Frost & Sullivan Names IBM A Leader In Customer Value Within Integrated Commerce Order Management Space

Fincons Group Supports Mediaset’s Publitalia ’80 for the Launch of Pioneering Addressable Smart TV Advertising

Fincons Group, a leading global IT business consulting firm, has been a key enabler behind the launch of Publitalia 80’s new advertising products ADD+Plus. Publitalia ’80 is now able to offer addressable advertising capabilities as well as a broad and engaging digital platform to advertisers by leveraging Smart TV capabilities and broadband-broadcast convergence across all Mediaset’s portfolio. Mediaset is Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster and wholly owns Publitalia ’80, its advertising sales business.

Making Broadcast-Broadband Convergence a Reality with Smart TV Advertising!

At the time of this announcement, Michele Moretti, CEO Fincons Group, commented, “Our long-standing relationship with Mediaset has been extremely fruitful, enabling us to develop our solution from R&D right through to commercialization.”

Michele added, “We are delighted to have enabled Mediaset with this pioneering advantage that enables them to offer addressable advertising and extensive content capabilities to their customers. We are proud to be making broadcast-broadband convergence a reality together.”

Fincons Group was awarded funding by the EU along with a broader consortium to take part in a co-development initiative, known as MPAT (Multi-platform application toolkit), to research and scope-out the potential of the HbbTV standard. Having developed those capabilities, Fincons Group was selected by Mediaset to implement the Enabler platform which is at the heart of ADD+Plus. Mediaset’s new Smart TV advertising products consist of two key features: ADD+Inside and ADD+Over.

What is ADD+Over?

ADD+Over is an ad-hoc format overlayed on a TV containing a call to action by simply clicking the “OK” button on a television remote control. ADD+Inside is an “L-shaped” frame, a high-impact format displayed inside editorial TV content, thus ensuring the greatest visibility. The frame becomes interactive by simply clicking the “OK” button on a remote control.

The interaction with ADD+OVER and ADD+OVER leads to an informative mini-site containing additional materials (video, text, images) about products and services.

Both formats are “addressable” ad solutions enabling the delivery of a customized message that enhances the advertiser’s communication and the value of the viewer thanks to data and targeting variables.

How Volkswagen Leverage ADD+over to Scoop Opportunities in Smart TV Advertising?

The German car manufacturer, Volkswagen, was the first company to take advantage of the addressability linked to these new formats. They use the ADD+ products to advertise 2 new models of car – Golf and Golf TGI. The company wanted to geolocalise the communication in two different areas and differentiate the creativity of the ADD+INSIDE formats to deliver two different messages on the linear TV Mediaset channels.

Paola Colombo, General Manager Adtech & Business Development at Publitalia ’80 said, “The collaboration with Fincons allowed Publitalia to offer advertisers a revolutionary and successful proposition which has been delivering real tangible results. We are currently working with Fincons to further develop the ADD+ family of products and we will soon be able to put on the market new video formats, bringing new exciting opportunities.”

Francesco Moretti, Deputy CEO Fincons Group and CEO Fincons US and Paola Colombo, General Manager Adtech & Business Development at Publitalia ’80 would describe this pioneering project in detail at NAB 2018 in Las Vegas on Monday 9 April at 4 PM local time.

Medallia Appoints Susan Lovegren As The Chief People Officer

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April 4, 2018

Medallia Appoints Susan Lovegren As The Chief People Officer

Former AppDynamics Exec Joins Medallia to Support Global Employee Growth

Medallia the leader in customer experience management software, has appointed Susan Lovegren as the Chief People Officer. She will lead the People and Culture function and serve on Medallia’s executive team. Her focus will be leveraging the company’s human capital capability to support continued global expansion. Due to strong business growth driving massive global hiring, Medallia now has more than 1,250 employees in more than 15 offices around the world.

Also Read: Rent-A-Center Selects Medallia for Voice of the Customer Program

Borge Hald

“With more than 25 years in leadership at technology companies, Susan is passionate about developing great working environments. Her track record of working for high-growth companies with values-driven cultures speaks for itself. Susan brings the right combination of skills, experience, and passion to help us tackle our biggest challenge: maintaining our strong culture while rapidly growing our global workforce,” said Borge Hald, CEO, Medallia.

Prior to joining Medallia, Lovegren served in Chief People Officer roles at AppDynamics, (acquired by Cisco), Juniper Networks, and Plantronics. Under Lovegren’s leadership, both Juniper Networks and Plantronics were named to Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list. She also held human resources roles at Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies. Throughout her career, Lovegren has supported women in technology by partnering with the Anita Borg Institute, Grace Hopper Women in Computing, Catalyst Inc., and Watermark, where she received their 2016 Advocacy Award.

Also Read: Air Liquide Selects Medallia to Focus on Customer-Centric Transformation

Susan Lovegren

“I am excited to be joining Medallia during a time of growth and success, as it scales from a large start-up to a major enterprise software player. Plus Medallia Experience Cloud, which makes companies significantly more customer-centric, has the added benefit of driving both faster revenue growth and positive culture change at client companies. Employees get more motivated when they know how their work impacts customers.
Many of the companies we work with talk about how implementing Medallia significantly improved their employee engagement, and that is personally very inspiring to me,” added Lovegren.

Lovegren earned a BA degree from San Jose State University and an MS degree in Human Resources Management from Golden Gate University. She currently is a member of the HR Industry Council for Betterworks and previously served on the Board of Trustees for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County.

iWave Announces Salesforce Integration Available on the Salesforce AppExchange

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April 4, 2018

Also Read: LevelJump Announces Sales Onboarding and Enablement Software on the Salesforce AppExchange, the World’s Leading Enterprise Apps Marketplace

iWave Announces Salesforce Integration Available on the Salesforce AppExchange

iWave Integration Enriches Salesforce Database with Powerful Fundraising Intelligence

iWave, one of the top-rated fundraising intelligence platforms on the market, announced the release of a new, more feature-rich version of iWave for the Salesforce platform.

Development and fundraising professionals depend on comprehensive donor information to make informed gift asks. iWave for Salesforce brings this information directly into a nonprofit’s Salesforce database. Enriching nonprofits’ internal data in Salesforce with iWave’s one billion wealth and philanthropic records, the upgraded app enables users to focus time and effort on the best major gift prospects.

Also Read: Bluecore Announces Salesforce Marketing Cloud Integration on Salesforce AppExchange

Mike Wolff

“We are happy to see iWave further enhance the iWave for Salesforce app on the AppExchange, as they provide customers with an exciting new way to learn more about their donors and better understand their capacity and inclination to give,” said Mike Wolff, SVP, ISV Sales, Salesforce. “The exponential growth of the AppExchange underscores the enormous opportunity the entire Salesforce ecosystem has in creating cutting-edge solutions and driving customer success.”

The latest version of iWave for Salesforce enables more functionality than ever before. Features include:

Batch scoring: Users can segment and score many contacts with one click.
Access to Profiles: Within the app, users can generate a new, custom profile for their prospect or link to an existing profile that details comprehensive donor records.
Tailored User Preferences: Customize individual settings so users can score and filter prospective donors based on fundraising goals.

Trent Beattie

“Our goal with iWave for Salesforce is to help our clients fundraise with confidence,” said Trent Beattie, VP of Channel Partners for iWave. “The latest version continues to enrich our clients’ Salesforce database with valuable intelligence and it brings a new level of customization and transparency that enables clients to align the solution with their unique fundraising goals.”

TechBytes with Tuomo Riekki, Founder, CTO, Smartly.io

By

Sudipto Ghosh

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April 4, 2018

Tuomo Riekki
Founder, CTO, Smartly.io

Marketing teams are spending more time and dollars to optimize their Facebook + Instagram marketing performance in 2018. Lack of automation and control in campaign management workflow prevents marketing teams from fully delivering ad campaigns at their highest performance. There is a clear need to differentiate between optimization and automation technologies for Facebook + Instagram Advertising. To throw credible light on Facebook + Instagram Marketing Performance, we spoke to the CTO of Smartly.io, Tuomo Riekki.

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Tell us about your role at Smartly.io and the team/ technology you handle.

I am co-founder and CTO at Smartly.io. I spend a majority of my time traveling around the globe to meet with Smartly.io customers and learn about their biggest challenges. I then develop new product initiatives to solve those biggest pain points – sometimes coding new functionalities for them in-person, during my meetings with them. At Smartly.io, working closely with our customers and partners is just as important as working closely with our colleagues – that consistent communication between these groups and our teams yields better results in product and more innovative ideas.

The core foundation of the Smartly.io technology is to help advertisers scale their advertising on Facebook and Instagram. One of the most popular product features is Dynamic Image Templates, which grants advertisers the ability to scale their creatives; it automatically couples product elements like images, price, and product names with a pre-designed template to standardize the design across thousands of ads. You can, for instance, pull best-selling items from product catalogs and create ads that showcase those products.

We work to constantly put customer feedback into action in our offerings. A great example of this is when we realized our customers wanted to have the same scalable options and automation for video advertising that we’ve given them with the image templates. We’re currently developing a video templates feature on our platform to meet those expectations.

How do you differentiate between optimization and automation technologies for Facebook + Instagram Advertising?

Automation is a means of reducing manual work and can be applied to anything from campaign to ad creation and reporting, whereas optimization is a specific task aimed at improving campaign performance.

Our Predictive Budget Allocation is an AI-based feature that helps users to make smarter decisions when it comes to shifting campaign budgets and spend. While it’s an optimization tool, there is also an element of automation in this feature. It automatically works to maximize campaign performance – but it’s done through optimization of budget allocation. All that marketers need to worry about is setting their goal – the technology does the rest, with more insight and smarter allocations than could ever be done manually by a single marketer.

On our platform, we provide marketers with the ability to automate a variety of manual tasks, with the most crucial being creatives through Dynamic Image Templates, as I mentioned previously. That doesn’t mean we take the humans out of the process, we just help marketers scale their work, giving them the ability to hit a larger audience with more relevant advertising. Creative automation capabilities are central to so many of the successes our customers have seen with their Facebook advertising campaigns.

What are the biggest challenges for marketers on Facebook? How does Smartly.io enable marketers on Facebook to beat these challenges?

The biggest challenges tend to be scaling ad campaigns (ie. ramping up spend and advertising volume whilst maintaining performance), targeting the right consumers at the right time, with the right content, of course. There are so many tools via Facebook that can help brands offer more engaging consumer experiences – but targeted advertising at scale is difficult to accomplish without automation capabilities. Manually, it would be challenging to achieve sustainable performance if the bulk of your time is spent on ad and campaign creation and management. FB has a massive user base and many brands have many products or campaigns they want to advertise. Between the two that’s a lot of volume.

At Smartly.io, we have created tools that are able to manage prospecting and retargeting campaigns, end-to-end, while enabling advertisers to scale their creative output. The Smartly.io platform does the work of what might take a really large team – and it does it more efficiently. Our e-commerce and travel customers find our creative automation tools particularly helpful as their product inventory is constantly changing and creatives need to be adjusted accordingly (flight deals adjustment, sold out clothing inventory removed from product ads automatically).

What do the changing algorithms on Facebook mean for marketers and influencers?

With the recent News Feed change, marketers are going to see less organic reach with their branding and advertising on Facebook. Their posts and ad content will not be prioritized, and, as a result, the premium inventory on Facebook will become more expensive and the advertising landscape on Facebook will be more competitive than ever. Having said that, marketers will diversify their ad format portfolio and venture into various placements outside the News Feed: Messenger, Instagram, and Instagram Stories to name a few.

In order to make sure ads stand out, it really comes down to both thoughtful and interactive creative as well as the ability to relay a smart, digital narrative across all stages of the marketing funnel – from brand background to product information. Luckily, Facebook has tools that help advertisers accomplish exactly that. And one of them is a tool that’s actually been around for a while but is not as widely used: the Canvas ad format.

What are the opportunities on Canvas Ads?

Canvas gives advertisers the opportunity to implement legitimate storytelling into their advertising. The format allows for so much flexibility in both the presentation of the ad imagery and in the order of the messaging within it. The Canvas ad can incorporate both higher level branding to direct response messaging about specific products – almost acting like a mobile landing page. It has the ability to scroll vertically and incorporate an abundance of information that we typically can’t fit inside a single ad unit. Compelling brand narratives are going to be the major differentiator between successful and unsuccessful brands. Canvas is definitely a huge stepping stone for that on Facebook.

What are the core tenets of your ‘Digital Transformation’ strategy? How does Smartly.io deliver contemporary Customer Experiences?

The core tenet of our strategy gets right back to that idea I mentioned of keeping our customers close to every step of the process. Their pain points are a consistent source of our latest innovations. So many of our ideas and solutions stem from our customers’ experiences.

Our company structure helps us with our product development speed. That structure includes, of course, that close relationship to the customer, but also lets our employees take direct ownership of their projects. We’re a flat organization structure so it gives everyone more autonomy – which is so critical in the innovation process, giving ideas room to grow and expand.

At Smartly.io, we’re also all consumers, ourselves, so we can literally put ourselves into consumers’ shoes when in the product development stages to understand exactly how our ideas will play out across the digital customer journey – will they create a more seamless and relevant experience for the consumer? That’s always an end goal, in addition to solving our own customers’ specific pain points.

What are your predictions about Social Media intelligence technologies playing a bigger role in 2018? How much of this would be influenced by AI/ML adoption?

Creative automation, particularly around video creatives, will be one of the central technologies in 2018 as personalization and scale are key to succeeding in digital marketing. As for AI, it should not be regarded as a must-have just for the sake of having AI – it only becomes meaningful when it creates value to the marketer by helping them take smarter decisions, faster. Ultimately, AI and machine learning should have the goal of making advertising less of a disruption and more of a value to consumers: seeing what they want, when they want it. In 2018 we’ll continue to develop the machine learning algorithms behind our automated optimization solutions, as well as developing new features that reduce manual work for advertisers and drive ad performance.

Thanks for chatting with us, Tuomo.
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

Talkdesk Delivers ROI Exceeding 300 Percent According To Independent Consulting Study

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April 4, 2018

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Talkdesk Delivers ROI Exceeding 300 Percent According To Independent Consulting Study

Independent Research Shows Talkdesk Customer Realized More Than $7 Million in Savings After Switching from a First-Generation Cloud Contact Center Application

Talkdesk, the leading enterprise contact center platform, announced the findings of a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study performed by a leading industry analyst firm, Forrester Consulting. Talkdesk commissioned Forrester to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises can realize by deploying Talkdesk Enterprise Contact Center Platform. Forrester’s final analysis found benefits in excess of $7 million over three years with a net present value (NPV) of more than $5 million, an ROI of 346% and an increase 19 points in Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Also Read: Forrester Releases India 2017 Customer Experience Index

To determine Talkdesk’s economic impact, benefits, costs and risks, Forrester interviewed a Talkdesk customer, a leading internet services provider with thousands of customers and millions of end users with over 250 customer support agents. Based on the data gathered, Forrester found the company realized overall benefits of $7 million comprised of the following:

$5.6 million saved through improved agent occupancy rates, which eliminated the need for additional contact center agents. Occupancy rate increase was directly attributed to the Talkdesk Enterprise Contact Center Platform improving application reliability and support.
$1.2 million saved in research and development costs by implementing Talkdesk’s easy-to-use, out-of-the-box solution.
Lowered customer acquisition costs by nearly $500,000 through improved customer satisfaction and retention rates.

Also Read: Talkdesk Launches AI-Powered Product to Drive Better Inside Sales Conversations

Tiago Paiva

“Forrester has done a remarkable job quantifying the acute benefits that Talkdesk delivers to our current customers as well as any company looking to improve their customer experience. In this study, Forrester found an astonishing 346% ROI and three-month payback period after a large enterprise customer made the transition to Talkdesk from another contact center platform. We’re excited to share the results of this study so that other companies can quantify the tangible value of improving their customer experience,” said Tiago Paiva, CEO, Talkdesk.

Before moving to Talkdesk, the surveyed company was using a first-generation cloud contact center application. The system was unreliable and plagued with numerous outages, leading to low NPS scores, low agent occupancy and lost revenue. After an extensive vendor search and technology review, the company selected Talkdesk to provide a reliable communications platform, which seamlessly integrated to their CRM system and provided the flexibility to quickly adapt as their customer service needs evolve.

Have Facebook and Google Done Enough to Restore Advertiser Trust?

By

Inbal Lavi

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April 4, 2018

Have Facebook and Google Done Enough to Restore Advertiser Trust?

Amid mounting concerns surrounding brand safety, transparency in advertising, and the responsible use of consumer data, marketers are rethinking the field’s larger strategic framework. Nine in ten CMOs at large US brands overhauled their digital strategy in 2017, according to a Teads survey. Amid this strategic pivot, Facebook and Google have been at the forefront of the debate over how to effectively combat ad fraud, protect the brand safety, promote transparency, and ensure the appropriate use of user data.

Among the most encouraging outcomes of this discussion have been improved ad solutions designed to optimize campaign effectiveness and equip brands with the tools needed to acquire and retain quality customers.

Evaluating Campaign Effectiveness

Since taking the helm at the world’s fastest growing performance marketing company in 2014, I’ve witnessed a sea change in how the industry evaluates campaign effectiveness. Today, an effective campaign is not one that reaches an extremely high volume of users, out of which only a small subset will actually convert. Instead, an effective campaign targets high-quality users who are genuinely interested in your business – high-intent users who are ready to perform meaningful actions.

For advertisers to mount successful campaigns, they need the ability to accurately identify their audiences; present targeted audiences with the right messages, be it content or creative; and lead them to the ideal proposition. Publishers, meanwhile, must deliver engaging content, thus attracting real user traffic at high-volume and in a scalable manner.

That’s the fundamental reality driving the strategic changes being implemented in marketing departments worldwide. Google’s universal app campaigns (UAC) is an instructive case study.

Metrics Drive Targetting

In touting UAC’s value proposition, Google has some impressive metrics at its disposal. UAC has driven 140 percent more conversions per dollar than Google’s standard app campaigns, and the company reported in August that it had delivered app developers more than 6 billion installs, compared to 2 billion in 2016. Google’s algorithms are able to distinguish high-quality users from others, enabling brands to optimize ad placements and reach users with the strongest conversion potential. UAC’s brand safety filters – not yet labeled, mature audience, tragedy and conflict, and sensitive social issues – bring an added layer of brand safety.

Meanwhile, amid the recent Cambridge Analytica revelations, Facebook has moved to take full responsibility for its users’ privacy, with executives displaying a deep understanding of the potency of data and external technology. Moving forward, Facebook should remain committed to its promises to secure the privacy of its users’ data. Such a promise lies at the heart of Facebook’s existence – which is precisely why we are likely to see the implementation of robust and meaningful safeguards.

Also Read: Facebook & Google: A Media Duopoly Under Scrutiny

All stakeholders – marketers included – have a vested interest in the restoration of user trust. As an executive with a fifteen-year track record in the marketing industry, I firmly believe that user value should be the North Star of the advertising ecosystem. Millions of redundant eyeballs on content won’t deliver businesses the quality leads and converts they seek. That outmoded approach spawned significant shortcomings in brand safety, culminating in the great strategic pivot of 2017. Facebook and Google’s recent moves, then, will go a long way toward reorienting the ad industry and better serving businesses’ bottom lines – putting the behemoths on a path to regaining the industry’s trust.

Email Marketers Are Confident Machine Learning Can Personalize Content To Individual Interests, New Study By The Relevancy Group And OneSpot

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April 4, 2018

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Email Marketers Are Confident Machine Learning Can Personalize Content To Individual Interests, New Study By The Relevancy Group And OneSpot

Seventy Percent Of Marketers Would Reallocate Over 36 Hours A Week To Strategic Initiatives If They Eliminated Manual Processes By Using Machine Learning

An overwhelming majority of email marketers (97 percent) are confident that machine learning can be used to personalize email content to an individual’s specific interests and improve the customer experience, according to “The Email Individualization Imperative,” a new study released today by market research firm The Relevancy Group in collaboration with OneSpot, a content individualization and intelligence platform. The survey of executive marketers examined their understanding of, sentiments towards and usage of machine learning for email personalization, across industry sectors.

Damian Borichevsky

“Machine learning — a powerful subset of AI — is advancing personalization beyond broad segmentation to turn every email subscriber into a segment of one. With machine learning, every person interacting with a brand should have their own unique content experience, a practice we call individualization,” said Damian Borichevsky, senior vice president of Customer Success and Business Development for OneSpot. “This research underscores the tangible sea change underway being driven by the proven ease and reliability of machine learning, consumer intolerance for content outside their individual interests, and marketers’ imperative to gain a measurable return on that individualization.”

Also Read: The Relevancy Group Releases Their Email Marketing Buyer’s Guide and Issue 17 of the Marketer Quarterly

Nicholas Einstein

“At The Relevancy Group we believe that the proliferation of AI and machine learning represents a watershed moment for email senders and we are extremely excited by the growing opportunities for brands and publishers to create individually relevant and valuable customer experiences,” said Nicholas Einstein, vice president of Research and Principal Analyst at The Relevancy Group.

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

Key takeaways include:

Email response rates are on a three-year upward trend due to senders implementing more personalized and relevant email campaigns
97% of marketers are confident machine learning — a powerful subset of artificial intelligence — can personalize content to individual interests and improve the customer experience
70% of marketers would reallocate over 36 hours a week to strategic initiatives if they eliminated manual processes by using machine learning
Top concerns about implementing machine learning to drive individualized content in emails include implementation/training and switching/adding a new platform

Also Read: Don’t Fall for These “Urban Myths” About Email Marketing!

Time Saved by Using Machine Learning Lets Email Marketers be More Strategic, Eliminate Manual Processes

Among the study’s findings is that on a weekly basis, most marketers’ teams spend over 36 hours or the equivalent of that entire work week of time on manual email segmentation processes such as content selection and proofing, in an attempt to personalize content. But 70 percent of marketers say if they used machine learning and eliminated manual processes, the time saved would be reallocated to program planning, expansion and strategy. More than half of marketers (51 percent) would instead allocate the time saved to data analysis, while subject line optimization (44 percent) and segment refinement and list cleansing (35 percent) are other activities to which marketers would shift their time reserve.

Also Read: Data: Mobile Conversion Rate Equals Desktop for the First Time

CPG and Retail Marketers Have Even Greater Opportunity to Benefit from Machine Learning Time Savings

To personalize email content, marketers in the Retail and Consumer Products sectors are spending a weekly average of 46 hours and 40 hours, respectively. As such, for retailers, there is an opportunity to garner an even greater business return on individualizing content by using machine learning in transactional emails e.g. communications regarding purchase, cart abandonment or returns. CPG marketers could use machine learning to increase email frequency to build even deeper relationships with audiences through individualized content.

Also Read: Beating the Big Guys Is All About Brand Loyalty

Despite Proven Personalization and Operational Benefits of Machine Learning, Implementation, Training, Switching or Adding Platforms Among Top Concerns

Implementation and training are key issues for marketers currently using machine learning for email personalization as well as those thinking about doing so. For 44 percent of marketers, implementation time took an average of 3.5 months, while 25 percent of marketers cited that it took as much as 7.5 months to implement a personalization solution. Only 16 percent experienced implementation times of 45 days, and it took less than 30 days for 3.5 percent of marketers.

“At OneSpot we are actively facilitating an industry transformation in partnership with Fortune 2000 companies, many of which operate newly established content studios,” added Borichevsky. “These brands and publishers have an ‘always on’ approach to content marketing, so spending months on complicated email implementations is highly detrimental to success. In just weeks, OneSpot seamlessly launches customers, easily integrating with their existing email service providers, collaborating on strategy and providing straightforward training every step of the way.”

Bytedance Partners With BAIR Lab To Foster Future AI Innovators And Entrepreneurs

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April 4, 2018

Bytedance Partners With BAIR Lab To Foster Future AI Innovators And Entrepreneurs

Bytedance to Sponsor First and Second-Year Students at the Berkeley’s Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab

Bytedance, a leading technology company operating content platforms that enable people to connect with, consume, and create content through machine learning technology, announced that it will collaborate with the University of California, Berkeley to support academic programs at its Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. The Bytedance AI Lab and BAIR will also look to further explore joint research projects and academic exchanges.

The Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab brings together UC Berkeley researchers across the disciplines of computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics. BAIR includes over twenty faculty members and more than a hundred graduate students pursuing research on fundamental advances in AI technologies, including multi-modal deep learning, human-compatible AI, and connecting AI with other scientific disciplines and the humanities.

Also Read: Build, Train And Deploy: How AI Chatbots Can Transform the Customer Experience

Bytedance has been dedicated to enhancing the content experience through AI technology, offering a global portfolio of content discovery platforms and interactive entertainment services. The Bytedance AI Lab is innovating and advancing state-of-the-art technology that enhances the entire lifecycle of the content experience – from creation to moderation to interaction. Staffed by world-class scientists and researchers, the Bytedance AI Lab focuses on basic research as well as product development, by placing lab team members side by side with product teams for direct experience with users and real-life product applications.

Wei-Ying Ma

“Bytedance looks for opportunities to support and engage with the best minds in the world, and the prestigious BAIR Lab is a center of gravity for young AI talent and internationally recognized leaders in their fields. We appreciate the opportunity to foster new scientists, ambitious inventors and future entrepreneurs dedicated to solving challenges,” said, Wei-Ying Ma, Head AI Lab, Bytedance.

Also Read: Cheetah Mobile Raises US $50 Million from Bytedancefor Live.me Inc.

“We appreciate the resources provided by Bytedance as an industry affiliate. It is valuable for BAIR Lab’s students and researchers to have the support of businesses applying AI technologies in changing and challenging real-world scenarios,” said Trevor Darrell, Professor & Co-Director, BAIR Lab.

Bytedance actively promotes cooperation between industries, universities, and research institutions to further basic research and transformational scientific development. The company is participating in several ongoing joint programs with prestigious institutions, including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the China Computer Federation(CCF), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Recommended Read: 6 Effective Ways To Drive ROI On Your Landing Pages

Harmonic Sets The Benchmark For OTT Delivery And Next-Gen TV At 2018 NAB Show

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April 4, 2018

Register For Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience With Promo Code: DMMAR2018*

Harmonic Sets The Benchmark For OTT Delivery And Next-Gen TV At 2018 NAB Show

Harmonic Will Showcase Its Video Delivery Innovations at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas From 9-12th April

Harmonic will showcase its market-leading innovations in OTT and broadcast video delivery. As broadcasters and service providers strive to deliver better-quality video and drive new revenue streams, agility and flexibility are critical. Harmonic’s software-centric solutions in UHD, ATSC 3.0, IP video and content-aware encoding technologies set the benchmark for the future of OTT and broadcast delivery. These solutions are offered as appliances or SaaS for business agility and provide exceptional quality of experience (QoE) on every screen at a low total-cost-of-ownership.

Tim Warren

“Global video consumption is at an all-time high, and broadcasters, content owners and service providers are under pressure to respond to the surge in OTT video, launch new services with fast time-to-market, and migrate to new media environments like IP video and ATSC 3.0. With a portfolio of agile and innovative solutions deployed by a global base of satisfied customers, Harmonic is committed to solving real-world challenges. Our expertise in media processing, playout and cloud uniquely position us to partner with our customers, enabling them to seamlessly adapt to a changing industry landscape,” said Tim Warren, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Video Business, Harmonic.

Also Read: Harmonic Announces VOS SW Cluster for Fast Origination and Delivery of OTT and IPTV Services

Tackle OTT Challenges with Innovative Solutions

Harmonic will address the challenges in OTT video delivery with targeted innovations:

Harmonic will highlight its award-winning VOS media processing family including the new VOS SW Cluster media processing software and VOS 360 media processing SaaS. VOS SW Cluster embeds market-leading media processing capabilities with support for cloud and bare metal compute environments enabling operators to launch OTT services quickly.
Harmonic offers streamlined OTT video delivery through cloud-based channel origination on VOS 360 SaaS, enabling operators to swiftly migrate channels from playout to end-user delivery for greater flexibility and a lower cost-per-channel.
Harmonic will also showcase live sports for OTT, delivered with reduced latency matching that of a live broadcast, in stunning UHD and HDR using VOS 360 SaaS.
With the VOS family, operators can deploy EyeQcontent-aware encoding to reduce bandwidth requirements for OTT delivery, decrease CDN costs and improve QoE. At the 2018 NAB Show Harmonic will premiere EyeQ support for HEVC.

Also Read: Harmonic and Veygo Team Up to Deliver End-to-End OTT Solution, Successfully Deployed by Indonesia’s AMTV

Get the Most Out of ATSC 3.0 With Advanced Statmux and Hybrid OTA/OTT services

Harmonic’s expertise in statistical multiplexing will play a key role in providing high-quality ATSC 3.0 streams at low bitrates. At the 2018 NAB Show, Harmonic will showcase its software-based Electra X ATSC 3.0 media processor and statistical multiplexing solution to deliver high-quality HEVC programs over DASH. For OTT services to complement over-the-air (OTA) transmissions, Electra X connects to Harmonic’s VOS 360 SaaS to enable hybrid OTA/OTT services.

Also Read: Webinar: Will your Media Company Thrive in the Over-the-Top Revolution?

New Possibilities for All-IP Workflows

In the IP Showcase, sponsored by AIMS, in booth C12634, Harmonic will highlight the Spectrum X media server as part of an end-to-end IP video workflow from contribution to delivery, using the SMPTE ST 2110 suite of standards, SMPTE 2022-7 seamless protection switching and AWMA IS-04 and IS-05 specifications. The Electra media processor and Spectrum X server fill the final gap for uncompressed workflows and control with support for uncompressed and compressed streams, enabling a smooth transition for live broadcast and OTT.

Also Read: OTT Explosion Provides Safe Platform For Marketers

Looking Ahead at Next-Gen Video Codecs and Content-Aware Encoding

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become a key innovation factor to optimize the video encoding process. Leveraging AI in the development of next-generation video codecs and content-aware encoding (CEA), Harmonic is leading the charge toward delivering better video quality at low bitrates. The company will provide a valuable side-by-side comparison of codec efficiency between HEVC, AVC with Harmonic EyeQ CAE technology, AV-1, and JVET.

Recommended Read: The State Of Play With OTT Sports Streaming

Interview with Jay Baer, Founder, Convince & Convert

By

Rohan Jagan

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April 4, 2018

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Interview with Jay Baer, Founder - Convince & Convert

[vc_wp_text]“Content and social work closely together, with social as an amplification engine that brings new viewers to content executions.”

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[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/jaybaer” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaybaer/”]

Tell us about your professional journey as a tech entrepreneur. What inspired you to set up a digital marketing firm?

I somewhat accidentally got involved in online marketing at the very beginning, way back in 1993. I was the spokesperson for a government agency and hated it. My friends from college had started the very first Internet company in Arizona, and I was looking to do ANYTHING else. I fell in love with digital (although dial-up modem speeds weren’t that sexy). My current firm, Convince & Convert, is the fifth digital marketing firm I’ve run. Our 10^th anniversary is this July.

How can business firms leverage content marketing for social media promotions to drive marketing ROI?

Increasingly, content and social work closely together, with social as an amplification engine that brings new viewers to content executions. Done well, they work in concert to drive awareness, leads, and sales.

What draws you to Oracle’s Modern Customer Experience 2018? Which sessions are you looking forward to?

I love this event, and I love working with the Oracle CX team. I’m incredibly excited to see Casey Neistat, and of course…..The MARKIE AWARDS!

Register Now With Special MarTech Series Promo Code: DMMAR2018*

How is the B2B marketing world evolving with newer tools and technologies? Which technologies are you keenly following?

A recent paper from Demand Gen Report found five technologies that B2B marketers are using to drive relevancy and results. The three that I work with the most for my own consulting clients are interactive content, repurposing and atomizing content, and video content. All three are skyrocketing in popularity because they break through the clutter.

What would be the best way to succeed in content marketing in 2018?

Whichever way works best for your audience is the real answer. But if I had to pick a horse to ride this year, I’d probably choose video, provided it’s hyper-relevant, useful, and entertaining.

Between Search and Social, which would drive higher ROMI in 2018 and how?

Timely question. I just wrote about a study that looked at that question. Recently, I would say social. Right now, I would say search. But of course, you need a foot in both camps.

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

I’m bullish on several companies and am a proud investor in several strong martech startups including Terminus in the ABM space, Uberflip in the content hub space, Co-schedule in the marketing operations space, and Buffer in the social publishing space.

What tools does your marketing stack consist of?

Sooooo many. Because we work with dozens of SaaS Martech companies as sponsors, partners, advisors, and mentors, I couldn’t even begin to list them all. We counted recently, and we have something like 80 SaaS licenses.

Would you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success?)

As an analyst and strategy firm, we don’t think much in terms of campaigns, but more in terms of how our recommendations tie back to overall business objectives. That said, I’m really proud of our work on behalf of many, many organizations, including The United Nations, Grand Ole Opry, David Weekley Homes, Cisco, and even Oracle!

How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a tech leader?

I can’t wait for the AI-centric world. When robots are in charge of the blocking and tackling and the drudgery of marketing, the strategist becomes king. Bring It On.

One word that best describes how you work.

Instinctive

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

Teamwork, Sococo, Camtasia, SnagIt, Keynote, CoSchedule

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

I use lots of 1:1 and small group video to help provide direction. Very helpful in a company that is all virtual.

What are you currently reading?

I read tons of periodicals. Not as many books as I would like. And right now, I’m finishing the new book I’m publishing this Fall with my co-author Daniel Lemin. It’s called Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth. So, that’s taken up a lot of my recent reading time!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.

Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?

I’m only good at two things, really: pattern recognition, and judging talent.

Tag the one person (from the Martech space) whose answers to these questions you would love to read:

Lee Odden of TopRank

Thank you Jay! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

*The code, for new registrations only, offers Mar Tech Series’ readers a $705 discount.

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Jay” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b68e091-7516″]

Internet pioneer Jay Baer helps companies clone their customers. He’s created five multi-million dollar companies of his own and is obsessed with helping businesses turn their customers into volunteer marketers. A New York Times best-seller of five books, Jay brings 25 years of marketing experience and has worked with more than 700 companies, including 35 of the FORTUNE 500.

Recently inducted into the Word of Mouth Marketing Hall of Fame, Jay is also an avid tequila collector, and certified BBQ judge. In his keynote presentations, Jay teaches how to gain more customers and keep more of the customers you’ve already earned by motivating and mobilizing today’s fickle, distracted consumer. Jay is the host of the Social Pros podcast, named best marketing podcast. He is also an active angel investor and startup advisor.

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One of America’s fastest growing private companies, per Inc. Magazine, the Convince & Convert Consulting group provides digital marketing and customer experience strategic counsel to the world’s most important brands. The Convince & Convert Media Group produces award-winning digital magazines, email, podcasts, webinars, workshops and other content assets that educate advanced marketing and customer experience professionals.

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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.

Netcore Solutions Expanding Business Into U.S.

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April 4, 2018

Netcore Solutions Expanding Business Into U.S.

Netcore Is Emerging as Asia’s Largest Email Delivery Platform

Netcore Solutions, a leading marketing technology company formed over 20 years ago, has expanded its international presence with offices in the US, located in the New York metropolitan area.

This is a strategic move for the company, serving 3,000+ companies including international brands such as Dominos, KFC, Vodafone, Airtel, Facebook, Cox & Kings, Myntra, Access Bank, Bibli, Malindo Airline, Standard Chartered Bank, Tokopedia, and Traveloka among others. Netcore is emerging as Asia’s largest email delivery platform, sending over 6 billion emails a month.

With comprehensive offerings, the company will be looking to rapidly expand into the United States. Offerings include Pepipost, their transactional API-based email delivery service; and Netcore Smartech, a full stack marketing automation suite, powered by Artificial Intelligence, coupled with analytics and consulting services.

Also Read: Your Buyers are Online: Why Aren’t You?

Leading this effort will be:

Abithab Bhaskar

Abithab Bhaskar, CEO, International Business, has helped Netcore Solutions grow over the past 16 years. Located in Mumbai, Bhaskar is an accomplished senior leader with a progressive career spanning two decades. In his current role, he has been instrumental in strategizing processes to expand the global footprint with indirect presence in over 20 countries and the direct presence in the US, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, and UAE. Bhaskar said, “I believe that Netcore’s core strengths and commitment to our product development will provide US marketers a new and better option for email services. We focus on customer satisfaction – for both our clients and their customers.”

Also Read: Netcore Recreates Its Brand Value with Futuristic Technology

Sankalp Bajpai

Sankalp Bajpai, VP – US Business & Strategic Initiatives, International Business, will spearhead the initiative by expanding the team and customer footprint in the market in the US. Bajpai, located in the New York area, has been instrumental in expanding Netcore’s presence in APAC and MENA and consolidating the growth strategy in APAC. “We are coming into the US market with a deep understanding of email deliverability, along with core email marketing services that transform our client’s marketing capabilities,” added Bajpai.

Also Read: AWeber Expands Its Suite of Easy-To-Use Marketing Automation Tools

Jeannette Kocsis

“I am very excited to be part of Netcore’s launch into US markets. I believe their products will resonate with many US marketers, who are looking for reliable email services and the expertise to get their email executed and delivered along with their customer’s journey,” added Jeannette Kocsis, SVP, Marketing & Business Development. She will manage marketing and business development efforts in the US. Kocsis, located in New York, was previously Global Head of Strategy at Harte Hanks, Inc. and led digital strategy and operations teams over her 17 years with the company. She has a technical background coupled with a digital marketing focus.

Netcore is a gold sponsor of the Email Evolution Conference, being held in New Orleans, LA on April 4-6, 2018.

Zilliant Names Phil Fraher As Chief Financial Officer

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April 4, 2018

Phil Fraher Will Lead Zilliant’s Financial Operations and Will Report Directly to Greg Peters

Zilliant, a company helping B2B enterprises turn data into actionable intelligence to accelerate profitable growth, announced that Phil Fraher has joined the company as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Fraher joins Zilliant from Bask Technologies, where he was President and CFO and helped re-energize the consumer technology firm.

Also Read:Zilliant Expands Global Artificial Intelligence B2B Benchmark Report

“Phil has an excellent track record advising fast-growth organizations and we’re excited to welcome him to the company. I’m confident his extensive experience in private equity, venture capital, M&A and international business expansion will provide tremendous value to Zilliant,” said Greg Peters, CEO, Zilliant.

Also Read: Zilliant Announces Global Artificial Intelligence B2B Benchmark Report

“It’s an exciting time to join Zilliant. Zilliant is helping B2B organizations transform their traditional and digital channels to maximize the immediate value of every transaction. In today’s hyper-competitive B2B market, the company is helping their customers create a significant competitive advantage. I look forward to helping the company optimize its financial operations,” said Fraher.

Also Read: FPX Partners with Zilliant to Maximize Customer LTV Across B2B Organizations

Phil Fraher

Fraher’s experience includes serving as CEO, COO, and CFO for FuelQuest, a fuel supply chain software company, which he guided to a series of successful exits. Other roles include President and CEO of Visual Numerics, Inc., COO and CFO of Brightmail, Inc., and financial management positions at Cahners Business Information Electronic Media Division, Pilot Software, and Dun & Bradstreet. Fraher previously served as an Executive in Residence at the Houston Technology Center and holds an MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester and a BS in computing engineering from Auburn University.

Zilliant helps B2B enterprises turn data into actionable intelligence that accelerates profitable growth. The Zilliant IQ Platform uses AI to deliver actionable, real-time sales and pricing intelligence for traditional and digital channels, so you can maximize the immediate value of every transaction – and the lifetime value of every customer.

CrowdFlower Unveils New Machine Learning Solutions; Changes Name To Figure Eight

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April 4, 2018

CrowdFlower Unveils New Machine Learning Solutions; Changes Name To Figure Eight

Expanded Vision, Solutions and Executive Team Focused on Establishing Figure Eight as the Human-In-The-Loop Category Leader

CrowdFlower, the essential Human-in-the-Loop artificial intelligence platform for data science and machine learning teams, unveiled new machine learning solutions that will help companies reduce the time to apply AI to their business and generate business impact from real-world AI applications.

These new machine learning solutions are part of a multi-year transformation CrowdFlower has been undergoing and as a result of it capped that transformation by changing its name to Figure Eight. The formal name change to Figure Eight is to better reflect the company’s technology platform that combines the best of machine learning and human intelligence, rather than just using human intelligence to label data. The new name and identity focus Figure Eight’s core philosophy of human-in-the-loop practices being the essential ingredient to making AI work in the real world, specifically the iterative process of active learning for the training, testing, and tuning of machine learning models.

Also Read: CrowdFlower Adds World-Class AI Expertise To Extend Its Category Leadership

Robin Bordoli Crowdflower — Robin Bordoli

“Most people think of AI as just the algorithm, but increasingly enterprises are realizing that the bottleneck to deploying effective machine learning models is large volumes of high-quality training data that describes the messy human environment the AI needs to operate within. The new Figure Eight solutions will allow companies to continuously improve their machine learning models with active learning and human-in-the-loop practices. Companies will now be able to deploy machine learning faster and more effectively so they can make AI work for their business,” said Robin Bordoli, CEO, Figure Eight.

While interest in AI and its application to solving real business problems is increasing, the reality is that only a few companies have deployed AI into their production environments. Gartner, Inc.’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey shows that “four percent of CIOs have implemented AI, while a further 46 percent have developed plans to do so.” in a recent report from the firm, “Over the next two years, CIOs will be scrambling to make sense of machine learning and other AI technologies, to figure out their roles in digital business and to launch the internal pilots that will test that knowledge and insight. At the same time, CIOs will have to sift through competing vendor claims and promises to identify and assess the genuineness of AI capabilities.”

Also Read: CrowdFlower Named a Gartner “Cool Vendor” in Information Innovation and Governance

Building on the traction of the Machine Learning team established in 2017, the company extended its Science team by bringing in more experts in three key areas: Computer Vision, Human-Computer Interaction, and Natural Language Processing. This team has been working with Figure Eight’s customers to build new Machine Learning solutions to improve the accuracy and throughput of the annotation process. This allows Figure Eight’s customers to rapidly deploy and update real-world AI applications.

“With these expanded solutions, customers can now come to us and access expertise regardless of where they are in their AI deployment journey. In some cases, they only need help with annotation strategies. In other cases, we help them build out the full AI workflow, from training data to deployed models and human-in-the-loop feedback to continually improve those models. Our customers love that we can help them deploy Machine Learning models across all the leading cloud platforms,” said Robert Munro, CTO, Figure Eight.

Also Read: CrowdFlower Secured $20M to Speed up Adoption of AI Within the Enterprise

To help drive the continued innovation and adoption of the Figure Eight platform, the company also added three new executives to the team and promoted one executive. Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger joined as VP of Product, having previously been Director of Product Management at IBM Watson where she oversaw the development of a large portfolio of AI products including vision, speech, emotional intelligence and machine translation. Louis Monier joined the Figure Eight board of directors, bringing his experience as a technology pioneer having previously founded the search engine company Alta Vista and more recently served as Head of the AI Lab at AirBnB. Dale Brown joined as VP of Business Development to drive partnerships within the machine learning ecosystem, having previously been VP of Business Development at Bitnami. Robert Munro was promoted to Chief Technology Officer, having previously been VP of Machine Learning after joining Figure Eight from Amazon where he led Product for AWS’s first Natural Language Processing services in the Deep Learning team at Amazon AI.

AdColony Receives TAG Certification For Fighting Digital Ad Fraud; Commitment To Quality

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April 4, 2018

AdColony Receives TAG Certification For Fighting Digital Ad Fraud; Commitment To Quality

Mobile Video Advertising Leader Meets Stringent Requirements from Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)

AdColony, the ad quality video marketplace, announced the company has been granted the coveted Certified For Fraud certification by Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). The certification reaffirms AdColony’s continuing efforts to directly combat ad fraud and offer increased transparency for its advertising and publishing partners.

Şekip Can Gökalp

“Advertisers deserve to know that the campaign reporting they receive is honest and accurate. By attaining this TAG certification, AdColony provides advertisers with yet another assurance that their investments are being actively protected against malicious actors that would otherwise affect reporting and overall return on ad spend,” said Şekip Can Gökalp, Chief Operating Officer, AdColony.

Also Read: TAG Anti-fraud Certification Will Require Publishers to Implement Ads.txt

According to research and advisory firm Gartner, mobile ad fraud may have cost the industry as much as $6.5 billion in 2017. As part of its ongoing responsibility to provide the best solutions and highest degree of transparency possible for both advertising and publishing partners, AdColony has embraced anti-fraud and transparency certification from leading independent bodies like TAG, MOAT, IAS, DoubleVerify, and more.

To earn the certification, AdColony met stringent guidelines as determined by TAG, a leading unbiased advertising accountability group. TAG was formed in 2016 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to combat fraudulent activity across various digital advertising ecosystems.

Also Read: Study Shows Ad Industry Anti-Piracy Efforts Have Cut Pirate Ad Revenue in Half

The high bar and stringent requirements for advertising companies to acquire TAG certification are designed to protect advertisers, publishers, technology providers, and consumers from the fraudulent behaviors that cost the digital ad industry billions of dollars each year.

The TAG Fraud Benchmarking Study conducted last year by The 614 Group found the use of TAG Certified networks and channels for digital ads decreased invalid traffic (IVT) rates to 1.48 percent across more than 6.5 billion display and video impressions.

Also Read: Trustworthy Accountability Group Hires Former IAB UK Executive Nick Stringer

Eric Dickinger

“This certification not only speaks to our own continually improving anti-fraud efforts up and down our technology stack but also gives us even more tools to fight fraud,” said AdColony’s VP of Growth and head of anti-fraud efforts Eric Dickinger. “TAG’s Payment ID System and Data Center IP list will be invaluable as we continue to combat fraud as a company and as an industry.”

In addition to this most recent TAG Certification, AdColony has also received a Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG) certification by JICWEBS, the leading independent digital ad benchmarking organization for the UK and Ireland. AdColony was also named one of the most secure mobile ad networks by Singular in their most recent report.

ContentWriters Releases Inbound Marketing Guide For E-Commerce Businesses

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April 4, 2018

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ContentWriters Releases Inbound Marketing Guide For E-Commerce Businesses

Informed By Metrics and User Feedback, the White Paper Details Proven e-commerce Marketing Tactics

ContentWriters has released a new white paper for e-commerce businesses that are looking to increase inbound leads and accelerate revenue growth.

Francesco Montesanto

“E-commerce is an incredibly vibrant space that’s flourishing. We’ve seen a pretty drastic uptick in requests for product descriptions from companies looking to gain an advantage over their competitors,” said Francesco Montesanto, Director Marketing, ContentWriters.

Also Read: Why Contact Centers Are Critical to Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

After months of analytic research and customer insight, ContentWriters aimed to create a comprehensive guide that would serve as a valuable resource for businesses looking for product description writers and e-commerce marketing services.

The new guide highlights many key components of successful marketing tactics including instructions for writing quality product descriptions, how to properly leverage social media, and what types of content are more likely to convert potential customers.

Also Read: Email Signature Marketing: 10 Tips on How to Drive Leads, Increase Sales and Boost Your Social Following

“ContentWriters understands the value of delivering as much useful content to consumers as possible within a short window. Product descriptions need to be incisive and catchy. Social media posts need to speak the same language as your customers. Most of all, businesses need to know how to properly target the right audience,” added Montesanto.

Also Read: How Blockchain Technology Could Disrupt Social Media’s Stronghold on Data

ContentWriters specializes in providing high-quality content for all major industries. By pairing expert writers with industry-specific clients, ContentWriters ensures that clients’ needs are exceeded every time. The company produces all forms of content, including blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, press releases, product descriptions, website content, and white papers. For more information about the services that ContentWriters provides.

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

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April 4, 2018

SteelHouse's Unique Targeting Technology Allows For Connected TV Audience Extension

Brands Can Now Serve Programmatic TV Ads to New Audiences Proven to Convert

SteelHouse’s new Connected TV (CTV) offering allows brands to reach the growing number of cord-cutters with the efficiency and data-driven precision of a digital channel. They now offer sophisticated targeting that allows brands to find new, highly-qualified users and serve them television ads.

Also Read: SteelHouse Advertising Suite Now Targets Connected TV Audience for Omnichannel Brands

With SteelHouse, brands are able to identify high-value audiences through their associated cookie, IP address, or device-ID and serve them a Connected TV ad. Additionally, SteelHouse has developed the unique ability to build an audience segment of unique users who have been exposed to a brand’s Connected TV ad and then serve those users related ads across the web, mobile, or native.

Also Read: Steelhouse Adds Industry Veterans Dan Weiner and Rory Mitchell to Executive Team

Dan Weiner

“Consistent messaging across all channels and devices is a proven way to drive site traffic that ultimately leads to a purchase. We created the ability to apply this to television ads which have been extremely exciting for the brands and agencies we work with,” said Dan Weiner, SVP Enterprise Sales/CTV, SteelHouse.

Also Read: How GlassView’s Global Connected TV Platform is Being Embraced By Advertisers

SteelHouse is an AI-driven, self-service advertising software company for brands of all sizes. The SteelHouse Advertising Suite provides marketers with everything they need to build their own ads then launch retargeting and prospecting campaigns through a display, mobile, native, connected TV, and social media. Our solutions give advertisers total transparency and complete control over their campaigns – all with the fastest go-live in the industry. SteelHouse has more than 700 customers including brands like Virgin America, TUMI, Staples, Beachbody, and others.

OneSignal Announces The Launch Of Email Messaging

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April 4, 2018

OneSignal Announces The Launch Of Email Messaging

OneSignal, the Leading Mobile App, and Web Push Notification Platform Announced Their Expansion into Email Marketing

With the launch of OneSignal Email Messaging, OneSignal customers can now synchronize user emails from their website or app and deliver email messages using the same dashboard, API and SDK they’ve been using for notifications.

In surveying the landscape, OneSignal’s team noticed many of the same factors as when they started as a push notification platform – existing solutions are complex, hard to integrate and expensive.

Also Read: Google AMP for Gmail: A Marketer’s View

George Deglin

“We started OneSignal after previously working as a mobile game studio where we experienced first-hand the absence of technology to send effective notifications that didn’t annoy our users. Publishers experience the same struggles with email. Many of them send impersonal and poorly targeted emails or don’t send them at all,” said George Deglin, CEO, OneSignal.

Unlike many existing email messaging platforms that require publishers to manually import email addresses or integrate complex APIs to track analytics and user preferences, OneSignal has taken a developer-centric approach with a powerful SDK for mobile apps and websites.

The OneSignal SDK takes care of details like synchronizing emails, getting analytics on campaign effectiveness and storing user preferences such interests, timezone, and language. This makes it easier for publishers to get started leveraging email as a channel and provides them the tools to make sure that their emails are relevant and engaging.

Also Read: Email Signature Marketing: 10 Tips on How to Drive Leads, Increase Sales and Boost Your Social Following

Additionally, OneSignal is emphasizing support for new email capabilities, such as AMP in Gmail.

“As we have with push notifications, we will work towards always supporting the latest technologies, including AMP for email, HTML5 video support, encryption and more,” said Deglin.

OneSignal believes that, while push notifications are now the platform of choice for short, time-sensitive messages, email continues to be a ubiquitous and evolving platform for long-form messages and announcements. Looking forward, OneSignal plans to continue working towards making it easier for publishers to effectively leverage both channels.

Recommended Read: Beating the Big Guys Is All About Brand Loyalty

Rakuten Marketing Whitepaper Reviews US Compliance Framework for GDPR

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April 4, 2018

Rakuten Marketing Whitepaper Reviews U.S. Compliance Framework for GDPR

Provides Expert Insight on the Value of Gathering Consent for Advertisers & Publishers

Rakuten Marketing, a leading technology company that enables marketers to increase sales through data-driven performance marketing, recently announced the availability of a new whitepaper that reviews the US compliance framework for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This data-rich resource also provides expert insight on the impact GDPR will have on US advertisers and publishers, ways European citizens are responding to the new legislation and action brands need to take to become GDPR-compliant by the May 25 deadline.

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

The digital marketing and advertising industry generates a massive amount of consumer data, valuable in increasing brand awareness and loyalty; driving customer acquisition and retention; and, ultimately, fueling online sales. GDPR, approved by the EU Parliament on April 14, 2016, is a data protection legislation that directly impacts US businesses who market and sell to EU citizens. The regulation is the result of the escalation of intrusive digital marketing practices and poor online advertising that has created negative experiences and sentiment for online consumers. As the legal framework governing the use of personal data across EU markets, GDPR sets a strict, new standard for consumer privacy and data security.

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing Centralizes Publisher Ecosystem to Optimize Online Ad Inventory

Once into enforcement, GDPR will impact US advertisers and publishers. Aside from financial penalties, (up to four percent of their global turnover or 20 million euros – whichever is greatest), brands will no longer have easy access to consumer data. At first glance, this may be seen as a negative hit to the industry, but in reality, the regulation provides an important opportunity for brands to improve and deliver more consumer-friendly and consumer-desired ads and online marketing experiences. Similarly, GDPR provides consumers with the opportunity to take complete control over personal data they allow advertisers and publishers to collect and use through digital marketing and advertising programs.

Also Read: GDPR: Developing a Proportionate Response

Rakuten Marketing’s whitepaper titled ‘Defining the GDPR Impact on Digital Advertising’ shares insights into the foundation that advertisers and publishers need to understand to be compliant with GDPR. It explores the benefits of gathering consent for GDPR-compliant brands, how to support the delivery of more consumer-friendly ads and online marketing experiences, and the resulting impact to advertisers, publishers and consumers.

Also Read: GDPR Will Drive A Coach And Horses Through The Online Advertising Ecosystem

“The GDPR-compliance deadline is here and it’s more important than ever for marketers to have solid knowledge and understanding of the regulation, its impact and how to strategically develop and execute campaigns consumers love,” stated Tony Zito, CEO, Rakuten Marketing. “This document arms advertisers and publishers with valuable information and expert insights that help achieve GDPR and market success.”

Technekes And XSInc Agree To Merge

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April 4, 2018