer

Tableau Explorer is perfect for governed self-service analytics. It enables people to create new dashboards based on governed data sources, collaborate with others, and stay on top of data with subscriptions and alerting. This offering enables people to explore trusted data, create their own tailored content, share and collaborate with data, and stay on top of key data points with data-driven alerts, all within the convenience of their web browsers.

Tableau Viewer

Tableau Viewer makes it possible for organizations to extend the value of data and analytics across their entire workforce in a very cost-effective manner. It helps people within scaled deployments make data-driven decisions based on trusted content by interacting with dashboards and visualizations created by others in a secure, easy-to-use platform. Customers will be able to view and filter dashboards, receive and manage subscriptions to dashboards, and receive data-driven alerts, all via mobile and/or the web.

From the choice of SaaS, on-premises, public cloud or hybrid solutions, to enabling the individual analyst as well as the largest enterprise deployments, to a range of subscription choices, Tableau gives organizations the flexibility to buy what they need, when they need it. Likewise, Tableau’s new tailored offerings allow people to leverage the power of analytics in a way that is flexible, easy to ramp up, and simple to scale. Entire organizations now have the flexibility to license the role appropriate to the capabilities each person needs at a price that makes sense for them. This reduces the upfront investment and makes it easier than ever to scale best-in-class business intelligence across the organization.

Brainshark Customers to Describe Sales Enablement Success Stories at Summit

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April 25, 2018

Brainshark Customers to Describe Sales Enablement Success Stories at Summit

Brainshark to Also Demonstrate Acclaimed Sales Readiness Solutions – Including Upcoming AI-Powered Innovations

Brainshark Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement and readiness solutions, announced customer participation in the SiriusDecisions 2018 Summit, to be held May 8-10, in Las Vegas. The annual event, expected to draw more than 3,200 sales and marketing professionals, will unveil new best-practices research and B2B product innovations, and share strategies for measurably improving sales success.

As companies across industries execute on a common goal – to improve sales results – they need a strategy for always-on sales learning, so reps are prepared to deliver value in any selling situation. The stakes are high. According to recent research from SiriusDecisions: “Any single mistake can kill a deal and create negative organizational outcomes. Sales enablement must ensure that reps know what to do and how to do it, as well as execute consistently at scale. Sales learning and coaching solutions support better and faster knowledge transfer, application and retention – which can lead to improved performance and longer tenure.”

Brainshark customers will share how, through a mixture of people, process and technology, they’ve strengthened areas like sales onboarding, training and coaching programs to improve overall sales effectiveness.

Also Read: Brainshark Included in Sales Readiness Tools Report from Independent Research Firm

Last week Brainshark Inc announced that its chief readiness officer, Jim Ninivaggi, will be a featured speaker at the ATD 2018 International Conference & Exposition, held between May 6 and 9, at the San Diego Convention Center. Hosted by the Association for Talent Development (ATD), a professional membership organization, ATD 2018 is the largest event for talent development professionals worldwide – drawing 10,000+ attendees, and providing strategies and solutions for cultivating sales talent and improving sales training.

Ninivaggi’s session, “Sales Training: If You’re Not Assessing, You’re Guessing,” will take place May 6, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. PDT. The topic is one he and Brainshark have been championing across the industry – with Ninivaggi sharing related insights in an article he authored for Forbes last month. Attendees will learn about the importance of taking sales training from a consumption-based learning model (which emphasizes whether reps completed training) to an assessment-based one, rooted in validating and mastering competencies.

Resonate Strengthens Executive Bench with Three Key Hires, Including SVP of Marketing

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April 25, 2018

Resonate Strengthens Executive Bench with Three Key Hires, Including SVP of Marketing

Industry Veterans Fill Vital Positions to Drive New Growth for Advanced Consumer Intelligence Platform at Resonate

Resonate, a leading provider of consumer intelligence and insights for marketers, today announced three key additions to its executive team. These new hires were made to strengthen the company’s growth and generate broad awareness for its data-driven solutions designed to drive business decisions based on a deep understanding of the consumer that extends beyond basic attributes like demographics and psychographics to reveal a unique understanding of human motivations.

Veteran publishing executive Ray Faust has joined the company as General Manager of Resonate’s Publisher and Entertainment vertical, Edward Choi has joined as Senior Vice President of Customer Success, and Ericka Podesta McCoy has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Marketing.

At the time of these executive hiring announcements, Bryan Gernert, Chief Executive Officer of Resonate, said, “We’re excited to be adding three respected industry veterans to the Resonate team at this time of unprecedented demand for our unique consumer intelligence insights and engagement platform.”

CEO Bryan added, “Marketers’ need for deeper, real-time insights into their customers and prospective customers has never been greater. Today’s CMO is tasked with redefining the customer experience around their brands, and that requires an understanding that goes much deeper than your standard consumer profile. Resonate’s unique ability to discover these critical human insights, and then drive engagement across the marketing department within one platform, is changing how our customers make decisions and accelerating positive outcomes for our clients.”

These key hires strengthen Resonate’s executive team at a time when the company is experiencing tremendous growth in its SaaS business and redefining the consumer intelligence marketing landscape.Resonate’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven platform is the first industry solution to apply science and technology toward the art of understanding the complexity of human motivations—the true why—behind consumer behavior.

At a time when CMOs are struggling to gain and act on a deeper understanding of their audience that crosses all channels, Resonate is the only insights platform that provides a continuously updated view of the consumer, cross-channel engagement and ongoing analysis helping marketers make better decisions and create unique customer experiences that drive growth.

Ray Faust, who most recently spent eight years leading national and emerging media sales at Star Tribune Media Co., will lead solutions and sales efforts for Resonate within the publishing community. With Faust’s appointment, Resonate—best known for its SaaS-enabled intelligence solutions for marketers—deepens its commitment to helping publisher and entertainment customers deploy the market-leading technologies in pursuit of their primary goals: delivering more effective solutions to their advertising partners through more precise media engagement, and driving their own subscriber acquisition efforts with the same rich, single-source data describing hundreds of millions of US consumers.

Edward Choi, who has spent the past 20 years driving strategic growth initiatives with companies such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Verizon, Accenture, and VeriSign, is charged with fostering client success with Resonate’s SaaS business. In his new role, he will focus on client retention and expansion by ensuring Resonate’s industry-leading clients achieve their business objectives by applying unique insights from the Resonate platform.

Meanwhile, Erica Podesta McCoy — whose previous roles include leading marketing strategy, acquisition and retention for companies including Marriott and Sprint — joins Resonate at a crucial time in the company’s growth, as deficiencies in traditional customer intelligence and disparate platforms are sparking growing demand for the unique intelligence, engagement and analysis technology delivered by Resonate. Most recently Vice President of Marketing for Global Campaigns at OpenText, McCoy brings a unique depth of insights into the marketing of advanced data-driven platforms to the Resonate team.

Currently, Resonate is recognized as a pioneer in Consumer Intelligence Marketing, delivering deep c understanding, dynamic insights, cross-channel engagement and analysis in a single, simple-to-use SaaS platform.

The Resonate Consumer Graph encompasses 7,000 attributes, including values, motivations, and other psychographics, describing more than 175 million US consumers. Hundreds of companies have used Resonate to reveal and engage “The Human Element,” a deeper understanding of their target audience, that extends beyond traditional demographics, psychographics, and behavioral data to uncover the why – the values and motivations that drive consumer decisions to buy or support certain brands, products or causes.

Meltwater Acquires Sysomos to Unify Media Intelligence and Social Analytics

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April 24, 2018

Meltwater Acquires Sysomos to Unify Media Intelligence and Social Analytics

The Latest Acquisition Expands Meltwater’s Ability to Incorporate Online News and Data with Social Media Analytics in One Robust Platform

Meltwater, a pioneer of media intelligence and now Outside Insight, today announced its acquisition of Sysomos, a leader in social analytics and engagement. The addition of Sysomos to Meltwater enables organizations to analyze social media, news, and other human-generated content in one platform, furthering Meltwater’s mission to give businesses the insights from outside data, helping them stay ahead. Peter Heffring, the former Sysomos CEO, will run Meltwater’s Social Analytics division, in its new avatar.

Meltwater Aims to Bring Together News and Social Media Under One Company

Celebrating his recent scoop, Jorn Lyseggen, founder and CEO of Meltwater, said, “All the social analytics companies look at social data in isolation, limiting the insights for brands and businesses. With our acquisition of Sysomos, we can bring together news and social media under one company, giving social data context while adding social engagement to our news and media monitoring offering.”

Sysomos Will Become the Social Analytics Division

For the PR and communications teams who engage with influencers over social media, Meltwater’s existing Media Intelligence division will now offer integrated news monitoring and social engagement. Under Meltwater, Sysomos will become the Social Analytics division with a focus on delivering timely and relevant insights to brands and marketing teams. Both divisions support Meltwater’s mission to give businesses insights from external data.

At the time of this announcement, Niklas de Besche, Executive Director of Product at Meltwater, said, “It’s not enough to simply give clients raw data or shallow analytics – businesses need relevant insights. Between our combined data partnerships, Sysomos’ social analytics and Meltwater’s AI models, we can combine social and news data to extract game-changing insights for both of our clients.”

In its new identity within Meltwater, Sysomos may retain its position as a global leader in social marketing and analytics empowering brands and agencies to turn data-driven insights into actionable customer engagement opportunities.

Marketers Would Gain the Context Needed to Collect More Meaningful Insights Across Their Earned and Owned Social Channels

***Peter Heffring, Former CEO, Sysomos***

Former Sysomos CEO Peter Heffring, said, “By joining the Meltwater team, our clients benefit from the leadership and global scale of one of the world’s first SaaS companies.”

Peter added, “In order to enhance the search and analytics experience in the Sysomos Platform, we will leverage the AI models and information extracted from the unstructured web by Meltwater. This will give our clients the context needed to collect more meaningful insights across their earned and owned social channels.”

Following the acquisition of DataSift last month, the Sysomos acquisition cements Meltwater as the market leader in both Social Analytics and Media Intelligence.

Niklas added, “At the same time, with Sysomos under the Meltwater brand, we can offer our clients greater integration between social engagement and media monitoring.”

The Sysomos acquisition is Meltwater’s seventh in the last 18 months.

Currently, Meltwater is recognized as a pioneer of media intelligence and now Outside Insight, gives businesses the information advantage they need to stay ahead.

Meltwater is dedicated to personal, global service built on the local expertise of 55 offices across six continents. Meltwater is also committed to fostering the data science ecosystem through MEST, a pan-African entrepreneurial program, and incubator, and Shack15, a global data science community.

Vungle Brings Industry-Leading Performance Marketing Platform to Galaxy Apps

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April 24, 2018

Also Read: Vungle Announces Self-Serve Platform for Mobile Advertisers, With Creative Automation to Scale High Quality Customer Acquisition

Vungle Brings Industry-Leading Performance Marketing Platform to Galaxy Apps

Developers Can Leverage Vungle To Deliver Native Advertisements in Popular App Store

Vungle announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics, which has incorporated Vungle’s industry-leading performance marketing platform for in-app video ads into the Samsung Galaxy Apps app store. The partnership will give developers the ability to access customized promotional placements in Galaxy Apps.

Galaxy Apps is a store that features entertainment, gaming and productivity-boosting applications for Galaxy devices. This new relationship will provide developers with access to significant new promotional opportunities while consumers are searching for apps. Samsung and Vungle development teams have designed custom placements within the store and have streamlined the app acquisition experience.

“Vungle and Samsung have worked in concert to create an integrated experience, including the ability to download apps directly from within the ad unit. This partnership provides advertisers with new opportunities to reach consumers while they are actively trying to discover and download new apps and games,” said Rick Tallman, CEO of Vungle.

The initial rollout will be in the US and South Korea. Distribution to consumers began earlier this month.

Vungle is the leading performance marketing platform for in-app video ads. Advertisers depend on Vungle’s creative and LTV optimization technologies to reach and acquire high-value users worldwide. Top publishers rely on Vungle to generate revenue with engaging video ads that enhance the user experience.

In March, Vungle announced the global availability of its advertiser Self-Serve Platform along with several new features that enable the automated creation of ads. Following successful beta trials earlier this year, Vungle’s Self-Serve Platform provides advertisers access to Vungle’s global audience and enables them to upload video content that then is automatically converted into a variety of advertising creatives. The Vungle Self-Serve Platform also simplifies the management and measurement of campaigns from a single dashboard.

Trusted by 50,000+ mobile apps worldwide, Vungle serves 4 billion video views per month on 1 billion unique devices and is consistently top-rated in user quality by global performance indexes.

TIBCO Recognized in Dresner Advisory Services’ 2018 Cloud Computing and BI Market Study

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April 24, 2018

TIBCO Recognized in Dresner Advisory Services' 2018 Cloud Computing and BI Market Study

Annual Report Names TIBCO a Top Cloud Vendor, Excelling in Cloud Architecture and Cloud Security

TIBCO Software Inc ., a global leader in integration, API management, and analytics, has been acknowledged as a top vendor in Dresner Advisory Services’ 2018 Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study, a part of the Wisdom of Crowds^® series of research. In this year’s report, TIBCO improved on its 2017 ranking, excelling in the cloud architecture and cloud security categories.

Thomas Been, CMO at TIBCO, said, “We’re excited to be recognized as a top vendor in this year’s study, given our continued efforts to revolutionize this market.”

Thomas added, “As the report notes, cloud business intelligence spending has consistently increased over the past years. TIBCO is committed to delivering a comprehensive portfolio of cloud services to our customers, equipping them with the robust solutions necessary for their digital transformations.”

Dresner’s seventh annual report examined 22 vendors in four categories: cloud business intelligence features, cloud architecture, cloud security, and web data connectors. TIBCO ranked high for cloud architecture, which includes relational database support, automatic upgrades, and connectors capabilities.

TIBCO’s business intelligence offering includes TIBCO Spotfire^®, which provides customers with enterprise-class business intelligence, geo-analytics, and predictive analytics solutions in the cloud. With built-in data wrangling, threaded discussions, and filtered analytics views, customers can easily collaborate, connect to data sources, and visually interact with their data, creating new opportunities to discover actionable insights.

The founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services, Howard Dresner, said, “There is a clear and consistent increase in the current use of public cloud BI, driven in part by an abundance of cloud-based solutions. Deployment of cloud BI applications continues to grow steadily, with organizations citing substantial benefits realized over traditional on-premises.

Currently, TIBCO fuels digital business by enabling better decisions and faster, smarter actions through the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud. From APIs and systems to devices and people, we interconnect everything, capture data in real time wherever it is, and augment the intelligence of your business through analytical insights.

Bluescape Unveils Private Cloud Collaboration Offering for Effective Data Control and Protection

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April 24, 2018

Bluescape Unveils Private Cloud Collaboration Offering for Effective Data Control and Protection

Teams Can Connect and Collaborate Knowing That Their Content Is Secure and Adheres to Compliance and Regulatory Requirements While Satisfying GDPR Regulations

With GDPR just a month away, Bluescape^© has announced the availability of its new private cloud solution and new workplace tools – giving users added control, speed and ease in connecting and collaborating across virtual teams. The leading comprehensive workstream collaboration and digital workplace company is now expanding its workstream collaboration solution with a new, private cloud offering for companies with the most stringent data protection, management, and governance requirements.

Recommended Read: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

Financial services, legal, healthcare, government and other highly-regulated organizations can now connect, develop, share and manage sensitive content while meeting compliance and regulatory directives.

Companies adhering to the mandates of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can also gain improved control and management of their data when teams collaborate on Bluescape. Implementing the private cloud option, organizations are able to execute and demonstrate business transparency while protecting the privacy of all European Union (EU) citizens’ personal information.

Peter Jackson, CEO of Bluescape, said, “The harsh realization occurs when a company is denied market access or issued steep fines in not meeting compliance or regulatory mandates. A company’s bottom line and corporate reputation take a debilitating hit.”

Peter added, “We understand the tremendous pressures companies face. We’re working on new ways organizations can better create, share and manage content for improved efficiencies and control of their data.”

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

Bluescape offers its private cloud solution as a managed service offering. The single tenant architecture of Bluescape private cloud gives CIOs and IT administrators complete control of the environment with the ability to isolate and manage data, provision and monitor user access and log-in credentials. The increased security controls ensure data is protected and confidentiality is maintained.

At the time of this announcement, Andy Markham, VP of product management at Bluescape, said, “All of our customers work with proprietary data to some degree. The private cloud option gives them all the capabilities of our public cloud offering, as well as peace of mind that we’re compliant on the security and data confidentiality fronts.”

Using Bluescape’s SaaS workstream collaboration and digital workplace solutions, organizations save time and money each week by reducing coordination missteps, confusion, information searching and switching between applications.

In addition to a private cloud offering, Bluescape introduced new digital workplace capabilities so teams can work faster by minimizing the steps to do repetitive tasks, search and find content more easily and as well as more flexibility to navigate across the workspace area.

Workspace Search

Bluescape expanded its search capabilities to provide more intuitive and efficient search results. Users can search for assets within workspaces and filter the results according to a range of criteria.

Portal 2.0

Bluescape adds new functionality and resources to its solutions portal. New security elements increase protection of content and Bluescape environment. Teams can customize and personalize their use of the portal to better fit their needs.

Move Canvas

The new Move Canvas feature enables teams to quickly and easily organize groups of content within a workspace. Instead of grouping and moving content piece-by-piece, this feature gives users the ability to select and organize multiple groups of content faster. It also allows users to easily nest separate groups (canvas) together into one group space, having all the content ready for ongoing program work.

Currently, Bluescape lets distributed teams work more naturally and visually through a persistent, complete contextual view of conversations and content.

AI-Powered Ad Exchange Codewise Appoints John Malatesta as President

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April 24, 2018

Codewise Appoints John Malatesta as President

The Company Supports Skyrocketing Revenue Growth By Strengthening Its Operational Alignment Around The Customer

Codewise, the industry-first provider of AI-powered ad exchange, DSP, and online ad measurement and optimization platforms for digital marketers, recognized by the Financial Times as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe, announced the appointment of Dr. John Malatesta as the company’s first President. John Malatesta will report to Robert Gryn, CEO and owner of Codewise and a member of the Forbes Technology Council.

John Malatesta, President and CRMO, Codewise — John Malatesta

John Malatesta, a Doctor of Economics and a member of the Forbes Agency Council, has held multiple senior leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups during his 22-year career in the software industry. In his new role, he will be responsible for the strategic and operational direction and management of all Codewise departments and for the full P&L. He will also continue to serve as Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer at Codewise.

“The exponential growth of Codewise’s revenue, pioneering new innovative technologies and the progressive expansion into new geographies now calls for the deployment of a state-of-the-art operational management structure. John’s delegated responsibility for the effective management of all operations will enable me to dedicate even more of my time and resources to high-priority strategic decisions and to breakthrough and visionary technological enhancements of the AdTech ecosystem,” said Robert Gryn, CEO and Owner of Codewise.

“I am honored to continue serving Codewise as our company continues its exponential global expansion. As a result of the consistent alignment of product innovation and customer experience to our clients’ ever-changing needs, since our inception in 2012 we’ve been able to continuously achieve a profitable 290% average annual growth rate. Meeting the new demanding expectations that the AdTech industry will set in the future requires continuous enhancements of our processes and operations as well as the deployment and coordinated management of additional industry-leading engineering, product management and customer-facing resources. This calls for an even stronger planning and operational alignment across all our departments, to be achieved with a unified and adaptive company governance built around each and every customer,” said John Malatesta, President of Codewise.

Also Read: Codewise’s Voluum Tracker is Industry’s First AI-Powered Ad Traffic And Offers Match Optimization

ironSource Expands Programmatic Marketplace, Adding Mobile Interactive Video Inventory and Moat Integration

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MTS Staff Writer

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April 24, 2018