Tech Industry Veterans Join the Company to Drive Product Innovation, Revenue Growth and Customer Experience
Comm100 Network Corporation announced the appointment of the company’s North American leadership team including key positions in marketing, sales and customer support.
Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, Comm100 will accelerate growth in North America with their next generation digital customer engagement platform. Now in its ninth year of operations, the company has developed a leading enterprise platform featuring Live Chat, Chatbot, Knowledge Base, Ticketing, Co-Browsing, Text Messaging, Social Media, and Audio/Visual Communications.
Robin Jones, CMO: Jones has 25 years of executive marketing management experience with global technology companies including Active Network, QuickMobile, MDSI (now ABB), and Creo Products (now Kodak).
Kevin Grzybowski, VP Enterprise Sales: For 20+ years, Grzybowski has worked at high-growth tech companies including Vision Critical and Mintent, and Fortune 500 companies including PepsiCo.
Jeff Epstein, VP Product Marketing, and Communications: Epstein is a career B2B marketer focusing on product, content, and partner marketing in high-growth tech companies including Allocadia, QuickMobile, Vision Critical, and Sophos.
Viviana Matheus, Director, Digital Strategy, and Brand: Early founder of a creative agency in Venezuela, Matheus has continued to specialize in digital strategy and demand generation for startups and rapidly growing organizations like QuickMobile and Payfirma.
David Carlson, Head of Solutions and Pre-Sales: Bridging the gap between technical and business teams, Carlson brings a diverse set of skills from previous roles at ACL, Microsoft, and Absolute Software.
Tony Sandhu, Head of Customer Success: Sandhu is a career customer advocate, championing customer success and support programs at DNN Corp and Cytiva Software.
“The North America leadership team brings exceptional experience and enthusiasm to the business and embodies our culture of collaboration and innovation. In the last two years, we have greatly strengthened our platform and internal systems, and have sharpened our focus on our customers. We plan to build on our progress by investing in our team of people, and by adding innovative functionality to our digital customer engagement platform,” said Kevin Gao, CEO, Comm100.
Revenue Marketing™ consulting firm, The Pedowitz Group (TPG), announced that Principal Partners Bruce Culbert and Debbie Qaqish will co-present a session on talent and organizational design during CRM Evolution 2018. Chief Service Officer Bruce Culbert and Chief Strategy Officer Debbie Qaqish will deliver an Expert Perspectives track on “Talent and Organizational Design Considerations for the Engagement Economy.
Today’s customers expect vendors to predict, meet and exceed their expectations 24/7 – One misstep in today’s hyper-digital, social media obsessed world can be a death knell for companies who fall short. Having the right talent and processes in place to meet these escalating expectations is key to survival and prosperity.
Successful B2B companies operate in an agile environment, adapting readily to changing industry conditions and customer demands. CRM and Marketing Automation anchor a stack of MarTech and SalesTech solutions that together with a unified marketing and sales team form the front line for managing engagements with prospects and customers throughout their lifecycle.
During their session, Bruce and Debbie, will address these burning questions:
What are the roles, responsibilities, skill sets to execute a company’s engagement strategy? How should marketing & sales operations and support be structured and organized?
Presenters will share results from recent research, which analyzes trends, case studies, and interviews with dozens of companies of different sizes and industries facing these same challenges. Attendees will learn what these companies are doing to develop and support leaders in today’s customer-driven engagement economy.
Other highlights of this year’s conference include the keynote address by Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group on “Designing Customer Experiences that Matter to a New Generation of Accidental Narcissists.”
Constellation Research Founder and Principal Analyst, Ray Wang will deliver “The Future of CX: Infinite Ambient Orchestration.”
Amazon’s Pasquale DeMaio will discuss how AI is changing customer service and an expert panel will discuss GDPR.
David Raab, founder of Customer Data Platform Institute will talk about “Customer Data Platforms for Business Marketing.”
A panel of CRM heavy-hitters including Salesforce.com and SAP will reveal the megatrends that will completely disrupt the industry by 2020.
VideoIPath and Virtuoso offer a complete solution for facilities and remote production applications
Nevion, award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, announced enhanced support for audio over IP and audio processing in the latest software upgrades for its flagship products – Nevion Virtuoso, its software-defined media node and VideoIPath, its orchestration and SDN control system. Together, VideoIPath and Virtuoso offer a complete solution for IP-based audio and video routing for facilities and remote production applications.
Virtuoso can handle many input and output formats, including composite formats such as SDI and SMPTE ST 2022-6, and essence-based formats such as AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110. It offers any-to-any conversion, and routing and processing of individual audio channels. VideoIPath provides orchestration of routing and processing of the video or audio composite and essence flows.
Virtuoso audio processing capabilities now include synchronization, embedding, de-embedding, mono shuffling, audio delay as well as gain control on a channel by channel basis.
The new software release of Virtuoso also significantly extends the number of SMPTE 2110-30/AES67 RTP audio flows, allowing all audio to be routed in its native form on IP. This means, for example, that mono channels are routed as single channel streams and stereo audio is routed as two-channel streams.
The software now also supports SMPTE ST 2022-7 hitless switching (SIPS – Seamless IP Protection Switching) for all IP audio streams.
Further enhancements expected soon will include MADI to SMPTE 2110-30 conversion, and support for Dolby-E transport and audio embedding (draft SMPTE 2110-31).
VideoIPath can orchestrate audio essence flows (in addition to video flows) across an IP network, as well as through Nevion Virtuoso. It also provides a northbound interface to any broadcast controller (using EMBER+ or a RESTful API), that enables existing control panels to be used to manage the signal flows along with control of Virtuoso endpoints. These capabilities combine with the recently announced data orchestration capabilities to provide fully convergent SDN control.
Johnny Dolvik, Chief Product And Development Officer for Nevion says: ”The latest enhancements to Virtuoso and VideoIPath bring a whole new level of versatility to these products. These products’ ability to handle video and audio transport over IP is already well established, but with the addition of comprehensive audio processing, they provide a real value-add, especially in the facilities. We are already seeing this translating into customer wins, which we will announce once deployed.”
The Partnership Will Help Brands Enhance The Efficiency And Excellence Of Organic Marketing
The ‘central nervous system’ of SEO and content marketing is getting a major boost with the latest announcement by Conductor and LinkResearchTools.
Conductor, a content creation and optimization platform has announced a strategic alliance with LinkResearchTools, a provider of website link optimization and analytics in real time. This partnership will allow SEO professionals around the world to get better, deeper insights into link data.
The Power of SEO in the Modern Context
Link building and backlinks continue to be a pain point for SEO teams and marketers. Despite significant innovations in content automation, marketers remain at the mercy of executing traditional search marketing plans, largely due to lack of data-backed technology. For site performance, SEO is the backbone, and backlinks, the motor nerves that drive traffic back to the site.
For an SEO strategy to succeed, the critical aspects are backlink and link creation sub-strategies. Today, acquiring high quality links is becoming tedious, and hence Conductor was not quite getting their data to seep into them. Therefore, the company has opted for the technology offered by LinkResearchTools to resolve the challenges faced by their customers with regards to those critical aspects of search.
The Inspiration to Partner with LinkResearchTools
It all began when Katherine Heisler, Director, Strategic Alliances, Conductor, attended the BrightonSEO conference in September 2017 where she met Christoph Cemper, Founder and CEO, LinkResearchTools. Back then, Heisler was the Director of Partner Development. On meeting Cemper, she was quick to realize that LinkResearchTools’ approach towards creating links was in sync with the data-centric approach of Conductor.
On her return to the lab, the SEO exponents at Conductor were brainstormed on the technology offered by LinkResearchTools. Rest, as they say is history!
The role of link building technology in an SEO game is big. Let’s quickly retrospect this technology. According to Cemper, “Link building and SEO, in general, was the Wild West essentially until 2012. People could throw any kind of links to a site and make it rank. Google stopped that with smarter algorithms and a whole new era of link evaluation.”
The abovementioned shift set a mandate for the execution of efficient link building strategies. From the present day perspective, Cemper opines, “Today link building is a very data-driven, big data approach that should use as much as possible data to decide. Only judging a link’s quality by a simple visual approach or “gut feeling” can be very dangerous. That’s why some people think that ‘SEO is dead’ or say, ‘Links are not important’. Even Google confirmed repeatedly that links and content are the most important ranking factors in their algorithm still in 2016 and 2017.”
The alliance with LinkResearchTools rakes in a big data approach for the customers of Conductor. This approach allows them to identify vulnerabilities and opportunities, and acknowledge what is going right or wrong when their content gets discovered on the web. The coming together of the existing robust solutions of Conductor and LinkResearchTools’ data is set to determine a whole new standard of impactful and effective marketing in a customer-first context.
Seth Besmertnik, CEO & Founder – Conductor
Seth Besmertnik, Founder and CEO, Conductor, states, “Customer-first marketers are obsessed with building meaningful content journeys. It was clear we needed to expand our data set to help our enterprise customers understand how their content is connected online.”
Besmertnik goes on to add that the accuracy and integrity of the data provided by LinkResearchTools helps the customers of Conductor understand the above.
“Customers think in omnichannel terms. We should too. Technologies need to help marketers understand the entire picture – from a customer’s perspective. – Seth Besmertnik to MTS in an interview
LinkResearchTools brings together 25 sources of link data to provide marketers a 360-degree outlook of toxic backlinks’ insights which can jeopardize performance and referring traffic, which, in turn, empowers the knowledge and understanding of the customer journeys throughout the web.
This partnership could be a force of change on how marketers took on search strategies. It is also the fifth strategic collaboration that Conductor has carried out within two years. The previous strategic allies are Keyword Objects, Dragon Metrics, SEMrush, and DeepCrawl. All of them are under the umbrella of the Conductor Partner Ecosystem.
This integration of LinkResearchTools into Conductor is an absolute blessing for the latter’s customers who can now access all the exclusive packages the former offers which are inclusive of the complete set of essential reports and tools for staunch optimization and analysis of backlinks. It could also mean the customer acquisition and retention percentages for Conductor soaring up in 2018. Competitors in the space also need to take notice as well. The reason is that any tool or solution that allows a marketer to do more with search and web content optimization is always embraced.
Contentstack Introduces CMS Modular Blocks, a Dynamic New Way to Create Pages Quickly and Easily
Award-Winning Headless Content Management System Empowers Content Managers to Create and Modify Components of a Page or App On-The-Go
Contentstack announced the availability of Modular Blocks, the latest feature of the industry-leading headless content management system (CMS). The addition of Modular Blocks enables content managers to powerfully create and modify components of a page or app, without needing help from a developer, saving significant time and resources editing and delivering content.
The recent emergence of headless CMS platforms has empowered content managers to fully own content from start to finish, yet they still relied on developers to create new pages or modify existing ones, slowing time-to-market and draining precious development cycles. The introduction of Modular Blocks to Contentstack’s headless CMS frees content managers from this dependency, enabling them to mix-and-match blocks and create customized pages on-the-go without the need to engage developers.
With Modular Blocks for Contentstack, developers can create multiple sets (or groups) of fields within a block in a content type. Content managers, while subsequently creating an entry, can easily create powerful content by choosing any block (set of predefined fields) of their choice (such as banner, quotes, features), adding more blocks, rearranging them, or removing them to make changes to the web page or app. Gone are the days where a developer had to be brought in for every minor change required in the page structure.
Key highlights include:
Author-Friendly Templating: After the developer creates a content type with the required modular blocks, users can create dynamic content anytime by choosing from a set of templates, and mix & match them to make rich pages.
Flexible: Empowers the content manager to alter existing structure and add content components on-the-go.
Faster Results: Sort, add, remove, and move the components of Modular Blocks, without a developer for quick results.
Contentstack also announced that two new customers will be using its CMS to deliver content: BestBuy – a leading provider of technology products, services and solutions – and Roblox – the world’s largest social platform for play – will take advantage of Contentstack’s CMS and new Modular Blocks feature to give content editors the freedom and flexibility to edit pages and deliver content quickly.
“Contentstack has seen strong adoption across retail and e-commerce customers who have an insatiable appetite to publish time-sensitive content,” said Matthew Baier, COO at Contentstack. “Modular Blocks helps these companies deliver new content – to support campaigns, product launches or sales events – quickly and without heavy development. With this latest enhancement to Contentstack, business users get an intuitive page builder at their fingertips that allows them to create and customize template-driven pages in minutes and without the need to write code.”
First Platform To Connect Mobile Attribution With Marketing Automation
Kochava Inc., the industry leader providing holistic measurement solutions for mobile and connected devices, announces the addition of customized, behavior-driven push notifications to their platform. With Engagement push notifications, marketers can target specially selected audiences based on user behavior, trigger automated personalized push messages, visualize campaign lift at scale and attribute push campaigns, all within the same Kochava platform.
Tyler McKinley, VP of Marketing Automation Platforms at Kochava said: “This is the first platform of its kind that directly connects mobile advertising attribution and measurement with marketing automation in a single unified dashboard.”
Today, marketers face fierce competition in vying for user attention. With millions of apps available to a user at any given time, app churn is all but guaranteed. Mobile users are distracted—browsing while commuting, watching television or while at work—and will only click, on average, half the number of times on mobile compared to desktop to find what they want before they abandon the search. The current approach to user engagement with mass communications, whether as push notifications or emails, has lost its potency.
“The number of apps and the sheer number of digital messages bombarding users across all channels has created a problem in getting the attention of customers. How do you as an app owner separate yourself from the pack with all this message pollution?” McKinley said.
“Digital marketers are realizing that they have to actively engage their customers
with customized, relevant, and timely content, at scale. The Engagement
dashboard will maximize customer lifetime value for their brand.”
Engagement is the next generation of push notifications, giving marketers the ability to send contextualized, personalized messaging based on valuable customer data, such as in-app user behavior. Marketers can automatically trigger customized messaging based on where customers left off in a funnel.
For example, a marketer can create a behavioral funnel within the app for users who add an item to their cart but do not complete the purchase. The marketer can then automatically send a push notification to each user when this series of events occurs. Via deep link, the push message can deliver the user back into the shopping cart for a rapid, seamless purchase. Kochava then attributes this purchase to the push message which is the marketer’s “owned” media, giving them substantial savings over having to pay their ad programmatic or social partners for the conversion.
This next generation push messaging capability creates a full cycle loop for prospect targeting, customer acquisition, customer engagement, advertising attribution and budget optimization, all within the same Kochava dashboard.
“Marketers have to go beyond the idea of simply reaching customers at the right time. They must extend that notion to marketing the right products and services based on expanded real-time data categories and they can now do this within a seamless toolset,” McKinley said.
How Engagement works
Engagement enables marketers to target the type of in-app behavior they choose and segment audiences by language, geo, device type and operating system. For example, one streaming company targets users who have completed three free video views but whose subscription to the service has lapsed.
Marketers can leverage this audience data to create dynamic, contextual messaging; use A/B testing to determine which messaging is most effective; anticipate and automatically react to leading indicators of churn, and visualize lift from these campaigns directly within the Analytics dashboard.
“Typically, with commodity push messaging, you’ll see low open rates. But once you start adding data to the mix, invariably your open rates and conversions increase. In our experience, marketers see a notable improvement in their push campaign success,” McKinley said. “Our job is to help marketers activate data about their customers and add that into their mobile marketing initiatives to maximize the lifetime value of each customer.”
Dynamic, contextual push messaging via Engagement push notifications gives marketers a more refined tool to keep their app fresh, timely and relevant to their customers. They can define specific audiences and craft custom messaging to engage those customers with the products and services they care about.
McKinley said, “With Engagement, marketers are deploying their money where it has the most impact to drive their key performance indicators, typically mobile-driven revenue.”
Hootsuite Was Recognized As An Adobe Exchange Partner 2017 For Its Excellence in Social Media Management Solutions; New Hootsuite and Adobe Integrations Also Unveiled at the Adobe Summit 2018
Las Vegas, this week, was a buzzing with digital marketers and technocrats. At this year’s Adobe Summit, the event has witnessed many notable announcements. The event this year is focused on enabling businesses to identify the right transformational strategies and to provide engaging personalized customer experiences delivered at scale.
One of the major announcements from this year’s Summit features social media marketing and monitoring company, Hootsuite. The popular platform for social media management has announced that it is the Adobe Exchange Partner of the Year for 2017.
The recognition was based on the integrated solutions provided by Hootsuite which help brands to realize the true potential of social throughout their omnichannel campaigns and measure the extent of the impact social interactions had across the customer journey.
This announcement is also set to fortify Hootsuite and Adobe’s collaboration that began in 2017 with Hootsuite becoming a premier-level Adobe Exchange partner program. Hootsuite was henceforth Adobe’s preferred provider of SMMS – Social Media Management Solutions.
Relationship with Adobe Enables Joint Customers to Create Personalized Real-Time Experiences Across Channels Using Hootsuite
Penny Wilson, CMO, Hootsuite
Penny Wilson, Hootsuite’s CMO, expressed her delight at the recognition. She said, “We’re thrilled to be selected as the Adobe Exchange Partner of the Year. Our relationship with Adobe enables our joint customers to create personalized real-time experiences across channels to strategically grow their brand, business, and customer relationships with social—all with an eye toward delivering and measuring true social ROI.”
Amit Ahuja, VP, Adobe Experience Cloud Partners and Ecosystem Innovation, Adobe, stated that this award is a testimony to the innovations that Hootsuite has championed to unlock the value and power of social media for the customers of Adobe Experience Cloud.
“The social data and insights that Hootsuite delivers are powerful and help our joint customers achieve competitive advantage using our combined solutions. We look forward to continuing to advance our work with Hootsuite in 2018 and beyond,” he affirmed.
Hootsuite Is Now Available On the Adobe Analytics Cloud
Apart from the award, a new integration between Hootsuite and Adobe Analytics Cloud was also announced. With this integration, the exclusive customer insights and data provided by Hootsuite is now available within the Adobe Analytics Cloud enabling users to measure, optimize, and deploy omnichannel campaigns using social data.
The integration also allows marketers gain a comprehensive, omnichannel outlook on campaign ROI and customer insights leveraging the engagement data of Hootsuite within the Adobe Analytics Cloud. The collaboration between Hootsuite and Adobe will continue to help common customers offer superlative experiences by utilizing a truly consolidated profile.
While the Adobe Summit 2017 witnessed the path-breaking launch of Adobe Experience Cloud, this year too has been nothing short of intriguing.
Knock, Knock! Oracle Modern CX Is Coming, and There’s More to Customer Experiences
For starters, expect some similar revelations from Chicago next month during the Oracle Modern CX. With IBM also a part of the Oracle Partner Network for cloud solutions, the conference is slated for some ground-breaking collaborations and integrations apart from the usual awards. That would soon be followed by another IBM partner, Cisco’s – Connect, a series of events that commence in May.
Then, SAP is likely to grab eyeballs with its SAP Hybris Global Summit in Barcelona during October. Finally, late in the year, the spotlight will be on San Francisco for Dreamforce 2018 where cloud and big data with AI capabilities would keep everyone guessing about what’s next.
As for now, simply put, these are interesting times ahead for all Adobe (Experience and Analytics Cloud) and Hootsuite customers. It could set the tone for other companies to follow in terms of transforming the way social data is used to map customized experiences across channels. And, when all this happens on the back of cloud technology, possibilities are surely endless. 2018 will be sunnier for CX marketers than 2017!
Survey of 351 Small Business Owners Reveals That Businesses Budget Modestly for Digital Marketing – Which May Be a Mistake, According to Industry Experts
Nearly half (47%) of small businesses in the US spent less than $10,000 on digital marketing in 2017, according to a recent survey by Clutch, a B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm. Social media (54%), website (51%), and email marketing (36%) were key areas of investment.
Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) represent a small but promising digital marketing channel, with 10% of small businesses already early adopters in the space, according to the survey.
Many small businesses may not budget much for digital marketing because they have so few employees and limited resources to invest. More than half (57%) of businesses surveyed reported annual revenue of less than $1 million.
In addition, in-house digital marketing teams may not be “teams” at all: 30% of small businesses (the largest group) only have one employee working on digital marketing. This finding suggests that in-house digital marketers may lack the time and resources they need to market efficiently.
Small Businesses Plan to Prioritize Websites, Social Media, and Email Marketing
Small businesses’ priorities for digital marketing this year include renewed investments in their websites, social media, and email marketing. Over half of small businesses surveyed will improve their websites (54%) and engage consumers through social media (51%), while 36% will direct more resources to email marketing in 2018.
Fewer than 1 in 4 small businesses plan to invest in content marketing in 2018, but experts caution that failing to perform content marketing is a mistake for small businesses.
Creating content – such as blog posts, whitepapers, and videos – is a highly cost-effective way to build brand loyalty and boost a business’ ranking in search results.
Keith Gutierrez, vice president of marketing at Modgility, reminds small businesses that in developing a content marketing strategy, quality is more important than quantity.
“[Content] just needs to be great, quality stuff you can’t find anywhere else. Small businesses already have what they need to start creating content: They should consider their unique advice and data, and then package that information into useful conten,” said Keith.
Virtual/Augmented Reality Marketing Sees an Investment Bump
In an effort to keep up with new technology, some companies (12%) will increase their investment in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) marketing.
AR/VR marketing is especially effective for products that benefit from in-person tours such as real estate and travel booking.
Derrick Bozkurt, a Colorado realtor at House in Motion, uses VR marketing to create virtual house tours. The technology lets Bozkurt’s clients know exactly what kind of home they’re considering.
Clutch’s 2018 Small Business Social Media Survey included 351 small business owners or managers from across the U.S. with fewer than 500 employees.
Sharpen Those Pencils and Take Down These Notes from SharpCloud
Three Events by SharpCloud in April, in New York, Washington DC and San Diego
SharpCloud, a provider of visual communication and productivity tool for business enterprises and organizations, is hosting three events in the month of April. The events focus on SharpCloud for Enterprise, a leading visual software for business collaboration, it’s application in Government Strategy & Roadmapping, and Digital GDPR. There will also be Case Studies presented in the form of Customer Success Stories.
The Office of Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) in the state of Hawaii, are using roadmapping in SharpCloud, and working with SharpCloud’s US partner, Kitewire, to change the way government is run in Hawaii. They were looking for an effective and efficient way to communicate their priorities and direction. A strategic roadmap created with SharpCloud provides a clear picture of what projects and initiatives are underway and what progress has been made on each one. It is another way to enhance government transparency.
Explaining the way SharpCloud enables two-way communication between his upper management and technical workers, Todd Nacapuy, Chief Information Officer, State of Hawaii, says “SharpCloud is enabling a two-way communication between our upper management and our technical workers. The enhanced communication is enabling our staff to make quicker and more informed decisions. We also use it as a resource management tool.” Nacapuy is quick to add that SharpCloud has “changed the way that we run the government. There’s really no other tool we could find in this space that met our needs.”
Another partner, Chaucer Consulting, are tackling the issue of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in SharpCloud, with their digital Data Privacy Visualisation tool. Using this highly visual and functional tool, they are enabling clients to take complete control of their GDPR compliance programme, helping them to plan, organize and track their progress through the GDPR journey.
Want to know more about SharpCloud for Enterprise, head for one of the three sessions planned in US? Here are the details:
SharpCloud for Enterprise, Digital GDPR & IT Roadmapping
City: NewYork
Date: April 16
Timing: 10 am – 12 pm EDT
Venue: WeWork Penn Station, 315 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018
This event will feature key use-case presentations and the opportunity to participate in SharpCloud’s Thought Leadership Group with Rusty Johnson, SharpCloud CTO, offering privileged access to the SharpCloud Roadmap.
Introducing SharpCloud for Enterprise
Key features and benefits
Demo of a typical use-case
Key considerations in designing a SharpCloud for Enterprise solution
Partner Use-Case and Case Study Presentations
Take Complete Control of your GDPR Compliance Programme – Chaucer’s Data Privacy Visualisation and MI Tool
IT Strategy & Roadmapping
Thought Leadership Group
SharpCloud Roadmap – forthcoming product features and capabilities
Opportunity to influence and improve the software for the purposes of your business processes and use cases
SharpCloud for Enterprise, Government Strategy & Roadmapping and Digital GDPR
City: Washington DC
Date: April 17
Timing: 10 am – 12:30 pm EDT
Venue: WeWork, Tysons, 1775 Tysons Blvd, Tysons, VA 22102
This event will feature a key roadmapping case study presentation from the Office of Enterprise Technology Services at the State of Hawaii, and the opportunity to participate in our Thought Leadership Group with Rusty Johnson, SharpCloud CTO, offering privileged access to the SharpCloud Roadmap.
Introducing SharpCloud for Enterprise
Key features and benefits
Demo of a typical use-case
Key considerations in designing a SharpCloud for Enterprise solution
Case Study & Partner Use-Case Presentations
Changing the Way Government Is Run in Hawaii using Roadmapping in SharpCloud – Office of Enterprise Technology Services, State of Hawaii
GDPR – Chaucer’s Data Privacy Visualisation and MI Tool
Thought Leadership Group
SharpCloud Roadmap – new and forthcoming product features and capabilities
Opportunity to influence and improve the software for the purposes of your business processes and use cases
SharpCloud for Enterprise, Government Strategy & Roadmapping and Digital GDPR
City: San Diego
Date: April 19
Timing: 10 am – 12:30 pm PDT
Venue: WeWork, B Street, 600 B Street, San Diego, CA 92101
This event will feature a key roadmapping case study presentation from the Office of Enterprise Technology Services at the State of Hawaii, and the opportunity to participate in our Thought Leadership Group with Rusty Johnson, SharpCloud CTO, offering privileged access to the SharpCloud Roadmap.
Introducing SharpCloud for Enterprise
Key features and benefits
Demo of a typical use-case
Key considerations in designing a SharpCloud for Enterprise solution
Case Study & Partner Use-Case Presentations
Changing the Way Government Is Run in Hawaii using Roadmapping in SharpCloud – Office of Enterprise Technology Services, State of Hawaii
GDPR – Chaucer’s Data Privacy Visualisation and MI Tool
Thought Leadership Group
SharpCloud Roadmap – new and forthcoming product features and capabilities
Opportunity to influence and improve the software for the purposes of your business processes and use cases
Report Recognizes Cognizant for Its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision
Cognizant announced that it has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM and Customer Experience Implementation Services, Worldwide. The report evaluates 21 vendors that provide customer relationship management (CRM) and customer experience (CX) project-based services, including consulting and solution implementation services worldwide.
Leaders are defined by Gartner as those who “bring a wide range of business, analytic and technical capabilities, including CX and CRM strategy, business transformation consulting, customer analytics, enterprise architecture and design, CRM and other customer-facing technology expertise, industry-specific domain expertise, and business change management. They demonstrate strong comparative revenue and growth. They can demonstrate the ability to scale across multiple geographic regions. They are delivering with high client satisfaction.”
Gartner evaluated vendors based on their completeness of vision across the following criteria: market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering (product) strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy. Vendors were also evaluated based on their ability to execute across product or service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience, and operations.
Harish Dwarkahalli
“Business leaders recognize digital customer experience is the key to engaging, delighting and retaining customers in the modern world. Customers have so many choices, and they sit at the center of today’s value chain. Having the ability to understand the customer’s journey and deliver compelling products and experiences is more important than ever,” said Harish Dwarkanhalli, Global Delivery Leader, Digital Customer Experience Practice, Cognizant.
“In our view, being recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for CRM and Customer Experience Implementation Services, Worldwide underscores our deep industry understanding, strong technical implementation skills, unique design thinking and overall expertise in leading customer experience transformation. Cognizant works side-by-side with clients to transform their customers’ journey by enabling the digital platform, reimagining associated business processes and reshaping the experience,” continued Harish Dwarkanhalli.
Certifications Highlight ComScore’s Ongoing Commitment to Brand Safety and Invalid Traffic Detection
comScore announced the company received its certification renewal as a Validated Digital Advertising Assurance Provider (DAAP) through the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (TAG) Certified Against Piracy program, as well as a new TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal for its efforts to eliminate piracy and fraud.
TAG was created three years ago by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) to eliminate piracy, fraudulent traffic, combat malware and improve transparency in the digital advertising supply chain. comScore’s dual certifications emphasize the company’s commitment to these efforts, ensuring advertising campaigns are running in safe, transparent environments.
comScore is one of the first companies to earn TAG’s anti-piracy certification as a Validated DAAP. To receive this certification, the comScore solutions were subjected to a rigorous audit by independent Certified Public Accountants and approved by TAG as being compliant with the program’s Core Criteria, which include:
Identifying sites with pirated content
Preventing ads from being served on those sites
Monitoring placement compliance with advertiser requirements
To receive TAG’s Certified Against Fraud Seal, third-party measurement companies must be compliant with general invalid traffic (GIVT) detection and filtration requirements of MRC IVT guidelines and employ domain and data threat filtering. Additionally, companies that choose to be independently validated must participate in a third-party audit. comScore met TAG’s audit criteria through its MRC sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) accreditation in November 2016, and subsequent extension to include mobile in-app SIVT in December 2017.
“Our renewed certification as a Validated DAAP and new Certified Against Fraud Seal highlight our ongoing commitment to increase advertisers’ confidence in digital platforms. comScore has long been a pioneer in brand safety and IVT detection solutions that enable our clients to buy and sell trusted media, and create a more transparent marketplace,” said Steve Ahlberg, Senior Vice President, digital products, comScore.
The launch of Balluun365 Strengthens Mobile Footprint and Improved User Experience Across All Marketplaces
The leading provider of B2B social e-commerce worldwide, Balluun has significantly strengthened its mobile footprint and improved user experience across all its online marketplaces with the latest Balluun365 release. In focus are optimizing conversion, the customizability of each platform and the overall user experience to better serve thousands of wholesalers and drive their sales even more effectively.
For over 50,000 customers, the Balluun domains are now even easier to use, have a more stylish look and a number of new key features. Balluun offers a white-labeled solution for trade show organizers or trade associations to launch industry-specific B2B marketplaces, where wholesale buyers and sellers can connect, engage, and transact.
Highlights of this release include a fully responsive website across smartphone/tablet/desktop devices; a new user interface design that can be customized for each white-labeled marketplace, and streamlined processes for product upload and order capture.
Deepak Gupta
“Over the past 18 months, we have unveiled major product innovations around B2B matchmaking, lead generation, and mobile event apps bridging the online and offline. This release marks another important milestone in Balluun’s product evolution. It completes our mobile offerings, and sets a solid technical foundation as we expand our product and solution portfolio in B2B social commerce,” said Deepak Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, Balluun.
Users of Balluun-powered B2B marketplaces now can easily use the site on all mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop devices with a new sleek UI.
Michelle Ma
“Version 2.0 is a complete redesign of the product with many features and user experience enhancements. Key improvements in the shopping, showroom management and order capture are based on significant user research and close collaboration with industry domain partners. We expect the new version to significantly lift user engagement and key conversion metrics across all marketplaces,” said Michelle Ma, VP Strategic Initiatives, Balluun.
“We have been working closely together with Balluun since the launch of ShopTheFloor.com in 2013. Together we have worked hard to improve the user experience and feature set of the platform and this most recent release offers domain partners like us greater flexibility to customize the UI and functionality as needed for our business. Balluun’s state-of-the-art platform allows us to extend the value of our fashion tradeshows by enabling our wholesale brands and retailers to digitally discover, engage and transact year-round,” explained Vince Tsai, SVP, ShopTheFloor.
In 2007, I was as an Assistant Media Buyer purchasing local television spots for General Motors in a few markets in the south. My job was to pick local news or local shows and allocate budgets based off of the demographics those content sources were likely to reach. The only metric of success was posting 90%, which meant we needed to fulfill 90% of the buy to the people we said we’d reach. If the goal was to reach 10 million people aged 35 to 54, a successful buy meant reaching at least 9 million of them.
The campaigns were a black box for us.
Did the consumers watch the spots? Did they help the brand drive traffic to its local dealerships? Did we impact behavior at all? We had no way of knowing.
But now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been solving these problems in very interesting and exciting ways.
Last November eMarketer reported that 70% of U.S. adults “second screen” while watching TV. That’s pretty discouraging for brands that spend millions on their TV spots. But before you give up on TV advertising and its mass reach, consider this is reported, not observed, behavior. No doubt we all second screen, but we don’t do so all the time. That begs the question: how does a brand know consumers paid attention to its $5 million Super Bowl ad rather than their mobiles?
Using AI, data scientists have been able to map multiple devices to the same individual and household, as well as to connect online behavior with offline behavior, such as watching the Super Bowl via a connected TV and engaging with a smartphone during commercials. We can determine when consumers second screen during the commercials by counting the number of bid requests from their devices.
Of course, AI can’t tell us if an inactive device meant the consumer watched the ad or went to the kitchen for another beer, but if we track ad requests across millions of household, we can get a lot of insight into a creative’s ability to captivate consumers.
AI can also help determine the impact of an ad on consumer behavior, thanks to that same ability to link online and offline behavior. For example, if we know that a particular household was presented with a TV ad for a ‘one-day-only sale’ on GM pickup trucks, and a mobile device associated that household shows up at the local dealer on sale day, then we can assume the ad had an impact. The connection becomes more compelling when the behavior is seen across all households that see the ad.
Marketers will continue to see new opportunities to improve their campaigns as TV becomes more digitized. As of 2017, there are nearly 133 million connected TV users in the US and will grow to at least 181 million in this year. That’s 55% of the population we can now tie ad-views to online and offline behavior.
Many programmatic companies allow marketers to incorporate TV inventory into their multi-channel programmatic campaigns. These connected TVs are targeted using first- and third-party data sets, just as if they were laptops and tablets. Marketers can create surround-sound marketing, hitting consumers with messages on their laptops, mobile devices, and TVs. That’s huge, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
AI is more precisely transforming the very segments we use to pinpoint consumers who are in the market for a particular product. Machine learning excels at sifting through massive amounts of observed online and offline user behavior to discover distinct signals that indicate purchase intent.
Additionally, it can make sub-millisecond decisions on removing consumers from a targeting segment as soon as they stop sending in-market signals. Humans don’t tell the machines what to look for, the models do it completely autonomously at a scale beyond humans’ collective capabilities.
Through numerous applications of machine learning, we’ve learned that there is a host of common — and often non-intuitive — behaviors that people engage in before they exhibit the signals of being in the market.
For instance, in the classic digital marketing use case, airlines will retarget consumers who search on flights to Las Vegas. In a machine-learning use case, airline marketers would target consumers who look at wedding chapels, an early signal that they’ll soon look for a flight to the city. In other words, the machine predicts who an airline’s future customer will be, giving the airline the opportunity to get a jump on its competition.
Television has always been a powerful awareness tool, enabling brands to reach millions of consumers quickly and effectively. AI enhances that power by predicting the right people to receive a TV ad, gauging its effectiveness, and assessing its impact on online and offline consumer behavior. This is the kind of functionality that would have made my first job easier.
Streamroot & castLabs Partner to Simplify Video Streaming While Providing Robust Delivery and a Better Viewer Experience
castLabs, a global partner in premium digital video technology, and Streamroot, the provider of the world’s most extensive distributed delivery network for OTT video, announced their new product integrations. Streamroot DNA[TM] is now fully compatible with PRESTOplay, castLabs’ suite of player SDKs which includes an HTML5 player for browsers, as well as SDKs for Android/iOS and desktop apps.
Streaming providers using PRESTOplay SDKs can now benefit from the easy deployment of Streamroot’s distributed delivery network for OTT video. Advantages include unrivaled CDN offload and cost reduction, improved QoS and increased delivery capacity during peak traffic, ensuring a smooth, hiccup-free streaming experience for viewers worldwide. From now on, Streamroot DNATM libraries are built-in to all of PRESTOplay SDKs – customers are only a toggle away from harnessing the power of distributed delivery.
Pierre-Louis Théron
“We are happy to offer castLabs customers a seamless, truly plug-and-play integration of Streamroot DNATM. PRESTOplay support demonstrates our commitment to being compatible with 100% of both commercial and open-source players on the market. Our partnership with castLabs strengthens our global position as the leading provider of distributed video delivery, offering the best QoS on the widest range of players, devices and operating systems on the market,” said Pierre-Louis Théron, Co-Founder, CEO, Streamroot.
PRESTOplay player SDKs are designed to greatly simplify playback application development, facilitating offline, VoD, and live playback. Additionally, PRESTOplay SDKs offer MPEG-DASH, HLS, and Smooth Streaming ABR support; DRM support for studio content; multi-language audio & subtitles; fully customizable UI; common ABR algorithm for consistent cross-platform experience, IMA/VAST ads support and QoE & analytics integrations.
Michael Stattmann
“PRESTOplay player SDKs enable top broadcasters to provide premium playback features and adhere to the latest standards across all platforms. We are very excited to partner up with Streamroot, and to be able to offer our customers a simplified, out-of-the-box integration of Streamroot’s next-generation video delivery solution, providing their millions of viewers a better streaming experience across all devices,” said Michael Stattmann, CEO, castLabs.
New Akamai Survey Shows Increase in Prominence and Provider Confidence in Live Linear OTT Streaming Services for Quality Online Video Delivery
More Than Half of Online Video Service Providers Believe Streaming Quality Meets or Exceeds Traditional Television
Akamai Technologies, the world’s largest and most trusted cloud delivery platform, released survey data demonstrating growing confidence from online video service providers (OVSPs) in their live and live linear streaming offerings to compare favorably to traditional broadcast television. The finding is one of many within a new study, commissioned by Akamai and conducted by nScreenMedia and NewBay Media, that investigates how OVSPs are managing the quality of their over-the-top (OTT) video service offerings.
The study, “Scale My Service: OTT Video Providers Closing in on the TV Benchmark,” included a survey of 350 U.S. and U.K. company managers with responsibility for the technical implementation of a video streaming service. A significant majority (63 percent) of survey respondents include live or live linear channels as a significant part of their current offerings. Nearly three quarters (71 percent) believe the quality and reliability of their online service either already meets or exceeds that of traditional television, or will within one year.
Shawn Michels
“OTT services are offering an increasingly diverse array of content and options as streaming technologies continue to evolve and help ensure high-quality viewer experiences. Online video service providers are also thinking more strategically about their OTT services, and they are attaching key performance indicators to these services, indicating that these services are no longer a novelty. The study results lend credence to the view that we are within reach of the long-promised reality of the OTT experience being comparable to broadcast,” said Shawn Michels, Director Media Product Management, Akamai.
Sixty-five percent of U.S. respondents have set key performance indicator goals for their service, a jump of 20 points from the results of a similar survey in 2017. Goals include video resolution, video performance, service uptime and consumer experience. As an indicator that these providers are concerned about the impatient nature of the viewer, 76 percent cite startup time – or, how long it takes a video to start after selecting play – as the most important quality parameter for their service.
TMMData Announces Deep Integration with Adobe Cloud Platform
Leading Data Integration Solution Will Provide Marketers with Seamless Data Movement Between Adobe Cloud Platform and Other Marketing Data Sources
Digital marketers face ever-increasing challenges in accessing the many data sources needed for planning and optimizing digital marketing campaigns. Billions of data points and decisions inform digital marketing strategies, from thousands of keywords across multiple properties to targeting parameters like audience, device, geography, time of day and more, all coming from departments across the organization and beyond.
To address these challenges, TMMData announced its integration with Adobe Cloud Platform, developed in collaboration with Adobe’s platform product team.
Adobe selected TMMData, a premier flexible data integration and preparation platform, to integrate with its Adobe Cloud Platform due to its deep expertise in developing data integration solutions for the past ten years. The integration with Adobe Cloud Platform provides bi-directional Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) integration services, providing marketers with the ability to seamlessly move data between Adobe Cloud Platform, on- and offline sources, and cloud or on-premises databases.
Jim Rivera
“TMMData has a strong track record of helping brands with a smooth data connection.They were an obvious partner to collaborate with early on this initiative. We’re excited to have TMMData involved in Adobe Cloud Platform and look forward to continuing our work with them in 2018,” said Jim Rivera, Senior Director Product Management, Adobe Experience Cloud.
TMMData’s Foundation platform provides seamless connections from nearly any data source, eliminates repetitive campaign classification tasks, and automates direct data uploads to critical tools. In addition, TMMData’s Foundation platform allows marketers to blend data from across the organization – including sales, call center, and product databases – to build robust segments, improve audience targeting and inform engagement strategies.
“Through this integration, our respective teams have joined forces to provide solutions eliminating the all-too-common data access, data management and ETL hurdles faced by digital marketers. Our collaboration with Adobe will allow better delivery of the data resources and tools needed to automate and standardize data delivery to the valuable marketing platforms used across industries today – and into the future,” said Bob Selfridge, founder, CEO, TMMData.
TMMData powers the data supply chains of enterprises across a range of industries, including several clients it has in common with Adobe, such as Comcast, Shell, FedEx, Expedia, Royal Caribbean and Sony Entertainment, among others. TMMData’s Foundation platform automates the process of accessing, preparing and standardizing data from any on- or offline source to deliver direct data outputs for analysis.
LinkedIn B2B Video Now Available for Native Ad Campaigns
Marketers and Brands Can Leverage Video for Sponsored Content and Company Pages to Reach & Engage the Right Audiences, the Right Way
Now, LinkedIn Can Also Add Native Video Directly
In a major announcement for marketers and brands, LinkedIn is now adding more muscle to its B2B marketing platform. LinkedIn B2B users can now leverage video content on the platform to run native video advertisements, and also include video within their brand assets, including their Company Pages. With its recent move, that always seemed inevitable to B2B marketers, LinkedIn users can now capture audience’s attention in a more engaging manner.
As a part of LinkedIn B2B Video for Sponsored Content, LinkedIn has also signed an agreement with Oracle’s Moat to offer third-party video measurement and viewability, and intend to make these services available to customers later this year.
The LinkedIn B2B video for Sponsored Content announcement would help marketers and brands to highlight not only their products and services, but also their company mission, customer success stories, and thought leadership content.
LinkedIn’s Video for Sponsored Content
Last year, LinkedIn had introduced native video in the LinkedIn Feed and the response to that was overwhelmingly positive. However, marketers were awaiting the release native video ads. LinkedIn announced the launch of their beta program in October, to test video for Sponsored Content with a limited number of advertisers. In this closed beta, advertisers could use richer visual narratives to their target audiences in the LinkedIn Feed with video.
Thursday’s announcement delivers the business objectives of promoting video content to marketers and brands using LinkedIn. It is a known fact that video, short and long-length formats, have proved to be a popular tactic to engage decision-makers, the challenge has been finding a quality environment in which to reach them.
According to an internal LinkedIn study, over 46% of B2B advertisers surveyed said this was a top challenge when running video campaigns on other platforms.
LinkedIn B2B Video for Sponsored Content Enlivens Your Campaigns
Phil Spitzer
In a blog post by Phil Spitzer, Product Manager, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, said, “Native video ads represent the next evolution of LinkedIn Sponsored Content that lets you engage with business decision-makers throughout the buyer’s journey on LinkedIn. Unlike pre- or post-roll video ads, the video for Sponsored Content ads lives directly on the news feed as standalone posts.”
An ‘Across the Funnel Engagement’ with LinkedIn B2B Video
Most marketers would agree that traditional video content is an ideal component for the top of the funnel marketing. They help to build the sales momentum and create awareness, and not necessarily close the deal. However, LinkedIn’s Video for Sponsored Content is branded as an engagement for marketers and brands that could work across the funnel.
Company Page video is 5 times more likely than other types of content to start a conversation among members, based on results in our beta program.
According to a recent research from Forbes, “executives tend to watch work-related video on business-related websites (75%) far more often than they watch such content on YouTube (51%).” This demonstrates that B2B video content creates a better opportunity for an informed decision-making when hosted on LinkedIn’s professional network.
Drive More Traffic Across All Marketing Channels
LinkedIn B2B Video for Sponsored Content helps the user achieve marketing objectives across the funnel by —
Building brand awareness by telling rich, visual stories in the premium context of LinkedIn
Driving traffic to your desktop or mobile website
Collecting high-quality leads with a persistent “call to action” button or through LinkedIn’s integrated Lead Gen Forms product.
Phil added that accurate targeting is the key to make any ad visible to the right audiences, your audiences. He said, “Without accurate targeting, your ads won’t be seen by the right audiences. With LinkedIn’s suite of B2B targeting capabilities available for video for Sponsored Content, you can find your audience by traits like job title, seniority, company name, industry, skills, and more. What’s more, the integration with our Matched Audiences solution ensures you can target your Sales team’s highest-priority accounts with account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns.”
“These videos would help marketers deepen engagement with their brands: on average, LinkedIn members spend almost 3x more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content.” –Phil Spitzer
Customers Speak on LinkedIn B2B Video Solution for Marketers
Kaydee Bridges
At the time of this announcement, Kaydee Bridges, Vice President, Digital & Social Media Strategy at Goldman Sachs, a LinkedIn customer and partner during the beta program, said, “Video content is crucial for our brand, and these changes allow LinkedIn’s professional community to more easily derive value from the content we are producing. While our videos can be long – up to 3 minutes – we are seeing deep engagement at a great value.”
Marketers understand that everything hinges on delivering greater ROI. With video for Sponsored Content, you can measure your campaign’s success through insights and detailed breakdowns about the types of professionals watching, engaging with, and even converting on your video ads. LinkedIn’s proprietary Conversion Tracking tool is also integrated, enabling you to measure the number of leads, sign-ups, website visits, and other valuable actions that your video content generates.
Another customer, Renske Siersema, Social Media Manager at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, also shared her insights on the importance of video ads for B2B campaigns. Renske said, “Video stands out because it doesn’t tell, but it shows. On a platform where there’s more business content, a video stands out more, especially on LinkedIn.”
Conga Acquires Orchestrate LLC, Adding Process Workflow Automation to Its Suite
Conga Adds Easy-To-Use Digital Workflow Capabilities in Second Acquisition of the Month Following Octiv
Conga, the global leader in Intelligent Document Automation, announced the acquisition of Orchestrate LLC, a trailblazer in the financial services space that enables best-of-breed operations with its award-winning digital process workflow automation application, ProcessComposer.
The acquisition of Orchestrate will enhance the breadth and depth of the Conga Suite, widely considered the industry’s most comprehensive intelligent document automation suite. Orchestrate will extend the Conga Suite by providing the ability to visualize, create, and automate business process workflows, allowing Conga’s customers to directly address issues around process compliance and oversight. It will deliver better insight into workflow and help solve other issues stemming from antiquated and manual processes that teams have grown to accept at the expense of both efficiency and effectiveness.
Conga’s product portfolio encompasses end-to-end Intelligent Document Automation solutions, from data management, document generation, contract lifecycle management (CLM), and eSignature. With the March 7th agreement to acquire Octiv, Conga added web-based document creation, delivery, and collaboration capabilities; and with Orchestrate it now adds digital process workflow automation into the Conga Suite.
Matthew J. Schiltz
“With the addition of Orchestrate, we are executing on our strategy to create an end-to-end Intelligent Document Automation solution removing friction and accelerating the entire document and contracting process. This gives our customers and partners access to a new level of digital business process automation, and we are excited to welcome Orchestrate employees, customers and partners into the Conga family,” said Matthew J. Schiltz, CEO, Conga.
Conga’s innovation, momentum, and expertise in the document and contract management space will extend the solutions suite available to Orchestrate customers and accelerate the development of the Orchestrate business process workflow platform. The more than 1,100 organizations using the Orchestrate platform will now have access to Conga’s global 5-Star customer success.
“We’re really excited to team up with Conga, and feel that our solution strategically compliments the broader Conga Suite of offerings. Combining our customer-focused team and Conga’s extensive global resources will enable us to better serve users with world-class, integrated business process workflow automation,” said Joshua Van Heukelom, Co-CTO, President, Orchestrate.
Orchestrate’s customers, users and partners are invited to register to attend Conga’s annual user conference, Conga Connect, April 3-4 in Chicago, where they can meet the team and learn more about the combined capabilities of Conga’s and Orchestrate’s suite of solutions.
Tunity Strengthens Leadership Team with Former Nielsen and MGM Heavyweights to Build Analytics Product
Tunity Strengthens Leadership Team with Former Nielsen and MGM Heavyweights to Build Analytics Product
Tunity, the first application of its kind which allows users to hear live audio from muted televisions directly on their mobile devices, announced two new appointments to its leadership team. Bruce Tuchman and Paul Lindstrom have joined Tunity as President of Sales and Head of Research and Analytics, respectively. Tunity is committed to growing the company after its recent Series A, and the addition of high-level expertise that comes with Tuchman and Lindstrom will help the company further accelerate focus and delivery of its solutions, including the productization of Tunity’s data and analytics.
“Our goal at Tunity is to transform the out-of-home TV viewing experience for consumers and to provide high-value data to our clients and the industry. Bruce and Paul each have proven track records that will be pivotal in advancing our OOH data solution to our clients, networks and the advertising industry as a whole,” said Yaniv Davidson, Founder, Tunity.
Bruce Tuchman
Tuchman joins Tunity with more than 25 years of experience in media and entertainment. As a seasoned leader and trusted advisor, Tuchman has excelled in developing and managing global media, entertainment, and brand-driven businesses; transforming some of the most popular U.S. media brands into global enterprises. Previously, he has held a number of leadership positions with prominent entertainment companies, including serving as President of AMC Global & Sundance Channel Global, President of MGM Worldwide Networks and General Manager of Nickelodeon Global Network Ventures. Tuchman is also an investor in and advisor to a number of cutting-edge digital media businesses and sits on the executive committee and board of directors of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In his new role, Tuchman will leverage his experience in building new businesses from the ground up to lead the monetization of new product lines for Tunity and drive top line growth.
Lindstrom brings with him four decades of strategic media operations and research experience from Nielsen. During his time at Nielsen, Lindstrom was responsible for designing and deploying innovative tools, systems, studies, and measurements for new media outlets. He directed sales, operations, and strategy for Nielsen Strategic Media Research and Nielsen On Location. Lindstrom is an innovation, research, and strategy executive veteran with a successful track record in pioneering business development, product leadership, and research design. In his new role, Lindstrom will help with the creation of various data products, namely Tunity’s new analytics product, and help set strategic vision and direction. Lindstrom’s combination of experience with media research, custom research, and location and OOH measurements make him uniquely qualified to develop a new metric based on Tunity’s traffic, tuning, and attention data.
Tunity has unique data that can offer insights on OOH viewership for all supported networks by the venue on a near real-time and minute by minute basis. Television advertising buyers and sellers will be able to understand where OOH viewership is coming from, by whom, and the relative strength of individual programs, genres, and networks in a way that has not previously been available. Tunity will also offer a new Attention metric that will be the first of its kind for OOH and in-home viewing. Both Tuchman and Lindstrom will be based in Tunity’s New York City office.
Paywizard and Diagnal Unveil Strategic Partnership to Drive Targeted Real-Time Multichannel Customer Engagement
New Joint Offering Combines the Analytic Power of Paywizard Agile with the Marketing Execution Capabilities of Diagnal’s Engage Platform
Paywizard, the pay-TV subscription, billing and customer relationship management (CRM) specialist, and Diagnal, the expert in marketing technology solutions for Internet TV service providers, have announced a strategic partnership that enables pay-TV and over-the-top (OTT) TV operators to take an intelligent, data-driven approach to delivering real-time customer communications and dynamic multichannel marketing campaigns.
The new strategic partnership brings together the power of both the Paywizard Agile and Diagnal Engage platforms, providing operators with a robust set of tools to deliver social media and direct marketing campaigns in real-time, drawing customer data analysis to drive user acquisition, ensure revenue conversion and improve customer retention.
At NAB Show 2018, demonstrations of the new joint Paywizard and Diagnal proposition will highlight how operators can quickly execute proactive customer communications across multiple channels – including social media, email and in-app notifications – by leveraging rich data insight and predictive analytics to engage with subscribers more effectively at the eight critical ‘Decision Moments’ in the customer journey (identified as Find, Join, Consume, Upgrade, Downgrade, Bill, Leave and Win Back).
Bhavesh Vaghela
“A key to consistently providing consumers with the best possible customer experience is engaging with them through the right channel at the right time in the customer journey. Joining forces with Diagnal gives our clients campaign execution tools for intelligent customer engagement, allowing them to maximize the robust Decision Moments framework we’ve established so that operators can identify audiences proactively and get the most effective communications out to their customers in real-time,” said Bhavesh Vaghela, Chief Executive, Paywizard’s
“Paywizard’s Decision Moments is a well thought out framework for any pay-TV and OTT operator serious about managing their customer journeys. It made perfect sense for Diagnal to partner with Paywizard to extend Agile’s understanding and insight into action through Engage. Diagnal Engage now allows operators to take real-time actions as users reach specific Decision Moments, putting them right back into the driving seat in the customer relationship. By creating highly targeted, personalized and content aware campaigns via the Paywizard and Diagnal partnership, TV operators can now reduce both acquisition costs and customer attrition – while building subscriber loyalty and revenue,” said Reuben Verghese, Chief Executive, Diagnal.
The combined technology enables pay-TV and OTT operators to:
Target customers with ease – based on their behaviors, profiles, and position within the customer lifecycle
Drive engagement fast – identifying subscribers at the right moment, building marketing campaigns that can be triggered proactively in real-time
Improve their approach continuously – analyzing success, to learn more about customer behavior and take action to evolve your TV service
“Our joint offering empowers TV operators to tap into data insights and predictive analytics, to make the right marketing engagement decisions and to continuously monitor success,” added Verghese.
“This strategic partnership opens opportunities for TV operators to ensure they are talking to the subscribers in the way they need to – just when the timing is optimal. What’s more, it is critical for operators today to have the flexibility and ability to drive personalized offers and promotions, test different approaches to different customer segments and geographic markets, and drive further content consumption,” added Vaghela.
