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STRATACACHE Announces Acquisition of X2O Media from Barco

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stratacache

X2O Media Secured Top Tier Customers in John Deere, Verizon, Fox News and Accenture

STRATACACHE announces it has acquired Montréal-based X2O Media from Barco. As the global market leader in digital consumer engagement and digital signage, STRATACACHE offers enhanced focus and new growth opportunities for X2O.

After its acquisition in 2014, X2O became part of Barco’s Enterprise division, which focuses on solutions for meeting and control rooms. Over the years, X2O secured top-tier customers including John Deere, Verizon, Fox News and Accenture. All customer agreements will continue to be managed by X2O to ensure world-class support and service for current customers. X2O Media employs about 45 people and will continue to operate from Montréal, Canada. The sale will be closed at the end of March 2018.

Also Read: Box Appoints Australia, New Zealand Leader as It Accelerates International Expansion

Chris Riegel STRATACACHE
Chris Riegel

“With the acquisition of X2O Media, we will expand our portfolio with a complete solution for dynamic content display based on real-time data, plus add great new tools in the E-learning and broadcast markets.The X2O software platform versatility and its capability to address any display — be it fixed or mobile — will prove to be an important asset. This complementary technology will help us to further build on our core competencies in the ever-expanding digital display and data visualization marketplace,” said Chris Riegel, CEO, STRATACACHE.

Also Read: Ads on Top Unveils “Dynamix” Playlist Automation via API

“The X2O acquisition is a perfect example of the aggressive long-term growth strategy of the STRATACACHE Group. Working actively on over 400 deals per year, we are at the forefront of a long-awaited industry consolidation. Our investment strategy is to help unlock the potential in emerging digital media companies to grow faster,” said Dirk Huelsermann, Managing Partner, STRATACACHE Capital.

“The decision to divest X2O Media comes after a careful evaluation of its profitability and growth opportunities. As digital signage is no longer a strategic focus for Barco, we are convinced that selling X2O to a major player like STRATACACHE will provide the company with the focus and contacts it needs to reach the next level of global scale and success,” said Jan De Witte, CEO, Barco.

Recommended Read: The Importance of Marketing and Sales Alignment

Five Video Marketing Blogs You Should Read

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Five Video Marketing Blogs You Should Read
Five Video Marketing Blogs You Should Read

Video is hot, and there is no dearth of information about the new exciting innovations happening in the ecosystem. To get you close to “What’s Hot” in video marketing technology, we picked five must-read blogs you should dive into.

Introducing GoVHS, Vidyard’s Most Innovative Product! #AprilFools

One of the best product introductions in the video marketing series, Vidyard’s blog on GoVHS showcases why marketing teams should not lose touch with the ‘retro’. Hannah Cameron, Vidyard’s Content Marketing Pro, explains how GoVHS could help customers sail through this “new age of digital communication” as it gets noisier and cluttered. BTW, it’s a prank, or so we believe! But, great ideas.

10 Tips for Video Marketing Success

Simple, direct, and visually mesmerizing… this is not a blog, but an infographic that would inspire marketing teams to breathe a “new life into your message with engaging handcrafted video.” Explained by Laura Forer of Marketing Profs, the blog reveals why social media is the best place to share videos, and why Live Streaming is the killer way to drive audience engagement!

The rise of Virtual Reality technologies is a story in itself.

(Ssssh… talk to us, VR!)

Viewability For Display Ads Is Just 50 Per Cent; Video 60 Per Cent

Would you agree if we told you that the improvement in video performance could be a skewed factor? This article on the latest study by the  World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is worth taking a look at. David Murphy, Editorial Director at Mobile Marketing Magazine, puts together the puzzle pieces to clear the air on viewability metrics accepted in the global advertising industry. In this report-based article, David reveals that WFA worked with Adloox, comScore, DV, IAS, Meetrics, Moat, and Pixalate to provide the global marketing industry with clear benchmarks to assess the performance of their own advertising.

How to Generate More Sales With Video Content

This article reveals why “it’s not Just ‘Go Viral’ or Bust with Video Content.” An easy-to-follow guide to creating videos, this quick-read could help any video marketing team reach more prospects, generate more leads, and bolster sales.

How These 3 Brands Are Crushing the Video Marketing Game

Love Dollar Shave Club? Then, this blog on video marketing for 2018 is for you!

We dug out this exciting blog on video marketing, written by Tabitha Jean Naylor, President of President of KodasChoice.org. Crafted, or rather shot like an arrow, the narration is sleek. This blog tells you what big brands are doing to stay afloat and sustain their legacy as marketing geniuses. Check out who else featured on this blog with Dollar Shave Club!

(Get to feature in our exclusive blog series as a Guest Author by sharing your insights! Drop us a line at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com today)

Plantronics to Acquire Polycom for $2 Billion

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plantronics

Creating the Communications and Collaboration Gold-Standard So Good Ideas Are Seen and Heard

Plantronics, and Polycom announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Plantronics will acquire Polycom in a cash and stock transaction valued at $2.0 billion enterprise value. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close by the end of the third calendar quarter of 2018.

Compelling Strategic Rationale

With the acquisition of Polycom, Plantronics will become the partner of choice for the communications and collaboration ecosystem. The combination:

  • Accelerates Plantronics Strategy. Polycom brings a global leadership position in voice and video collaboration, accelerating Plantronics vision of delivering new communications and collaboration experiences.
  • Broadens Portfolio. With the addition of Polycom, Plantronics will have the broadest portfolio of complementary products and services across the global communications and collaboration ecosystem, and the ability to create exceptional user experiences.
  • Expands Market Opportunity. The combination positions Plantronics to capture additional opportunities across the $39.9B Unified Communications and Collaboration industry driven by innovation in video and the ubiquity of audio, building growth opportunities through data analytics and insight services.
  • Augments Services Business. Polycom significantly expands Plantronics services offering, providing a meaningful presence in management and analytics services.

This news will further accelerate Plantronics vision of an enterprise that is able to leverage powerful analytics, video and audio touchpoints to ignite all new communications and collaboration experiences.

According to Joe Burton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Plantronics, “With the addition of Polycom’s solutions across video, audio and collaboration we will be able to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of communications and collaboration touch points and services to our customers and channel partners. This will put Plantronics in an ideal position to solve for today’s enterprise collaboration requirements while capitalizing on market opportunities associated with the evolving, intelligent enterprise.”

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

“Polycom has returned to growth by focusing on building strong ecosystem partnerships and delivering innovative, smart solutions for our customers and partners. Bringing Plantronics and Polycom together will broaden the breadth of solutions available to customers and partners and create a consistent end-user experience across many collaboration applications and devices. As one company, Plantronics and Polycom will make it even easier for all customers to solve big-business problems through human-to-human connections,” said Mary T. McDowell, Chief Executive Officer, Polycom.

“Siris recognizes the incredible opportunity in the Unified Communications industry and has been focused on building momentum in the industry for several years. We are excited about the long-term value that the combination of Plantronics and Polycom will create for customers, partners, stakeholders, and employees,” said Frank Baker, Founder, Managing Partner, Siris Capital.

Recommended Read: Forget Mobile First, It’s Now Social First

Impartner Spring ’18 Release Makes it Possible for Channel Managers to Create the Perfect Partner Experience In Real Time

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Impartner Spring '18 Release Makes it Possible for Channel Managers to Create the Perfect Partner Experience In Real Time
Impartner Spring '18 Release Makes it Possible for Channel Managers to Create the Perfect Partner Experience In Real Time

New CMS Breaks All the Molds: Makes It Fast and Intuitive for Channel Managers to Edit Complete Partner Experience and Not Just Content in Partner Portals

Impartner, the best-selling and most-award winning pure-play Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution, today announced its Spring ’18 software release, which makes it possible for channel managers to edit, in real time, not only the content but also their partners’ experience in their Partner Portals – without the help of IT. The release continues the company’s ongoing focus on providing the world’s most powerful, most nimble channel-management tools. Impartner’s completely re-engineered Content Management System (CMS) allows users to both add and change pages by program segment, tier, region, etc., with a simple drag and drop interface, and make content changes using the solution’s new fast, sleek, intuitive control interface, the Momentum BarTM. Other key features in the release include enhanced sales enablement and segmentation functionalities.

Gary Sabin

“In 2018, the vendor with the best partner experience wins. This industry leap-frogging CMS solution is 100 percent focused on making it easier than ever for our customers to be able to continually optimize their partners’ journey with an easy-to-use, consumerized interface that users have come to expect from their business solutions,” said Impartner Senior Director of Product Management, Gary Sabin, highlighting Impartner’s newly re-engineered CMS.

Also Read: New Interactive Impartner Infographic Shows How Partner Relationship Management Enhances the Partner Journey

A Paradigm Shift for Sales Enablement

Sabin stresses this same paradigm-shifting engineering vision is the driver behind the release’s new sales enablement functionality. Vendors have long struggled to convert collateral layouts into formats that make it easy for partners to customize for their businesses by dropping in their own images, logos and text content. However, with Impartner’s new AutoSense technology, vendors can instantly scan and detect images and text in collateral material and ready them to be customizable by partners with the click of a button, removing dependence on professional services teams and running up timelines and expenses.

“Sales enablement materials are a critical part of the value partners expect from leading channel programs and one that we see driving a reported 56 percent increase in profitability for partners who have the resources they truly need to bring a vendor’s products to life in the market,” said Sabin. “By instantly making any existing collateral co-brandable, we’re removing the time, budgeting and logistical challenges that in the past, have caused vendors to limit the collateral they provide.”

Also Read: Largest Out-of-Home Advertising Database Surpasses 1 Million Assets

Segmentation in a Few Clicks

In its previous release, Impartner ushered in a new era of precision with its SegmentAI automated segmentation engine. With this release, SegmentAI features a new wizard, which takes Impartner’s segmentation functionality to another level by making it drop-dead simple for channel managers to bring their segmentation strategies to life with a few clicks.

“Visionary channel managers are dreaming up strategic segmentation schemes as part of their secret sauce to getting the most out of their channel partners, and imagining unique differentiated programs to stand out in today’s hypercompetitive channel environment,” Sabin said. “Until now, the challenge has been the difficulty of peeling those strategies off the whiteboard and actually implementing them within their toolset.”

Also Read: 10 Best SEO Names-Top SEO Agencies Selected by Online Marketing Industry

More Control Over the Heart of Your Chantech Stack

Self-service is also the focus of Impartner’s new configurable Single Sign On (SSO) solution. “Because a company’s PRM solution is the Grand Central train station of the chantech stack – the central hub from which partners can jump into other technologies that are constantly being added and reconfigured – our new SSO makes it easy for vendors to make the adjustments that are typical in today’s fast-moving technology landscape,” said Sabin. “Without having to turn to an outside vendor, it’s now 100 percent in the vendor’s control to add and remove technologies as they come and go – making it easy for vendors to maintain SSOs for their partners to ensure they have a seamless transition from their PRM to other technology solutions.”

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

Comm100 CEO Unveils North American Growth Leadership Team

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comm100

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.

Also Read: Salesforce Integration Cloud Arrives to Build Connected Customer Experiences

The full North American leadership team includes:

  • 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.

Also Read: Need for Data Orchestration for Contextualizing Customer Experience

“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.

Recommended Read: Digital Experience Data Reveals Customer Experience Isn’t Just for the Holidays

Pedowitz Group Principals Bruce Culbert and Debbie Qaqish Lead Expert Perspectives Session on Talent & Organizational Design at CRM Evolution

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pedowitzgroup

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.

Also Read: TechBytes with Sam Melnick and Debbie Qaqish – Allocadia & The Pedowitz Group

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.

Also Read: The Pedowitz Group and Allocadia Partner to Guide Marketing Operations Leaders to Revenue Accountability 

CRM Evolution 2018 Highlights

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.

Recommended Read: Fireside Chat with Jeff Pedowitz

Nevion Enhances IP Audio Capabilities

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Nevion Enhances Ip Audio Capabilities

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.

Marketing Technology News: Tray.io Unveils Unified Customer Integration Solution for Software Companies

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).

Marketing Technology News: Pipedrive Unveils Its Biggest Redesign; Launches New Products for 10th Anniversary

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.”

Marketing Technology News: TA Digital Earns 7th & 8th Adobe Specializations with Campaign and Marketo Badges

Conductor and LinkResearchTools Add Muscle to Sling up Search Strategies

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Conductor

The Partnership Will Help Brands Enhance The Efficiency And Excellence Of Organic Marketing 

conductor + linkresearchtools
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
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.

Also Read: 10 Best SEO Names-Top SEO Agencies Selected by Online Marketing Industry

Contentstack Introduces CMS Modular Blocks, a Dynamic New Way to Create Pages Quickly and Easily

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Contentstack Introduces CMS Modular Blocks, a Dynamic New Way to Create Pages Quickly and Easily
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.

Also Read: Contentstack Launches Partner Program to Fuel Adoption of Leading Headless CMS Platform

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.

Also Read: M-Files 2018 Provides A Solution To Manage Information Stored in Other Systems

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.”

Recommended Read: The Importance of Marketing and Sales Alignment

Kochava Announces Engagement Push Notifications

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Kochava Announces Engagement Push Notifications
Kochava Announces Engagement Push Notifications

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.

Also Read: Kochava Launches OnXCHNG Partnership Program For First Blockchain-Based Digital Advertising Platform

“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.

Also Read: Kochava’s New Release Makes Audience Targeting A Whole Lot Better

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.

Also Read: Kochava Acquires MobileRQ; To Target Users with Customized App Content

“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.”

Recommended Read: Why Will RCS Messaging Be More Effective Than Apps

Hootsuite is the Adobe Exchange Partner for 2017

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Hootsuite is the Adobe Exchange Partner for 2017
Hootsuite is the Adobe Exchange Partner for 2017

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 at 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

hootsuite-_-adobe (2)

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!

Digital Marketing Spend Is $10,000 or Less for Nearly Half of Small Businesses

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Clutch

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.

Also Read: Talk to People, Not Numbers: How Email Personalization Can Turn a Cold Lead Warm

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.

Content Marketing Lags, Despite Cost-Effective Results

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.

Also Read: 5 Mistakes That Can Be Disastrous to Your B2B Sales and Leads

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.

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

Sharpen Those Pencils and Take Down These Notes from SharpCloud

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Sharpen Those Pencils and Take Down These Notes from SharpCloud
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.

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

Todd Nacapuy

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.

Also Read: All-Star Speakers for Emma’s Fourth Annual Marketing United Conference

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

Also Read: MarTech Conference 2018 Comes to the West Coast This April

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

Also Read: Here’s What Was on Everyone’s Take-Away List at Revenue Summit 2018

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

Recommended Read: How to Beat Procrastination with a GDPR Marketing Compliance Plan?

Cognizant Named a World Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM and Customer Experience Implementation Services

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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.”

Also Read: Salesforce to Host Second-Annual Salesforce Equality Awards in San Francisco

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 Dvarkahalli Cognizant
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.

Also Read: Introducing Salesforce Lightning Flow: The Power of CRM Process Automation for Every CX

“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.

Recommended Read: How to Pick the Right CRM: 3 Key Ingredients

comScore Receives Renewed Certifications from TAG for Its Efforts to Eliminate Piracy and Fraud

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comscore

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.

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

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
  • Preventing fraudulent practices
  • Eliminating payments to those site owners

Also Read: DelPlaya Media Obtains ‘TAG Registered’ Status From the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)

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.

Recommended Read: comScore Launches New Audience Segments to Maximize OTT Reach

Social E-commerce Powered by Balluun Now Even More Powerful

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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.

Also Read: Shareablee Unveils U.S. Media 100 Index to Shed Light on Battle for Consumer Attention and Loyalty

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 Balluun
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.

Also Read: Peepla Launches Content-Oriented Live Streaming Service

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
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.

Recommended Read: Amazon Prime Air: A New Era of Drone Dominance in Online Retail Distribution

How AI is Driving a New Era of TV Advertising

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Varun-Batra-AI

dstilleryIn 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.

Read Also: AI, Big Data And Digital Transformation – And The Potential ‘Buzzword Backlash’

AI Delivers Insights into Viewing Behaviors

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.

Read Also: How AI Will Make Marketing More Personalized In 2018

AI’s Growing Impact on Connected TV Advertising

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.

Read More: The Most Effective Way to Sell, Backed by Science

Machine Learning Will Predict Customers

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.

Read MoreHow Marketers Can Use Customer Behavior to Drive Revenue

Streamroot & castLabs Partner to Simplify Video Streaming

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Streamroot & castLabs Partner to Simplify Video Streaming While Providing Robust Delivery and a Better Viewer Experience
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.

Also Read: The Remaining Barriers to OTT Advertising’s Boom

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.

Also Read: Endeavor to Acquire NeuLion Inc in $250 Million All-Cash Deal

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.

Recommended Read: OTT Explosion Provides Safe Platform For Marketers

Akamai Survey Shows Increase in Confidence in Live OTT Streaming for Quality Online Video Delivery

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New Akamai Survey Shows Increase in Prominence and Provider Confidence in Live Linear OTT Streaming Services for Quality Online Video Delivery
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.

Also Read: Addressability in OTT Is More Than Just Checking The Box

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.

Also Read: Akamai to Use Eurofins Digital Testing to Test and Measure Video QoE for Its Worldwide Customers

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.

Recommended Read: The Remaining Barriers to OTT Advertising’s Boom