DelPlaya Media Obtains 'TAG Registered' Status From the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)
DelPlaya Recently Completed the TAG Registration Process and Is Now Planning to Apply for a TAG “Certified Against Fraud” Seal
DelPlaya Media Inc. a direct source of programmatic mobile inventory and demand for agencies and publishers, recently announced that it has obtained “TAG Registration” from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). TAG is an advertising industry initiative created to fight criminal activity in the digital advertising supply chain. Several hundred companies in the digital advertising industry from around the world have now applied for TAG Registration, a prerequisite for participation in TAG’s certification seal programs. TAG Registered companies have been verified as legitimate participants in the digital advertising industry through a proprietary background check and review process powered by Dun & Bradstreet and subsequent approval by TAG. Following their approval, companies can be searched by name – or by their unique, persistent TAG-IDs – through the TAG Registry.
DelPlaya recently completed the TAG registration process and is now planning to apply for a TAG “Certified Against Fraud” seal.
Mike Zaneis
“Our industry’s efforts to fight fraud, combat malware, stop piracy and improve transparency are building tremendous momentum, as hundreds of companies obtain TAG Registration and take part in our certification programs. We commend DelPlaya Media for becoming TAG Registered and working with us to create a safe and trustworthy framework for the continued growth and success of digital advertising,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG.
“DelPlaya is committed to growing a digital advertising ecosystem for mobile audiences that advertisers can justifiably trust. We are proud to join the efforts shepherded by TAG in the fight for higher standards and for elevating the quality of the industry as a whole,” said Jeff Pescatello, EVP of Sales at DelPlaya Media, Inc.
DelPlaya is a Santa Barbara, California-based company that works directly with digital media publishers to market their audio, CTV/OTT, native, display and video inventory to advertising agencies and brands. Simultaneously DelPlaya works with advertisers to reach audiences across all connected devices in innovative ways that drive results. DelPlaya strives to maximize publishers’ revenue, improve the user experience, and increase advertisers’ return on their advertising investments.
Top-Rated Product Content Management and Retail Syndication Capabilities Now Paired with Actionable Insights to Enable True Closed-Loop Digital Merchandising
Salsify recently announced the launch of its Product Experience Management (PXM) platform, empowering brands to deliver compelling shopping experiences for consumers across every digital touchpoint.
In the past, companies have deployed an array of point solutions in order to approximate the concept of PXM. However, this patchwork method has inevitably led to major implementation and time-to-market issues, increased costs, limited interoperability, and larger feature gaps, leaving brands with a bunch of solutions that still don’t collectively address their actual business needs of effectively growing sales and market share using digital channels.
This latest expansion to Salsify’s software suite addresses the critical needs of modern brand manufacturers.
Recent consumer research found that 78% of US shoppers
would be more likely to buy if a retailer showed them
products with personally relevant images, videos, text, or reviews.
To win in this environment, brands need to intelligently activate and continually optimize their product content everywhere that consumers shop or otherwise experience their brand – whether that’s on ecommerce sites Amazon, Google, Walmart, Target, or their own website.
This is only possible through the use of PXM – the next step in the evolution of product information management (PIM). According to Forrester, the product experience management function is “the proverbial workbench for product managers and merchandisers to enrich content and create product experiences.”
PXM combines flexible product information management, advanced syndication, and actionable ecommerce analytics. The result is a platform that empowers brands to market products with the end consumer in mind. This shift enables closed-loop digital merchandising which helps brands speed time to market, build their brand online, and ultimately drive sales and market share.
With changes in consumer behavior and shifts in retail placing today’s brands under increasing pressure, Salsify’s PXM platform represents an integrated solution to help brands shape compelling product experiences across multiple retailers and digital endpoints. As the next generation of Salsify’s already top-rated product information management software, PXM gets great product content to the places brands need it, with underlying syndication and analytics capabilities that support a fast and lightweight response to emerging changes quickly and effectively without unnecessary overhead.
“Salsify’s capabilities with PXM really speak to what we see as our present and future needs for effectively driving and influencing sales through digital channels. Online grocery within the US market is catching up with the rest of the world, and our efforts with Salsify will be integral to our success for rapidly addressing consumer wants and needs across the digital landscape as this market continues to grow,” said Omar Haque, VP & Head of eCommerce at Acelerada at Bimbo Bakeries/Grupo Bimbo.
Jason Purcell
Jason Purcell, CEO of Salsify, added, “Existing technology solutions were not designed to address the rapid pace of change in the modern retail space. In category after category, global brand manufacturers are losing market share and suffering margin erosion as digital increasingly influences consumer shopping behavior – not just at checkout but at every step of the buying journey. Salsify’s PXM platform gives brands the tools to both successfully accelerate the digital transformation of their business, while maintaining the agility needed to address tomorrow’s challenges.”
Salsify PXM acts as a highly flexible product information repository and content activation engine, with the ability to crawl, integrate, and store all of the metrics and signals about online consumer experience related to products and brands.
Rich workflow capabilities nimbly address the needs of larger brands, helping manage and drive the high volume of activity around administering product and brand information. This includes working with 3rd party agencies or technology partners to enrich the information, such as image processing or language translation. Additionally, Salsify PXM expands premier functionality with top retailers, including Walmart Rich Media. Instead of having to upload content on an SKU-by-SKU basis, Salsify’s unique implementation allows brands to create content templates to upload product content across entire product assortments for Walmart.com. This means large companies no longer have to pick and choose which products to invest in.
Other Salsify-powered features embedded within the three pillars of PXM include:
Product Information Management:
Salsify’s product readiness dashboard allows users to view and edit product information they’re sending to a retailer prior to hitting publish, filter to see products in a given category, view validation errors, or quickly search for a specific product by the brand’s internal product ID. Additionally, new permission capabilities give brand managers the power to control which digital assets and products specific users are authorized to see and edit. Detailed audit history provides business users visibility into who changed what, and when.
Syndication:
Salsify supports and maintains the broadest set of retailer connections in the industry, and gives brands a comprehensive picture of their presence and performance on key, high-value retailers. A database of supported retailers is constantly updated and searchable on salsify.com. Salsify’s Amazon Marketplace connector enables first-party sellers to easily diversify into third-party on Amazon, giving them power and flexibility to deal with inventory challenges, resellers, and improve sales on long-tail products. Salsify also helps address digital product experiences on social networks like Facebook. Brands can use Salsify to directly push product content right into product-oriented Facebook ad products.
Actionable Analytics:
Salsify’s Insights uses machine learning applied across our cloud platform of more than 27 million products and deep retailer insights to drive a workflow of continuous content optimization. Analytics include product page performance recommendations, SEO product performance recommendations, brand compliance insights, and availability and buy box monitoring. This gives brands the ability to see exactly what buyers see on given product pages. This includes monitoring if a product is live and available on key retailers and understanding who is winning the buy box at what price. Brands can leverage this information to diagnose out of stock issues, lost buy box issues, minimum advertised price (MAP) violations by third-party sellers, possible counterfeit product listings, and other critical business considerations.
With consumers demanding increasingly personalized experiences, retailers adjusting to meet them, and brand loyalty progressively fickle across a number of product categories, the need for PXM software for brands has never been greater.
Asia-Pacific Marketers Focused on AI and Digital Skills, Says Asia-Pacific Marketers Focused on AI and Digital Skills, Says Adobe's 2018 Digital Trends Report
Adobe’s 2018 Digital Trends Report Found That Globally, Top-Performing Companies Are More Than Twice as Likely to Be Using AI for Marketing
Adobe and Econsultancy have released the Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2018 Digital Trends report, which provides insights into the state of digital marketing and the trends shaping the industry. This year’s report uncovers distinct differences between Asia-Pacific (APAC) marketers and their North American and European counterparts, particularly with regards to adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and investment in digital skills.
Investment and integration of technology is key to business success
Adobe’s 2018 Digital Trends report found that globally, top-performing companies are more than twice as likely to be using AI for marketing (28% vs. 12%). This aligns with Adobe’s “Future of Work: APAC Study” which found that organizations investing in workplace technology are more likely to be successful. Despite this, the Digital Trends report found that less than one in five global respondents (15%) said their companies are pushing forward with AI and nearly half of respondents (48%) said their organization has inconsistent integration between technologies.
While half (51%) of North American marketers see ‘no perceived need’ for AI, only a third (38%) of APAC marketers share this sentiment. Furthermore, APAC respondents (16%) were more likely to have an integrated, cloud-based technology stack, compared to their North American (10%) and European (9%) counterparts. This indicates that APAC marketers are ahead of their global counterparts when it comes to leveraging the power of new technologies to automate the delivery of personalized content, empowering them to work smarter and faster.
Sunder Madakshira
Sunder Madakshira, Head of Marketing, Adobe India, said, “New-age technologies have taken the centre stage for developing digital marketing strategies for leading businesses in India. With brands witnessing significant business impact from their digital transformation investments, Adobe is constantly innovating and investing in an integration of such disruptive technologies with business solutions to empower brands to deliver incredible experiences and become experience makers.”
Personalized experiences continue to drive quantifiable uplift for companies
Optimization of customer experience is the top priority for marketers in 2018 according to Adobe’s 2018 Digital Trends report, with 21% of APAC respondents saying it is the most exciting opportunity. APAC marketers are focusing on making the experience as personalized and relevant as possible, whereas North American and European respondents said their main focus is on making the experience as valuable as possible.
Organizations with ‘well-designed user journeys that facilitate clear communication and a seamless transaction’ are 57% more likely to be exceeding their business goals. Meanwhile, organizations with a ‘cross team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives’ are nearly twice as likely to exceed their top 2017 business goal. Yet, over a third (38%) of global respondents still do not have a cohesive plan, long-term view and executive support for the future of their customer.
“Producing tailored and personalized content for customers is the most important factor of consideration in delivering compelling experiences. The ever-growing demand for generating contextual engagements has compelled the brands to invest in newer technologies and designs based on data insights. Adobe, with its seamless offerings across creatives, marketing and analytics is empowering brands to deliver extra-ordinary digital experiences for their customers,” added Sunder.
Investment in digital skills and education pays dividends
Adobe’s 2018 Digital Trends report revealed that companies that are ‘combining digital marketing skills with technology’, are nearly twice as likely to have surpassed their 2017 business goals by a significant margin (20% vs. 11%). However, the intended level of investment in digital training for 2018 differs greatly by region. APAC marketers are more than twice as likely than their North American counterparts to invest in digital skills and education (34% vs. 16%), while those in Europe fall in the middle (25%).
In recent years, the booming business of video games has spawned a huge next generation of consumer engagement. For those who have been living under a rock—or at least far away from the monitor screens and events that are involving more than 70 million viewers and billions of dollars— this burgeoning phenomenon is the world of competitive eSports.
eSports, in which professional video game players face off against each other, has become a fast-expanding spectator sport filled with teams, leagues, and arenas (with yet a new one coming to Las Vegas in the next few months). And brand marketers of many stripes have taken notice.
Attracted by the highly involved target of primarily young adult males, many of these companies have begun to sponsor teams and leagues, building on the positive brand-building approaches they have taken in the worlds of live professional sports or music festivals.
But what many of these marketers are finding is that they need to invent new ways to engage Esports fans in ways that are tailored to the audiences and dynamics of this spectator sport.
Fans, whether rabid or casual, may be spending hundreds of hours and dollars to get closer to Esports, but they’re not reporting the same levels of fan satisfaction found in other sponsored professional sports or music activities.
Building The Fan Experience Requires A New Approach To Marketing
The reasons for this are evident when looking at the two types of gaming live events that dominate the sport, conventions, and competitions. Convention attendance is impressive. In 2017, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo, a leading video game industry conference) boasted 68,400 in attendance, a 31% year-over-year lift. PAX East in Boston pushed 80,000 fans through the turnstiles and PAX West, even more. Competitions definitely live on a spectrum, with most in hotel ballrooms and only a handful conducting arena-level productions in the US.
But at E3 fans waited upward of five hours to sample a Fallout 4 VR experience. Most popular attractions at PAX exceed an hour-long wait. At arena-level competitions, only the devoted diehards can sit through a four-hour Counter-Strike: Global Offensive match, where you’re limited to IMAG screen views of the same game map and limited player facial reactions.
Having spent the better part of the last year meeting with the top teams, leagues, and partners who are making Esports their next great portfolio property, it has become clear to me that building the fan experience requires new customized marketing approaches. Sure, these fans can stream on Twitch, or watch live at eSports events, but they are craving more interactive experiences with the sport and its players than either the leagues or teams are providing.
While the leagues, teams, and venues need to develop their own solutions, there is also a huge opportunity for brand marketers to create the kind of event-specific experiences that will generate greater loyalty and satisfaction with fans. It’s taken years for traditional sports sponsors to learn that just slapping your logo on a sign or booth isn’t enough and doesn’t resonate with fans. They need to accelerate this learning curve in order to start reaping the significant brand ROI available through investment in this sport.
For one thing, eSports finds itself in a space very similar to music festivals a decade ago. Like music festivals before it, eSports events are the physical manifestation of very strong consumer passions. As with music festivals, the core fan is very open to brand participation.
This Isn’t Just Talk—The Facts Prove It.
Momentum’s ongoing “We Know” research series has looked at fan involvement in music, sports and most recently gamers.
Among millennial respondents who engaged in a branded music experience, 93% like brands that sponsor live events. Specific to eSports, 68% of gamers believe sponsorship is good for the industry, and 62% are open to brands sponsoring a specific gamer or team.
But brands need to find ways to fully engage fans in relevant experiences that both enhance the sport and the brand.
Examples abound from other sponsorship venues. For the past three football seasons, for example, American Express set up a pre-game barge on Puget Sound that it called Hawks Island bringing Seattle Seahawks fans together with some team legends and Seattle area restauranteurs.
In a similarly experiential vein at the 2017 U.S. Open, Amex employed a combination of custom-built and responsive technologies, including air haptics and an ultra-sensitive motion capture system, to create an interactive live gaming experience, while also involving Venus Williams in social media activities.
These kinds of innovative customized experiences are what fans are craving and what brands can provide. While Esports is taking off big time in numbers, we’re still only at Stage 1 when it comes to building brand experiences that actively engage Esports fans. There are three basic steps to take in order to enhance these fan brand experiences.
Deliver a value proposition: Regardless of the tactic, don’t waste the fan’s time. Identify real value and deliver! Seat upgrades, talent access, VIP hospitality and fringe activities all provide access the fan is not expecting.
Build envy: Brands need to walk a fine line here, but this strong value proposition should be limited to the customer and visible to the non-customer without completely alienating the crowd. This audience is extremely socially vocal. Brands need to use that to their advantage and not be exposed by it.
Provide a new perspective: Regardless of the consumer passion, music, sports or Esports, fans are always looking to dive deeper. Brands should look to create activations that allow fans to see their favorite players in a new light. Imagine the power of VR delivering fans the ability to be a fly on the wall while their favorite player is pursuing a League of Legends victory.
Esports is not going anywhere, and the live event experience will be at the core of its growth. But significant thought needs to go into how to make the live event more appealing. For brands considering diving into the space or building additional equity in it, now is the time when they can make the most noise and be instrumental in molding the live event experience of the future.
Toluna Announces Global Growth Driven by Continued Digital Innovations
Toluna’s Growth Is Underpinned by a Vision to Transform and Expand The Market Research Industry
Toluna, a leading provider of on-demand, consumer insights, announced several significant business milestones recently, The announcements included double-digit revenue growth, year-over-year, driven by more than 40% percent revenue growth from its leading on-demand, automated consumer insights platform. The company further cemented its growth with the acquisition of KuRunData by parent company ITWP in January 2018, boosting its global panel size by nearly 40 percent to a total of 21+ million.
Toluna continues to be recognized for its leadership in the market research and technology sectors and was named on the MRS Top 20 Fastest-Growing Individual Agencies for 2017, and one of MarTech Radar 2018 Top 150 B2B Tech Companies you should follow – #7 Data Science, Visualization, and Marketing Analytics.
At the time of this announcement, Frédéric Charles Petit, CEO of Toluna, said, “Our growth and momentum is foremost a testament to the success of our clients. These milestones are something the entire team should be extremely proud of and underscore our commitment to powering the real-time insights that businesses need to compete and win in an on-demand economy.”
CEO Frédéric Petit credits the momentum to the company’s first and leading end-to-end automated platform that integrates fully with Toluna’s vast respondent community to deliver consumer insights in real-time.
Using the Toluna platform, clients have integrated on-demand access to sample, surveys, communities, and analytics at various service levels. They can access the platform directly in a DIY service level, leverage Toluna’s managed services, or create fully-customized digital consumer insights programs via engineered services.
Technology fuels every tool and service Toluna offers, and as a technology innovator, Toluna has another patent pending, this one supports proprietary methods and systems for avoiding network congestion on web-based survey platforms.
PowerPack: a fully automated, do-it-yourself (“DIY”) tool that provides marketers with actionable feedback on package design concepts directly from the consumers most relevant to their brand. PowerPack was the latest addition to Toluna’s full suite of automated insights solutions.
Digital Tracking: a single-source permission-based digital tracking solution that provides unprecedented real-time insight into online and mobile consumer behavior.
QuickCommunities: a tool that enables marketers to create their own branded digital community in minutes and engage directly with them.
Hyper-targeting within QuickSurveys: enabling users to find very precise demographically targeted survey respondents.
As part of its market leadership position, Toluna became a founding member of Insights on Demand Consortium in January 2018 alongside iconic brands such as Procter & Gamble, L’Oréal, Nestlé, Nature’s Way and innovative partners like W20, AKQA, Simmons Research and Harris Interactive. The group, which was launched by Toluna’s parent company ITWP is comprised of individuals and companies from all industries that are committed to evolving, refining, and promoting the principles of Insights on Demand™.
“The vision I had for a democratized market research industry was the driving force behind insights on demand and this consortium. The reception and interest from top global brands and digital agencies so far have been incredible, and we’re looking forward to our first official member meeting where we will begin to formally move these ideas forward in a constructive and collaborative way,” remarked Frédéric.
Venture Builder Enhance Closes Seed Round of $1.5 Million
MENA Venture Builder Seeks Rapid Expansion of Region‘s Leading Online Gifts Platformjoigifts.com and Growth of Online Marketplace Portfolio
Enhance, the holding company for online marketplaces for the Middle East and Africa, has raised a seed round of USD 1.5 million with investment from iNet, 500 Startups, Shorooq Investments and leading angel investors from the Gulf, Europe and the US. Enhance wholly owns Dubai-based joi (joigifts.com), the region’s leading online gifting platform, and plans to utilize funding towards its rapid expansion to the rest of the Middle East.
Founded in late 2015, Enhance employs a unique holding company model to overcome challenges experienced by regional startups. Since its launch, Enhance has built marketing, technical, and operational capabilities in its offices in Dubai, Riyadh, Jeddah and Cairo, and plans to use these capabilities beyond its current portfolio in subsequent vertical marketplaces.
“We have been involved in the startup ecosystem in the region from its early days as founders and angel investors and directly experienced the unique challenges of building startups in the Middle East. A Silicon Valley startup has immediate access to hundreds of millions of consumers in one market. In the Middle East, we have a fragmented market with different regulations, and fundraising remains a major challenge. Enhance is built to mitigate these challenges by being able to reuse its infrastructure, marketing, technical and funding resources across different businesses,” said Co-founder Alper Celen.
Co-founder Ritesh Tilani added, “It has been a great experience building an offline to online migration platform like joi. We now plan to use this experience to continue joi’s rapid growth and launch other vertical marketplaces that benefit from joi’s capabilities. With iNet, 500 Startups, Shorooq Investments and other prominent investors on-board, we have access to great regional and global know-how and funding which will be instrumental in the next phase of our growth.”
Abdullah Altamami, Investments Director for iNet, syndicated investment from iNet and leading Saudi angels to lead the close of the funding round. Altamami noted, “We believe in Enhance because of the experience and strong work ethic its founders bring to the table, and also because the Enhance model increases chances of success given the unique challenges in the markets it targets. During this time of inflection in our ecosystem, Enhance promises to build great businesses that will offer better digital experiences to consumers, who are increasingly moving online.”
Snoop Dogg Joins 'The Party' along with Matthew McConaughey, Marc Benioff, And Others at Sound Ventures' SXSW
Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures Announces, “The Party” and Reveals Additional Judges for PerfectPitch – the $100K StartUp Competition
Sound Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, announced new judges for PerfectPitch, the firm’s $100,000 pitch competition to be held at SXSW for early-stage entrepreneurs.
New to the judging roster are actor Matthew McConaughey, Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce, Melody McCloskey, CEO of StyleSeat and Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia – who will join Kutcher and Oseary. PerfectPitch will be held Saturday, March 10, 3:30-4: 40 pm at the Hotel Van Zandt in Austin, and is open to anyone with an SXSW pass.
PerfectPitch will feature five early-stage technology entrepreneurs selected from hundreds of applications to present their idea. The panel of judges will select one winner, who will be announced at the event and awarded $100,000. Salesforce, Forbes, and Cisco are lending support to PerfectPitch.
“We are thrilled to give entrepreneurs the stage to build awareness for their companies during one of the biggest tech events of the year. Our Sound team is eager to invest in the best and brightest minds driving innovation in tech and changing the world for the better. We are grateful to our esteemed judges for participating,” said Kutcher.
Also announced is the “The Party,” presented by Sound Ventures, in partnership with Salesforce – with a DJ set performance by Snoop Dogg. The invite-only annual SXSW party will take place March 10. Sponsorship support includes Audi, Michelob ULTRA Pure Gold and Sugarfina.
Sound Ventures is an LA-based venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs. Since its founding in early 2015, Sound has invested in a wide range of technology companies—from enterprise to consumer, early stage to growth. Sound brings a unique and differentiated network to the venture community: artists, marketers, innovators and public-sector thought-leaders.
Voice Shopping Set to Jump to $40 Billion By 2022, Rising From $2 Billion in 2018!
According to a leading global strategy consulting firm, OC&C, Voice-driven commerce is expected to jump to $40 Billion by 2022. Currently, the new-age channel for retail marketing is pegged at $2 Billion. The greatest push to this industry is pivoted on the Amazon-dominated household speaker penetration that is expected to soar to 55% over the next four years, from current numbers at 13%.
At the time of this announcement, John Franklin, Associate Partner, OC&C, said, “Voice commerce represents the next major disruption in the retail industry, and just as e-commerce and mobile commerce changed the retail landscape, shopping through smart speaker promises to do the same.The speed with which consumers are adopting smart speakers will translate into a number of opportunities and even more challenges for traditional retailers and consumer products companies.”
Voice shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion in 2022, up from $2 billion today, suggesting the new channel may well be the next major disruptive force in retail, according to data from OC&C Strategy Consultants.
The survey showed growth in the voice segment will be driven by a surge in the number of homes using smart speakers, rising to 55% from 13% percent today. Meanwhile, Amazon is poised to dominate the new channel with the largest market share, currently more than twice that of its nearest competitor.
Three tech behemoths lead the virtual assistant AI space in the US – Amazon’s Echo has 10% penetration of US homes; Google’s Home, 4%, and Microsoft’s Cortana, 2%.
Apple has been left behind. Siri lacks the AI capabilities of Google, while their HomePod has only just hit the market.
Only 39% of consumers trust the “personalized” product selection of smart speakers.
Smart speaker owners skew younger and more affluent and are more likely to have children.
Voice purchases tend to be stand-alone, lower value items.
The three most commonly shopped categories through voice are commoditized — grocery (20%), entertainment (19%) and electronics (17%). Clothing is fourth at 8%.
Amazon Wields the Most Power in Voice Shopping
“Amazon Choice” status will be more important than ever. Those products that attain Amazon “Choice” status typically realize a sales boost of more than 3X. Losing Amazon “Choice” status typically leads to a 30% reduction in sales.
Amazon has a firm hold on consumers’ buying decisions, with 85% of consumers selecting the products Amazon suggests.
Currently, 45% of grocery orders replace existing store or online purchases, the vast majority are made through Amazon Fresh.
Retailers Need to Adapt to Succeed in Voice Shopping
Retailers must develop “skills,” or connected applications, that integrate into current voice offers. There are currently only 39 such apps within the voice shopping category.
To drive additional spending and higher price points, retailers should provide inspiration in the form of new recipes, for example.
Building trust has a direct correlation with overall ratings. Only 39% of consumers trust in the “personalized” product selection of smart speakers and only 44% believe they offer the best value selection of products.
How Consumer Packaged Goods Can Succeed
Consumer goods businesses must maintain Amazon’s “Choice” status, even though Amazon’s “Choice” products changes frequently (4-5% daily) due to stock or delivery speed issues.
Ensuring that products are easy to find is critical, as 69% of customers know the exact product they wish to buy.
Tailoring search terms to ensure distinctiveness (e.g., “sensitive toothpaste”) increases the chances that a product will be “found.”
Coye Nokes, Partner, OC&C, added,“In order to properly position themselves, retailers must ask themselves key questions, such as: What objectives am I trying to meet? How should I tailor my voice proposition to meet those objectives? Which AI system is best suited to enabling those objectives? How can I build consumer trust in my product recommendations? How can I make the order economics work? The companies that are able to answer those questions most clearly are likely to be the winners in this next phase of retail disruption.”
Fierce Pace of Tech Disruption Force Companies to Innovate via M&A
In the Latest Report Focusing on Tech Disruptions, Hampleton Partners Highlights Increased Private Equity Activity Against a Cyclical Downward Trend in Deal Volumes and Value
The fierce pace of technology disruption is forcing companies to resort to M&As to innovate, to avoid being left behind. In their latest report, Hampleton Partners’ Tech M&A Outlook 2020, the international mergers and acquisitions advisor, outlined how traditional companies remain under pressure to quickly and effectively integrate new technologies such as Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, IoT, Big Data, and the cloud into their product and service offerings to avoid being rendered obsolete by new market entrants that are causing profound shifts in value chains and customer behaviours.
This is resulting in rising strategic deal valuations for disruptive, young and scalable tech companies, with increasing activity from private equity and their portfolio companies compared to strategic investors. This, despite an overall cyclical downward trend in transaction volume and total disclosed value from 4.043 and $506 billion in 2016 to 3.441 and $325 billion in 2017.
Continued Tech Disruptions Forces Established Vendors and New Market Entrants to Innovate and Stay Competitive
Miro Parizek
Miro Parizek, Founder and Principal Partner, Hampleton Partners, said, “Despite the slowdown in the second half of last year, the overall outlook in the foreseeable future is very positive as continued technological disruption forces established vendors and new market entrants to innovate and stay competitive via tech M&A.”
Miro added, “We are in the midst of a longer lasting upcycle and expect a rebound in deal volumes this year. The technological and resulting behavioural and social change is forcing established companies in industries such as financial services, automotive, healthcare and high-tech industrials to acquire and integrate companies at the leading-edge of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cybersecurity and many other technologies to ensure they can stay relevant and launch new products and services into the marketplace quickly. The alternative is simply to be left behind.”
Private equity firms – with more cash at their disposal than ever before – and their portfolio companies, completed a total of 882 deals, more than a quarter (26 percent of all tech 2017 M&A deal transactions. And such firms are becoming increasingly present in mega-deals, such as the acquisition of Scandinavia’s largest payments processor, Nets A/S, for $5.3 billion by a consortium led by U.S. buyout firm Hellman & Friedman LLC at a 30 percent share premium and 24x earnings.
Eight Sectors Seeing Rapid Pace of Tech Disruptions
In their current edition, Hampleton Partners’ Tech M&A Outlook 2020 Market Report offers an outlook on eight sectors- automotive technology; digital marketing; e-commerce; enterprise software; fintech; healthtech; high-tech industrials and Industry 4.0 and IT services.
Sellics Launches Amazon Vendor Optimization Software for Brands
Sellics Vendor Edition Software Enables Brands to Perform Amazon SEO, Optimize Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) Campaigns to See Increased ROI
Sellics, the leading All-in-One Amazon software tool for third-party sellers, has released Vendor Edition, the first Amazon optimization platform developed for vendors selling wholesale to Amazon. Sellics’ Vendor Edition software enables brands to optimize for Amazon search marketing (‘Amazon SEO’), automate Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ad campaigns, manage customer reviews, and monitor Buy Box ownership.
At the time of this latest announcement, Franz Jordan, CEO of Sellics, said, “Global brands are increasingly aware they need an Amazon strategy. However many are at a loss of how to get started and struggle to identify the tools they need to drive sales growth and ensure their Amazon operations run smoothly.”
Franz added, “Interestingly when Sellics was launched in 2014, it was the third-party Amazon sellers who first recognized the need for a dedicated Amazon strategy, personnel, and software.”
Sellics is a part of Amazon’s Official Global Solution Provider Network, and the Sellics Vendor Edition pulls data directly from Amazon via the Amazon Advertising API integration.
At the time of this announcement, Chad Baures, Director of Search Marketing, FRWD Agency, said, “We’ve been seeing great results for our clients on Amazon, and using Sellics allows us to bypass many of the limited functionalities we struggled with in Vendor Central and the AMS interface. The ease of using Sellics to review campaign performance and optimize keywords and ASINs in Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) campaigns has saved us an enormous amount of time and effort.”
Sellics released an early version of Vendor Edition last year, and their enterprise clients include Lego and Bosch, who use Sellics’ advanced proprietary software to manage and scale their Amazon operations.
Currently, Sellics is a leading All-in-One Amazon software platform that powers both SMBs and enterprises to scale their success on Amazon. Businesses of all sizes leverage Sellics to boost their organic traffic on Amazon, run profitable ad campaigns, track profit margins, manage customer reviews, and much more.
TechBytes with Zackary Cantor, Director, Decision Sciences - GlobalWide Media
Zackary Cantor Director, Decision Sciences, GlobalWide Media
As audience-based advertising strategies continue to draw a sizeable amount of ad dollars into the tech industry, the definitions of “Digital Transformation’ and “Digital Innovation” have begun to converge for businesses. Brands are now focusing on creating personalized ads that match up to the modern customer experience standards. To know more about the state of adtech in 2018 and the major pain points that advertisers should get rid of, we spoke to Zackary Cantor, Director of Decision Sciences at GlobalWide Media.
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Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be part of an advertising technology company?
I lead Decision Sciences at GlobalWide Media (GWM), the team responsible for developing and implementing the predictive analytic solutions that underpin our ad-serving logic. I started my career as a financial analyst within a global investment management firm. However, it didn’t take very long before I realized that the culture at these investment firms is not for me. Luckily, this realization coincided with an industry-wide hiring boom in which ad tech companies were looking to ramp up their data and analytics organizations, and financial analysts like me were heavily targeted by recruiters.
What has kept me interested and inspired after moving to ad tech is the constant supply of novel, interesting problems that we need to solve to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving climate. The industry has also served me well from a work culture perspective in that work-life balance is prioritized, organizations are less hierarchical and advancement is truly merit-based; none of which I found to be true in finance.
From the point of view of a data-driven technology company, how would you define “Digital Transformation’ and “Digital Innovation”, respectively?
“Digital Innovation” is any technology, product or service that achieves the goal of making digital experiences more relevant. Incremental innovations typically come in the form of incorporating new data sources or identifying novel applications of existing data. Whereas “Digital Transformation” is radical or disruptive innovation, which typically introduces a new paradigm or approach within digital advertising. A recent example from GWM was the introduction of our RYPL platform.
How do personalized ads match up to the modern-day customer experience standards?
I think the modern-day consumer would argue it’s a poor match. This is partially the result of the high bar set by innovations like a la carte TV or product customizer tools like those offered by Nike and Harley Davidson, just to name a few. However, this is also partially the result of the basic rationale behind marketing, and the resulting incentive structures. Companies serve ads to prospective customers to increase their market-share or otherwise increase revenue. It is impossible to achieve growth without engaging a group of people who ultimately won’t be interested in your product or service.
The key for marketers is to ensure the stockpiles of consumer data that we’ve been generating are intelligently deployed, increasing predictive accuracy and diminishing the error margin in personalized advertising. I’m a big proponent of open-source solutions like the R Project for Statistical Computing or the Python scientific computing packages like NumPy, pandas, etc.
What are the major pain points for advertisers when they deal with the multi-touch video engagements?
In our experience, the biggest pain point is sticker shock, especially when an advertiser has strict direct response goals but deploys traditionally upper-funnel, expensive media executions like multi-touch video. An alternative is to combine high awareness video engagements, which introduce new prospects in the funnel, with lower-funnel display executions that provide a more cost-efficient call-to-action.
How do you see the convergence of Data Science, Programmatic and Customer Experience technologies impact advertising budgets?
I believe advertising budgets will continue to grow at more or less the same rate. What will change is the distribution of advertising dollars. For example, the cord-cutting trend means traditional television advertising budgets are being slashed in favor of digital executions that tap into OTT. Within digital, the efficiency of programmatic advertising technologies, combined with the highly-targeted messaging made possible by data science, means that customer acquisition carries a smaller price tag. As a result, we’re seeing larger budgets for upper-funnel, high awareness digital media campaigns.
What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2018?
GWM has focused on developing an in-house marketing technology stack consisting of a proprietary DMP, a predictive analytics platform, and an exchange-integrated DSP. GWM enhances its stack by working with 3rd parties for data enhancement (Oracle Data Cloud, Adobe Audience Manager), advertising verification (MOAT, Double-Verify, IAS) and independent media attribution (NCS, Placed, Convertro, VisualIQ).
Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign at GlobalWide Media?
Our most recent standout digital campaign involved testing RYPL, our newest platform capability, for JohnnyWas, a national apparel brand. RYPL identifies users that are inclined to influence others and then intelligently messages those users to stimulate the offline conversation about a brand. The RYPL-powered campaign generated a 39% lift in sales over the campaign that messaged only prospective consumers. Rob Trauber, CEO of JohnnyWas, attributes this success to the authenticity and credibility that comes from hearing about a brand from a trusted peer rather than a paid celebrity.
How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader? How do you leverage AI capabilities at GlobalWide Media?
GWM has made significant investments in technology to support a platform capable of real-time marketing automation. Such technologies were viewed as cutting-edge just a few years ago, but are increasingly becoming that standard. That said, it is important to understand that AI is a tool for accomplishing a marketing goal, but is not the “be all and end all” solution. The TI-83 calculator is a wonderful device capable of performing all manner of statistical calculations. However, if I gave my mother the TI-83 and asked her to use it on the AP Statistics exam, I dare say she wouldn’t fare very well. We in the industry should be mindful that machine-learning, by any other name, can produce calamitous results when employed by people who don’t have the domain expertise to understand the problem being solved. At GWM, we combine years of marketing experience with cutting-edge predictive analytics to produce superior performance outcomes for our clients.
[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Real-time personalization is still nascent. It’s never been about a lack of data science or analytics, rather the biggest factor slowing customization down is an outcome to optimize towards.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]
What inspired you to launch a mobile advertising technology platform?
I’ve been in digital advertising for a little over 10 years. My first company, Spongecell, pivoted into display advertising after raising money from IPG and I’ve been fascinated with the industry ever since.
What are the core tenets of time-based advertising in 2018?
We start with the belief that advertisers should only have to pay for media that captures audience attention, and publishers should know the quality and relevance of ads running on their site. Most importantly, the entire industry is aligned around showing people ads that they actually want to see.
How do you see media buying models for mobile evolving with the availability of cross-device measurement technologies?
The promise of cross-device technologies is appealing to every brand, but the accuracy of most probabilistic models is pretty iffy. So for now, I don’t see media buying evolving in very meaningful ways due to cross-device.
How has the maturity of data science and analytics influenced the creation of real-time customized experiences for mobile?
Real-time personalization is still nascent. It’s never been about a lack of data science or analytics, rather the biggest factor slowing customization down is an outcome to optimize towards. How does one judge a relevant ad from an irrelevant one? This is one of the most exciting applications of attention data — when you put consumers in charge of how long they spend with advertising, that duration becomes a quantifiable measure of relevance and quality.
Which startups in the martech/ad tech industry are you watching/keen on right now?
I’m most interested in what the different identity federations like DigiTrust and the Advertising ID Consortium are doing and projects in the blockchain + media space.
Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign or a unique customer success story at Parsec?
In February 2017, we worked with BMW to raise awareness for the M760i. Across the entire campaign, we were able to increase awareness by 70%. Specifically, we saw a 6% lift in awareness per second that consumers chose to spend on the ad.
How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
Investing in people and systems that can better leverage data. AI is no different than any data-driven technology.
How do you bring people and technology together at Parsec?
We use chat, voice and video calls to bring our offices together as a tightly knit team while allowing our employees to work remotely.
Parsec is the first platform to sell media using attention metrics. It’s a rewarding product to work on as it solves a real problem in the industry: the way we transact media misaligns incentives between publishers and advertisers, and creates poor experiences for readers. Parsec was created by a group of senior advertising execs and seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve built agencies, digital publishers and ad tech companies. We’re headquartered in NYC and have offices in Los Angeles, Chicago and London.
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.
Dataiku Once Again in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms
Dataiku Believes the Position Reflects the Work They’ve Done to Focus on Collaborative Features That Enable Users to Quickly Get Started with Machine Learning and Its Support for Open-Source Solutions
Dataiku, the enterprise platform for data teams that moves businesses along their journey to artificial intelligence (AI), was named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms for the second consecutive year. Dataiku believes the position reflects the work they’ve done to focus on collaborative features that enable users to quickly get started with machine learning and its support for open-source solutions.
Dataiku’s unique solution removes roadblocks that allow enterprises to move quickly on the path to producing data projects while also providing the structure and stability necessary for long-term success. The platform, which is built for coders and non-coders alike, ensures successful leveraging of existing staff on the data journey, inclusive of all teams and profiles across the enterprise.
“Businesses today need to be innovative with data to compete, and achieving this means not spending precious time on administrative, organizational, or repetitive tasks. We’re proud to be recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms as a Visionary for the second year in a row. In the year to come, our company plans to develop more features to ease model management and deployment to bring produced data science to even more companies in the year to come,” said Florian Douetteau, CEO of Dataiku.
Hundreds of companies use Dataiku on a daily basis to enable their teams to build, deploy, and monitor predictive data flows to solve industry-wide problems like fraud, churn, supply chain optimization, predictive maintenance, and much more. In 2017, Dataiku doubled in size and tripled their revenue.
Data and analytics leaders are fueling digital transformation, creating monetization opportunities, improving the customer experience and reshaping industries. The Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, that starts today, March 5, provides the tools to build on the fundamentals of data management, business intelligence (BI), and analytics; harness innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT); and accelerate the shift toward a data-driven culture to lead the way to better business outcomes.
Leading Digital Transaction Management Technology Provider Offers New Connectors for Microsoft Sharepoint, Office365, Outlook, Dynamics and Salesforce
Namirial, leading provider of Digital Transaction Management (DTM) software and trust services that help people simplify how business gets done digitally announced a suite of connectors that enable Microsoft and Salesforce users to much more easily and seamlessly incorporate electronic signing into their existing document and sales processes.
“We have intensively analysed the many connectors available for other digital transaction management solutions and identified that most conectors just provide either simple re-directs or inline frames for HTML. Our goal was to raise the bar with our connectors and provide a native application experience and a higher level of interoperability between our products,” said Luigi Tomasini, CEO of Namirial “We have long offered native plug-ins for Microsoft products, but user expectations have changed. So, we spent a lot of time working with a strategic partner, CompuSight, to define exactly what users expect from integrations today. That’s what these new integrations provide.”
“Our new connectors represent the next maturity level in Microsoft and Saleforce integrations,” said Antonio Taurisano, General Manager, Digital Transaction Management for Namirial Group. “Our customers are particularly discerning in their expectations regarding user experience. They expect these integrations to automatically pull and push data to all of the relevant entities in their CRM systems while also operating with the same look and feel as the native products.”
“We’ve designed a number of connectors for many different vendors,” said Adi Saric, CEO of CompuSight “Namirial wanted us to significantly surpass what we’d done for anyone else. I think that’s one of the reasons these integrations passed the certification process with Microsoft and Salesforce so quickly.”
Namirial is a global leader in trusted security for Digital Transaction Management with solutions for user electronic identification, multi-factor authentication, digital certificates, electronic signature, electronic invoicing, and digital archiving. The company has been certified for many products and services including being an eIDAS Qualified Trust Service Provider.
Ad Tech Company Doubles Its Reach By Acquiring Leading Provider Of Advertising Placements
Proper Media, a full-service, independent ad tech company based in San Diego, today announced the acquisition of Spoutable.com, a technology company reinventing web monetization through its suite of highly viewable and engaging advertising placements.
Spoutable’s approach combines unique ad units, a variety of media types, and machine learning to create new and high-yielding ad inventory for premium publishers. With more than 2 billion monthly ad impressions, the firm nearly doubles Proper Media’s reach with its highly viewable and engaging advertising placements. On a pro forma basis, the company generated $39 million of revenue and was profitable in 2017.
“We are excited to have this powerhouse addition to help us scale and broaden services in this next stage of growth,” says Chris Richmond, CEO of Proper Media. “This acquisition expands the capabilities of Proper Media’s management of advertising for large-scale publishers by adding one-off, unique and highly engaging units running across hundreds of publishers to fully service the industry at scale.”
Eight of the employees from Spoutable have joined Proper Media, including CEO Jon Belmonte and CTO Josh Schlesser. Prior to Spoutable, Belmonte and Schlesser worked closely together at ACTIVE Network (ACTV), which was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2013 for $1 billion.
In addition to Proper Media, majority shareholders Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup directly own a variety of websites, such as TVTropes.org, which generates more than 80 million monthly page views. Their experience as publishers themselves enables them to understand what publishers are looking for in a monetization partner.
Proper Media is a full-service, independent media company that is ready and eager to tackle the toughest problems in the digital landscape for our publishers and advertising partners. They own, operate, and represent top-ranked web properties, and have the skills, tools, and know-how.
Spoutable is a technology company reinventing web monetization through its suite of highly engaging, and often incremental, advertising placements. The platform mixes various forms of promoted and native media – including content, video, display, quick links, email capture, commerce widgets – into a single placement, then leverages its ML-based optimization engine to select the unit design that best serves the website’s monetization and engagement objectives. And all placements are simply managed through a single tag integration.
Scale, Drive Revenue, and Win with ABM – 3 Lessons from B2BMX
Leading ABM Practitioners List Three Learnings from B2BMX That Are Worth Highlighting
There were a number of informative ABM sessions at B2BMX this year. They covered everything from AI and what’s in the hype to winning case studies and sales support.
In between sessions, I had the chance to catch up a few of the Triblio users who were on stage–
Jen Dimas, VP Integrated Marketing and Business Operation, initiated and continues to lead a seasoned, full-funnel ABM program at Plex. She’s been named “one of the world’s leading practitioners” by TOPO.
Ciaran Mahoney is the Director of Demand Generation at FinancialForce, the number one cloud ERP built on the Salesforce platform.
Michelle McCabe, Manager of Demand Generation and Marketing Operations at Trapeze Group, which took home a “Finny” for Best Account-Based Marketing Campaign.
I got the inside scoop on one-on-one interviews and found three lessons that are worth highlighting. All three leading practitioners–
Use tiered account segmentation
Focus their marketing efforts on revenue generation
Execute omnichannel campaigns
Below are the three key ABM strategies illustrated by 3 case studies.
Use a Tiered Strategy to Scale ABM
Jennifer ‘Jen’ Pockell Dimas
Plex, a leading manufacturing cloud ERP, serves various industries around the world. Despite its large market potential, Plex’s marketing isn’t scattered. It remains focused and never swerves from a set list of target accounts.
Of course, Plex revisits this account list periodically, adding new targets and removing closed opportunities, but in the end, Plex is 100% account-based. It runs an impressive, full-funnel ABM operation.
According to Jen Dimas, “I think of everything we do as account-based because we focus every single marketing activity on that list.”
How can it Plex scale an account-based strategy to reach over 40,000 accounts?
The reason Dimas’s team can focus on its master account list is that its uses a tiered account segmentation strategy. Plex organizes its target accounts by geography, verticals, and buyer cycle stage to create tiered account lists. This way, the message doesn’t get diluted to a wide-ranging audience. Instead, their strategic segmentation, powered by cutting-edge MarTech solutions, enables Plex to reach over 40,000 accounts with personalized campaigns, landing pages, and content hubs.
Plex can easily create large volumes of seemingly custom campaigns on account-based platforms that execute and personalize campaigns at scale. To optimize these campaigns, they receive account-based insights with tools like Triblio. They can filter these reports for, let’s say, the top 25 accounts that have been on the site and see which segments they belong to, which pages they’ve visited, and when.
Always be Driving Pipeline/Revenue
Ciaran Mahoney, FinancialForce
Demand generation involves advertising campaigns, SEO, paid media, email, direct mail, and the list goes on. What’s different for Ciaran Mahoney’s team at FinancialForce is that they can see above all the day-to-day activities across various channels and say, “Really, my number one KPI is driving pipeline for our sales team.”
Why did they move to an ABM strategy?
Yes, ABM can help them focus on a really defined target market. Yes, it can help them penetrate into target accounts across various channels. Yes, it can help them deliver personalized campaigns at scale. But in the end, FinancialForce is in the ABM game because ABM helps them grow pipeline and generate revenue.
FinancialForce ensures that its marketing campaigns impact pipeline and revenue by investing in sales enablement. As Mahoney said, “Our ABM strategy at FinancialForce is around delivering segmented playbooks through SDRs and our AEs to our target accounts. We use a wide range of tools and channels to be able to deliver them a personalized message at right time with right segmentation.” In other words, marketing’s responsibilities don’t end after they press play.
Marketers at FinancialForce follow their campaigns and manage SDR outbound campaigns to follow-up with active, in-target accounts.
Another sign of its devotion to revenue generation lies in its segmentation. At FinancialForce, marketing segments mirror sales. Because their SDRs, who are assigned to AEs, report to marketing, their marketing segments are also organized by sales territory. This neatly aligned segmentation strategy further strengthens the tie between marketing efforts and pipeline numbers.
In the end, Mahoney mentions that “the journey to a complete ABM strategy really requires you to use vendors that can support you on that journey.” They’re strategically moving budget towards select vendors because “there are only certain vendors out there that can target your target accounts.”
When you’re on the cutting edge of B2B marketing, and you’re reinventing the way vendors should interact with buyers, your efforts are only made fruitious by account-based tools. FinancialForce utilizes an ecosystem of MarTech tools to help enrich their data, automate email, execute personalizations, trigger sales actions. Solutions include Triblio, Salesforce, Marketo, Sendoso, and ZenIQ.
These tools are well curated so that its entire MarTech stack works together towards revenue generation.
Win with Omnichannel Orchestration
Michelle McCabe, Trapeze Group
In an interview with Michelle McCabe, she explained how Trapeze Group brought home a “Finny” for Best Account-Based Marketing Campaign. Trapeze Group is a Toronto-based hardware and software provider for public transportation systems throughout the world. Its marketing team didn’t bombard public transport centers with a bunch of letters or a bunch of emails. It spread its touches across the various touch points in the day-in-a-life of a buyer for an omnichannel approach.
From direct mail to social campaigns, events, email, personalized websites, and display ads, McCabe’s team drove awareness, reinforced its messaging, and activated sales.
The results?
The key account they were going after is set to close by the end of this quarter.
Webinar: Will your Media Company Thrive in the Over-the-Top Revolution?
Industry Experts from Frost & Sullivan Would Host An Interactive Briefing on the Future of the Media Industry and the Over-The-Top Business Strategies That Should Be Considered
As OTT video goes mainstream, it keeps content distributors awake, wondering if they are truly prepared for a large-scale mass distribution of OTT video.
Key Benefits of Attending the Briefing on Over-the-Top Video Services
Gain insight on the future of the media industry
Find out the 8 applications within the workflow of an OTT operation
Understand viewership trends for digital versus traditional television
Identify challenges for OTT video services as well as the modern-day approaches to OTT video delivery workflow.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the global OTT video service revenue is expected to reach $36 billion by 2021, increasing from 1.2 billion online video viewers in 2017 to over 2 billion in 2021.
While mobile video consumption is on the rise, accounting for 50% of the overall online video viewership, maturing markets such as the United States and Europe, have an increasing number of Over-the-Top viewers on TV sets.
In fact, 28% of US broadband households in 2017 used a smart TV as a streaming device.
The webinar will offer expert insight from Vidya S Nath, Digital Media Director at Frost & Sullivan, Dhaval Ponda, Global Head of Sales & Business Development, Media & Entertainment Services and Jeremy Dujardin, Chief Technology Officer, Media & Entertainment Services, both from Tata Communications.
“The challenges of scalability and time to market compels every content company to have a robust and agile strategy in place before launching an OTT service for a critical mass of viewers. This often means the service provider has to invest not only in content but also in technology and infrastructure that enhances the Quality of Experience (QoE) for the end user,” explained Vidya Nath.
Let’s say you sell an enterprise product or solution, and your sales cycle is 4-6 months. Maybe longer.
What possible growth-hacking test done next week (or even next month) is going to deliver an immediate sales return? How can you possibly evaluate the effectiveness of a short-term test if it takes far longer to see actual, revenue-producing and beer-buying results?
This slippery slope applies to more than just tactical campaigns. If you’re evaluating immediate value/ROI from a new campaign, you’re looking at leading indicators which in most cases translates to some version of “more.” But “more” might not necessarily be better. Getting more clicks doesn’t naturally translate to better leads.
Generating higher response rates doesn’t mean those responses are from prospects you can sell something to; for one, you need to know considerably more about who those prospects are before getting your hopes up. Are they reachable by phone and email? What do they care about?
Setting these questions aside for later, you’re now positioned at the center of the dangerously slippery slope. And when this stance is applied to strategic and process improvements, your goals tend not to get prioritized in lieu of those tactical campaigns that “look better” and may make you feel better short term.
Building Confidence For A Predictable Future
So here’s what happens…
Organizations continue to prioritize knee-jerk, tactical, random acts of marketing that show a lot of activity and activity-based metrics. And they fail to invest in process improvements, sales development programs and data accuracy methodologies that can create long-term impact and results but are more difficult to justify with short-term results.
About a year ago, for example, we worked with a client to develop a systematic sales development system between the sales and marketing teams. If the client were to evaluate the ROI of that effort after 2-3 months, it could have been seen as a fail. Where are our closed deals? Where’s the pipeline?!
Fortunately, this client was able to balance short-term needs with building for the long-haul. Twelve months later, their revenue was up 97 percent year-over-year. And in Q2 of last year (2017), they did more sales than they did all of last year.
So what’s your priority? A few more leads this month and growth-hacking your way to week-by-week tactical results, or investment in a system of both streamlined practices and high-quality data within your B2B contact database to drive long-term, repeatable, scalable, and predictable growth?
If you answered both, that’s OK too. Just don’t ignore the big picture.
Centro’s Programmatic Ad System Delivers Digital Media Buying, Workflow, Measurement and Business Intelligence; Additional Release Centralizes Inventory Availability Data from All Channels and Markets
Centro, a provider of enterprise-class software for digital advertising, today announced that users of its Basis programmatic ad platform will be able to converge ad creative performance data from major delivery sources. Basis now offers users creative reporting across their campaigns, providing granular ad-level data from DoubleClick, Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, and Google Display Network all in one place. This gives advertisers deep insight into campaigns through an apples-to-apples view of what ads performed best across channels, targets, properties, tactics, and many other factors. For media professionals striving for holistic campaign planning, another new capability on Basis provides superior intelligence on ways to work with publishers in open auction, in private marketplaces (PMP), and through direct buying. Basis’ newly enhanced global directory of 9,000 vendors and 11,000 contacts centralizes inventory availability data on all channels and buying tactics.
Disconnected Tools in Digital Media
Digital media is growing more complex, as agencies balance different buying strategies on all devices and channels while analyzing how the various tactics and creatives on campaigns performed. Programmatic-only technology solutions don’t meet all the needs of campaigns that often include highly-tailored direct-buying, paid search and/or paid social. Furthermore, digital media buyers regularly work with an average of 4-5 vendors in each of ‘DSP,’ ‘data management,’ and ‘other’ ad tech categories. As a result, it takes many steps and continuous toggling in software applications to plan, buy measure and analyze media. This leads to more errors and costs, and loss in productivity.
“Basis represents the next generation of programmatic advertising software, driving the automation in all parts of digital media,” said Katie Risch, EVP of customer experience, Centro. “Basis is the only system where campaigns with direct, biddable, social and search buying can originate seamlessly. And through the natural progression of our technology, we’ve created a sophisticated feedback loop that gives advertisers vision on what is working and how to optimize.”
Creative-Level Reporting on Major Channels
Basis provides media strategists and buyers with creative-level reporting for many popular channels, giving them robust intelligence and data on which creatives perform the best. A complete picture of campaign performance helps agencies make impactful optimizations to improve campaign performance. Creative reporting also helps marketers understand the returns from their investment in creative production, which can be a significant portion of the budget. The feature provides:
Fast reporting of creative performance on desktop, mobile, tablet and more from data sources connected to Basis. Data will be available from major third-party ad servers and social platforms, as well as Basis’ integrated demand-side platform (DSP).
A holistic view of creative messaging across channels that are typically silo’d from each other. This perspective allows analysts to understand performance, trends, and opportunities on a more profound level.
Creative performance data in the context of the media plan, targeting, properties, and tactics of the campaign.
Video unit measurement of impressions, clicks, starts, completes, and conversions, with more metrics for consideration later in the year.
A superior workflow experience and data granularity compared to other DSPs that report first-party delivery but do not include data served by a third-party ad server.
Enhanced Publisher Directory
Basis provides users with one directory containing wide-ranging data and inventory availability for publishers and vendors. Users can access a single view of all media-buying options on any specific publisher. In evaluating how to work with publishers either directly or through exchanges and private marketplaces, media professionals can assess their best chances for success working with a vendor. Media strategists gain:
One source to look up information on thousands of properties to understand all the buying options available, strategize for the best return-on-ad-spend (ROAS), and seamlessly transition to media activation.
Information for direct buys with a publisher, including audience and sales contact. It also utilizes previous contract and pricing data between agency and publisher to benchmark and leverage for negotiation.
Open auction traffic availability on specific publishers based on the inventory type and device.
Private marketplace deals (custom created for Basis or for the agency, or evergreen); Centro pre-negotiated 1,800 deals for all its users.
Impactful Ad Technology in One System
The Basis SaaS solution is designed to boost team and campaign performance by enabling advertisers to integrate real-time bidding (RTB), direct, search and social advertising into one campaign planning and buying platform. Basis helps agencies connect disparate features and tools of digital media buying in a programmatic ad platform. It acts as a one-stop shop for agencies focused on driving performance of business, teams and campaigns by consolidating all parts of digital media buying into one system.
Alteryx Leads in Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and ML
Company Appears in Fifth Consecutive Report, Moves from Position as a Challenger in the 2017 Version to Position as a Leader in the 2018 Version
Alteryx, Inc., a leader in self-service data science and analytics, has revealed that it was named a Leader in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms. This recognization in Gartner Magic Quadrant marks the fifth consecutive time that Alteryx has been positioned in this Magic Quadrant, and the first time the company has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant.
Opportunity: AI/ML Growing in Prominence but Still Gap Between Supply and Demand in Tech Skills
Most large organizations understand that data and analytics can provide a powerful competitive advantage, but many are struggling to achieve the following-
– leverage many disparate data sources
– adopt a growing number of ML and AI services
– find enough skilled workers to develop an analytic advantage
Langley Eide
At the time of the announcement, Langley Eide, Chief Strategy Officer at Alteryx, said, “We are seeing increased demand for a common platform that enables the line-of-business to take full advantage of their data assets, whether users prefer a code-free or code friendly experience.”
Langley added, “We believe that our position as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant underscores our mission to serve an emerging generation of citizen data scientists.”
Alteryx Empowers Data Scientists to Make Powerful Business Impact using Data Science and Analytics
In the last 12 months, Alteryx has introduced several new solutions that help round out its end-to-end analytics platform, aiming to empower data scientists and analysts alike to break down data barriers and experience the thrill of getting to business-changing insights faster than ever.
Langley’s colleague at Alteryx and VP of Product Management, Ashley Kramer, said, “Many organizations struggle to drive business value from their advanced analytic initiatives—whether because of a data scientist talent shortage or the fact that a large number of analytical models are never actually deployed.
Ashley added, “We’ve made significant advances to the Alteryx platform that address these two issues and empower any data worker, whether a data scientist or business user, to deliver real insights and meaningful business impact.”
Alteryx Promote, a component of the Alteryx platform, allows both data scientists and citizen data scientists to deploy predictive models directly into business systems through an API, and then manage and monitor model performance over time. Alteryx Promote is expected to be generally available in early 2018 and is the result of the company’s acquisition of Yhat, a Brooklyn-based data science company, announced in June 2017.
