Nex Cubed Announces Two New Board Members

Channel and Sales Enablement Software Provider, Mindmatrix Launches Salesforce Community Add-ons

The Integration Adds Value to Salesforce Community by Bringing Mindmatrix Channel Enablement Tools to the Salesforce Community Portal Making It More Powerful

Pittsburgh-based channel and sales enablement service provider, Mindmatrix introduces Salesforce Community add-ons that bring the Mindmatrix channel enablement tools to the Salesforce Community Portal, making it more powerful.

The integration brings Mindmatrix channel and sales enablement software platform’s key modules such as playbook, training and certification, assets, channel reporting and enablement to the Salesforce Community Portal. The entire integration is compatible with Lightning Bolt, the technology vastly used by Salesforce in its Community portal.

The Mindmatrix platform already integrates with Salesforce CRM, providing salespeople with all the sales tools they need to close leads faster—right from the Salesforce interface. Launched in 2014, the Salesforce CRM integration happens at five levels—assets, playbooks, contacts, campaigns and operations.

Also Read: Mindmatrix Sales Enablement Software Introduces Electronic Contract Signing Feature

Harbinder Khera, CEO, Mindmatrix says, “The launch of Salesforce Community Add-ons is in line with our core vision that for channel enablement to be successful and to build long lasting channel relationships, channel enablement tools have to be integrated with the partner environment. Vendors must take the tools to their partners, making easy for the partners to use them. The Salesforce Community Add-Ons do exactly that by bringing the core elements of the Mindmatrix platform into the Salesforce Community portal, seamlessly.”

Mindmatrix offers Channel & Sales Enablement software for direct and indirect sales channels. Mindmatrix is the only provider of a Single Unified Platform that combines PRM software, Direct Sales and Channel Enablement, Channel Marketing Software, Marketing Automation software and Marketing Asset Management. Mindmatrix takes you through every step in the sales process from lead to revenue, enabling your salespeople and channel partners to sell more, faster.

Moving from Media Monitoring to Industry Intelligence

By

Mimrah Mahmood

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May 11, 2018

Media monitoring reports often contain a wealth of information that can help companies navigate fast-changing landscape and spot both opportunities and issues on the horizon. Unfortunately, these insights tends to stay buried in the inbox of the PR and communications department and business decision makers lose out on a valuable source of information. So how can communications professionals – both in-house and agency – elevate their insights to the C-Suite to the point that they affect business decisions?

The biggest problem lies in relevancy as executives are often bombarded under an avalanche of requests and reports, from a multitude of sources, and a multitude of agendas. “FYI” is now code for “Safe to Ignore”, and “Urgent” is the new “Regular work”. With this constant amount of background noise, creating a report that stands out in terms of clarity and relevance is essential.

Here are some ways to evolve the way functional groups view and work with communications teams.

Also Read: Three Misconceptions About Public Relations

Understanding what’s important to internal teams

As communication professionals, we understand the impact of the media, and media intelligence in achieving business outcomes. However, this understanding might not be clear for all business functions, and there are plenty of anecdotes about inter-departmental friction because of this.

Instead of trying to educate and convince your colleagues, communications professionals should make the effort to understand not just company business models, but also work processes.

For example, with the expiration of the Production and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme, the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) introduced during Singapore’s Budget 2018 will take its place to provide small and medium-sized enterprises with funding support for off-the-shelf solutions to improve productivity. If your sales team has products that can be funded with governmental grants, changes to grant structures could impact their sales strategy.

Also Read: Is A/B Testing Dead?

Gathering this feedback also helps better define your parameters on your media monitoring platforms, allowing these solutions to pick up content that you know will be more relevant for your internal target audience – which is why a well-constructed media intelligence report will also be critical in making sure the report is read by key stakeholders. It should be constructed in such a way that the most important information is highlighted in a concise manner.

The challenge lies in balancing providing enough information while making the report concise enough for a quick read.

A few questions every communications professional should ask themselves when sharing information to other internal teams:

Is this relevant information outside of a communications/PR function?
Is there a “bigger picture” or strategy that can be derived from coverage?
How does this impact other functions? What kind of actionable insights can be extracted from this coverage?
Is there any non-media information that should be shared to provide more context? (e.g. Links to relevant blogs, in-depth research papers, new online resources)
How can intelligence reports also highlight the importance of a communications function?

Also Read: Are Small and Local Businesses Ready for Voice Search?

Reverse Engineering Competitive Strategy

A competition’s major strategic campaign usually creates some ripples in the media, even if they are not explicit about it. A savvy enough communications professional can piece together not just what is being said to the media, but also better understand “behind-the-scene” strategy.

For example, if a competitor has announced a MoU with a major educational institute, and opened an incubator lab, they may be pivoting for a strong push among start-ups. Or if a brand has signed on a celebrity outside of their typical demographic, and released products targeting a niche market, it may signal a larger strategic push in another direction.

Once a potential competitive strategy has been extrapolated, the information could be used by other functions to pivot and gain the competitive advantage.

Also Read: Measure Your Marketing Campaigns Using Link Tracking

Developing Next Steps

To bring intelligence to the next level, it needs to have actionable insights. While most business functions should have an idea of what next steps are, PR and communications professionals can also value-add by including potential next steps – including suggesting possible new lines of inquiry.

The old business adage of “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!” resonates here – and while PR and communications teams are unlikely to have a fully-fledged solution to most problems, the next best thing they can provide is a way forward to helping teams collaborate to come up with a solution.

For example, if a government agency announces a new budget allocation for smart cities, PR and communications teams can provide links to various RFPs that are part of this new allocation. If a competitor announces a new product, PR and communications teams can provide an updated portfolio of the competitor’s products.

Organisations face little issues with data collection. Where they struggle most is in analyzing it, picking out the most important data points and then developing a strategy around it. This is where presenting information in a standard format is key to avoid alternative interpretations of data, encouraging cross-departmental collaboration and streamlining processes to mitigate the risks of duplicating work. Ultimately, aligning each department’s strategy into achieving the organization goal.

While elevating your media monitoring requires extra time and thought, turning data into value-added insights in collaboration with different departments will potentially help your organization make that next critical decision.

Also Read: How to Evoke ‘Analog’ Emotions Using Digital Technology

Socialbakers Named a Leader in Social Media Marketing Suites, Analytics, Management and Monitoring

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May 11, 2018

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Socialbakers Named a Leader in Social Media Marketing Suites, Analytics, Management and Monitoring

G2 Crowd Recognized Socialbakers as an Industry Leader by Customers in g2 Crowd’s Spring Reports for Marketing Suites, Analytics, Management and Monitoring

Socialbakers, the leading AI-powered social media marketing platform, has been named as a leader in four categories of Social Media Marketing Suites, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Management and Social Media Monitoring on G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business solution review platform.

Leveraging the largest social media data-set in the industry, Socialbakers’ social media marketing platform helps brands large and small ensure their investment in social media is delivering measurable business outcomes.

In today’s competitive digital marketing environment Socialbakers has become the go-to social media marketing partner for thousands of enterprise brands and SMBs around the globe. Socialbakers’ industry-leading AI-powered marketing platform helps brands like Nestlé, Desigual, Lexus and National Geographic to ensure their digital investment is delivering measurable business outcomes.

At the time of this announcement, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO at Socialbakers, said, “We are excited to be named a leader by G2 Crowd in four digital marketing categories, Marketing Suites, Analytics, Management and Monitoring categories as this is a direct reflection of our customers’ satisfaction.”

Read Also: Is A/B Testing Dead?

Yuval added, “The business of digital marketing has never been more complex than it is today. With the Socialbakers Suite we simplify the lives of marketers by giving them a platform to help them understand their audiences across social media and other digital sources, create more effective content to engage and grow their customer base, as well as to measure and benchmark their impact on their business goals.”

Michael Fauscette, chief research officer, G2 Crowd, said, “Rankings on G2 Crowd reports are based on data provided to us by real users. We are excited to share the achievements of the products ranked on our site because they represent the voice of the user and offer terrific insights to potential buyers around the world.”

Socialbakers’ users reported its social analytics (95% user satisfaction) and brand safety (91%) as its two highest rated features. Currently, Socialbakers is recognized as a social media management partner to thousands of enterprise brands and SMBs.

Criteo’s Global Commerce Review Highlights Mobile-First Psyche of Customers

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May 11, 2018

Criteo’s Global Commerce Review for Q1 2018 Highlights Mobile-First Psyche of Customers

Results Reveal that On-the-Go Omnishoppers Lead to Highest Lifetime Sales Value, Along With Driving Higher Conversion Rates and In-App Sales on Mobile vs. Shopping Apps

Criteo, a commerce marketing company, has disclosed its Global Commerce Review conducted for Q1 2018. The report analyzes purchase and browsing data from more than 5000 retailers spread across 80 countries. The outcome indicates that present-day shoppers opt for purchases on-the-go, and they are active across every browsing environment.

Jonathan Opdyke, Chief Strategy Officer, Criteo, says, “Our latest study shows continuing shifts from desktop to mobile shopping, as well as from retailer websites to apps. Today’s shopper is on-the-go and researching across multiple screens, requiring a cohesive, data-driven approach to intersect and influence buying decisions. For retailers with physical stores, app adoption and improved data infrastructure are opening new horizons in omnichannel marketing, with online and offline blending into a seamless and measurable shopping journey.”

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

Research Takeaways

The Criteo Global Commerce Review for Q1 2018 provides the following key takeaways:

Retailers need to optimize and prioritize shopping apps else they will face revenue declines because mobile transactions have now gone beyond mobile websites
While customers use multiple devices, mobile is still the chosen transaction vehicle
Syncing online and offline data is critical to tap purchasing power and buying intent particularly because omnichannel consumers lead to highest lifetime value as far as sales are concerned

Also Read: Criteo Reinforces the Power of Mobile Devices and Omnichannel Strategies in Driving Sales

Apart from the above, additional highlights from the study include:

Increase in adoption of mobile apps

More than 70% of mobile ecommerce transactions take place through apps in North America
In-app transactions on a global scale have increased by 22% year-on-year

Maturity of Mobile Market

Sales transactions on smartphones have increased by 22.5% year-on-year
Beauty/health and sporting goods constitute 44% and 43% of mobile sales respectively

Time for Omnichannel

Just 7% of customers are omnichannel, yet they contribute to 27% of all sales
Omnichannel data is the pivot to optimize marketing ROI

The Criteo study is a clear indication of things to unfold in the retail and ecommerce space in 2018. It’s time to further bridge the online and offline data gap. Retailers who can do this successfully will steer ahead in the competition.

TechBytes with Somrat Niyogi, VP Business Development, Clari

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May 11, 2018

Somrat Niyogi
VP Business Development, Clari

Clari scooped a major funding round this year, raising $35 million in financing led by Tenaya Capital. Following the funding round in March, the AI for Sales company is offering customers tools that take sales forecasting and leverage AI to add data-driven approaches to refine sales leads. To dive deeper into the core tenets driving Clari’s AI for Sales technology and the immediate roadmap for the Clari product marketing team, we spoke to Somrat Niyogi, VP Business Development, Clari.

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

I run business development for Clari. As part of that, I’m responsible for building our channel business as well as strategic partnerships with a range of applications, implementation and sales transformation partners.

At Clari, what are the core tenets driving your technology and product marketing teams?

Our mission as a company is to make selling easier and more predictable. At the core of that is our commitment to customer success and our deep partnership to drive measurable value through high agility of roadmap execution. At the core to our product innovation is our strong heritage in applying AI to solve enterprise problems and delivering predictive insights through a set of practical applications for every member of the sales organization.

Could you tell us more about your recent integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Clari is among a very select group of partners that have access to Linkedin’s APIs, giving users faster access to LinkedIn company and profile data. As part of our initial integration with Sales Navigator, sales reps and managers can view the Linkedin profiles of accounts and contacts they are engaged with, directly from Clari, where they update their deals, manage their pipeline and call their number.

This is the first of a range of integrations with Linkedin designed to improve the way managers inspect the pipeline, how they collaborate with reps on plays and how they align on the key stakeholders. All critical components for driving accurate forecasts.

How would this integration help reps maximize their deal productivity?

With this integration, reps can do better prospecting into target accounts – they can immediately see where and how they are connected to expedite their way into the account or progress opportunities in flight. In addition, front-line managers get better visibility to inspect the pipeline and see how they can help move deals forward through their networks and connections. This ultimately improves the way sales teams collaborate on account-based strategies and joint plays:

Reps and inside sales teams know who in the organization has access to the power base
Reps can quickly identify key people to connect within their target accounts
Sales management and reps are unified on their target account strategies

What is the “State of AI-driven Sales” technology in 2018? How would Data Science and AI/ML technologies influence better adoption and ROI from sales intelligence tools?

We are in the early days of how AI and machine learning are impacting the way we work and how sales teams operate. This is a massive and highly transformative change in the way teams process information, collaborate and make decisions. We’re seeing a shift from historical analysis, reports and queries to AI-based insights that push practical information and predictions into the hands of reps, managers and sales execs at key moments across the sales process.

For instance, Clari can help identify risk and upside on opportunities and project how the quarter will end. This not only transforms the way sales teams work together to drive their strategies but also the ability of business leaders to drive the actions needed to hit the number. With AI, we’re also able to project the forecast in future quarters and suggest the required pipeline to achieve those projections. The C-suite including COOs, CFOs, CMOs and CROs are now collaborating around the same set of data points and metrics in a far more integrated and productive way than ever before.

To what extent is this state influenced by the growing need to diversify CRMs and sales intelligence tools?

CRM is going through a renaissance. The original premise of CRM was around a single unified view of the customer – and at that time it was all about filling out forms and manually inputting data. Now data volumes are increasingly growing, coming from multiple sources outside of CRM. This is fueling a wave of new innovation in the way data is collected, analyzed and presented. It’s driving the unbundling of core sales processes and the emergence of new sales intelligence tools that leverage CRM data in addition to email, calendar and other data signals to drive better decision making in sales.

What are the major challenges that lie ahead for reps working without sales technologies? How do you think reps could better leverage Clari for their overall business goals?

Whether you’re a rep, manager, VP, or C-level exec, your goal is to grow efficient, predictable revenue for your business. Period. Specifically, reps need to understand where to strategically focus their increasingly limited sell time without getting bogged down by CRM updates.

Because Clari automatically captures rep activity and customer engagement data, it all but eliminates much of the administrative burden that typically bogs down the sales process and frustrates everyone.

With Clari, reps have fewer fields to fill and easier, more intuitive ways to document deal status on the fly. And, with fewer administrative tasks on their plate, reps have more time to do what they were hired to do in the first place — sell. The majority (91 percent) of reps we surveyed, said using Clari gives them time back to sell, with nearly one-third boasting two or more reclaimed hours of precious sell time per week!

But the value does not stop with the reps. Clari provides the kind of visibility and insights a manager and a sales exec needs to accurately gauge pipeline health, identify risk and effectively prioritize where to invest to get the team back on track to hit the number.

How does Clari fit into a modern CMO’s tech stack?

The lines of the CMO’s tech stack and CRO’s tech stack are blurring. CMOs are increasingly interested in tracking their impact to the forecast and revenue and CROs are getting more knowledgeable about the way marketing teams are contributing to the overall revenue funnel. We see this as an opportunity to improve the way sales and marketing teams get aligned to achieve revenue goals and increase forecast accuracy. As we all know, a predictable sales forecast affects the levers for increasing or decreasing marketing program spend. Vice versa, if sales doesn’t know where and how marketing is influencing accounts and opportunities, it may affect driving a predictable forecast.

We are starting to address this today by giving marketing visibility into sales activity and improving contact data so they can understand campaign influence and identify where they need to focus to design and execute more impactful programs that support sales efforts. At the same time, Clari gives sales visibility into customer marketing engagement activity so they can better evaluate the true state of the deal and forecast more accurately.

Thanks for chatting with us, Somrat.
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

Now, Pinterest Marketing Gets Easier with Hootsuite’s Latest Integration

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May 11, 2018

Now, Pinterest Marketing Gets Easier with Hootsuite's Latest Integration

Integration Enables Pinterest Scheduling and Publishing from Hootsuite, Empowering Customers to Build and Manage Brands and Strengthen Relationships with Customers Through the Power of Imagery

Leading social media management platform and a MarTech 150 RADARcompany, Hootsuite, has announced a global partnership with Pinterest. This partnership is resulting in the native integration of Pinterest into the Hootsuite platform. Following the trends uncovered in Hootsuite’s 2018 Social Trends Report showcasing the growing importance of the use of images to engage customers and followers, all Hootsuite customers are now able to schedule and publish content directly to Pinterest.

At the time of this announcement, Penny Wilson, CMO of Hootsuite, said, “We’re excited to bring to life the full native integration of Pinterest into the Hootsuite platform to empower organizations to harness the power of human connection with their customers at scale.”

Penny added, “The visual appeal of Pinterest has proven to be a strong e-commerce sales driver for consumer and lifestyle brands. Our strategic partnership with Pinterest advances Hootsuite’s industry leaders to help customers, large and small, to strategically grow their brands, businesses, and customer relationships with social.”

With more than 200 million monthly active users and growing, Pinterest is a driver of sales, with traffic from Pinterest 3.8 times more likely to convert into a sale. Pinterest’s success as a visual discovery platform delivers increased value for brands that offer e-commerce and rich product pages are evident in the company’s 40 percent year over year growth.

Now, all Hootsuite customers can collaboratively and securely schedule and publish visual content directly to owned Pinterest boards. Additionally, customers that have Hootsuite Impact will also be able to measure their Pinterest account growth and analyze the performance of individual Pins as part of their integrated marketing strategy and associated campaigns.

Hootsuite customers can post content and engage with customers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, WordPress, and Pinterest. As part of this strategic partnership, Hootsuite will be listed as one of Pinterest’s Content Marketing Partners.

Currently, Hootsuite is the most widely used social media management platform, trusted by more than 16 million customers and more than 80 percent of the Fortune 1000.

Interview with Itamar Benedy, CEO, Glispa

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May 11, 2018

Interview with Itamar Benedy, CEO at Glispa Global Group

[vc_wp_text]“For mobile ad tech companies there is no way around opening themselves up to a B2C approach because the end user is eventually the decision maker about trending technologies.”

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

Tell us about your role and how you got here? What galvanized you to start Glispa?

Today I’m the CEO of Glispa. My story starts four and a half years ago when I joined as VP Strategy to lead the company’s transition from an affiliate to an ad tech company. Part of my role was to lead our acquisitions, in the course we acquired Avocarrot, RelevantTech, and justAd. I also focused on driving our global expansion and therefore opened an office in Tel Aviv. Starting out alone in Tel Aviv, I built a team of around 40 people in 2017. From a client perspective, global expansion involved increasing our international operations. Today, we are running campaigns in almost every country in the world. From that, I was appointed CEO to lead the full transition from an affiliate to ad tech at a product level, by shifting our strategy from acquiring to building new solutions. Furthermore, we improved Glispa’s brand and positioning with a huge rebranding effort, and also built the right teams to implement our strategy. We hired a lot of key people and aligned our go-to-market strategy with the biggest opportunities in the market and to match the demands of our clients and partners. We ultimately connected the product, brand and people to implement our strategy.

How is the mobile ad tech industry different from when you first started?

As one of the early adopters of mobile, I saw the industry changing dramatically in the past decade. From the early days, when developers didn’t really have many opportunities to monetize, acquire users, and utilize data (for the better or worse), we moved to a period in which the benchmarks of the product are becoming much higher, companies are investing in creative and building excellent applications. In the last decade, we saw great companies like Waze, Moovit, and Playtika emerging. An array of promising technologies has sophisticated the mobile ecosystem that became a very fragmented industry. To a large extent, Glispa’s strategy is based on aiming to control more components from that value chain to provide more value for the clients.

Tell us about your ‘Ideal Customer’ profile?

For me, the ideal customer is a big brand which I’m helping to enter the mobile world. Numerous amazing brands spend vast amounts of money for achieving a very strong presence in the digital world. From the mobile perspective, however, they are far away from maximizing their opportunities. Helping brands and app developers build a mobile strategy for reaching the right audiences is very exciting. What’s so unique about mobile as a platform is that there is a very high level of engagement because smartphones are popular, with people checking their phones around 150 times a day, spending more than three hours a day inside applications. In enabling customers to leverage the mobile space, we’re part of something bigger, a mobile revolution.

What is the current state of Mobile Marketing engagement in 2018? How much of that state is influenced by the maturity of data science and customer experience platforms?

Mobile marketing engagement undoubtedly grows in 2018 with people relying on and appreciating mobile even more. We can observe this trend in various ways: from the number of hours a day people spend on their smartphone to the number of applications they have. In parallel to the improving products, people gain more value from them and use them more often. Whereas data science is still in its early beginnings for maximizing mobile engagement. With mobile measurement completely differing from desktop, we’re just now starting to work with sufficient technologies that are highly useful from a data perspective of mobile. Particularly, location data gains importance, which we haven’t really utilized enough yet. I expect this to become a significant factor for mobile marketing engagement in the next five years. Having mentioned utilizing location data, it is crucial to elaborate on GDPR, which is going affect how we utilize data in a very positive way. It enables us to keep people’s personal data private while still using it in legitimate ways to create value. That is a big thing to look at already in 2018 and 2019.

How do you see the mobile marketing strategies evolving around omnichannel analytics? What factors should marketers consider to launch a mobile website?

To understand the context of omnichannel, we first need to look back at the progression of mobile. 2017 was the year of promising, new technologies that started to bring value in the mobile space, although still in a very fragmented way. I believe 2018 and 2019 will be the two years mobile is starting to consolidate as a standalone. Only after, we can start connecting other platforms to it like Smart TV, augmented reality or physical stores. When launching a new website, companies find themselves surrounded by of a lot of noise, with millions of websites and apps, and innumerable opportunities. We’ve come to the understanding that is important to first and foremost deliver a great user experience (UX). While this has improved in the course of the years, companies still have a long way to go. In managing a great website or app UX, they will eventually be the kings in deciding which products and technologies customers will be using. Websites are a great example for making the case for UX, since they always define B2C relationship, being directly tailored for people. If a company overemphasizes the monetization aspect in their website, it will harm the UX, and fail to bring real value for the customer and eventually the company.

Tell us about the new standards of B2B mobile ad tech. How does Glispa help customers optimize user insights for better mobile marketing campaigns?

For mobile ad tech companies – naturally B2B oriented – there is no way around opening themselves up for a B2C approach because the end user is eventually the decision maker about trending technologies. Even if your client is the advertiser, the big brand, UX is paramount, as brands prioritize the needs of their client, the end user. Therefore, part of our strategy at Glispa is to identify how we as a B2B company can bring value to the end user. That’s why, we recently acquired justAd, a company touching the end user directly by creating engaging mobile ad formats. Of course, there is more to that. Really good targeting is essential for aligning people with the content they want to consume. Today, no one is accepting ad experiences that aren’t good. People are blind to ads that are not entertaining and not to the point and don’t convey which aspect of the product the ad is trying to advertise.

What marketing and sales automation tools do you use?

Automation is definitely a big topic today in the industry, and we’re dealing with it various ways. People tend to forget that programmatic is first and foremost an automation tool. In the past few years, programmatic has become the most popular ad format. Not only did it create a buzz, it actually increased ad revenue. To be part of the programmatic revolution, our strategy at Glispa included acquiring Avocarrot, a programmatic ad exchange, which comes with a more automated process and less manual work. Furthermore, automatic is related to personalization. How to run a successful email marketing campaign these days without highly personalizing it with the help of automatic services like Hubspot? Applying automation is part of being a high tech company, it’s part of increasing efficiency. My definition of a high tech company is a company that minimizes the amount of jobs people in the company do that are embarrassing for the cognitive part of the brain. The world is moving towards a future of machines replacing people in manual tasks, where they outperform people, while we benefit from shifting our focus on solving cognitively challenging tasks. That is actually automation.

Which startups in martech and adtech industries are you keenly following?

As an ad tech enthusiast, I’m excited about innovation and new technologies in this area. I’m paying a lot of attention to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). I believe that’s going to be a very important platform down the road. Mobile is doing a good job in building the best applications with the current technologies out there. The next big thing in mobile is AR. I predict that in two or three years, 80% of the smartphones will have augmented reality capabilities. There will be a wealth of new applications improving the mobile experience via augmented reality technologies. Magic Leap is a noticeable company pioneering in mixed reality (MR) rather than augmented reality. Mixed reality enables a real interaction with physical elements and virtual pixels in the space. Magic Leap might leave the biggest impact in this field in the next few years.

How do you prepare for an AI-centric ecosystem as a business leader?

With AI out there as a buzzword for many years, we’re just now starting to understand what it means and how it can impact our business. Sure, AI is also still in its early days. However, if your company wants to utilize data in a better way, to become more of a high tech company, and to push the limits of what technology can do for maximizing value for clients, AI should definitely be part of the mobile marketing mix.

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

Glispa’s vision is about challenging and improving the mobile ecosystem via innovation, and innovation starts from connecting technology with opportunities. A lot of what we do at Glispa originates from this approach. We recognize opportunities in the market, and actively build solutions around them – be it in-house or via an acquisition. We see a lot of innovation opportunities from connecting our four products. Coupling Glispa Discover, a monetization solution for operators and carriers, with Glispa Connect, a programmatic exchange, we could bring programmatic to the operator’s and carrier’s business for the first time in the advertising world. At Glispa, we’re trying to hire smart people who challenge everything they do. I see them getting really excited and motivated about changing the status quo, and bring innovation to the market. Technology is the base for all of that.

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

All my life centers around technology and multiple apps navigate me through different moments. For someone who is flying a lot, Netflix really improved my life. In making it easier for me to manage a global company with people from different countries with different offices, Slack really brought a lot of value.

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

I read that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, starts each meeting with 30 seconds of complete silence, with no one in the room speaking, which is supposed to lead to better productivity. I actually tried to implement that into our company, and it didn’t really improve our productivity. What really works for us: we’re trying to stay a startup, even though Glispa is becoming a much bigger company in terms of the number of offices, employees, and products we have. Part of being a startup is trying to avoiding bureaucracy and practices of big corporations, just by having our meetings very direct and to the point, for instance. I believe we’re more productive that way.

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

To start with the second part of the question, today we have access to information in a great number of ways: be it by reading, watching movies, attending lectures, having conversations in chats, checking social feeds, researching, Google. While we have overcome the limitations of accessing content, the challenge now becomes finding the needle in the haystack in terms of valuable information, since the filters are missing. Reading about ad tech exemplifies where this is leading to. The information you get from all the channels is very different from what’s actually going on. Most of what books, online content and talks at conferences tell us is inaccurate. Even more information becomes irrelevant when data is not updated as quickly as technology is changing our life, which creates a gap. On a higher level, I just recently read a book Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking, fast and slow”, revolving around the way our brain is structured in terms of thinking, decision making, and instincts. Exploring the big gap between how we think our brain works vs. how it really works, how people make irrational decisions on a daily basis without really knowing it’s irrational, that’s a field I’m really passionate about beyond technology.

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

Don’t be right, be smart.

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

Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon. Amazon didn’t start out as an ad tech company, but if I needed to bet on who is going to be the biggest mover in ad tech, I would definitely mention Amazon. The company is in a very interesting position from an ecommerce perspective, and ad tech, as I see it, leads the way for ecommerce, and is ultimately tied to it. Amazon has a vast amount of data, and their activities around Alexa, search, audio, and AI, are fascinating, and I would be very keen to hear his wisdom around the conversation we had today.

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

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Itamar Benedy is the CEO of Glispa, a mobile ad tech player with 10+ years in the mobile marketing industry. Formerly serving as the CRO and VP of Strategy, Itamar is currently leading the transformation of Glispa from an affiliate company to a sophisticated ad tech company. In just two years, Glispa has had five strategic acquisitions and has integrated these innovative products onto a single platform. Itamar has also lead the massive rebranding efforts, bringing all these products under the Glispa brand.

Prior to Glispa, Itamar served as the VP Marketing at Sport.com and Yoga.com, leading the user acquisition, monetization, and analytics teams. With more than a decade of experience in mobile & app marketing, Itamar guided Sport.com to become a market-leading fitness company with over 40 million downloads across 30 native apps. Itamar was selected for the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 for Israel, and currently resides in Berlin.

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Glispa is a mobile ad tech company. We are dedicated to empowering our partners with sophisticated solutions that make it simple for agencies and brands to connect with target audiences and for publishers to monetize their apps. Our product suite is tailored to design a more valuable experience for the user by creating real connections. This approach, combined with our deep understanding of the industry, provides our partners with the best set of tools to make mobile ad tech simple.

With a decade in the advertising industry, Glispa employs a diverse team of 50 nationalities speaking over 45 languages. Operating across 8 international offices, we combine an experienced global workforce with local market expertise. To learn more, visit glispa.com and follow us on social @glispa.

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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.

TIBCO’s Enterprise Integration PaaS Now Available in AWS Marketplace

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May 11, 2018

TIBCO Cloud Integration Can Equip Customers to Seamlessly Connect Applications

TIBCO Software Inc., is a global leader in API management, analytics and integration. TIBCO announced the availability of TIBCO Cloud Integration on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace (AWS). TIBCO Cloud Integration is a pillar of the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud Platform. TIBCO Cloud Integration is an iPAAS (Integration Platform as a Service) that allows users to seamlessly connect cloud, on-premises and IoT (Internet of Things) applications without any coding required.

TIBCO Cloud Integration is built on an easy-to-use platform, and the components are based on an open-source Project Flogo where customers can rapidly connect their applications and share data in a system as simplified as ever.

Rajeev Kozhikkattuthodi, vice president, product management and strategy, TIBCO said, “We’re excited our customers can now purchase and launch our enterprise iPaaS directly from AWS Marketplace. As organizations adapt to cloud technologies, they want to work with companies like TIBCO and AWS, who are at the forefront of innovation. By making TIBCO Cloud Integration available in AWS Marketplace, TIBCO enables users to accelerate their digital transformation efforts with a simplified procurement process through AWS contracts.”

Also Read: TIBCO Software Named a Leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management

Barry Russell, general manager, AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Business Development, Amazon Web Services, Inc. said, “With its availability on AWS Marketplace, TIBCO Cloud Integration allows organizations to easily connect their cloud and on-premises applications for seamless hybrid operations. AWS is excited for TIBCO to offer this on AWS Marketplace for enterprise customers as TIBCO’s first SaaS product available for procurement via AWS Marketplace, and we look forward to customers leveraging this to migrate more workloads onto AWS.”

Apps Associates, a global IT services company, has already seen the benefit of TIBCO Cloud Integration’s accessibility. Pandu Prudhvi, practice director, integration and custom development, Apps Associates says, “Using TIBCO Cloud Integration, Apps Associates is seeing new business opportunities. It’s a flexible solution, and it’s really helping us develop, build, and deploy integrations in a scalable way. With the availability of TIBCO Cloud Integration on AWS Marketplace, customers now have even easier access to a market-leading, cloud-based iPaaS.”

TIBCO helps fuel digital businesses by equipping them with decision-making and choices which are simplified, faster and smarter. TIBCO helps interconnect everything from data in real-time to augmenting intelligence via analytical insights. TIBCO is also a gold sponsor of the AWS 2018 London Summit, which is taking place on May 9 and 10 at the ICC, ExCel London where it will exhibit TIBCO Cloud Integration and other TIBCO solutions.

PlaceIQ Selected for Best Attribution and Analytics Technology in the Ad-to-Action Awards

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May 11, 2018

Ad Action Recognizes PlaceIQ Offerings to Produce Valuable and Advanced Customer Insight for Brands

PlaceIQ, is the company which is building a new consumer-behavioral model with location insights and data. PlaceIQ announced that its LandMark Data offerings and Place Visit Rate (PVR) have been named the best attribution and analytical technologies, in addition to also being the best location intelligence platform in the Ad-to-Action awards.

Ad-to-Action Awards

Ad-to-Action awards is produced by industry trade group Local Search Association (LSA). These awards highlight innovations in technology that help brands drive customer engagement, sales and create memorable experiences for customers. The category winners went through severe scrutiny with a panel of diverse judges which comprised of technology experts, advertising industry press and several media agency leaders.

Achievements by PlaceIQ

PlaceIQ’s PVR was named Best Attribution and Analytics solution in the award category which aimed to create, target, measure and traffic advertising in innovative ways. PVR was introduced in 2012, and it has a first-of-its-kind measurement metric that has become a standard for understanding the effect advertising has in the real-world situation. Users across retail, dining, CPG and automotive have all chosen PVR to precisely understand the impact advertising campaigns have on offline channels.

Landmark Data offering by PlaceIQ was named Best Intelligence Platform in an award category. The category was recognized as technologies helping brands, media companies and agencies analyze and create actionable insights from location data. Landmark gives media agencies and brands access to PlaceIQ’s premier audience, visitation and behavior data- so as to take a number of informed business and marketing decisions. The technology is highly powerful with location-derived insights about the real-time customer journey and it includes; retail site selection optimization, financial investments, cross-channel strategy, financial investments and media activation.

“PlaceIQ has become synonymous with industry leading technology innovations in the location data realm,” said Duncan McCall, CEO and co-founder at PlaceIQ. “Our legacy is built on more than seven years of creating and refining offerings that deliver both insights and true value to brands. We’re honored to be selected by both LSA and a jury of well-known executives for the quality of our work. The Ad-to-Action Awards add to a long list of validation for our product portfolio from others in the technology ecosystem and exist as a testament to the dedication from many different teams within PlaceIQ that bring these solutions to market.”

Brands to Benefit from 2018 Mother’s Day Holiday; Rakuten Marketing Announces Shopping Trends and Insights

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PRNewswire

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May 11, 2018

Brands to Benefit from 2018 Mother's Day Holiday; Rakuten Marketing Announces Shopping Trends and Insights

For the 2018 Mother’s Day Holiday, Rakuten Marketing Expects Consumer Spending to Increase by 20 Percent

Rakuten Marketing, a leading technology company that enables marketers to profit through digital marketing, today released industry data and insights for Mother’s Day 2018. Comparing year-over-year (YOY) holiday spend for the two weeks leading to Mother’s Day 2016 and 2017, Rakuten Marketing expects 2018 consumer spend to increase, making this Mother’s Day a sweet retail period for online brands.

Along with this news, the company also provides YOY comparisons on consumer shopping behavior, including cross-device shopping tendencies; marketing and advertising budget allocation over the Mother’s Day holiday period; top-performing product categories; and publisher shopping peaks. This data and insights equip brands, advertisers and publishers with valuable information to improve and deliver better online ad and shopping experiences.

For the 2018 Mother’s Day holiday, Rakuten Marketing expects consumer spending to increase by 20 percent, with revenue increasing across all key product categories. The company believes top-selling gift categories will include personal experiences (dinners, outings, movie, etc.), flowers, candy, jewelry and gift cards. Mother’s Day spend is expected to peak in late April with most consumers turning to content publishers early in their shopping journey to purchase. Gift orders (e.g., spa gift cards and gourmet gift baskets) from content publishers are expected to peak the Saturday before Mother’s Day and sales from loyalty coupon and rewards publishers peaking the week prior to Mother’s Day. The highest selling day for flowers is expected to occur May 10th, 2018, the Thursday before the Mother’s Day holiday. Sunday and Monday before Mother’s Day 2017 served as peak selling days for jewelry and Rakuten Marketing expects this trend to continue in 2018.

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing Announces Whitepaper on Global Data Protection Regulation; Offers Specific Recommendations for Brand Marketers

Key Insights from Mother’s Day 2017:

Loyalty rewards publishers saw orders peak the week of May 7, 2017, for department stores, flowers, food and drink, and gift and luxury. These verticals showed solid year-over-year (YOY) sales not only during the Mother’s Day holiday but during springtime shopping in general.
Shopping publishers focused on the sales period following Mother’s Day 2017, with apparel and accessories, department store and luxury retail orders peaking at the end of May.
Sales conversion rates peaked on May 8, 2017, for all publisher types.

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing Survey: Global Organizations Anticipate 26 Percent Marketing Budget Loss in 2018

Device Behavior and Advertising Spend

In 2017, mobile sales for Rakuten Marketing Affiliate advertisers were approximately 20-25 percent of total orders for the Mother’s Day holiday shopping period. Flower orders accounted for 20 percent of total orders and mobile device orders accounted for 30 percent of total flower orders.
With a heavy push for advertising on mobile this year, Rakuten Marketing expects mobile-driven conversions and revenue to increase by about 40 and 70 percent respectively.
Rakuten Marketing expects overall online revenue to increase by 20 percent.
In 2017, luxury items had the highest percentage of orders placed on tablet at 7 – 8 percent.
Rakuten Marketing clients running same-store display campaigns during Mother’s Day 2016 and 2017 saw YOY mobile average order value (AOV), conversions and revenue increase by 41 percent, 21 percent and 70 percent respectively. These clients also increased social and video budgets through this period by 74 percent and 43 percent respectively.
Personalized gifts are popular during Mother’s Day. Based on 2017 insights, Rakuten Marketing expects the top-selling product to be flowers, but more specifically flower arrangements designed for Moms and Grandmothers. More specifically, consumers tend to request spring flower arrangements, followed by tulip and rose arrangements.

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing’s Dr Neal Richter Receives IAB Tech Lab’s Esteemed Service Excellence Award

Rakuten Marketing Survey: Global Organizations Anticipate 26 Percent Marketing Budget Loss in 2018 — Stuart Simms

“Individualism is at the heart of consumers, which means it should be at the heart of marketing. Advertisers and publishers should strive in tailoring their consumer online experiences and Rakuten Marketing can help deliver these kinds of experiences,” commented Rakuten Marketing President, Stuart Simms. “Through our data and insights, we encourage advertisers, brands and publishers to understand their consumers’ trends and behaviors so they can create the best kinds of advertising and content and, therefore, receive the best results.”

Rakuten Marketing prioritizes understanding and catering to consumers’ wants and needs in the digital advertising world to implement positive online experiences and increase performance for advertisers, publishers and brands. Rakuten Marketing data and insights are based on aggregated and anonymous data analyzed from leading U.S. retailers running Rakuten Marketing Display and Rakuten Marketing Affiliate campaigns.

Recommended Read: Interview with Tony Zito, CEO, Rakuten Marketing

Keith Kaplan Joins Digital Remedy Board of Directors

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May 10, 2018

Keith Kaplan Joins Digital Remedy Board of Directors

Digital Remedy, a white-labeled ad operations and sales solution for publishers, advertisers and influencers, announced that Keith “Kappy” Kaplan has been appointed to the company’s Board of Directors, effective May 9, 2018. His appointment follows the acquisition of CrowdHere and the elevation of its former CEO Nick Pahade to COO and President of Digital Remedy. Kaplan most recently served as the Global President of Monetization for King Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard.

Also Read: Oracle’s Moat Is Now a LinkedIn Partner for Video Viewability and Analytics

“A longtime digital strategist who understands the pressures of the market from many different seats, Kappy is a natural fit for our board. His guidance will help us to realize our vision of delivering solutions that meet and exceed advertiser and publisher needs in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.,” said Mike Seiman, Chairman and CEO of Digital Remedy.

At King, a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, Kaplan oversaw the global expansion of the company’s revenue by focusing on the growth and development of strategic accounts, agencies, and partnerships. His expanding team of regional sales, marketing, and account management focused on fostering deep relationships, developing partnership programs, and addressing top marketers’ challenges, including innovative solutions that ultimately connected brands with consumers in ways that enhanced their experience.

“I’m excited to join the Board of Digital Remedy to partner in the development of the organization’s long-term roadmap. I hope my industry connections bring invaluable insight to bear in this process, as I work to be an advocate and proponent for the company and all Digital Remedy has accomplished to date,” said Kaplan.

Also Read: Publishers Clearing House Delivers 92% Audience Data Match Rate

Kaplan brings 20 years of experience and leadership in effectively communicating brand and product offerings to a global audience. He held positions at Yahoo as Head of Revenue for Genome and Head of Global Agency & Client Development. Before that, he was the President and Chief Revenue Officer of Interclick and President of Adconion Media group in North America, which was acquired by Amobee. Earlier in his career, Kaplan served in senior roles at Cablevision Sports, Paramount Pictures, CBS Outdoor, L90 Interactive, MetroLights Outdoor Media and MaxWorldwide Inc.

“Keith has been a friend and colleague for the entirety of our careers, but I have never had the opportunity to join him on the board of a company we mutually admire. Our deep ties within the industry will be reinforced by our new positions, and I look forward to the connections we will make for the company,” said Nick Pahade, COO, President and Board Member of Digital Remedy.

Also Read: Optimove Acquires DynamicMail Business to Expand Email Capabilities

Optimove Acquires DynamicMail Business to Expand Email Capabilities

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May 10, 2018

Optimove Acquires DynamicMail Business to Expand Email Capabilities — Optimove Acquires DynamicMail Business to Leap Ahead in Email Capabilities

The Acquisition of DynamicMail Strengthens Optimove’s Existing Email Capabilities and Provides Advanced Email Solutions for Smart Marketing Teams

Optimove, the maker of Relationship Marketing Hub, has acquired DynamicMail business from PowerInbox. PowerInbox is a leader in email real-time personalization and dynamic subscriber engagement. PowerInbox’s email components enable additional highly engaging content, such as video, countdown timers, store locators, and carousels.

At the time of this news, Pini Yakuel, CEO and Co-Founder of Optimove, said, “The first real digital marketing tool, email is still one of the most effective platforms in relationship marketing. That said, there is a huge opportunity to bring the type of personalization and interaction available in other channels to the inbox.”

Pini stated, “The acquisition of DynamicMail strengthens Optimove’s existing email capabilities and provides advanced email solutions for smart marketing teams.”

Read More: MuleSoft Announces Titan

DynamicMail Adds Muscle to Optimove’s Existing Email Product, Optimail

PowerInbox developed DynamicMail to automatically transform static email HTMLs into dynamic, interactive content so recipients get content that is updated for relevancy in real-time upon open. These capabilities will enhance Optimove’s existing email product, Optimail. Current and new users of Optimove will have access to these features.

CEO of Optimove said, “Emotional intelligence is a key element in relationship marketing today, and PowerInbox’s dynamic email technology offers great value to 300+ brands who use Optimove to communicate more effectively with their customers and provide outstanding customer experiences.”

Pini added, “By acquiring DynamicMail, Optimove provides a unique complement of solutions in email products and features, as well as greater service. It is an additional acceleration in an already existing momentum of the company’s growth.”

Optimove’s Acquisition of DynamicMail Follows the Company’s Introduction of Optimove 6.0

The acquired dynamic email innovations include real-time database reach and personalized optimization. These capabilities allow marketers to ensure that their emails refer only to products and services that are most relevant at the moment the recipient opens an email. For example, the technology excludes products from the view that are not currently in stock or put forth product recommendations specific to weather conditions at the reader’s current location.

Shefa Weinstein, General Manager of DynamicMail, said, “We see this as an amazing opportunity to join a great company, with a similar background. It’s the perfect match, and I look forward to combining our product with Optimove’s impressive capabilities.” Shefa will join Optimove’s roster along with approximately 10 employees.

Optimove’s acquisition of DynamicMail follows the company’s introduction of Optimove 6.0 in late 2017 and underscores the company’s commitment to offering smart marketers everything they need to take a scientific approach to relationship marketing.

Currently, Optimove’s unique technology suite helps marketers maximize customer spend, engagement, retention and lifetime value.

Publishers Clearing House Delivers 92% Audience Data Match Rate

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May 10, 2018

Publishers Clearing House Delivers 92% Audience Data Match Rate

Publishers Clearing House Achieves Industry Leading Consumer Engagement At Scale Across Owned Properties, Apps And Social Media; Delivers Higher Match Rate Compared to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Adobe Ad Cloud

Publishers Clearing House (PCH) has announced a series of substantial growth and engagement milestones that showcase PCH’s engagement with consumers that equals and often surpasses well-known publishers and marketers.

Read More: ABM Company Azalead is Now Jabmo

Currently, PCH reaches more than 70% of all US households and is one of the only premium digital publishers to combine first-party user data with purchase data to help marketers and brands connect directly with their precise audiences.

To put PCH’s current scale in perspective, people visit PCH’s digital properties more than 4 million times a day, viewing nearly 2 billion pages each month. They spend more than 8 minutes a day on PCH’s digital properties, higher than The Washington Post, Meredith (both 2.7 mins) and Google Sites (5.9 mins), according to comScore. PCH sites have more monthly unique visitors than Vice, Houzz, Barnes & Noble, and GSN, all per comScore.

PCH continues to grow its social audience on Facebook, with 4 million fans and over 6.6 million views of Inside PCH, a Facebook Live “TV” show that launched in July of 2017 and airs weekly.

“As publishers of all stripes address the issues of audience fragmentation and seek to increase the level of engagement they have with consumers, PCH has successfully done so through the unique opportunities afforded by having a wide variety of properties and apps keeping millions of people entertained and playing for multiple chances to win,” said Mark Cullinane, SVP & GM Digital, PCH. “Critical to marketers trying to reach consumers in a multi-channel environment–and in keeping with its storied lineage in direct marketing–PCH’s 92% audience data match rate is higher than Facebook’s 20-30%, LinkedIn’s 75%, and Adobe Ad Cloud’s 90%.”

PCH is the leading destination for millions of people who are passionate about chances to win entertainment. By combining snackable content with fresh and innovative promotions, PCH offers its users an engaging and highly differentiated entertainment experience which is omnichannel across the desktop, mobile web, and mobile applications.

Publishers Clearing House is a leading digital entertainment, commerce, and marketing company that has put consumer engagement and loyalty at the center of its client solutions for more than 60 years. The company is famous for its Prize Patrol which surprises winners on their doorsteps with oversized checks in amounts ranging from $1,000.00 to $10,000,000.00 while TV cameras are rolling.

Oracle’s Moat Is Now a LinkedIn Partner for Video Viewability and Analytics

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May 10, 2018

Oracle's Moat Is Now a LinkedIn Partner for Video Viewability and Analytics

Now, Moat Shall Offer Video Viewability and Attention Measurement Across the Major US Digital Platforms

Oracle’s Moat, a SaaS analytics measurement provider for marketers and publishers that is part of the Oracle Data Cloud, today announced it has been selected to measure viewability and attention signals on the LinkedIn platform. The collaboration will focus on LinkedIn’s video for Sponsored Content. With the integration, Moat will be the first provider to offer video viewability and attention measurement across the major US digital platforms.

Jonah Goodhart, SVP of Oracle Data Cloud and Co-Founder of Moat, said, “We are proud to collaborate with LinkedIn as we share a positive vision of the future of digital marketing. Moat measurement on LinkedIn marks a significant moment for marketers, who will have independent viewability and attention measurement in one place, on Moat, across all major US digital platform.”

At the time of this announcement, Tomer Cohen, VP of Product, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, said, “In today’s video advertising landscape, marketers require independent viewability insights to truly understand how their campaigns perform.”

Tomer added, “Our work with Moat will enable marketers on LinkedIn to leverage Moat’s industry-leading digital measurement platform, so they can make more informed advertising decisions.”

The collaboration will equip marketers with a deeper understanding of their campaign performance and results garnered from LinkedIn video inventory – and intends to make these services available to customers later this year. This reinforces Moat’s vision of providing widespread trusted and independent measurement in order to empower brands to make smarter media and creative decisions.

MuleSoft Announces Titan, the Next Major Release of Anypoint Platform to Build Secure, Multi-Cloud Application Networks

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May 10, 2018

MuleSoft Announces Titan, the Next Major Release of Anypoint Platform to Build Secure, Multi-Cloud Application Networks

Latest Release Strengthens Application Networks with New Runtime, Advanced Security and Monitoring Capabilities, and Flexible Multi-Cloud Deployment Model

MuleSoft, a provider of the leading platform for building application networks, announced Titan, the latest release of Anypoint Platform that features new capabilities to easily deploy, secure and monitor composite applications across cloud environments. Anypoint Platform unlocks the power of API-led connectivity, allowing organizations to connect apps, data and devices more rapidly and efficiently. With the Titan release, IT achieves greater agility and flexibility with a new multi-cloud container service for Mule runtimes, a modern security model for distributed architectures, and an advanced monitoring solution for end-to-end visibility. Powered by the next generation Mule 4 runtime engine, Anypoint Platform further enables a broader set of users to build their own applications at speed and drive new levels of innovation. The latest release accelerates MuleSoft’s vision to help businesses build powerful, secure application networks.

“At JetBlue, we’re focused on humanizing the travel experience and rethinking our approach to customer service, including deploying mobile payments and being the first airline to roll out onboard purchases using Apple Pay,” said Vitaly Faida, manager of IT product release engineering, JetBlue. “The tokenization capabilities within MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform allow us to secure credit card transactions flowing through JetBlue eCommerce Platform, so that we can drive innovation and agility without compromising security.”

“With a combined network of more than 750 Pilot Flying J Travel Centers across North America, MuleSoft is critical to enabling us to deliver innovation at scale. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform allows us to securely build and share APIs with external partners, as well as experiment with new technology, to provide a frictionless experience for our guests, including professional drivers and traveling motorists,” said Mike Rodgers, senior vice president, chief strategy and information officer, Pilot Flying J, winner of the 2018 Tech Innovator Award for Most Transformative Customer Experience. “Anypoint Platform increases our developer productivity by allowing us to quickly and securely integrate systems that deliver new capabilities, as well as improve our speed to market.”

Also Read: API Management Platform MuleSoft Inc. Files for IPO

Today’s Complex IT Landscape Increases Security Risks and Restricts Innovation

According to Saurabh Sharma, principal analyst at Ovum, “The modern IT landscape is growing increasingly complex, and the pace of change for today’s IT team is unrelenting. The adoption of mobile, cloud services, microservices and the internet of things (IoT) have rapidly expanded the boundaries of the enterprise, while IT’s ability to gain visibility to detect security attacks, mitigate business risk, and operate at the same scale is constrained. A single business transaction now crosses over dozens of different systems, and legacy security and monitoring systems can’t keep up. By leveraging a unified hybrid integration platform offering self-service and API-led connectivity capabilities, such as MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform, IT teams can achieve a more holistic view of the organization and across different IT environments, while enabling developers to securely self-serve and innovate for the business.”

Titan Drives New Levels of Security, Visibility and Flexibility for Building Multi-Cloud Application Networks

This new release accelerates digital transformation by providing increased security, visibility and flexibility, driving development speed and efficiency across the entire lifecycle of composite applications. Anypoint Platform now further enables IT to be a catalyst for transformation, allowing broader teams to focus on innovation.

Also Read: Salesforce-MuleSoft Deal: The Dynamic Shift in Marketing Cloud Equation

Titan highlights include:

A next-generation multi-cloud runtime drastically simplifies development and operations:

Mule 4 and enhanced Studio: New runtime version automates and simplifies common complex integration tasks and expands the scope of reusable assets to increase development speed.
Anypoint Runtime Fabric: Container service for Mule applications allows rapid deployment on most common cloud providers and on-premises, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, virtual machines and physical servers.

A modern security model for distributed architectures:

Anypoint Security: Policy-driven, enterprise-grade perimeter gateways, and automatic tokenization and encryption simplify how advanced security is delivered across the application network.
Managing compliance: Enables customers to meet government-mandated compliance standards, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), FedRAMP In Process, EU Data Residency and EU-US Privacy Shield.

New monitoring service enables actionable visibility across application networks:

Anypoint Monitoring: Real-time insights, dependency mapping and instant access to historical log data across APIs and integrations give operations teams the ability to speed up issue identification and root cause analysis.

More connectors expand MuleSoft’s ecosystem to scale application networks:

New MuleSoft certified connectors include SAP BusinessObjects BI, Docker, Microsoft Office 365, Google DFP, Edifecs XEngine Server, Zoho Books and Amazon DynamoDB.

“IT teams are struggling to manage the acceleration of new technology adoption, as well as the new capabilities and services being created inside of their organizations every day. With the Titan release, IT can fuel internal organization momentum to innovate and drive business outcomes faster, while maintaining security and control,” said Mark Dao, chief product officer, MuleSoft. “The release bolsters our API-led connectivity approach and commitment to our customers by delivering powerful and secure application networks that scale globally and can be deployed anywhere.”

Foap Expands Service Offering: Adds Video Creation to its Popular Missions Technology Platform

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May 10, 2018

Foap Expands Service Offering: Adds Video Creation to its Popular Missions Technology Platform

Brands Around the World Now Have Access to One-Of-Kind, Authentic Video Content from the Foap Community of Nearly 3mm Global Content Creators

Foap, a marketplace that connects brands and marketers with its global community of nearly 3 million content creators to generate exclusive, authentic visual content, announced that they will be expanding its popular Missions platform to include video. Brands around the world have leveraged Foap Missions to generate one-of-kind images for social media and digital marketing campaigns, now they can leverage the Foap content creator community to generate videos.

Foap Video Missions is now available in a public beta and addresses the growing popularity and results generated from digital video. According to Technavio’s market report, social media posts containing videos attract three times more inbound links than text posts, and according to Wyzowl, 81 percent of people have bought a product or service because they watched a brand’s video.

Also Read: Millennials Feel Social Media is the Most Effective Advertising Medium — But Don’t Count TV Ads Out Yet, New Horowitz Study Finds

“Brands that leverage Foap Missions generate high-value content that drives increased campaign engagement and ROI on social media,” said Adrian Dubler, CEO of Foap. “Video is a natural extension of our platform and provides brand marketers a one-stop-shop to generate global and authentic visual content that resonates with their key audiences online.”

How do Video Missions work?

Brands will generate a creative brief that describes the assets the campaign requires
Submit the brief to Foap
Sit back and wait for Foap’s specialized intelligence tools to provide the best videos based on the brand’s campaign criteria that were generated by Foap’s content creator community

Foap is a marketplace that connects brands and marketers with its global community of photographers and videographers to create and access authentic visual content that increases campaign engagement and return on investment (ROI). Brands like Five Star (ACCO Brands), AirAsia and BuddyFruits as well as top agencies like ADROC and Digitas New York, leverage Foap’s technology platform to generate high-quality images and videos to make their digital and social marketing campaigns more effective and engaging. Foap offers brands a large and global lens by giving them direct access to a diverse community of nearly 3 million professional and amateur photographers and videographers from more than 100 countries.

Madison Logic Partners with Marketo to Help B2B Marketers Quickly Convert Target Accounts

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May 10, 2018

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Madison Logic 2022 Future of Work Buyer Report Breaks Down Evolving Post-Pandemic B2B Buyer Behavior

Madison Logic to Help B2B Marketers Quickly Convert Target Accounts with a Comprehensive Global Account-Based Marketing Self-Serve Platform, ActivateABM™ Direct

Madison Logic, the leading global Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platform has announced that ActivateABM Direct, the industry’s first global self-service account-based marketing platform, would be made available to select Marketo customers prior to its full release.

At the time of this announcement, we asked Tom O’Regan about how important is the Marketo-Madison Logic partnership for the ABM ecosystem. Tom answered, “It is even more important now in light of Marketo’s recent acquisition of Bizible. Madison Logic has been the ABM platform of choice for Marketo for many years. For some time now, Marketo has leveraged Madison Logic and our data to reach in-market prospects who are actively researching marketing automation systems. We have helped the Marketo sales organization engage their top prospects and ultimately convert them into accounts. Leveraging our ABM, content marketing and lead solutions, they are generating a high volume of net new contacts.”

The platform unifies the power of ABM with Marketing Automation, enabling marketers to reach and engage prospects at every stage of the buyer journey, accelerate growth, and prove the ROI of their efforts.

For years, leading companies have leveraged Madison Logic’s ActivateABM platform to measure ABM effectiveness, shorten sales cycles and accelerate growth. With the release of ActivateABM Direct, companies of all sizes have access to the same powerful ABM platform to better measure and understand their programs and quickly convert target accounts.

ActivateABM Direct’s self-service model, allows B2B marketers to create account-based marketing programs in real-time, giving them control to create multi-channel programs that both drive awareness, generate leads at their target accounts, and ultimately accelerate conversion.

Madison Logic helps B2B marketers convert their best accounts faster by finding and engaging with the most influential individuals throughout the buyer journey.

Tom added, “Madison Logic’s ActivateABM platform already helps some of largest enterprises in the world shorten their sales cycles and accelerate their pipeline. Now, with ActivateABM Direct we aim to serve Marketo’s customers by helping them launch comprehensive account-based marketing programs that are simple, strategic and ROI focused.”

With ActivateABM™ Direct, Marketo customers now have access to an integrated, self-service account-based marketing platform to engage target accounts and convert them faster:

Integrate seamlessly with Marketo to instantly nurture target accounts and optimize the buyer journey
Engage target accounts with hyper-relevant messaging via digital advertising and content syndication
Align sales and marketing with account level insights that increase pipeline velocity, drive sales enablement and increase conversions

“We are excited by Madison Logic’s valuable offer to our customers as an Accelerate Partner and with ActivateABM Direct,” said Shai Alfandary, vice president, global head of ISVs and LaunchPoint ecosystem, Marketo. “Madison Logic’s ability to deliver content and digital ads that are customized to each stage of the buyer journey is a huge benefit.”

Tom concluded by saying, “Marketo is just the right size, and its leadership lends itself well to forward-looking organizations. Other marketing automation platforms are owned by much larger technology behemoths, and they are just one of many different software solutions. When you’re part of a larger organization, it’s harder to see where the market is going and to innovate like Marketo can. “

Nevion Announces Record Year, Reporting a Healthy 16% Overall Revenue Growth in 2017

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May 10, 2018

Nevion Announces Record Year, Reporting a Healthy 16% Overall Revenue Growth in 2017

Virtualized media production solutions provider sees impressive growth, led by IP networking solutions and services

Nevion, the award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, has reported 47% growth in IP and software defined networking solutions and 67% growth in its services business. Nevion’s overall revenue has grown by 16% year-on-year.

This growth reflects a shift in the market from pure hardware towards software-defined technologies and from product sales to solutions and value driven projects, as customers want to take advantage of the benefits offered by IP technology.

Geir Bryn-Jensen, CEO of Nevion, said: “2017 was a hugely exciting year for us as we continued to evolve our offering to respond to the evolution of the broadcasting industry. As the adoption of IP within broadcast continues to gather further pace, we are seeing more and more broadcasters and service providers turning to us for our services, consultation, and most importantly, our IP-based solutions.”

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In the past 12 months, Nevion has also gained 80 new B2B customers, completing major projects for the likes of TV 2 in Norway and Channel 11 in Thailand. It has announced partnerships with major IP companies, including Cisco and Mellanox.

Bryn-Jensen added: “These impressive results are the outcome of a successful transformation strategy we embarked upon a few years ago. We anticipated the industry’s move to IP, and understood the impact of the technology on organizations and their workflows. We set out our vision of bringing virtualization to real-time production and delivery, and used it as a guiding principle to build products, solutions, services and indeed our company to meet the needs our customers are now facing. We look forward to continuing the success in 2018 and beyond, and our first quarter is already confirming that. This is good news for us of course, but also for our customers and partners who are investing for their future.”

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May 10, 2018