Intelligent Automation & Cognitive Systems: A Match Made in Heaven for 2018

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March 16, 2018

Inc. Magazine Unveils Ranking of Europe's Fastest-growing Private Companies

ADYOULIKE Ranks No. 1308 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 Europe with Three-Year Sales Growth of 544%

Inc. magazine ranked ADYOULIKE. NO 1308 on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in Europe. The Inc. 5000 Europe represents the only comprehensive look at what may be the most dynamic segment of the world’s economy: fast-growing private companies.

Julien Verdier, CEO, ADYOULIKE, added, “We are delighted to be listed in the Inc. 5000 list for 2018. Our business has grown at a phenomenal rate over the last three years – double the average median growth of Inc. 5000 companies – as more and more advertisers come to recognize the benefits of native advertising and our innovative technology. The Inc. 5000 list has a long history of identifying ‘the ones to watch’ so I am delighted to have been ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of Europe’s fastest growing companies alongside dynamic brands such as Brewdog, Grosvenor Estates, Pure Gym and Secret Escapes.”

Also Read: ADYOULIKE and Tabmo Join Forces in Native Programmatic Advertising Partnership

The 2018 Inc. 5000 Europe list, unveiled this week on Inc.com, serves as a unique report card on the European economy. Within an uncertain economic climate, latest aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased by €101.8 billion, nearly doubling aggregate revenue from 2013. The list features an amazing group of thriving businesses growing at breakneck speed over the past three years:

On average, Inc. 5000 Europe companies grew +473% over the past three years, creating over 380,000 jobs in the process.
To make the top 500, a company had to have achieved a remarkable three-year growth of 1 013%.
Of the 42 countries included in this pan-European list, the Russian Federation, Italy and Spain fielded the most companies.

Also Read: ADYOULIKE Expands US Leadership Team with Two Key Additions

ADYOULIKE is a global leading in-feed native ad platform with main offices in London, New York, and Paris. Launched in 2011, it is recognized as a pioneer in native technology and creating advertising experiences for users that mirror the websites they are visiting. Using its own native supply-side platform (SSP) and native technology platform, the company enables brands to scale native advertising campaigns across premium and niche publishers, while publishers benefit from access to ADYOULIKE’s marketplace.

“Innovation and entrepreneurship are alive and well throughout Europe. From cybersecurity to renewable energy, the continent’s creativity and deep knowledge are showing the world how to grow and profit in the 21st century-and the Inc. 5000 Europe list spotlights those that do it best,” said James Ledbetter, Inc. & Inc.com Editor.

DataWeave Unveils Advanced SaaS-Based Competitive Intelligence Product Suite

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March 16, 2018

DataWeave Unveils Advanced SaaS-Based Competitive Intelligence Product Suite

DataWeave’s AI-Powered Data Aggregation and Analysis Platform Harnesses Billions of Data Points from Diverse Web Sources

DataWeave, a provider of Competitive Intelligence as a Service, announced the launch of a powerful new version of its SaaS-based competitive intelligence product suite that helps retailers and consumer brands leverage public data on the Web to make smarter decisions and compete profitably.

“Since our inception, we have led the large-scale transformation of how enterprises consume and derive benefits from rich sources of data publicly available on the Web. With the launch of our new, state-of-the-art product suite, we bring more power to our customers’ fingertips through unmatched access to key and relevant competitive insights that drive strategic decision-making,” said Karthik Bettadapura, Co-founder, CEO, DataWeave.

Also Read: Nathaniel Fry Joins DataWeave’s Advisory Board as Strategic Advisor

DataWeave’s AI-powered data aggregation and analysis platform harness billions of data points from diverse Web sources to provide retailers with unified price, promotion and markdown optimization, and product assortment insights, and consumer brands with brand governance, share of voice (SOV) analyses, and shelf space optimization in e-commerce. These insights are typically accessed through a SaaS-based web portal or directly consumed via APIs to augment the customer’s internal analytics systems.

Also Read: InsideSales.com Announces Next-Gen AI Technology for Sales

With DataWeave’s advanced SaaS-based products, retailers and brands can:

View near-real-time insights and historical trends at greater granularity, enabling them to effect faster and more precise actions on pricing, promotions, merchandising, and other areas of revenue optimization
Customize their experience based on functions relevant to their profile and act on personalized recommendations
Integrate seamlessly with internal data systems and models to generate predictive insights and measure ROI

“While conventional competitive intelligence systems are still mostly limited to providing descriptive insights, our new product suite, with deeper data integration capabilities, lets us deliver prescriptive insights to our customers, so they can instantly solve clearly defined and actionable business problems at scale. As we explore further innovations, we will progress from providing recommendations to enabling actions directly through our products,” added Karthik.

Clarivate Analytics Appoints Caroline Birkle As General Manager of Converis

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March 16, 2018

Clarivate Analytics Appoints Caroline Birkle As General Manager of Converis

Caroline Brikle Brings More Than 15 Years of Experience in the STM Industry and Will Lead Converis During Its next Phase of Expansion

Clarivate Analytics has announced the appointment of Caroline Birkle as the General Manager of their leading research information management system, Converis. Converis supports universities, research institutions, and funding agencies in collecting and managing data across the research life cycle. Birkle will join Converis on April 16th, 2018, based in Karlsruhe, Germany and will manage an international team across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia.

Converis is part of Clarivate Analytics, the global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics to accelerate the pace of innovation and is part of the Scientific and Academic Research Group alongside industry leaders like Web of Science. Built with the research community in mind, Converis is used by faculty, librarians and research managers globally to showcase the outputs and impact of research. Converis offers seamless integration with data, platform, and products from Clarivate Analytics, such as Web of Science, InCites and Derwent Innovation Index, as well as a number of third-party products.

Also Read: Samantha Burridge Takes Over as Director of Strategy & Transformation at Clarivate Analytics

Birkle will join Clarivate Analytics from Thieme Chemistry in Germany, where she is Managing Director and has overall P&L responsibility for global electronic publications, leading an international team including editorial, production and software development. Previously, Birkle held publishing positions with the Royal Society of Chemistry and Thomson Reuters before moving to Holtzbrinck Publishers, where, as Vice President, she led Business Intelligence for STM (including Nature and Macmillan Science & Education) and coordinated the integration of Macmillan and Springer Nature, pre- and post-merger.

“The research landscape is changing at an unprecedented rate, with technological opportunities creating a pace within the research life cycle that is exhilarating and challenging. The opportunity to join Converis and work together with research offices globally, creating meaningful solutions that address industry needs, is one I am really looking forward to. I am proud to be joining this highly skilled and entrepreneurial team working within one of the industry’s most exciting and dynamic business groups,” said Birkle.

Also Read: Identifying extreme impact in research, Clarivate Analytics uses citations to forecast Nobel Prize winners

Annette Thomas Clarivate Analytics — Annette Thomas

“I am delighted to welcome Caroline to our growing team; with her deep understanding of the research market, commercial and strategic acumen, as well operational and transformational experience, she is ideally suited to lead Converis during its next phase of growth and expansion. Converis currently supports a wide variety of customers in more than 20 countries and it’s our intention to significantly evolve and strengthen its position in the market by integrating more data and by providing a more streamlined product offering. Caroline’s experience will benefit us tremendously as we expand, and accelerate innovation and growth,” said Annette Thomas, CEO Scientific & Academic Research Group, Clarivate Analytics.

How Chatbots Are Changing the Way Research Is Done

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March 16, 2018

How Chatbots Are Changing the Way Research Is Done

Chatbots Can Share a Multitude of Information and Messages with the Survey Respondents

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Chatbot technologies are changing the way work gets done with many industries across geographies adopting these technologies into their everyday work to improve productivity.

Where Does This Leave the Research Industry?

Surveys moved from offline to online with the introduction of web surveys. Although innovative at the time, this methodology has not really changed in the last two decades. This gives us a pretty good understanding of why survey response rates have also remained at 5-10% mark.

Research companies across the globe are starting to look at new and innovative ways to keep their respondents engaged in their surveys and chatbots are looking to bridge this gap by changing the way surveys are taken by introducing a conversational approach to surveys.

Also Read: Progress Launches AI-Driven Native Chatbot

More than a back and forth of questions, these chatbots can share a multitude of information and messages with the survey respondents, giving research firms the ability to build a contextual conversation with every survey.

Existing players in the survey tool space such as SurveyMonkey have started offering chatbots as a solution to deliver their surveys, albeit in a very simple format. Other chatbot companies such as surveybot.io, claim to have 800+ customers who are leveraging their online conversational solution. Built for research surveying needs, AceBot.ai lists some of the larger Research firms as its customers having handled over a million conversations through their Chatbot-led survey tool.

Also Read: ScaleX.Ai Announces Personalization at Scale, Powered by Artificial Intelligence

“Our customers are seeing a huge jump in survey response rates of up to 85%, this has helped them in attaining their previously difficult sample goals faster than their older methodologies,” says Ralph Vaz, Co-Founder, AceBot.ai.

There is a definite change that has begun in the research industry and chatbots are here to completely change the way surveys are taken.

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

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March 16, 2018

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

10 Best SEO Has Announced Its Selection of Top SEO Companies

After the greater part of a decade and thousands of pages of content, the online industry magazine 10 Best SEO has again begun adding to its portfolio of content. Well-known for its SEO tips, daily blog, and ever-expanding directory, this website has catered to users both within and interested to learn about the SEO and online marketing sectors. For over six years, 10 Best SEO has been providing varied media, news and updates for the marketing sector via its online industry magazine, and earlier this month, staff compiled their selections of top SEO companies.

Also Read: NETGEAR Joins Swrve Series D Funding Round After Successful Deployment of Swrve’s Customer Interaction Platform

Straight North, an online marketing agency based in Chicago, has worked with clients around the world. Their attention to detail on projects ranging from branding & design to search engine optimization & pay-per-click advertising has allowed them to stand apart from the competition. Straight North has made its way to the pinnacle of this Best SEO Agencies list.

Also Read: Evergage Named a Top Rated A/B Testing and Personalization Tool on TrustRadius for Second Year in a Row

Hailing from San Diego, CA, Ignite Visibility appeared second on this list. This company has become one of the most well-known companies internationally when it comes to SEO. They currently serve more than 100 companies of varying sizes, and they approach each client in a customized and individualized fashion. This bespoke strategy has garnered a great deal of success and makes Straight North deserving of this recognition.

Beyond this new list, 10 Best SEO has a continued commitment to providing its users with a wealth of new information and data about its sector. For many around the web, 10 Best SEO has become known as the best SEO blog online, due to its unique and growing content.

Interview with Joe Camacho, CMO, SABIO Mobile

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March 16, 2018

Interview with Joe Camacho, CMO - SABIO Mobile

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/sabiomobile” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-camacho-6100b415/”]

[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Strict privacy and brand safety standards have a tremendously positive impact on mobile marketing campaigns.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be a part of a mobile marketing company?

As a Co-Founder and CMO, my role is constantly changing. Initially, I was wearing many different hats but am now able to focus on the company’s marketing mix, specifically product development and promotion. The journey to get here began after film school while working in television production at the NBC O&O in San Diego where I continued to work full time while finishing my MBA and transitioned from TV news production into Sales & Marketing at the station. The relationships I made and the Media Sales experience I gained ultimately led to the evolution from broadcast television to the fast-paced mobile industry.

With ad-viewability metrics catching up, how does SABIO satisfy the customers in delivering ROI?

The importance of viewability led our product innovation and strategy teams to develop Validated Publishers™, an additional publisher vetting process that requires a high viewability threshold. The high viewability standard we’ve set for ourselves has improved the delivery of increased ROI for our customers.

How do mobile marketers decide on their optimization and personalization standards for mobile marketing?

It’s all KPI driven. Depending on the campaign’s KPI goals, personalization should be embedded into everything you do from both a creative perspective and also the targeting and delivery of the ad, given mobile’s unique personalization capabilities. For example, if the campaign is a brand awareness campaign with a click-through rate as the KPI, personalizing the creative to dynamically change with a variety of elements such as local weather, time, or the consumer’s location personalizes the message and improves the CTR.

How do data privacy regulations and brand safety standards impact mobile marketing campaigns?

Strict privacy and brand safety standards have a tremendously positive impact on mobile marketing campaigns both individually and at a macro level as well. These standards, such as the TAG certification, help weed out the bad players in our industry and help companies who are proactively developing brand safety and ad fraud protections such as our Validated Publishers™ to differentiate themselves, deliver better performance, and help restore a level of trust necessary for marketers and martech companies to form lasting partnerships and change.

How do you see mobile marketing landscape evolving with the maturity of behavioral targeting and location data platforms?

With the unprecedented and tremendous data processing capabilities that AI is providing, we are able to combine enormous amounts of data, including but not limited to behavioral and location data to improve the targeting and delivery of mobile marketing campaigns. As these capabilities continue to evolve and the data sets available continue to be added, such as voice and facial recognition, driverless networks and their media, along with the growing number of ubiquitous connected devices, I foresee them all working together seamlessly through the app ecosystem on our mobile devices so that our need and want sets are satisfied nearly automatically and without us having to ask. Companies that identify these opportunities now and in the future will be able to use mobile marketing data to not only deliver targeted messages but also the actual delivery of goods and services more efficiently.

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

I don’t want to mention any specifically for various reasons but generally, companies that are focusing on voice recognition data.

What tools does your marketing and advertising stack consist of in 2018?

While we use SEO/SEM and a few other tools including content marketing, we also use our own technology to reach our customers with our own ads. With the use of our own Predictive AI platform that combines app profile segments with locations of our targeted customers, we’re able to deliver our own ads at a reduced cost and higher ROI.

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

We ran an amazing campaign in partnership with Digitas and The Trade Desk for Lyft’s Round Up & Donate Campaign which allows Lyft’s customers to round up their fare to the nearest dollar and donate that amount to a charity the customer preselects. This was an exceptional campaign, not only because of the professionals we have the privilege of working with at DigitasLBi and The Trade Desk, but most importantly, it highlighted the great work Lyft is doing to raise millions of dollars for great causes such as Habitat for Humanity, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. We used our App Science® technology to identify Lyft’s customers and their competitors by targeting people who have rideshare apps such as Lyft and also charity apps like Share The Meal and Snap Donate. The video campaign performed well above industry Video Completion Rate benchmarks but the reason it stands out here at SABIO Mobile is that it allowed us to use our technology and hard work to help the client do more than simply sell more widgets. It’s a brand awareness/cause marketing campaign I’m really proud of.

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

We’ve prepared for the future by building our own AI platform and placing it at the center of everything we do. We call it App Science® and we believe that “You are what you App.” App usage data, including the apps a person has on their mobile device combined with the locations they’ve recently visited, tells us a lot about that person’s lifestyle, media preferences, demographics and cultural identity. It allows our clients to know their customers in a better and more granular way. With over 250MM mobile devices’ app usage data in our platform, we’re able to identify correlations between certain audience segments that help find not only a client’s current customers but also the most likely future customers as well.

How do you bring people and technology together at one place?

Our company continues to expand and in fact, we recently opened our App Science® Lab in Hyderabad, India. Communicating across the country and with our team in Hyderabad requires scheduling meetings with multiple time zones via video conferencing and services such as Slack and cloud computing to share files, ideas, and work literally around the clock.

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

I live in LA and I don’t leave home or go anywhere without using the Waze app. It recognizes my schedule, recommends I stick to my favorite route or has me take one of the canyon roads when PCH is all backed up.

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

I wouldn’t say it’s the smartest, but it’s definitely a habit that I find useful. I text myself action items that I need to put at the top of the list. This reminder is with me everywhere I go, staring me in the face until it gets completed, deleted, and repeated.

What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)

I’m constantly reading articles and updates from the network of influencers, colleagues, and contributors I’m connected to. However, I’m currently reading a book about the life of Ronald Reagan. When Character Was King by Peggy Noonan was a gift that reminded me of the earlier times of my life when I was in the United States Marine Corps and my Commander In Chief was a man of great character and integrity.

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

The best advice I’ve ever received came from my pastor when I was a teenager. He quoted a scripture that said, “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he will strengthen your heart.” It reminds me to be patient and continue having courage even through difficult times. Things usually work out in the long run but during those tough periods, it takes great courage to keep your chin up, smile in the face of adversity and persevere through life’s valleys; believing the sun will shine again.

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

Jeff Bezos

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

Also Read: Interview with Aziz Rahim, CEO, SABIO Mobile

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Joe” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46621e-81d5″]

Joe Camacho is Sabio Mobile’s CMO. His responsibilities include the company’s marketing efforts that include the continued expansion into new markets and verticals. He has previously served as CMO of the Latin American Multimedia Corp, where he was responsible for the marketing and distribution of the company’s Spanish language television properties. Joe has also served in the Marine Corp.

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SABIO mobile

Sabio is smarter mobile advertising. We offer brands and agencies cutting-edge technology, killer customer service, a full creative suite, and an agile approach to mobile ads. Sabio’s App Science™ capability infuses deep learnings from a consumer’s app-ecosystem and their geo-behaviors to help brands reach and understand their target consumers more efficiently on mobile.

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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.

NinthDecimal’s Omnichannel Marketing Platform Breaches 100 Percent Annual Revenue Growth

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March 15, 2018

NinthDecimal’s Omnichannel Marketing Platform Breaches 100 Percent Annual Revenue Growth

NinthDecimal Crossed the 100% Annual Growth for the Third Consecutive Year

NinthDecimal, a leading omnichannel marketing platform powering real-world conversions for brands, has announced more than 100 percent annual revenue growth across its marketing platform in 2017. A record number of agencies, brands, and publishers partnered with NinthDecimal last year as the industry increased its focus on bridging the online and offline behaviors of consumers.

Currently, NinthDecimal is an omnichannel marketing platform powering real-world conversions for Fortune 500 brands. Using location intelligence, the company identifies a brand’s best customers and new prospects; activates marketing strategies to drive store visits and sales; and quantifies the impact of advertising across all media.

At the time of this announcement, Michael Fordyce, CEO of NinthDecimal, said, “2017 was a pivotal year of growth for NinthDecimal as many of the largest brands in the country made our data and measurement products a central part of their marketing strategy, which was capped off by our third consecutive year of triple-digit growth.”

Michael added, “As more and more brands use our marketing platform to make multi-million dollar marketing decisions, we are in a strong position to accelerate our growth through 2018 and beyond.”

Quantifying the Impact of Marketing and Advertising

NinthDecimal measured more than $500 million in media spend during 2017 across TV, out-of-home, mobile, and other media formats as demand for offline attribution of all media increased. This includes measuring one of the largest U.S. consumer electronics launches of the year focused on driving visits to 9K locations. Other 2017 measurement highlights include —

– Omni-channel measurement and attribution. NinthDecimal nearly tripled year-over-year measurement revenues and doubled the number of TV campaigns measured for the second consecutive year.

– Connecting digital assets to offline sales. NinthDecimal launched Website LCI® in 2017, the industry’s first website-to-store attribution offering giving marketers the intelligence to quantify store visits generated from their website and website traffic strategies such as search.

– Expanding ecosystem of partners. The number of media companies, TV networks, and premium publishers integrated with NinthDecimal’s measurement platform grew to more than 250 in 2017.

The Largest Real-Time Engine of Consumer Behavior

Over 900 brands relied on NinthDecimal audiences and its activation network of more than 200 partners, including leading DSPs, DMPs, social platforms, and TV buying platforms, to build marketing success in 2017. This customer growth contributed to several key business milestones during the year —

– Audience data. Revenue from NinthDecimal’s mobile-derived audiences grew more than 100 percent for the third straight year.

– Investing in high-quality and propriety data. The company launched its software development kit (SDK) fueled by the acquisition of moLOGIQ in the fourth quarter of 2017. The NinthDecimal SDK, a unique source of data representing billions of data points, has been deployed across more than 50 million Android and iOS mobile devices.

– Marketing platform growth. NinthDecimal scaled its platform to more than 190 million monthly active users seen in nearly 10 billion locations per day.

– Self-service platform launch. NinthDecimal’s new audience creation tools released in the fourth quarter of 2017 allow brands to combine their first-party CRM data with NinthDecimal’s proprietary audience intelligence, unlocking the power of the two most important sources of customer data.

NinthDecimal’s continued innovation was recognized via a newly awarded patent for household-to-device mapping capabilities. This adds to NinthDecimal’s patent portfolio that already includes methods for location data precision, measurement for digital media, and measurement for TV. Together, these patents form the foundation for the company’s Omnichannel Marketing solutions.

Read More: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

Last year also marked the expansion of NinthDecimal’s board of directors with the addition of Manish Bhatia, the CEO of Kantar Media North America and former chief product officer of comScore. Bhatia brings one of the most successful industry track records of identifying, building, and managing successful digital data businesses globally.

NinthDecimal was recognized on the Inc. 5000 for the third consecutive year, making it one the fastest-growing private companies in the country. According to Inc. Magazine, of the tens of thousands of companies that have applied for the award over the years, only 20 percent have made the list three times.

NinthDecimal has the largest real-time engine of consumer behavior based on where you live, work, shop, and play. Its platform is powered by nearly 200M U.S. consumers seen in almost 10 billion locations per day, unlocking AI-driven consumer intelligence not visible through traditional search or social platforms.

MobFox Partners with Moat to Enhance Viewability for Advertisers

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MTS Staff Writer

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March 15, 2018

The Mobfox Moat Partnership Will Enable Advertisers Access To Verified Inventory

This new partnership enables Mobfox to offer advertisers Moat’s viewability metrics for improved transparency, better ad measurement and optimization for in-app ads. These tools would be available for all inventory that comes from Mobfox SDK publishers. Partnering with Moat, we are able to provide advertisers and publishers a solution that ensures verified, high-quality inventory, and a greater means to track the effectivity of our advertisers’ ads.

Also Read: Mobfox First to Offer Factual and Adsquare Data Directly from Its SSP

“By pulling back the curtain on viewability metrics, we’re able to provide our customers with a clearer picture of their ads’ reception, giving them the tools they need to optimize the way they serve ads. We are proud to provide additional indicators at ad placement level for our partners to successfully run their campaigns, as we continue to enhance and expand our mobile and programmatic advertising capabilities,” said Kumaran Sambandam, SVP Global Demand, Mobfox.

Matomy Media Group acquires Mobfox: In 2014, Matomy Media Group, a global advertising performance company, acquired Mobfox. It added Mobfox’s ad technology into its own suite of advanced programmatic solutions.

Also Read: Alexa.com Unveils New Branding Gap Analysis to Boost SEO And SEM Efforts

Oracle acquires Moat in 2017: Oracle has scored a major martech moment just days before its marquee annual event, The Modern Marketing Experience 2017. The world’s leading cloud platform announced that it had signed a decisive agreement to acquire MOAT, a digital measurement company. Moat will join Oracle Data Cloud to enable marketers and publishers gain insightful results from their media campaigns.

As part of Oracle, Moat will connect data to consumer attention for better media experiences and business outcomes. With Moat’s acquisition, Oracle Data Cloud will now offer brands and publishers a full suite of targeting and measurement solutions to improve the outcome of virtually every type of digital advertising campaign.

Recommended Read: TechBytes with Gil Klein, Managing Director, Mobfox

Scrapping Email: How Millennials are Changing Workforce Communication

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Stephen Wakeling

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March 15, 2018

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The workplace is evolving, especially as millennials become the vast majority of the workforce. This demographic is growing – representing 38 percent in 2017 from just under 25 percent in 2011 according to Paychex, and is influencing how we conduct business, manage people, and communicate.

Until now, email has been the pervasive medium for organizations to communicate, however, new messaging platforms are challenging the status quo to serve the needs of millennials. Whether working at a desk or in the field, email is not keeping today’s workforce connected to the organization. In fact, a Workfront survey of over 2,000 employees shows that on average, a total of 199 emails are sitting in their inbox unopened. This further validates the ineffectiveness of email, and the lost opportunity for organizations deliver timely, business-critical information to the changing workplace and workforce.

Today’s workers are demanding real-time communication – expecting to live, work, and communicate at the moment. Based on their needs, next-generation communications platforms that mimic an organization’s structure can present leaders with the capability to deliver the right information, to the right employees, at the right time. These solutions not only provide instant access to the front-lines but also give the front-lines access to their peers.

More than point-to-point message delivery, next-generation platforms can be connected to disparate systems like intranets and other scheduling, CRM, and HR applications – creating robust knowledge bases that drive operational efficiencies, scalability, and growth. These knowledge bases can be further automated through artificial intelligence (AI), enabling users to quickly get answers to questions in milliseconds.

AI technology provides new ways to engage employees and customers. According to Gartner, 30 percent of our interactions with technology will be through conversations via smart machines and software-based robots.So, what are the key drivers impacting these transformational changes in technology and the workplace?

Top-Down Messaging

While organizations are geographically-dispersed and employ a mix of full- and part-time personnel, they still need to deliver timely messages to the right person (or group) at the right time. Delivering messages to an app is more responsive than traditional email. In fact, our clients on average realize a 200% increase in messaging received-rates compared to email. This significantly improves employee engagement and performance.

Workforces can receive and acknowledge timely sales promotions, urgent corporate announcements, details on new product launches, and more, directly to their smartphones. Additionally, time-sensitive information can be separated from the everyday workplace chatter so that it does not get lost or forgotten.

Also Read: Why You Should Be Paying More Attention to Your Holiday Email Marketing

Peer to Peer (and Group) Communications

Horizontal communication can yield a higher quality of information exchange since it transpires directly between team members working in similar environments. Threaded conversations contained in an app, enable peer and group communications, giving team members the capability to work together, collaborate, and exchange information in real-time as necessary.

Engagement and Accountability

In our experience working with large retailers and enterprises, individual, group, and organizational performance can be correlated to those who receive key messages, versus those that did not open them. To boost employee engagement, with real-time reporting in place, management has the ability to monitor what messages were opened and by whom. Knowing open rates can be monitored, employees are more attentive, diligent and engaged. Additionally, insight via analytics provides the capability to view the health of your organization and holds teams more accountable.

Also Read: Have Your Best Email Marketing Year Ever by Focusing on Engagement

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

According to a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities through bots shift the burden away from workers struggling to manually filter the influx of content, communications, and notifications.

Instead, chatbots can be integrated with an array of systems and applications to fetch all types of information. They are always on and ready to serve employees (and customers) in real-time.

Using conversational language, employees can ask questions pertaining to personal schedules, policies, promotions, and more. As questions are answered, machine learning enables chatbots to grow and expand their knowledge parameters.

Making the Shift with Millenials

It is clear that mobile devices, apps, and chatbots integrated with next-generation communications platforms are enabling organizations to empower their people in the workplace with tools to collaborate more effectively. As a result, workforces, especially millennials, will be better informed, engaged, and connected. Thus, they will be in the best situation to make decisions, be more productive, and deliver impactful customer experiences.

Also Read: Reaching the Millennial Travelers: The Marketing Channel That’s Making a Surprising Impact

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

By

Shalaka Nalawade

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March 15, 2018

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Here's What Was on Everyone's Take-Away List at Revenue Summit 2018

The One-Day Event Talked About the Most Innovative and Actionable Best Practices to Scale Revenue While Being a Phenomenal Destination for C-Level Enterprise Leaders, Junior Sales, Sales Management, and Demand Generation Marketers

Missed one of the most amazing sales and marketing conference of this year? Don’t worry; we bring you a gist of what took place in San Francisco, California at Revenue Summit 2018.

Hosted by Sales Hacker, the leading resource for sales innovation, acceleration, and the future of sales, The Revenue Summit is known for empowering B2B leaders to accelerate growth across the entire funnel, by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success through the lens of technology.

The top five key takeaways from the conference include:

Not all analytics are created equal
During their talk about the future of sales leaders, Jacco vanderKooij, Founder, Winning By Design, and Rob Jeppsen, CEO Xvoyant spoke at large about how most sales teams are looking at the wrong metrics. They went on to explain how instead of volume metrics, companies should focus on conversion metrics and productivity metrics for better sales.
Change Your Daily Rep Goals
Olivia Nottebohm, Senior Director, SMB Sales and GTM Operations, Google Cloud, and Sean Kester, VP of Product Marketing, SalesLoft, spoke about the significant improvements that were made ever since their sales teams switched daily rep goals from being volume-driven to focusing on 3-5 positive conversations per day.
Sales Enablement Will Take You to the Next Level
With sales teams placing a higher emphasis on sales efficiency, there has been an increased focus on using the right sales tools to spur growth. Jacco and Rob also mentioned that more teams are likely to spend four days per week selling and dedicate 1 day per week on sales training.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. You must speak with reps or managers directly to understand where they feel strong and where their gaps lie,” said Amanda Chang, Senior Sales Enablement Manager, Zoom Video Communications.
Selling is a Team Effort
In his session, Amit Bendov, CEO, Gong.io informed that HE has found calls that involve multiple sales reps are 258% more likely to close. An approach also used by Jennifer Brandenburg, VP of Inside Sales, ServiceMax, and Chris Donato, VP of Sales, DXC Technology. While Jennifer uses a small army to close deals after handoff by the sales development team at ServiceMax, Chris found that team-based quotas and bonuses helped his reps keep each other accountable.
Success depends on a structured process
John Barrows of JBarrows Sales Training, and Morgan Ingram, Director of Sales Execution, JBarrows Sales Training, recommended creating structured training and execution processes for companies that are hiring reps straight out of college, finding them to be highly effective.

This is what some of the attendees had to say about revenue Summit 2018

“Sales Hacker brings together the top practitioners in sales & marketing. The connections and the knowledge transfer that happens here is priceless,” said Steven Broudy, Director of Inside Sales, Americas.

Also Read: Are You Ready for The Revenue Summit ’18?

“Revenue Summit is the destination for learning how to accelerate sales & marketing at any B2B organization, with purely educational content that moves the needle,” said Mark Roberge, Former Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot.

Calling it an “incredible event”, Koka Sexton, Global Social Sales & Marketing at LinkedIn, said, “An incredible event full of awesome insights and actionable takeaways from passionate people; a rare occasion for sales & marketing professionals to get together and learn from each other.”

MarTech Champions Pay Tribute to Stephen Hawking

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March 15, 2018

MarTech Champions Pay Tribute to Stephen Hawking

I was six-years-old when the Comet Shoemaker-Levy broke apart and collided with Jupiter in 1994. That was my first brush with astrophysics and anything related to the Milky Way. That was the start of my curiosity about the Big Bang and space, and then I read Stephen Hawking’s Life in the Universe. When I met him in 2001, during his visit to Mumbai (India), I realized what human brain is capable of thinking, and achieving for the entire mankind.

As Katie Martell of On-Demand Marketing, put it, “Stephen was in many ways a practical dreamer. That’s the right mix for any of us with a career in marketing.”

“Be curious.”

In this tribute to the man who prophesized the rise of ‘superintelligent artificial intelligence’ as a steering wheel of the mankind’s fate, Stephen Hawking left many in the Martech world awed with his inspiring tales and feats.

Dr. Marcell Vollmer, Chief Digital Officer, SAP Ariba

In his LinkedIn bio, Dr. Marcell Volmer quotes that “I’m sensitive to the complexities surrounding the intersection of technology, compliance, and supplier networks that today’s procurement leaders face.”

Remembering the “man who walked the cosmos in his brain”, Dr. Marcell said, “Stephen Hawking inspired me by two quotes I couldn’t describe it any better: – “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

And, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

Yaagneshwaran Ganesh, Director of Marketing, Fiind Inc

A Top 100 Martech Influencer, and a Guest Author at MarTech Series, “Yaags” found his inspiration drawing knowledge from Professor S.W. Hawking. He said, “For me, Stephen Hawking was a man who inspired the universe from his wheelchair, and is one of the greatest contributors to cosmology and physics. But for me as marketer and martech enthusiast, he inspired me to believe in AI more than I always did. He always said he was an optimist and believed that AI can be for the good of the world, and we only need to be aware of the dangers, and identify them.”

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”

Connecting science with the cosmic relevance that is central to mankind’s existence today, Yaags added, “In fact, it (AI for good) inspired me and Krishna, a renowned mindfulness coach to build a framework to engineer customer experiences using AI, neuromarketing, mindfulness and data science.”

Scott Swanson, CEO, Aki Technologies

The CEO of Moment Marketing Science company, Aki Technologies, had drawn great inspiration from Dr Hawking’s perspective that science unlocks knowledge when he said, ‘Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.’

Jen Spencer, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, SmartBug Media

The Marketing Chair of “Girls in Tech Phoenix” shared her personal experience from the moment news of Hawking’s demise broke on Tuesday. Jen said, “Late last night, my 14-year-old son gasped and said, ‘Oh no, Stephen Hawking died.’ While this news was absolutely tragic, as a mom I was proud that my sports-obsessed teenager knew who he was and that this was a significant loss. I’m grateful for the scientific contributions of Dr. Hawking, for his tenacity, his wit, and the inspiration he has been and will continue to be to all of us.”

“The universe doesn’t allow perfection.”

Ilan Kasan, CEO & Co-Founder, Exceed.ai

The pioneering technocrat in Conversation Automation technology shared how he turned to Stephen Hawking’s quotes everytime he thought of servicing his customers. Ilan said, “Hawking once said, ‘People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.’ This applies to companies as well. Companies should not boast about how good they are, they should talk about how they can add value. And then it is up to the customers to determine how good the company is.”

Krishna S, Founder of AskKrishna Centre for Mindfulness

Krishna, who is a life-transformer, found a deep connection with Stephen Hawking to share with us. He said, “Beginning my academic career as a student of Physics, have been introduced to Steven Hawking’s insights very early on in life. It had its own impact on my growing years and his deep insights into cosmology, an area that got me going as a Mythologist made me more attracted towards his research! In due course, all these facilitated my journey as a Mindfulness Coach, opening new vistas into human mind and behavior. This culminated and manifested into “Customer Engineering”, where I’d an opportunity to collaborate with Yaags, strangely who is also inspired by Prof. Hawking!”

Hawking: Master of the Universe

As we explore Dark Data, Cryptocurrency and the impact of fraud metrics on marketing and advertising campaigns, there are so many lessons from Professor Hawking that we could fall back on.

What better way to conclude this tribute than using his quote —

“Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.” – A Brief History of Time

Movable Ink Introduces Automated Content Sourcing

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prweb

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March 15, 2018

Movable Ink Introduces Automated Content Sourcing

Movable Ink’s Automated Content Sourcing: No Coding Required to Pull and Repurpose Creative Content from Web sites, APIs and Social Channels

Movable Ink, the provider of leading intelligent content platform, introduced Automated Content Sourcing, which allows marketers to easily access and integrate widely scattered content into their email campaigns. Previously, designing and formatting content pulled into email required developer resources. Now with Automated Content Sourcing, any marketer can easily do this using Studio, Movable Ink’s drag-and-drop graphics editor without any coding or development – saving more time for already tight production schedules. Marketers can also preview and approve personalized content using Contextual Preview, and verify it will render correctly in any inbox with an optional Litmus account.

Also Read: Movable Ink and Persado Partner to Build AI-Powered Personalized Content Engagements

Brands have massive amounts of content, however, it’s scattered across countless channels and not readily accessible by everyone. Despite all of the available content, email marketers often face bottlenecks because they need to repurpose and reformat it so that it will render properly in an email.

Movable Ink’s Automated Content Sourcing enables email marketers to easily source, integrate, personalize, and reformat content for email using a variety of flexible capabilities including:

Import individual images, product info, prices, inventory, levels, or entire content blocks from websites
Pull images, content, and data from internal and external sources including partner websites, using CSV files or APIs
Integrate offers and data from offer management tools, like IBM Interact or Pega for Marketing
Combine promotions with user-generated content (UGC) and social posts from fans using social curation tools that can be remixed and layered on top of other images.

Also Read: Movable Ink Hires Former Hootsuite Executive to Accelerate Global Growth

“From a consumer’s perspective, the content is the most important part the emails they receive from brands. However, most email marketing tools were built to focus only on optimizing email delivery, not content. Movable Ink’s Automated Content Sourcing makes it easy for any marketer to grab and reformat content from countless brands, product, social and third-party sources, without any coding. This simplifies the production of innovative email campaigns and speeds time-to-market,” said Vivek Sharma, CEO, Movable Ink.

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

Beachfront and White Ops Expand Partnership To Clean Up Connected TV Advertising

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March 15, 2018

Beachfront Video Inventory for Connected TV Advertising Across Mobile, Desktop and CTVs is Backed By White Ops

Beachfront, a leading independent video supply monetization company across Connected TV (CTV), desktop and mobile devices and White Ops, the global leader in bot detection and human verification on the Internet, are expanding their partnership to place an emphasis on ensuring clean, fraud-free Connected TV (CTV) video advertising inventory.

Bill Jennings, CEO, Beachfront Media

Bill Jennings, CEO at Beachfront, said, “Cord cutting and improved content discovery on connected TVs has led to rapid growth of mid-tail and long-tail content. Especially since CTV ads are so reliable — with upwards of 97% completion rates — it’s extremely important we remain closely partnered with fraud-fighting industry leaders like White Ops as we relentlessly keep our promise ensure clean, brand-safe inventory across the CTV and digital video ecosystem.”

Read More: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

The partnership helps ensure Beachfront’s cross-platform video inventory is backed by White Ops, which will provide third-party bot detection and Human Verification to Beachfront video inventory. In particular, the partnership aims to help the burgeoning market of mid- and long-tail premium video publishers provide an environment for advertisers that is protected from fraud.

“Video is still booming and attracting high CPMs, which means it is a very attractive area for cybercriminals,” said Michael Tiffany, President and Co-founder at White Ops. “We’re dedicated to fighting fraud and ensuring these expanding premium OTT video monetization opportunities remain clean. We are excited to partner with Beachfront, a leader in cross-platform video, in this battle.”

It’s no secret that OTT video continues to grow. Users doubled in 2017, and that number is only poised to continue climbing for 2018. Additionally, CTV had nearly 169 million viewers in 2017. That rise has continued to bring better programming to the table, and as a result, money toward advertising.

“Video is very cross-screen oriented — and increasingly, we’re seeing audience-based buys across mobile, desktop and connected TVs,” added Beachfront Founder and Chief Product Officer Frank Sinton. “It’s important to provide trust and comfort to media buyers who are making bets against niche segments of people consuming content from mid-tail and long-tail publishers.”

As cord-cutting keeps growing, OTT is set to find itself at parity with traditional (cable/satellite) television in short order. With that shift comes a higher demand for video advertising quality and safety. Those are industry necessities that both Beachfront and White Ops continue to push as leaders into the future of streaming video inventory.

Currently, Beachfront provides an independent video supply monetization platform across Connected TV (CTV), desktop and mobile devices, meeting the video distribution and monetization needs of publishers and advertisers across screens. The company’s mobile-first platform enables great user experiences in today’s demanding mobile video environment.

EnterWorks Partners with Amplifi to Enable Businesses in Content for Commerce Initiatives

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prweb

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March 15, 2018

EnterWorks Partners with Amplifi to Enable Businesses in Content for Commerce Initiatives

EnterWorks Partners with Amplifi, a Leading Information Management Consultancy, to Enable Businesses in Content for Commerce Initiatives

EnterWorks, the leading provider of Master Data Management (MDM) and Product Information Management (PIM) solutions, announced a strategic partnership with Amplifi, the leading provider of MDM strategy and implementation services. The partnership brings to bear Amplifi’s diverse capabilities – expert advisory, strategy, consultancy and delivery offerings for all aspects of data improvement – in implementing the EnterWorks Enable platform for companies undertaking data and commerce transformations.

Also Read: Need for Data Orchestration for Contextualizing Customer Experience

As B2B digital initiatives approach a pace until recently only seen in B2C commerce, mastery of data and content are essential in implementing effective data management systems to support multiple domains such as product, customer, supplier, asset, and location. For both B2B and B2C companies, the increasing personalization of content demands agile data modeling and data management as found in a multi-domain MDM solution such as EnterWorks Enable. Similarly, software and services teams must have deep skills and experience to guide companies that are new to digital transformations as well as those on the leading edge.

Also Read: Serenova Launches Skylight for CRM: CCaaS Integration for Salesforce and Zendesk

“Our strategy focuses on the B2B2C Value Chain, enabling manufacturers, distributors, member groups, and retailers alike while bringing them closer together as collaborative networks. We are pleased that Amplifi not only has MDM and PIM strategy and consulting expertise but also understands the importance of B2B2C commerce from their extensive omnichannel consulting and implementations across industries. Companies compete on commerce with quality and differentiated content and need partners who can deliver on the promise of MDM and PIM as value drivers for their businesses,” said Rick Chavie, CEO, EnterWorks.

“At Amplify, we have worked with some of the top brands in B2B and B2C on transforming mission-critical enterprise initiatives through omnichannel commerce and digital projects. Successful digital initiatives start with a foundation of enterprise content that is accurate, up-to-date and accessible across commerce channels. With the Enable platform, a robust, agile data management tool that has proven itself in the market, EnterWorks and our partnership with them positions us for great mutual success in driving digital transformations,” said Corey Mellick, CEO.

Recommended Read: Adobe’s Survey Highlights the Importance of DMPs

Episerver Announces North America, APAC Partner Award Winners and Partner Innovation Spotlight at Ascend 2018

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March 15, 2018

Episerver Announces North America, APAC Partner Award Winners and Partner Innovation Spotlight at Ascend 2018

Partners Recognized for Driving Forward Episerver’s Strategic Vision at Annual Customer and Partner Conference

Episerver, the company transforming digital experiences, celebrated the innovative achievements of its partners while honoring those selected for awards during “Partner Day” at Ascend 2018.

Winners of the Partner Awards contest were chosen by a panel of Episerver judges based on their outstanding contributions to the field of digital transformation and their alignment with Episerver’s strategic vision.

Episerver presented the following awards for North American and APAC customers:

Luminos Labs (North America) and Empired (APAC) were awarded “Digital Experience Cloud Partner of the Year” for their contribution to the delivery of Episerver’s Digital Experience Cloud offering. Luminos Labs had double-digit commerce wins in 2017, and Empired generated the most revenue to Episerver APAC over the last year.

Rightpoint (North America) and Levo (APAC) were awarded “Strategic Partner of the Year” for their proven engagement with strategic customers and in complex engagements across the Episerver customer landscape. Some of Rightpoint’s customers include SurePayroll, Toppers Pizza, and Pregis Holdings. Levo works with key customers such as YHA Australia, St John Ambulance of New Zealand and Primary Health Care.

Whereoware (North America) and Fusion (APAC) were awarded “Digital Commerce Partner of the Year” for their contribution to the positioning and delivery of the Episerver platform to support digital commerce. Whereoware experienced double-digit wins, including Yamaha and Liberty Furniture. Fusion brought beautiful creative design into complex B2B organizations to create true experience-driven commerce solutions.

Also Read: Episerver Announces Intelligent Content Personalization

Thinkmax (North America) and Empired (APAC) were awarded “Dynamics Ecosystem Partner of the Year” for their delivery of Episerver solutions in conjunction with Microsoft Dynamics to solve customers’ business scenarios. In the last year alone, Thinkmax delivered Episerver Commerce for Dynamics 365 for two new customers, with several more in the pipeline. Empired delivered on full digital transformation projects for key Dynamics customers, including Les Mills.

Hero Digital (North America) and Get Started (APAC) were awarded Ascender Partner of the Year for their impact as new Episerver partners. Hero Digital acquired two other agencies, giving it a national presence, and brought on new customers like Numerica Credit Union. In APAC, Get Started participated in more concurrent opportunities than any other partner in the region in 2017.

Brightfind (North America) was awarded Industry Go-to-Market Partner of the Year for its strategic contribution to serving customers in an industry vertical; in this case, associations and non-profits. Brightfind leveraged its deep knowledge of the business challenges of this vertical, along with the capabilities of the Episerver platform, to create a strong value proposition for its customers, including ASIS International, Institute for Supply Management and Federation of State Medical Boards.

Also Read: Digital Marketing Tips To Nurture Revenue for B2B Startups

“Our partners truly represent the best and brightest in the field of digital content, commerce, and marketing. The digital agencies and systems integrators we have recognized with Partner Awards have succeeded in the spirit of creativity and innovation that drives forward Episerver’s vision and promise to its customer base. We can’t wait to see what 2018 brings our partners as they continue to deliver on digital transformation for their customers,” said Johan Jardevall, chief sales officer, Episerver.

Episerver also celebrated its partners’ achievements in digital transformation this year through its latest initiative, Partner Innovation Spotlight, in which Episerver called partners to extend the use of its newest products in one of three focus areas: Individualized Content, Experience-driven Commerce, and Intelligent Campaigns. With the help of the Partner Innovation Spotlight, Episerver’s Digital Experience Cloud powers the website experiences of nearly 100 million unique visitors and roughly a half a billion page views each month for its customers. Multiply those interactions with the number of relevant content and campaigns Episerver customers can deliver before, during and after a sale, and Episerver is helping businesses innovate at scale.

Also Read: Episerver Announces a New Visitor Intelligence Product and Releases a Headless API

“Our participation in this year’s Partner Innovation Spotlight exemplifies our shared commitment with Episerver to helping customers create more meaningful, powerful digital experiences across the world,” said Joe Grause, director, business development, Making Waves.

“Episerver’s Partner Innovation Spotlight was a great way to showcase our team’s development skills and the powerful experiences that Episerver’s Digital Experience Cloud can deliver for our customers,” said Allison Simpkins, senior vice president, North America, Valtech.

TV May Affect the Brain But Influencer Marketing Affects the Heart

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Richard Wong

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March 15, 2018

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Social Media Influencer Content Effectively Drives Engagement, Consideration, And Purchase Intent While TV Effectively Drives Brand Awareness

Marketing and advertising have evolved in many ways over the past decade—particularly with the ways we consume media, most notably social media. The advent of social media has ushered in a new wave of creators— the talented individuals who have showcased their creativity and developed a following around their content. Enter influencer marketing—one of the fastest growing segments of marketing—a new and exciting way to bring your brand to life. The big question that always remains is: “How do I measure the impact of my marketing programs?”

Understanding The Impact of Branded Influencer Marketing

The #paid team decided to tackle this challenge by working with the team at Nielsen Consumer Insights on a Marketing Effectiveness study to better understand the consumer impact of the branded influencer marketing materials, specifically reviewing the creative campaign of a major food and beverage brand. To accomplish this, Nielsen conducted an online study to —

Evaluate the effectiveness of influencer marketing on key brand KPIs (recall, affinity, etc.)
Assess the attributes associated with each piece of content (unique, credible, cool, etc.)
Determine the impact of influencer marketing on future purchase decisions

As a basis of comparison, the team wanted to establish a benchmark against the primary channel for brand-based marketing—video advertising/TV commercials—by using a pre/post-exposure methodology, often used by Nielsen Media Lab. The published study can be found on the #paid website.

The results were surprising, but insightful into the ays consumers view these different types of content. The research showed that video advertising performed extremely well on brand recall and driving brand awareness; however, social media content drove stronger brand perception shifts and content quality was viewed as equivalent or greater than the traditional video ad.

Also Read: How NOT to Handle a Collaboration Request When it Comes to Influencer Marketing

So what does that mean for influencer marketing? These are some of the major takeaways from the study —

Influencer Marketing and TV Work in Complementary Ways

Many marketers view these two investments as an “either/or”, essentially creating a divide between the two channels. In the end, the research revealed the various impacts of marketing, and how they actually work best simultaneously.

When consumers see a TV ad, they see the brand logo, the product shot, the key claims, and tagline. Catchy jingles can get stuck in people’s minds. All of this works well to get people to notice and remember a brand, but this is only the first step within the path to purchase.

Influencer marketing takes this a step further by integrating products into the creators’ lives that consumers seek inspiration from and relate to. In short, creators make products highly relatable and desirable. These attributes have been shown to increase consideration and purchase intent—the next stage of the path to purchase.

Also Read: The Data & Measurement Behind Successful Influencer Marketing

Content Can Be Produced — at Scale — from Social Media Creators

Marketers should look at how we develop creative content in the 21st century. It doesn’t require the pricey studio rentals, production crew, casting talent, and editing anymore. All of these tasks are performed by content creators—the 21st-century production crew.

Initial concerns about the quality of the content were put at ease when the results showed content quality was actually viewed as equivalent or exceeding that of the traditional video ad.

Tools to Measure the Impact of Influencer Marketing Are Becoming More Abundant

Measuring the impact of brand marketing has always been an elusive and tricky thing to figure out. The ways in how we measure the impact can vary depending on the type of campaign that’s run, the objectives set out, as well as the conversion funnel. That said, establishing campaign goals, running brand measurement studies, or any conversion analysis are excellent ways to track the performance of influencer marketing and determine the brand’s ROI.

When traditional research leaders like Nielsen partner with the brand teams, agencies, and industry innovators on finding new ways to measure the impact of new approaches to marketing, the industry wins. It allows all marketers to understand the different use cases and make everybody’s efforts stronger.

Authenticity and Relatable at Its Core

A strength in influencer marketing stems from its ability for brands to partner with creators that develop content perceived to be authentic and relatable to their audience. Their audience has come to know them for an extended period of time, heard their reviews on a range of different products and services, and see a bit of themselves in the creators they follow.

When a creator voices their opinion and integrates a brand into their feed, it connects to their audience in a much more powerful way than simply getting a video view or an ad impression.

Also Read: The Death Of Cash Back And Loyalty Programs – The Burgeoning Impact Of Influencer Marketers

Influencer Marketing Should Be Considered a Key Part of a Marketer’s Toolkit

While influencer marketing programs can be led by different teams— from PR teams, creative teams, media teams, or the brand—the simple story is that influencer marketing is here to stay and deserves significant investment and coordination within a brand plan.

When the #paid team works on various influencer marketing programs, they either partner with brands directly or their media agencies—as they often hold the media budgets. Those budgets are crucial in order to ensure the scalable success of influencer marketing: creators deserve to get compensated for the work, time, and talent; brand teams need to ensure content is created on time and according to the brief.

All in all, the future of influencer marketing is bright. Influencer marketing budgets continue to rise, creators are learning how to integrate brands in a more sophisticated and authentic way, and the industry as a whole is adopting best practices to drive even more value for everybody involved.

Also Read: Influencer Marketing & Your Customer Journey

dotCMS Hires Robert Slaughter As New Chief Marketing Officer

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prweb

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March 15, 2018

DotCMS Hires Robert Slaughter As New Chief Marketing Officer

dotCMS Appoints, Robert Slaughter to Lead Marketing Department as Chief Marketing Officer

dotCMS, a leading-edge, open source, Java CMS and Customer Experience Management software company, announced that Robert Slaughter has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer, effective immediately. Slaughter will report to Ralph Miller, Chief Executive Officer, and become one of the senior executives within the company.

Also Read: dotCMS Hires Stefan Schinkel as New Chief Sales Officer

“Since we sell a mar-tech product, we need to ‘walk the talk,’ and that means we had to bring someone onboard with the skill set that only a few people have today. Someone who combines the knowledge of the space, digital strategy, demand generation knowledge and is very technical. He has to understand our product, use our product and evangelize about the product. We are really glad to have found the perfect person for this role,” said Ralph Miller, CEO of dotCMS.

Also Read: How Marketers Can Optimize $682 Billion in Expected Spend in 2018

Slaughter was most recently Principal at Ripple Effect Advisors, a B2B Marketing and Sales Acceleration Firm based in Washington, D.C. where he led the global marketing initiatives of several high-growth, technology firms.

“Having a previous professional relationship with Ralph, I am keenly aware of his business acumen and ability to grow and scale companies. And then once I dug into the product and viewed the executive team’s commercial roadmap, I was convinced dotCMS was 100% committed to customer success. That type of mindshare in the B2B world is hard to find, and I couldn’t be more excited or optimistic,” said Robert Slaughter.

dotCM, the leading, open source content and customer experience management platform for companies that want innovation and performance driving their websites and other content-driven applications. Extensible and massively scalable, both small and large organizations can rapidly deliver personalized and engaging content across browsers, mobile devices, channels, second screens, and endpoints — all from a single system.

TechBytes with Anne Frisbie, SVP, Global Brand & Programmatic, InMobi

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March 15, 2018

Anne Frisbie
SVP, Global Brand & Programmatic, InMobi

With the recent spurt of innovations in the digital advertising analytics technologies, programmatic and native advertising models are grabbing more attention. To understand the true ‘State of Advertising’ in the years to come, with the merger of programmatic and AI/ML capabilities, we spoke to the Senior Vice President, Global Brand & Programmatic, InMobi, Anne Frisbie.

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

I’m the Senior Vice President of Global Brand & Programmatic at InMobi. I oversee InMobi Exchange, brand sales in North America, and also lead InMobi’s global brand and programmatic strategy.

Do you see a gradual convergence of ad tech platforms towards audience-data platforms and behavioral marketing technologies?

This is a brilliant question. The question of the convergence of ad tech platforms towards audience-data platforms gets to the heart of how extensive the disruption in media buying and marketing technology is, and it comes down to 1) the success of the walled gardens, 2) the failure of the media industry to pay enough for data unless it is coupled with media, and 3) the increasingly high bar that artificial intelligence will create in order to produce exponential levels of value when buying platforms, data platforms and media are combined. So yes, there will be a convergence of buying platforms, marketing platforms, media, and data. But then, questions remain about how many of these full stack “data lakes” will exist, and how much of the market will participate outside of a complete full stack?

What are the major pain points for brands leveraging video advertising technologies for audience building and targeting? How does InMobi solve these challenges for customers?

We have moved into a world of video consumption and video advertising that’s cross-device and predominantly rooted outside of the browser. A tremendous amount of video viewing is being consumed within mobile apps or connected TVs rather than only on desktop and mobile web experiences. This alone is a major shift for advertisers. In the past, cookie-based audiences could effectively address audience buying in digital (browser-based) inventory including for video. Today, cookie-based audiences alone will simply not enable effective audience buying into the most premium video ad experiences within mobile apps and connected TVs.

InMobi has spent the past two years addressing the challenges of advertising into mobile apps across smartphones and tablets. We have worked diligently to move the industry from javascript, browser-based technology like VPAID to technologies like VAST that can work with the native environments of these connected devices. InMobi has also worked to solve MRC accredited viewability and fraud metrics that will work seamlessly with VAST, and have rolled out ways to execute interactive creative with VAST and native technologies of the Android and iOS operating systems. In 2018, we are looking to extend our approach into connected TVs which require many of the same approaches to what we have done within mobile apps.

Has TV been side-lined as an advertising medium with the maturity of mobile and social media advertising?

Not at all – TV continues to offer very powerful and trusted advertising opportunities. Linear, traditional TV did incredibly well in 2017 because that medium is understood in terms of impact generally, is relatively simple and trusted. The challenge is that marketers know that they are over-reliant on traditional, linear TV and that consumers are quickly moving to mobile and connected TV experiences. As a result, the rally cry from top brand marketers for greater trust and support around brand safety and social responsibility is driven in part because brands need digital media to become a larger part of their marketing mix because even TV experiences are moving there.

How do you see the ‘State of Advertising’ evolving by 2020 with the merger of programmatic and AI/ML capabilities?

Programmatic and digital media require AI/ML in order to deliver the true potential and value that is possible for all participants. Already advertising technology is one of the fastest and earliest business areas where AI/ML was being leveraged. I started in digital media in 1996, and then helped launch search marketing at AltaVista in 1997, before Google was founded in 1998. The pace of change today is faster than I have ever seen in my 21 years in digital media and that includes the launch of mobile which essentially began with the launch of the iPhone 10 years ago. AI/ML and the power that it lends to data is one of the reasons that the pace of change has accelerated so much, and it is exactly what is driving the convergence of marketing technology, advertising technology, media, and data which is highly disruptive for everyone in the digital media ecosystem.

How do you leverage AI/ML at InMobi? Would AI/ML enable make media buying and brand safety compliance easier to deal with in the coming?

InMobi is leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in a wide range of applications. At the core of the company is an engine that runs billions of auctions. For each auction, AI algorithms find answers to crucial decisions such as deciding who participates in each auction, who wins and at what price, while ML algorithms determine which are the right ads to show to a user.

InMobi is taking charge to lead innovations around AI and also works with ML generated user segments such as look-a-like segments to help advertisers find more valuable users amongst the 1.5 billion unique mobile devices that InMobi reaches. InMobi also uses deep learning to characterize creatives to help find effective creatives early and drive down exploration cost, as well as dynamic algorithms help identify user fatigue and refine ad delivery frequencies. AI/ML is at the core of InMobi’s fraud detection algorithms. As fraudulent activity gets more sophisticated, InMobi is leveraging deep learning to identify bad actors early. InMobi also uses reinforcement learning algorithms to maximize revenue and yield for publishers in a fast-changing ecosystem.

Our goal is to create the largest, global ecosystem around mobile in-app and connected TV device experiences (i.e. outside of the browser) that delivers the most value to publishers, consumers and advertisers and AI/ML is absolutely at the heart of being able to achieve that.

Thanks for chatting with us, Anne.
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

Alexa.com Unveils New Branding Gap Analysis to Boost SEO And SEM Efforts

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March 15, 2018