Progress Launches AI-Driven Native Chatbot

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March 13, 2018

Progress Launches AI-Driven Native Chatbot

Progress’s NativeChat, Offers 15x Faster Development, Native Support for 72 Languages and Ability to Integrate with Web, Mobile and Social Channels for a Seamless Digital Customer Experience

BEDFORD, the leading provider of application development and deployment technologies, announced the availability of Progress NativeChat, the artificial intelligence-driven platform for creating and deploying chatbots. Unlike other chatbot technologies, NativeChat is based on patent-pending CognitiveFlow technology that can be trained with goals, examples, and data from existing backend systems, similar to the process of training new customer service agents.

Also Read: Genesys Unveils New Customer Experience Marketplace to Drive Unparalleled Business Performance

With NativeChat, organizations can now easily give their customers the ability to converse and transact in a natural way, on the channel of their choice, without the need for human interaction
Chatbots solve many pressing customer service challenges for organizations – freeing overloaded call center employees to focus on critical business needs by offloading transactional requests, reduction in cost, increased customer satisfaction and more. However, the creation and deployment of chatbots can be complex, with limited results, if not done right. NativeChat removes many of the complexities of chatbot development, speeding time to market, because of its ability to self-learn as interactions evolve.

“Chatbots are most powerful when they are intelligent and context-aware, directly pulling data and insights from systems of record. NativeChat makes it easy to create chatbots on top of existing systems that interact with users in a natural way and improve contextual understanding, accuracy, and forecasting in conversations,” said Dmitri Tcherevik, Chief Technology Officer, Progress.

Also Read: Mobile World Congress 2018: What’s Next for Industry Innovation?

NativeChat can be integrated into self-service web portals and mobile apps, enabling customer self-service across any channel. Customers can also communicate using NativeChat through social channels such as Facebook messenger and other live chat technologies, furthering their ability to engage in the ways that they are most comfortable. NativeChat also integrates with any enterprise system that supports REST APIs.

“We evaluated several chatbot technologies and selected Progress NativeChat because of the CognitiveFlow technology enabling the bot to hold human-like discussions. We were able to build our proof of concept digital chatbot in just weeks. Given this early success, and our focus on technology that transforms the way we do business, we’ll be looking at NativeChat as the potential platform for our new robo-agent service,” said Harry Singh, Global Vice President, PowerCurve Software Products, Experian.

Also Read: Voice of the Customer Program, An Alternative to Focus Groups

Progress NativeChat can:

Support both transactional and FAQ-style interactions
Understand natural conversations in 72 human languages, and comes with an optional built-in Natural language Processing engine powered by Facebook
Replicate existing web and mobile forms
Be trained from existing FAQ pages and materials
Be up and running in as little as two weeks and is as simple to train as a service agent
Adapt, learn and review chat history without developer support
Easily integrate with any enterprise systems supporting REST APIs
Integrate out-of-the-box with the Progress Kinvey serverless cloud application platform
Integrate out-of-the-box with the Progress Sitefinity web content management platform and the NativeScript. native mobile application development technology

NativeChat Is the First Product to Come out of Progress Labs, the Innovation Incubator Inside of Progress. Progress Labs Enables the Best and Most Innovative Ideas Coming from Anywhere Within the Company to Be Nurtured and Funded, Driving Innovation in the Progress Portfolio and Delivering New Value for Progress Customers and Partners. Other Progress Labs Projects Currently Being Pursued Involve Augmented and Virtual Reality, Blockchain, Edge Computing for IoT, New AI-Based Applications and More.

360° Video Ads Drive Higher Purchase Intent Compared To Traditional Video Ads

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MTS Staff Writer

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March 13, 2018

0

360° Video Ads Drive Higher Purchase Intent Compared To Traditional Video Ads

Biggest Pitfall For Effective 360° Video Ads Is Simple Branding, According To New Research From YuMe, MAGNA, The IPG Media Lab

MAGNA, the intelligence, investment and innovation unit within IPG Mediabrands, and IPG Media Lab, the media futures and advisory arm of IPG Mediabrands, in partnership with YuMe by RhythmOne, a proven partner for video advertising leadership and innovation, announced the results of a media trial examining consumers’ perspective on 360° video advertising from innovative brands BMW, Royal Caribbean and PBS.

The resulting report, The 360° Effect: Understanding Immersive Video, reveals the opportunities this ad format provides marketers and the challenges they will face in maximizing its value. The report also offers insight into how marketers should utilize this new video ad format to drive brand KPIs.

Also Read: When it Comes to Ad Blocking, Personalization is the New Scale

While most brands have yet to utilize 360° video for marketing purposes, many consumers are already familiar with the format. Consumers show a strong interest in 360° videos created by brands, with the majority (69%) intending on interacting with brand videos in the future. Consumers’ primary interest in a brand created 360° video is related to their desire for entertainment and new experiences. Marketers need to not only deliver on high expectations for fun but also move the needle on the metrics that drive brand growth.

“While 360° video ads are the most accessible immersive video ad experiences for consumers – available across mobile, PCs and VR headsets – marketers must artfully balance entertainment with branding to achieve optimal brand metrics. Our study reinforces the opportunity that marketers have to drive purchase intent with 360° video ads, provided they properly incorporate brand messages to encourage higher recall,” said Devin Fallon, VP of Analytics, YuMe by RhythmOne.

Also Read: How Contextual Blocking Tactics Can Ensure Brand Safety at the Page Level

“This research has not only helped us better understand the user experience for 360° video ads, but also the common pitfalls marketers may face in driving important metrics such as brand favorability and purchase intent. Consumers are welcoming of this advertising format because it provides a fun and engaging experience. We need to ensure that we deliver on those expectations and our KPIs at the same time,” said Kara Manatt, SVP, Intelligence Solutions Strategy at MAGNA.

Also Read: Unleashing Digital Video’s Potential for One-to-One Marketing

Key insights include:

Consumer Preference

Consumers are eager to experience 360° video even when created by brands. However, they have high expectations for fun and excitement, which were reported as the top reasons for engaging with 360 video in the future. 88% of those who found 360° “entertaining” intend to interact with 360° video ads in the future.
Early tech adopters are most likely to engage with and enjoy 360° video, making it a big opportunity for brands targeting tech-savvy consumers.
Providing simple instructional cues provided the best user experience. Some consumers didn’t engage with the video because they weren’t sure what to do.

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

Marketer Takeaways

Overall, 360° video can be an effective format in delivering against brand KPIs above and beyond traditional video; however, challenges persist in creating memorable experiences given the inherent distractions of the format.
The payoff is big once consumers recalled the brand, with +7% purchase intent increase on smartphones and 12% lift in agreement that the brand “has a unique story to tell” compared to a traditional video ad.
While VR headset environments serve as the ideal platform, smartphone was the next best option. 360° video outperformed on smartphones compared to the same ad on PC, with a10% lift in purchase intent.
Contextual targeting can make a difference – pairing a 360° ad with content that is also 360° improves branding impact. The same ad is viewed as 8% more relevant compared to running in front of standard (non-360°) content.

Also Read: 3 Innovations Driving Out-of-Home in 2018

“360-degree video is a true discovery experience – showcasing multiple facets of the brand offering instead of being limited to just one or two messages. This provides brands with an ability to tap into consumer passions while allowing them to choose their own journey through the experience,” said UM’s Global Chief Innovation Officer, Chad Stoller.

In conducting the media trial, a total of 2,159 consumers were recruited from a representative online panel. The survey directed participants to a media experience of their choosing on PC, smartphone, or smartphone-enabled VR device, where they were able to view a webpage and watch video content based on their interests. Each participant was randomized into a test cell that determined what type of pre-roll video they saw – control, standard video ad, or 360° video ad. Afterwards, participants completed a survey that measured traditional branding metrics and qualitative feedback.

Beating the Big Guys Is All About Brand Loyalty

By

Armand Thiberge

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March 13, 2018

0

There’s an imbalance in the sales and marketing industry today between small business and the industry giants of the world. With deeper pockets, wider budgets, and seemingly limitless tools at their fingertips, competing against the “big guys” can seem like an insurmountable task. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With the right solutions and customer insights, smaller businesses can be just as competitive at winning over their customers.

Regardless of the size of your business, the most effective way to drive customer loyalty in today’s modern marketing landscape is giving customers what they want, when they want it, and through the proper channel. That’s why SendinBlue recently conducted a consumer survey of over 700 US millennials, currently the most sought-after consumer demographic, to find out their preferences regarding marketing communications and promotions from brands.

Armed with this knowledge, small and medium-sized businesses can outshine their larger competitors with more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns tailored exactly to what their customers are looking for.

Also Read: Marketers Cannot Overlook Mobile Casual Gamers Anymore!

Here are the key insights from the survey that brands should adopt to be more competitive in the marketplace.

Deliver to Their Inbox

While it may seem as though there’s a new marketing channel popping up every day, millennial consumers indicated they still prefer the more traditional route of email when it comes to receiving marketing messages from brands. In fact, 63 percent of our survey respondents cited email as the best way for brands, particularly retailers, to communicate with them. The second closest channel, text messaging, was far behind at 14 percent.

That’s a big gap, and it gets even bigger when it comes to social media, which ranked third with 12 percent of the votes. Snail mail was last with only 7 percent of millennial respondents saying they preferred this channel.

Another good sign for email was the number of times millennials visited their inbox throughout the day. When asked how frequently they checked their email, 69 percent of respondents said they were in their inbox multiple times per day. An impressive 20 percent revealed that they’re in their inbox too many times to count. Compare that to traditional mail, which gets checked once on a good day, and you’ll understand why email makes more sense for reaching customers with your marketing messages.

Also Read: From Cookies to Ad IDs, Why Email Is Key

Give Them What They Want

The key to effective outreach is giving customers what they’re looking for. For millennials, in particular, it’s all about a good deal to keep them coming back for more. Close to 60 percent of respondents revealed that they want a site-wide or product category-wide promotional offer in order to take action. They also appreciate it when your promotional outreach is focused and personalized based on their past shopping habits.

Millennials know brands are capable of collecting their data, and in turn, they expect it to be put to good use in ways that most benefit them. This means recommendations based on past purchases and notices when an item they left in their cart goes on sale. That additional 25 percent off could be the nudge they need to complete their purchase.

The Payout

While trying to figure out what a customer wants may seem like a shot in the dark, utilizing these survey insights along with your own audience insights brings the process much closer to a science. Millennials are a loyal generation and this translates over to the brands they follow. Seventy-five percent of respondents said simple perks like free shipping or two-day delivery are what drives brand loyalty to retailers. That’s not a big dent in your company’s bottom line, but it goes a long way in the hearts and minds of customers, which can have a substantial effect on earnings.

If your company is just starting out and those types of incentives seem unrealistic to offer, keep it more cost-effective by making more of an effort to personalize your messages instead. Close to half of respondents said that receiving relevant, personalized information based on their previous shopping preferences enhanced their brand loyalty as well.

At the end of the day, it’s about caring for your customers’ needs and wants, and showing them that they’re your top priority. A little love goes a long way in the brand/customer relationship and it’s what will allow for small businesses to stay competitive and win back business from the bigger players.

Also Read: Email Is Hard – Here’s How To Make It Easier

TechBytes with Fatima Nadine Khan, Chief Privacy Officer, Demandbase

By

Sudipto Ghosh

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March 13, 2018

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Fatima Nadine Khan
Chief Privacy Officer, Demandbase

GDPR could be the most disruptive event of the year for marketers. Last year, marketers spoke about the power of Intent Data and the way it could change the face of Customer Data Platforms and marketing performance forever. But, then came the long list of questions on the privacy of data! Today, every fifth company in the tech industry has either hired a legal counsel or added a Chief Privacy Officer to manage the probable disruptions. To get answers to all our questions on GDPR and the impact on privacy standards, we interviewed Demandbase’s Chief Privacy Officer, Fatima Nadine Khan.

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Tell us about your journey as a Privacy Officer in the tech industry?

I began my career interested in privacy issues faced by technology companies. It’s been especially exciting to work with adtech/martech companies because they face a lot of scrutiny, yet still manage to consistently adapt to this dynamic area of law by providing innovative solutions to resolve concerns about privacy. For example, companies have implemented just-in-time notices for mobile, alternative SDKs, and more granular privacy choices. As both consumer and regulatory concerns continue to increase, the last few years have served as a starting point for privacy and it will only become more important in the future.

How do you see a Chief Privacy Officer working in sync with the Chief Marketing Officer, and the Chief Technology/Digital Officer in the organization?

It is essential for the CPO to work in sync with the CMO and CTO of an organization on data strategy. The three roles have the overlapping goal of ensuring a company’s valuable data assets are protected. The CPO establishes the company’s approach to privacy and advises other stakeholders on how to accomplish business goals while respecting the law and privacy principles.

Would GDPR be the biggest disruption to data management and marketing intelligence ecosystems? How is Demandbase preparing for this disruption?

GDPR is definitely a disruption to the data management and marketing intelligence ecosystems. That said, this disruption should be viewed positively because it presents companies with a new opportunity to innovate by providing law-friendly privacy solutions to customers. Demandbase is preparing for this disruption by creating a compliance plan that includes addressing privacy concerns such as data subject access rights, re-evaluating internal processes, and increasing transparency for customers and individuals.

Should the DMPs, CDPs, and Account-based Marketing platforms get ready to tight their data privacy regulations in 2018?

The penalties under the GDPR are steep and DMPs, CDPs, and ABM platforms will need to take stock of their data inventory and make sure that any data collection, use, and sharing is done in compliance with the GDPR. The whole industry will have to take steps to adapt and comply with the new regulatory requirements.

Apart from GDPR, what other data privacy regulations and standards should global companies tune into?

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continuously enforces privacy law through the FTC Act in addition to regularly providing updated guidance on emerging privacy issues. Companies should stay up-to-date with FTC guidance and look to their industry for any self-regulatory guidelines established by industry associations, such as the Digital Advertising Alliance.

Do you think that the use of AI/ML technologies would help better manage and comply with the data privacy regulations? How do you leverage AI/ML as a Chief Privacy Officer?

AI/ML technologies can certainly help CPOs comply with privacy regulations on an operational level through assessing data inventory and discovering non-obvious data relationships. These types of automated assessments will allow CPOs to achieve a deeper understanding of the data and find trends that may not be feasible or available through implementing existing standard procedures.

Thanks for chatting with us, Fatima.
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

Also Read: TechBytes with Christopher Golec, CEO, Demandbase

Interview with Lissa Daniels, VP, Demand Generation, Marketing Operations and Analytics, Looker

By

Rohan Jagan

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March 13, 2018

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

[mnky_testimonial_slider slide_speed=”3″][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Technology is going to help us all get more personal. Data, behavioral intent and AI can help us all make the experience more personal for our leads and customers.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

Tell us a little bit about your role at Looker?

I head up the team that fills and optimizes the marketing lead funnel. Our first goal is to feed our sales development team with the highest quality leads possible. Those leads need to turn into happy customers. We spend our time testing and trying all that we can. Then we spend a good bit of time analyzing to see if the leads do what we want.

What draws you to the MarTech Conference?

It is the best martech conference in the area. It is where marketers who think technology, data and feeding sales team can come together and talk to each other and more than one vendor.

Which sessions at the Martech Conference would you recommend to and Why?

‘’From Data to Impact: How Red Hat Marketing Decides the Next Best Action”, looks very interesting. I love getting frameworks for how to choose the next best thing to do. Ultimately my intuition is what usually tells me what to do, but I train my intuition with data. Data can usually only answer one question at a time, and deciding what to do next is rarely a single question and answer. So, intuition and the human brain is best at balancing all the elements and weighing needs and possible outcomes.

“How to Manage GDPR and Legal Hurdles that Stall and Kill Your Martech Strategy” looks like an important session to go to because, well, we need to treat our prospects and customers with respect.

What is the one piece of advice you have for B2B marketers in 2018?

Keep testing and trying new stuff and retry the stuff you tried a few years back. The market is always changing, your product is always changing, never give up.

How do you see the B2B Marketing landscape evolving, in the years to come?

Technology is going to help us all get more personal. Data, behavior intent and AI can help us all make the experience more personal for our leads and customers. It does make it more work for the marketer. We need to understand the cohorts of prospects and customers really well so we can curate that personal experience, without that understanding and curation, technology is not as effective as it can be.

Which sectors is Looker looking to target to expand its reach in 2018?

We are working to expand our reach across industries, use cases, regions and the people who engage with data. So basically everywhere 😉

What startups are you watching/keen on right now?

Intellimize for website testing and the new Customer Data Platforms. I am curious to see how these evolve for better marketing coordination.

What is the most important metric of a digital marketing campaign that Performance Marketers should track?

Ah, there is no single metric. Data answers one question at a time. It also depends on the goal of the company and the program. I am spending time looking at ROI and contribution to bookings. Whereas 2 yrs ago, I simply focused on lead to meeting conversion rate (how we verified that we gave quality leads to SDRs)

What does your Martech stack currently consist of?

Marketo at the core connects to Salesforce.com connects to Looker. We then have other point tools, Intellimize for web testing, Drift for web chat, Clearbit for data augmentation, and On24 for online events

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

As with anything, understand your goals, brand, and market. Then decide what the best way to go to market, and if AI is a way, test it out.

One word that best describes how you work.

Efficient.

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

Well at work, I could not live without Looker. Seriously, I am in that every day. If not doing my own exploration, I am looking at dashboard folks on the team have created.

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

I print out my daily calendar each evening and mentally review the following day. I list my goals for the day. Then I carry it around with me. I realize I can do that electronically, but paper stares at me, a screen can be hidden too easily.

What are you currently reading?

I listen to a lot of audio books, it helps me get outside walking or going the gym. I like mystery books. I do not read many business books. The best ones I have read are The One Minute Manager and Nudge.

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

Early on at Looker, the VP of Marketing simply told me ‘If something works, just do it again.” That gave me the OK to just try everything and if it worked do it again, if it did not work, move on. It was the start of our ‘test, optimize, expand or stop’ mentality in DG.

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

I think I listen really well to others. And then I love to do, learn and try new things.

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

Register For MarTech Conference With Promo Code – martechseries10 To Avail a 10% Discount

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Lissa” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46dd0b-8f8e”]

Lissa is a collaborative and analytical marketing professional with expertise in demand generation and marketing operations. She has a track record in driving high-impact marketing and has consistently met aggressive business goals. Lissa also has experience building demand generation engines for growing startups and mature companies. As a trusted leader and insightful mentor, Lissa is dedicated to building partnerships across the organization.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Looker” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46dd0b-8f8e”]

looker
Looker is a complete data platform that offers data analytics and business insights to every department, and easily integrates into applications to deliver data directly into the decision-making process. Looker is powering data-driven cultures at more than 1200 industry-leading and innovative companies such as Sony, Amazon, The Economist, Spotify, Etsy, Lyft and Kickstarter. Looker is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, with offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boulder, London and Dublin, Ireland. Investors include CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, First Round Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Goldman Sachs.

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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.

Episerver Announces Intelligent Content Personalization

By

PRNewswire

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March 13, 2018

0

Episerver Announces Intelligent Content Personalization

Episerver Advance Rounds out the Episerver Personalization Suite, Drawing on Cognitive Artificial Intelligence to Support Unprecedented Content Personalization at Scale

Episerver, the company transforming digital experiences, today announced the launch of Episerver Advance to help organizations deliver individualized content to visitors everywhere they digitally engage.

Episerver Advance helps marketers and merchandisers solve the modern challenge of delivering relevant content to people when and where they need it. Transcending the capabilities of traditional product recommendations, Episerver Advance draws on cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) to apply rich metadata tags to content assets automatically, and then sequence the delivery of those assets based on deep analysis of data as well as a visitors real-time activity to ensure they see the best content to support their inferred intent or goals.

Also Read: Episerver Study: Nine in 10 Consumers Are Comfortable With Brands Knowing More About Them

As a person interacts with a brand, AI-powered algorithms work behind the scenes to analyze all of an organization’s content as well as the clues the visitor provides about what they are looking for in order to present the most optimal content in the moment. Meanwhile, marketers can spend this time developing great content versus laboring over how to tag it for optimal performance or when and where to share it.

Episerver Unveils Complete Keynote Lineup for Ascend 2018 — James Norwood

“Personalization is now table stakes for marketers, but they’re often lacking the tools they need to deliver effective personalized content throughout the digital journey. With the release of Episerver Advance, we are solving the last and most complex piece of the personalization puzzle and delivering on our promise to help organizations create individualized experiences for their customers and visitors wherever and whenever they engage,” said James Norwood, chief marketing officer and executive vice president, strategy at Episerver.

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

The launch of Episerver Advance, completes Episerver’s Personalization Suite, which also includes Episerver Personalized Find for AI-based search rankings, Episerver Reach for event-trigger based messaging, such as personalized email, SMS and push notifications, Episerver Perform for personalized product recommendations, and Episerver Insight — released last month — for customer journey analysis and persistent visual visitor intelligence.

Also Read: Episerver Named a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms

Supported by Episerver’s behavioral big data store, Episerver Advance presents tailored content at different points in a person’s online journey to increase revenue and positively affect loyalty. Providing a relevant experience for both first-time visitors and repeat customers can result in lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates. In fact, 44 percent of people often abandon purchases because of disappointing online shopping experiences.

Episerver’s personalization suite helps organizations of all kinds to deliver individualized content, intelligent campaigns and experience-driven commerce as part of the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud.

Mediavine Launches Exclusive Video Adhesion Ad Unit

By

PRNewswire

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March 13, 2018

0

Mediavine Launches Exclusive Video Adhesion Ad Unit

The Custom-Built Video Adhesion Unit Brings Together Advertisers, Publishers, and Users in a New Way Through High-Viewability Mobile Native Experiences

Mediavine has launched a custom-built, patent-pending ad unit exclusive to the company: the video adhesion player. The unit, currently in beta testing, is the first of its kind and is Mediavine’s first piece of advertising technology to receive a provisional patent.

The video adhesion player is a mobile native experience that showcases publishers’ original videos to users, providing publishers the opportunity to monetize with highly sought-after video ads on every page view in a user-friendly format. The player uses video header bidding capabilities from Prebid.js to integrate with advertising partners’ video demand.

Also Read: Mediavine Publisher Network Confirmed as Google Certified Publishing Partner

The video adhesion unit will take the place of the company’s pre-existing mobile adhesion banner ad unit when a video advertisement wins the marketplace auction. By keeping the new unit the same location as the existing mobile adhesion unit, Mediavine found a way to provide the user with useful, engaging content while allowing continued interaction with the site.

The result of beta testing has been 90 percent viewability and high engagement.

“Mediavine’s unit seamlessly integrates AppNexus video demand with Mediavine inventory and delivers it to the user in a novel way. The integration also speaks to the power of using an open platform for video header bidding, like Prebid.js, allowing Mediavine to easily customize a powerful new user experience for their own video player while tapping into video demand from multiple partners. This kind of innovation adds to the value of our partnership with Mediavine, and we look forward to seeing them evolve their technology further with a goal of creating a better video internet,” said Eric Hoffert, SVP, Video Technology, AppNexus.

Also Read: AppNexus Sees Steep Rise in Video Business, with 230% Growth of RTB Video Spend

“Video adhesion has proven itself to be the perfect trifecta of balancing our publishers’ needs to monetize their videos, hitting advertisers’ goals for campaigns, and providing a less invasive experience for the user while adhering to the Initial Better Ads Standards as set by the Coalition for Better Ads. This unit is the ideal case study for how we aim to do business at Mediavine – bringing together the publisher, advertiser, and user in new, innovative ways that benefit everyone in the advertising chain,” said Phil Bohn, Senior Vice President, Sales and Revenue, Mediavine.

Also Read: Mediavine Achieves 86% Ads.txt Ad Request Rate

In addition to the new patent-pending video adhesion player, Mediavine offers native ad units, pre-roll video instream inventory, and custom content and packages that can be created for any advertiser across the company’s nearly 2.5 billion monthly impressions.

Recommended Read: Fast Forward Your Video Content Strategy in 2018

Telemundo Deportes Initiates 100-Day Countdown to the FIFA World Cup, Unveils Sponsors and Digital Partners

By

PRNewswire

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March 13, 2018

0

Telemundo Deportes Initiates 100-Day Countdown to the FIFA World Cup, Unveils Sponsors and Digital Partners

Telemundo Unveils Initial Findings of an In-Depth US Consumer Focused Research Study Around the FIFA World Cup

Telemundo Deportes announced a line-up of top-tier advertising partners, digital partnerships, more legendary and groundbreaking commentators, and insights of its latest consumer-focused study around the FIFA World Cup.

“We are kicking off the 100-day countdown in a big way to celebrate this historic moment for Telemundo Deportes. This will be the most consumed and most widely distributed digital event in Spanish-language television history. All of the initiatives announced today support our mission to bring our viewers the most authentic and complete coverage in the history of the tournament,” said Ray Warren, President of Telemundo Deportes.

Also Read: Maestro Unveils Impact Scores: A New Metric for Interactive Live Streams

Initiatives and updates announced include:

Sponsorships

Telemundo has teamed up with Coca-Cola, Sprint, and Volkswagen for the network’s exclusive Spanish-language coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. Match halftimes and post-games will be presented exclusively by Sprint and Coca-Cola, respectively, and Volkswagen will present the network’s primetime show.

Original Content in partnership with VICE

As part of Telemundo’s plans to create compelling storytelling around the tournament, the network is partnering with VICE, the world’s leading global youth media brand, to produce short-form features and stories of the interesting, contagious aspects of the culture and fandom that the FIFA World Cup brings around the world. The content will air exclusively across Telemundo Deportes’ television coverage during the FIFA World Cup and will extend to TelemundoDeportes.com.

As part of Telemundo’s more than 1,000 hours of FIFA World Cup content planned across digital platforms, Telemundo Deportes announced a content partnership with NBCU Digital Lab to create “Somos el Mundial,” a digital docu-series to be featured on TelemundoDeportes.com and Telemundo Deportes’ YouTube page. In addition, BuzzFeed will create short-form content from the series to be integrated across its platforms. The series will debut in May and will continue running during the tournament.

“Somos el Mundial” is an intimate profile chronicling the powerful narratives behind the Hispanic World Cup countries as told through the eyes of key players. Each episode will center on an individual country and their upcoming journey to Russia 2018. The primary fabric of each episode will be comprised of interviews with players representing their country at the World Cup. Their interviews will focus on the history of their country as it relates to the tournament – national pride, what it means to be a citizen of this country, their emotions heading into the games, etc.

Also Read: video intelligence Launches Contextual Video Platform

Telemundo and COPA90 create first-ever U.S. Hispanic content creator network

Telemundo recently announced an exclusive partnership with the global soccer media company Copa90 to create the first-ever Hispanic content creator network focused on soccer. The first stage of the campaign kicked off in early February with a call to fans via Telemundo and Telemundo Deportes’ social media platforms and the COPA90 network, encouraging soccer fans across the US to submit content that showcases what fuels their passion for their national team, and demonstrate how they plan to support their team’s efforts during the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia.

In two weeks, the program received hundreds of entries from men and women across 19 different states delivering over 5.5 million total impressions across Telemundo Deportes and COPA90 social platforms, reaching 2 million fans. In the next phase, Telemundo and COPA90 will now select 24 finalists who will be tasked to share their stories in real-time during the international friendly matches scheduled to be played across the US late March.

The final selection of influencers will be part of a number of short films that will be created in anticipation of the FIFA World Cup and distributed via Telemundo and COPA90’s social media accounts. Influencers and content will be leveraged in Telemundo’s programming and marketing of the FIFA World Cup across all platforms.

Also Read: Connatix Expands Video Syndication Offerings With New CRO

Telemundo Owned Stations to Deliver Unique Content for On-Air and Digital Platforms Directly from Russia

The Telemundo Station Group is dispatching a team of 11 journalists to the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, the largest team of local Telemundo journalists to ever report from an international, live sporting event.

The station group team – made up of sports, news anchors and producers from all across the country, representing different US Hispanic constituencies – will round-out Telemundo Deportes’ coverage of the World Cup by delivering the most relevant and compelling coverage about all 32 competing teams, including the teams that are of most importance to local Latino audiences.

Soccer Legends and Commentators to Join Telemundo’s Exclusive Coverage

For the first time ever, Telemundo Deportes will introduce the first woman to provide in-match commentary for a FIFA Men’s World Cup in the US, regardless of language.

Viviana Vila will serve as an analyst for select matches during the tournament joining Telemundo Deportes’ renowned team of play-by-play commentators and analysts. The Argentine sports journalist has been covering soccer for radio and television in her native country since 1999.

Other additions to the team include iconic soccer personalities who will lend a unique “on-the-pitch” perspective to the commentating team. These names add to the roster of experts announced last year:

Tab Ramos: Former American soccer player who currently serves as head coach of the United States U-20 team and US Soccer Federation’s Youth Technical Director.

Diego Forlán: Uruguayan professional soccer player who currently plays for Hong Kong Premier League club Kitchee. Through his career, he also played for some of Europe’s top clubs including Manchester United, Villarreal, Atletico de Madrid and Inter Milan.

Jesús “Chucho” Ramírez: Former Mexican soccer player who, following his professional career took on the challenge of coaching. He served as manager of the Mexico National Team and won the U-17 World Cup in 2005.

Teófilo Cubillas: Former soccer star considered one of Peru’s greatest players and the country’s all-time leading scorer with 26 goals in 81 matches.

Also Read: Horizon Media Taps 4C For Its Advanced TV Platform, Pivot

FAN INSIGHTS STUDY

In an exclusive partnership with Horowitz Research, Telemundo unveiled the first phase of findings from the most in-depth consumer research initiative to ever be conducted around the FIFA World Cup in the US, focused on fandom, culture, technology and brand building.

Findings from the first phase of insights show that 9 out of 10 Hispanic soccer fans plan to watch the FIFA World Cup from beginning to end. Most (77%) Hispanic soccer fans plan to watch World Cup matches live on television, but when they can’t catch the matches live, 46% say they will live stream matches and 31% will stream matches on demand, setting up 2018’s World Cup to be the most cross-platform in history.

Telemundo’s research emphasizes that Hispanic millennials are leading a shift towards soccer in America’s sports culture, with 2 in 3 Hispanic millennials saying they are soccer fans.

In fact, 61% of Hispanic millennial males would risk getting in trouble at work to stay home to watch an important World Cup match; 68% would rather give up all of the rest of the content on TV than give up soccer; and 52% would rather spend the day hanging out with their favorite soccer team than with their own family.

Recommended Read: YouTube Partner Program Tightens Monetization Rules

Teradata Names Martyn Etherington as Chief Marketing Officer to Bolster Its Cloud Strategy

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March 13, 2018

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Teradata Names Martyn Etherington as Chief Marketing Officer to Bolster Its Cloud Strategy

Teradata Appoints Martyn Etherington As Chief Marketing Officer

Teradata, a leading cloud-based data and analytics company, has named Martyn Etherington as Chief Marketing Officer. Etherington, who has a distinguished track record of driving top-line results, growing market share, improving customer experience and enhancing brands, will report to Oliver Ratzesberger, who became Teradata’s Chief Operating Officer earlier this year. Both roles are newly-created and showcase the ongoing evolution as a company that prides itself on innovation and driving high-impact business outcomes for its customers.

“As Teradata continues to innovate and help the world’s most influential companies use analytics to achieve business results, it is important to have experienced leaders as part of our new executive team. Martyn brings a proven ability to transform and develop marketing organizations to help better understand our customers and drive growth,” said Oliver Ratzesberger.

Also Read: Teradata Visualizes the Path to Impactful Business Insights

“Teradata’s current momentum is unquestionable. It has an industry-leading portfolio of service cloud offerings, decades of experience in consulting, unequaled architecture expertise and market-leading data and analytics technology. But even more important, it has some of the world’s leading brands as long-term customers. I firmly believe Teradata is well positioned to leverage its Teradata Everywhere strategy and is at the cusp of writing its next growth chapter, so I am delighted to be joining at this critical stage.” said Martyn Etherington.

Also Read: Teradata Announces Executive Appointments

Etherington was Chief Marketing Officer, IoT Cloud at Cisco Jasper, #1 global market leader for IoT Connectivity Management. Previously, Etherington served as Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief of Staff for Mitel, responsible for all aspects of the company’s corporate marketing strategy, brand, digital and customer experience programs globally. Etherington has been recognized by the Economist as one of the Top 25 Social Business Leaders, Forbes as one of the Top 50 marketers, B2B Magazine as one of the World’s Best Marketers, and The Internationalist as one of the top International marketers.

Recommended Read: Teradata Acquires San Diego-based Start-up StackIQ

Genesys Unveils New Customer Experience Marketplace to Drive Unparalleled Business Performance

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March 13, 2018

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Genesys Unveils New Customer Experience Marketplace to Drive Unparalleled Business Performance

Genesys’s New Unified AppFoundry Offers Ecosystem of 200+ Pre-Built Integrations, Giving Customers Time-To-Value Almost Immediately

At the Enterprise Connect conference opening, Genesys, the global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions, will debut a unified AppFoundry marketplace that incorporates integrations for its entire portfolio, including the PureEngage, PureConnect and PureCloud platforms. The new Genesys AppFoundry makes it simpler for businesses to quickly gain value from the industry’s highest caliber of cloud and on-premises customer experience solutions available in one comprehensive marketplace.

Also Read: Genesys Launches G-NINE to Enhance its Customer Experience Platform

Thousands of Genesys customers across every vertical, including financial services, retail, hospitality, healthcare and more, are using at least one integration from its partner ecosystem. Today, over 200 applications, integrations, and services are listed in AppFoundry, a 100 percent increase since mid-2016. Leading partners include Amazon Web Services, Aria Solutions, Avtex, eMite, AudioCodes, AVST, CafeX Communications, Call Journey, ConvergeOne, Jabra, Occam Networks, Plantronics, RedSky Technologies, SmartAction, Starfish Associates, and Vidyo.

AppFoundry gives all customers one interface to explore the ecosystem of pre-built integrations for the Genesys Customer Experience Platform. With “one-click installation” capability, Genesys customers, like Amazon Web Services, can enable and configure a new integration in about 30 seconds, resulting in lightning-fast time-to-value.

Also Read: Genesys PureCloud Integrates with Amazon Lex

“The new Genesys AppFoundry makes it easier than ever for businesses to rapidly benefit from new machine learning technologies. This latest innovation from Genesys brings the natural language capabilities of Amazon Lex to the customer engagement market in a very easy and consumable way. Now, businesses can simply activate Amazon Lex in their contact center with just one click for an improved customer experience,” said Vasi Philomin, general manager, Machine Learning Language Services, Amazon Web Services.

Also Read: Genesys Acquires Altocloud to Empower All Businesses with Improved Sales and Service Results Through AI and Journey Analytics

One-click install for PureCloud AppFoundry applications is available now, allowing on-demand configuration and enablement. The company also plans to add one-click purchasing for PureCloud in the second half of 2018. Genesys expects to start extending these capabilities to the rest of its portfolio at the same time.

Adding the ability to auto-provision integrations across the breadth of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform will position AppFoundry for significant growth. The company anticipates adding nearly 40 percent more integrations in 2018, which it considers in line with analyst predictions.

Also Read: Stop the Bleeding: Retailers Losing Millions in Unprofitable Promotions

According to Gartner, “By 2020, 60 percent of the software application providers that consume cloud platform services as part of their product offerings will also market, sell and provision their offerings through cloud platform marketplaces.”

“Organizations need to be extremely agile to stay ahead of customer expectations today. By creating one consistent ecosystem of applications for our Customer Experience Platform and leveraging the power of the cloud, we’ve accelerated time-to-value for businesses. Our aim is to give all customers a simpler way to discover and rapidly deploy solutions that propel the standard of customer experience even higher,” said Merijn te Booij, chief marketing officer, Genesys.

Recommended Read: Fast Forward Your Video Content Strategy in 2018

PlaceIQ Expands Partnership with LiveRamp, Offering Seamless Access to Thousands of Location-based Audiences for People-Based Marketing

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March 13, 2018

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PlaceIQ’s Leading Location-based Audiences Available to LiveRamp Customers Through IdentityLink™ Data Store Feature

PlaceIQ, the company building a new model of consumer behavior with location data and insights, announced an expanded partnership with LiveRamp^®, an Acxiom^® company and leading provider of omnichannel identity resolution.

For the first time, PlaceIQ will offer its advanced location-based audiences through LiveRamp’s IdentityLink™ Data Store feature which offers unique, people-based audience data from industry leaders. This integration gives Data Store buyers direct and seamless access to PlaceIQ’s extensive audience library, which has already empowered hundreds of brands to fuel effective media strategy, planning and activation. According to the Accenture Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Research, 50% of US consumers said they switched companies they buy from in 2017 because of poor customer experience, and 41% citing “poor personalization” as a key reason. Through this partnership, consumers can expect to see more personalized cross-channel experiences.

PlaceIQ offers more than 2,000 unique audiences, based on detailed analysis of visitation to real-world points of interest, across industries, including auto dealerships, dining establishments, entertainment venues, retail locations, travel destinations and more. With PlaceIQ, marketers can leverage these syndicated audiences, or build custom audiences, to easily engage with people that are in market for a new car, frequent breakfast diners at a particular quick-service restaurant, frequent business travelers, big box retail shoppers and more.

Read Also: Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

Nadya Kohl

“PlaceIQ has spent more than seven years building and refining location-based audiences that have become the standard for marketing success,” said Nadya Kohl, EVP of Business Development and Marketing, PlaceIQ. “We are committed to delivering the gold standard in audience data to brands as seamlessly as possible and, with today’s news, we’re pleased to expand our relationship with LiveRamp, an industry leader in providing the omnichannel identity resolution needed for people-based marketing. We have enjoyed a long relationship with LiveRamp and admire their commitment to heavily vetting and only partnering with best-in-breed data providers. The IdentityLink Data Store feature is delivering incredible value to marketers thanks to the strong vision of LiveRamp’s team. With PlaceIQ audiences and LiveRamp’s identity resolution service, LiveRamp customers can unlock a powerful, omnichannel view of the consumer.”

Luke McGuinness

“We’re excited to expand our partnership with PlaceIQ because of their commitment to data quality, their privacy-first approach, strong team and shared mission of enabling people-based marketing,” said Luke McGuinness, GM, Data Store, LiveRamp. “With PlaceIQ audiences, our customers can easily tap into a true omnichannel view of the customer journey that cuts across the online and offline world.”

LiveRamp’s IdentityLink Data Store feature enables brands to discover syndicated audience segments, custom segments, or license data from more than 125 leading data providers for advanced use cases. Because Data Store audiences support all industries and encompass all types of data, IdentityLink makes data consistent, consumable, and portable across any platform that marketers work with.

WordPress Events Plugin Market Disrupted by New Innovative Event Registration Calendar Software

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PRNewswire

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March 12, 2018

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WordPress Events Plugin Market Disrupted by New Innovative Event Registration Calendar Software

WordPress Has a New Event Registration Software That Changes Everything

Event Registration Pro Calendar is the newly released event calendar and event registration plugin for WordPress developed by Integrated Technology and Design. A leader in the open source event registration market for the past 10 years as a Joomla CMS extension, Event Registration Pro Calendar is now released as a WordPress Plugin.

For many years, WordPress event calendar plugins and WordPress event registration software have been lacking a common goal – focusing on conversions. Event Registration Pro Calendar for WordPress has set out to disrupt the WordPress events plugin market by offering a free event registration plugin that converts visitors into registrants.

Also Read: Announcing Attendify Audiences – First-Ever Data Management Platform for $565 Billion Event Industry

Event Registration Pro Calendar achieves this by including the following features in the core event registration plugin:

Information where it should be – All information is displayed in key critical areas where the visitors can find exactly what they are looking for.
Illusion of urgency – Users are presented with a colorful event countdown timer showing the urgency to sign up for the event.
Easy registration flow – With the ability to register for multiple events at one time and an innovative spam-proof design, there are no captcha fields needed to frustrate potential registrants.
Retrieve abandoned registrations – Get back potentially lost registrations with an included follow up email system to recapture those registrations that would otherwise be lost forever.
Reminder emails – Automated reminder emails are sent to event registrants to increase attendance rates.

With the WordPress plugin market generating over one billion in sales annually, WordPress users have grown accustomed to paying high prices for event calendar and event registration plugins. Even plugins that have very limited features are being sold for amounts that make no sense. And some of the event calendar and event registration plugins that are available currently are just plain ugly and hard to use. Not to mention the user experience for both front-end visitors and administrators is just horrible. However, Event Registration Pro Calendar for WordPress has set out to disrupt this mindset by offering WordPress users a FREE event management plugin that is both easy to use and has more features than most commercial plugins in the WordPress market.

Event Registration Pro Calendar can also be extended using add-ons that are available for charging for your events. Multiple payment gateway options are available as well as recurring events and discount codes. Installation and customization services are available as well as priority support.

Event Registration Pro Calendar is the perfect solution for organizations that offer conferences, recurring training, courses and classes. Most users of Event Registration Pro Calendar have found it to be a perfect way to extend their business to offer additional services and new revenue streams that are highly lucrative.

Leaders from P&G, Facebook, Google & More Join the Lineup for 4A’s Accelerate Conference

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March 12, 2018

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Leaders from P&G, Facebook, Google & More Join the Lineup for 4A's Accelerate Conference

Speakers for the Annual Conference Include Actor John Leguizamo, P&G’s Marc Pritchard, Facebook’s Nada Stirratt and Google’s Allan Thygesen

The 4A‘s flagship conference, formerly known as Transformation, relaunches this April as 4A’s Accelerate.

Accelerate, slated for April 8–10 at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, will bring together C‑level executives and industry leaders from across the advertising, marketing and media worlds. It will celebrate creativity, its impact on commerce and its influence on culture with a mix of keynotes, panels, fireside chats and more.

Accelerate will feature the following prominent speakers, among others:

Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer, P&G
John Leguizamo, actor and partner, NGL Collective
Nada Stirratt, VP, Global Marketing Solutions, North America, Facebook
Debby Reiner, CEO, Grey New York
Allan Thygesen, president, Americas, Google
Scott L. Kauffman, chairman and CEO, MDC Partners
Susan Credle, global chief creative officer, FCB
Steve King, chief executive officer, Publicis Media
Evin Shutt, COO and partner, 72andSunny
Jordan Bitterman, chief marketing officer, IBM Watson Content & IoT Platform
Barbara Tint, consultant, Barbara Tint Consulting, and professor, Portland State University
Glenn Singleton, president and founder, Pacific Educational Group Inc.

Also Read: Salesforce had a Dream! How a SaaS User Conference Turned Into The World’s Largest Software Conclave

Unlike previous years, when the conference offered a dedicated Media Day and Creativity Day, Accelerate 2018’s day-to-day programming reflects a mix of sessions themed around addressing core industry hot topics: new agency models, brand safety, trust, agency/client partnerships, AI and machine learning, creativity and innovation and diversity and female leadership.

The first day of programming, the Management Practitioners Forum on Sunday, April 8, is for 4A’s members only.

Marla Kaplowitz

“The new name—Accelerate—really illustrates the speed of change required to thrive in today’s ever-changing marketplace. With things moving so quickly, we want Accelerate to offer moments of reflection, conversation and critical thought that illuminate clear paths forward for the industry. Above all else, we want to make sure we deliver the most value to attendees and respond to their needs. One addition is immersive workshops and learning tracks that allow attendees to actively participate in the conference experience,” said Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4A’s.

Also Read: SnapApp Joins Marketo Accelerate to Enable B2B Marketers to Better Engage Audiences Through Interactive Experiences

Learning track sessions include “Introduction to Courageous Conversations about Race,” which offers a preview of part of the learning series component of the 4A’s Enlightened Workplace Certification, and “Improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre,” through which attendees can experience some of the workshops offered through the 4A’s partnership with the Upright Citizens Brigade. Quebec-based Cirque du Soleil will also host an interactive workshop designed to stimulate creativity, curiosity and innovation.

Also at Accelerate, the 4A’s will reveal the winners of the fourth annual 4A’s Partner Awards, the industry’s only awards program that recognizes the collaboration and partnerships that power great creative work.

FleishmanHillard Hires Matt Groch to Lead Development of Global Data Analytics Capability

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March 12, 2018

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FleishmanHillard Hires Matt Groch to Lead Development of Global Data Analytics Capability

Research and Technology Strategist Matt Groch Brings Experience in the Strategic Application of Research, Data and Technology Across a Variety of Industries

FleishmanHillard (FH) recently announced the hire of Matt Groch as senior vice president and global lead of data analytics and innovation. Reporting to Natasha Kennedy, global managing director, research and analytics, Groch’s hire represents the agency’s commitment to the expansion and growth of its research and analytics practice.

Natasha Kennedy

“Matt brings a unique set of skills to our organization that further strengthen and distinguish the expertise of our practice. With a background in software development, mathematics, business and finance, he’ll help us create custom, insights-oriented solutions using computational analytics, big data and predictive analytics,” Kennedy said.

This is not the first time Groch and Kennedy have teamed up. In 2005, they pioneered the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in communications to discover topical trends, messaging, influencers and sentiment in online conversations and traditional media.

“Matt and I explored applications of AI and machine learning when print media first began making the transition to online, and blogging had just begun to proliferate as a newly recognized media channel,” Kennedy said, adding, “I’m very excited that he’s joined FleishmanHillard to partner once again in developing new AI-powered solutions for our clients.”

Also Read: AcuityAds Enhances Strategic Partnership with Fraudlogix to Expand Protective Measures and Increase ROI for Brands

Matt Groch

Groch brings experience in the strategic application of research, data and technology across a variety of industries, including nine years with the research and analytics division at Edelman. More recently, he served as chief technology officer for Clayco, a U.S.-based commercial construction company, and was the founding chief technology officer for a Chicago-based healthcare startup, Mondopoint. Before launching Mondopoint, Groch served as head of product innovation for Mission Metrics, the data products subsidiary of Mission Measurement responsible for the development of the Impact Genome Project.

Groch’s work has been recognized by various academic and professional organizations. He has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and served as a keynote speaker at the Nonprofit Technology Network’s Leading Change Summit. In addition, he is a recipient of the Chookaszian Prize in Risk Management from Northwestern University. Groch earned his MBA with a concentration in analytical finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and holds a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

FH’s global research and analytics practice creates a data-driven strategy and intelligence solutions. With a focus on improving business outcomes through continuous intelligence gathering, the practice delivers sustained, analytics-driven value for its clients.

Is GDPR Really Changing Ad Tech?

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Jeffrey Finch

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March 12, 2018

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The ad tech industry is accustomed to change. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will, no doubt, have a global impact. Despite the understated value of the new U.K. data protection bill, ad tech is bracing itself ahead of the deadline to comply. Are we overreacting?

First off, What Is GDPR?

GDPR will hold companies that control and process personal data from European countries accountable for how they handle that data. The UK government’s new data protection legislation will go into effect starting May 2018.

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

How Did GDPR Come About?

When a consumer clicks “Accept” on an opt-in box to proceed to a website, they should understand how their personal data will be processed and handled by the business asking to use that information. This goes beyond how their data will be used for marketing or advertising to how their data will be shared between systems and who has access to the information. This, I feel, is a reasonable request.

But such is not the case with every company. Transparency is a problem. The jargon and legalese of opt-in forms are intentionally vague to confuse consumers about what user agreements they’ve accepted.

Consumers in the US, have long demanded the same rights and data protection. But with the large, dense clusters of European consumers, the voices of many became amplified, which made it easier to achieve legislation.

By the way, has anyone asked European consumers how they want to be asked for consent? Has anyone informed them that their online experience is about to dramatically change, at least in the short term, for the worse? I have yet to hear or read much on GDPR from the consumer perspective.

Also Read: 3 Reasons Why Marketers Should Welcome GDPR (Other Than Because It’s Required!)

How Does GDPR Impact the US Companies?

Certainly, companies face more legal obligations under GDPR. Businesses need to take the necessary steps to protect privacy-related user information. And it will become harder for data management platforms to obtain third-party data.

But, while the threshold for consent has changed, it was always a necessity to a degree. GDPR is a long time coming and has been in the talks since 2016. The companies fretting over the new data protection policies are the ones that haven’t built a transparent, GDPR-compliant infrastructure. They’re under threat of losing revenue.

On the other hand, companies that have been regarding consent and transparency as the norm before the loom of GDPR will be the least affected by the regulation.

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

What’s the Upside of GDPR?

User experience under GDPR is a concern. Marketers fear digital advertising will regress to the days of untargeted and blanketed ads.

The best advertising puts first-party data first—it’s an underused yet powerful tool. Since third-party data will become harder to procure, the upside for smaller ad tech companies entering the space is the opportunity to create best practices around the use of first-party data.

PowerPost Launches PowerIQ – First Virtual Assistant for Content Marketers

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PRNewswire

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March 12, 2018

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PowerPost Launches PowerIQ - First Virtual Assistant for Content Marketers

PowerIQ To Deliver AI-Driven Content Technology

PowerPost, a leading content marketing platform, has today announced the launch of PowerIQ Virtual Assistant, a unique content intelligence technology that takes the guesswork out of content marketing. PowerIQ provides brand marketers access to real-time intelligence, competitive insights and identifies the most successful content produced by competitors and industry influencers.

“PowerIQ is a cross between a virtual research assistant and a content coach. For the first time, brands will now be able to identify relevant content topics on-demand, create hyper-targeted campaigns and have access to expert brand journalists—all from a single platform. PowerIQ is the first ever virtual marketing assistant powered by AI,” says Dan Curran, President of PowerPost.

Also Read: PowerPost Scoops $2 Million in Funding to Transform Brands into Social Media Power Publishers

With PowerIQ, brands can now tailor content topics more precisely to attract consumer attention. Data-driven editorial decisions are essential to brand success. Early client feedback has demonstrated an increase in social engagement by more than 50 percent by leveraging PowerIQ.

The launch of PowerIQ represents a crucial milestone towards leveraging predictive technology and artificial intelligence techniques to help create fully-optimized branded content.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming how marketers plan, produce, personalize, promote and perform. Using AI in content marketing is one of the biggest opportunities for marketers to move the needle in a meaningful way, starting today,” according to Mike Kaput, Director of Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute.

Also Read: PowerPost Drives Growth with Chicago Acquisition

Nearly 100 PowerPost clients, representing verticals such as insurance, finance, and CPG are currently leveraging PowerIQ to build successful content programs and outperform their competition.

PowerPost provides brand marketers with access to three intelligent content marketing solutions. PowerIQ delivers access to real-time intelligence to create surgically-precise branded content.

talkshoplive Launches the First Ever Live-Streaming Social Selling Network

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PRNewswire

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March 12, 2018

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talkshoplive™ Launches The First Ever Live-Streaming Social Selling Network

talkshoplive Video Platform Includes All the Tools and Resources Needed by Vendors

talkshoplive launched an offering for everyone from small business owners to mainstream brands and influencers a platform to create their own live streaming home shopping shows. The first network of social selling shows powered by user-generated content and it is also a full-service storefront and an intimate shopping exchange never before experienced in online purchasing for sellers and buyers.

The innovative platform is set to disrupt the online retail revenue model. talkshoplive is the first social media platform to offer an interactive and immersive live shopping experience. This allows entrepreneurs to host their own live product demonstration shows, chat in real-time with potential customers, and close sales by driving to a one-click buy button. Complete with order management and pre-paid shipping labels, It also allows anyone, anywhere, to run their own live shopping business irrespective of the budget size. Every live stream show has a ‘BUY’ button and can be shared to play live on other social media platforms, including Facebook mobile and Twitter.

Also Read: Shutterstock To Invest $15 Million in China’s Leading Social Network Platform ZCool

“The traditional home shopping show is losing relevance because it does not incorporate user-generated content. The experience doesn’t just allow for modern and authentic commerce, it provides a true measurement of influencer impact. As influencer marketing has kicked into high gear, talkshoplive offers a tangible look at ROI from influencers that no other social media platform can offer a brand. It is not about how many real or bought impressions they can garner, but rather how many items they can move,” said Bryan Moore, talkshoplive, co-founder.

“We facilitate a dialogue between buyers and sellers in a live setting that has not yet been available online. We’re creating economic opportunity for both small sellers and large brands alike, with buyers having direct access to creators of products and the people who love them. We created a platform to help people actualize their own American dream, and make it come true,” added co-founder Tina Moore.

From dressmaker Julie Mollo (best known as the creator of pop star Katy Perry’s iconic fruit-inspired ensembles) to America’s favorite Tupperware queen in Alabama to a succulent wall designer in Los Angeles to digital stars Megan Nicole (with a clothing and accessories line) and Chloe Lukasiak (with her book), talkshoplive’s inaugural brands and sellers are sure to pique interest and offer unique products – all while proving that this platform is for everyone. Look for legacy retailers, celebrities and more exciting independent sellers to be announced in the coming weeks.

Also Read: Talkwalker Launches Its New Social Media Search Engine Quick Search

The talkshoplive video platform includes all the tools and resources needed by vendors to create their own live shopping show and bring their products into the homes of their customers around the world with ease and creativity. It provides sellers with their own digital storefronts, without the overhead costs of brick-and-mortar. This platform is available to both sellers on the website and for sellers on the iOS marketplace. It allows sellers to highlight product features and benefits by using a ticker that scrolls across the screen with pre-loaded text. Live shows can be linked to social media accounts and a seller’s email list that alerts his/her followers when he/she is live and selling. After a sale is complete, the ease of shipping for sellers is unparalleled, they simply print the label, ship and get paid.

Shoppers have unlimited access to channels and live product shows with a talkshoplive Shopper account. Order processing and shipping are saved to profiles, making purchasing truly one click away. It makes it easy for buyers to follow profiles of brands and sellers they like, and to be notified when their favorite sellers have live shows or sales.

talkshoplive is a platform for brand new products. Sellers are not permitted to re-sell previously used the merchandise. All items sold on talkshoplive have a minimum of $10 value, and live video streams remain on the user’s page until the item has sold out, up to thirty days or until the seller chooses to end the sale. Each show has a duration of up to 15 minutes. talkshoplive shopping categories include Appliances, Automotive, Beauty & Health, Clothing, Eco-Products, Electronics, Home & Kitchen, Jewelry, Pet Supplies, Sports & Outdoors, Toys & Games and more.

Recommended Read: Video intelligence Launches Contextual Video Platform

Dropbox and Salesforce Form Strategic Partnership

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MTS Staff Writer

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March 12, 2018

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Dropbox and Salesforce Form Strategic Partnership

The Partnership Leads to the Creation of Branded Customized Dropbox Folders Within Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud with the New Digital Asset Engagement Solution

Dropbox and Salesforce, announced a strategic partnership to connect Salesforce’s #1 CRM platform with Dropbox’s leading collaboration platform, enabling companies of all types and sizes to collaborate and more deeply connect with their customers across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more.

The companies will initially deliver two new integrations to drive brand engagement and boost team productivity:

Fusion with Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud: This partnership saw the creation of branded customized folders within Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud with the new Digital Asset Engagement solution. Folders can be accessed by both internal teams and external partners. With two-way workflows, content stays relevant and up-to-date, whether the user is working in Dropbox or Salesforce. For example, a retailer using Commerce Cloud may create a Dropbox folder to access product images or creative briefs from an external creative agency. The retailer is notified if the agency makes changes or additions and can then update their online storefront in order to deliver a superior shopping experience.

Fusion with Quip: This blend has facilitated ease of access to content such as photos, video, and slides, directly within Salesforce Quip. Dropbox will also add support for Quip documents, allowing joint users to work on Quip files that live in Dropbox, furthering their effort to build a unified home for work.

In addition to these new integrations, Salesforce will use Dropbox Enterprise and Dropbox will significantly extend its use of Salesforce products including Salesforce Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and PRM across its business.

Also Read: Salesforce Is #1 in Fortune’s List Of ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’

Expanded Partnership with Continued Focus on Customer Success

This announcement builds on the existing relationship between the two firms, including the Dropbox for Salesforce app available on the Salesforce AppExchange. Additionally, Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce’s corporate investment group, has been an investor since 2014.

“Customer success is core to everything we do at Salesforce and it inspires our partnerships. When you bring together the world’s leading CRM and collaboration platforms, the possibilities to create more value for our customers are endless,” said Ryan Aytay, EVP, Global Business Development & Strategy, Salesforce

Also Read: Salesforce.org Partners With United Way To Launch Salesforce.org Philanthropy Cloud

“This deeper partnership with Salesforce is a great opportunity to build new value for our mutual customers. We’re looking forward to delivering these new integrations so our customers can get the most out of their tools,” said Quentin Clark, SVP of Engineering, Product and Design at Dropbox.

“Salesforce has completely changed the way businesses connect with their customers through the use of cloud, social, mobile IoT and AI technologies. Together, we have the opportunity to fundamentally change how people work,” said Dennis Woodside, Chief Operating Officer at Dropbox

Transform Your Marketing Team Into A 3D Organization

By

Justin Yopp

-

March 12, 2018

2

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results,”– Winston Churchill

Never has the need for data-driven decisions been more critical to optimizing marketing performance than they are today. Digital transformations have created more and richer data about our customers and prospects. Marketing teams that are serious about contributing to the business are serious about turning that data into customer insights. Generating more urgency is the rise in business accountability.

Gartner reports in their 2017 CMO Spend Survey that 76% of marketing organizations at least share accountability for a P&L. Yet, Aberdeen finds that only 19% of marketers have comprehensive tracking and reporting practices in place. This leads me to conclude that most marketers are managing by gut feel, a wholly insufficient practice in today’s data-rich environment.

Also Read: The Right Time for the Millennial Marketer

The Four Fundamental Elements of Data-Driven-Decisions

Transforming into a data-driven organization requires four fundamental elements are in place. Without any one of these, you limit the insights available to your organization and cast doubt on the validity of the insights that are available. Address all four competently and you’ll create the environment to produce robust insights.

The four fundamental elements are– Strategy, Process, Technology, and Data.

TPG - The Four Fundamentals — *TPG – The Four Fundamentals*

Strategy: This is your organization’s plan for how you’ll transform and specifically how you’ll use data to generate meaningful insights.

Technical: Putting the right tools and systems in place to capture, store, measure, and analyze data and then share the resulting insights to your organization.

Process: Ensuring all your processes enrich rather than pollute your data set.

Data: Making sure you have the right data architecture, quality and completeness to generate the insights your organization needs to move the business forward.

As you can understand, lacking any of the four fundamental elements will leave your organization wanting. Without the right data, you won’t generate any insights or the ones you do will be called into question. The lack of processes, or inconsistent processes, will corrupt your data set.

Without the proper technology (and no, this isn’t a green light to get a BI tool) you simply won’t be able to generate or share the insights you need. And without a strategy tailored to your organization, you won’t know what tools, processes, and data you need because you won’t know which insights are critical to maintaining your business health.

Also Read: How Marketing Ops Runs Marketing Like a Business

A Methodology for Putting this into Practice

Start the Transformation

After years of consulting on decision-making, I’ve uncovered six critical, largely sequential, questions all organizations must effectively answer if they’re to move to data-driven-decision making. These questions appear whether you’re just starting out in your measurement maturity or you’re well on your way to advanced measurement.

These questions are–

What should I measure?
What reports do I need to get these metrics?
What data structure, processes, and tools do I need to generate these reports?
How do I use these tools to generate these reports?
How do I interpret these reports to generate meaningful insights?
How do I regularly share these insights with my organization to stimulate data-driven-decision making?

As you can see, these questions address the four fundamental elements directly and also address the insight generation and institutionalization elements that move your organization to data-driven marketers in practice.

As you’ll also notice, selecting what you’re going to measure (strategy) is the first step for a reason. It guides answers to all the other questions. This step is so critical that I recently conducted a half-day workshop on it at B2B Marketing Exchange for a packed room.

In answering this question, you must develop a KPI Roadmap to set the strategic direction for your team. Let’s explore why this is so critical.

Also Read: How Marketing Operations Affects Marketing Accountability

The Criticality of a KPI Roadmap

Here, we’re going a bit meta, as we’re addressing the strategy for determining which results to pay attention to. Marketing is a science and an art, with the science side of the equation getting a lot of focus lately, especially in the area of marketing ops. The primary implication is that marketers will act like scientists: they will experiment, collect results, analyze those results and then make decisions based on the insights. These data-driven-decisions, or 3D, are the hallmark of a science-based marketing team.

Choosing KPIs Is a Fundamental Function of Leadership

As marketing leaders, our purpose is to maximize the potential of our teams. The selection of Key Performance & Predictive Indicators (KPIs) directly impacts our fulfillment of that purpose. Done correctly, the right KPIs foster harmony and collaboration. They empower our teams and focus their effort where they have a meaningful impact. A misstep here, though, and the wrong KPIs create dissonance and drain creativity out of our teams.

A KPI roadmap is the strategic plan of specific KPIs your team should adopt for data-driven-decision making. These KPIs are phased over time to capitalize on advancing maturity and to ensure the team is able to consume and use the KPIs you’re measuring. Too much data can be as, if not more, detrimental than too little data.

A KPI roadmap is the framework for defining process and data structures that support the KPIs and ultimately generate reliable insights. You can’t lean on the data if you don’t trust your data. This roadmap guides analysts in their report selection. It also informs the timeline for when a BI tool will be necessary, avoiding the premature purchase of a shiny new system.

Also Read: Fireside Chat with Jeff Pedowitz

Keep It Inquisitive

At the workshop, it was clear that KPI adoption is still a sensitive issue. Across multiple organizations, participants told me stories of resistance to measurement and a fear of the transparency good KPI measurement and reporting enables. This fear is very real and unfortunately, in some organizations, very justified.

If the leadership doesn’t engender a culture of experimentation and inquisitiveness and instead uses this new transparency for data-driven persecution, you will fail to establish a data-driven culture. The team will resist and sabotage the effort at every turn.

An effort that could have been directed to generating and acting on insights will be wasted on defense and disruption (not the market-defining kind). It’s imperative as a leader to instill confidence in your team that this new transparency will be used to uncover insights that will improve the performance of individuals and the organization as a whole. There is a world of difference between a failure and a mistake. Failure is the natural result of experimentation while failures can be controlled and minimized.

You must address the human needs of your people if you’re going to implement a data-driven culture, which accepts the results of many experiments as key learnings that should be captured and shared, improving the results of the entire team.

Also Read: Core Organizational Ingredients of the Ever-Expanding Marketing Operations Function

Briz Media Group Launches Connectors – A New Twist on Influencer Marketing

By

MTS Staff Writer

-

March 12, 2018

0

Briz Media Group Launches Connectors - A New Twist on Influencer Marketing

dbray Media Rebrands Agency as Briz Media, Launches ‘Connectors’

Briz Media Group, formerly named dbray Media, recently announced the formation of Connectors, a network of the best and brightest influencers and power players in the communications and marketing industries. These high-profile executives are committed to bringing new innovative ideas, thinking and guidance to Briz Media Group, its clients, and the communications industry in general.

Agency changes include a new logo and website that better reflect the broad scope of the agency’s work and capabilities across a number of industries, including martech, adtech, digital, cryptocurrency, and telecoms, among others.

Through Briz Media Group’s Connectors, companies have access to industry power players who can make connections to propel a business to the next level. Connectors can also help advise companies on key business initiatives—from raising capital to the best route to successful exits.

Also Read: Agency 451 Names Social Influencer Marketing Group Leadership

“Connectors is Briz Media Group’s stake in the ground as leaders in the marketing communications industries. To own a category you need to be a leader— to be intimately linked to that category and define it,” said David Bray, founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Briz Media Group.

Melody Wolff, Chief Everything Officer at Briz Media Group, added, “Companies are still grappling with understanding how to utilize technology to effectively communicate with their customers. It is incumbent upon us, as communications professionals, to be up to speed on the latest developments in the market so we can fill in the gap and advise clients. We look forward to introducing customized, industry-specific networks that companies can use to bring new, fresh concepts to their own industries.”

Also Read: Impact Radius Unveils ‘Dynamic Payouts’ for Influencer Marketing Campaigns

The “Connectors” roster includes:

Greg Coleman, President of Buzzfeed
President & CRO at The Huffington Post & NYU Stern School of Business Adjunct Professor, Digital Marketing, former president of Criteo
Ron Berger, CEO, Executive Chairman at EURO RSCG
Co-founder & Chairman Emeritus at Advertising Week & Chairman of the 4A’s
Chris Cunningham, Founder of C2Ventures
Start-up investor via C2.Ventures, Bowery Capital limited partner, BoD at Cornell Tech iTrek, BoA at Build.org
Aurelie Guerrieri, Founder & CEO of Akila One
President Emeritus of Women in Wireless, author of The Mobile Native’s Guide to Marketing, published with App Annie. In 2016, she was named one of 25 Mobile Women to Watch by Mobile Marketer.
Marc Parrish, CMO of ActionIQ
Investor & Advisor at Appluence Inc., former COO and advisor at Braze (formerly Appboy)
David Honig, Vice President Strategy, Corporate Partnerships at Dynamic Signal
Business Development at Buddy Media, Co-founder of Media6Degrees,
Andrew Budkofsky, CRO at Digital Trends
EVP Sales & Partnerships at Break Media

Also Read: Influencers Who Work Harder Deserve Deeper Rewards

Commenting on the re-brand, Bray stated, “Our new name is intended to communicate and reinforce that we’re a bold and innovative agency representing clients that challenge conventional wisdom and match our core values and mission.”

Bray concluded, “Over the past five years we’ve been hyper-focused on our clients and building credible awareness for them. We decided to practice what we preach and invest in our own public perception by putting a spotlight on our unique value proposition and industry approach. Our decentralized model mirrors the innovation of the companies we represent. Our competitors follow a model that was established decades ago which calls for high overhead, and believes that everyone can become adept at all aspects of the profession. At Briz Media Group, everyone that touches a client’s business is an expert in their respective field, be it publicity, writing, or events.”

Progress NativeChat can:

Key insights include:

Consumer Preference

Marketer Takeaways

Deliver to Their Inbox

Give Them What They Want

The Payout

Initiatives and updates announced include:

Sponsorships

Original Content in partnership with VICE

Telemundo and COPA90 create first-ever U.S. Hispanic content creator network

Telemundo Owned Stations to Deliver Unique Content for On-Air and Digital Platforms Directly from Russia

Soccer Legends and Commentators to Join Telemundo’s Exclusive Coverage

Event Registration Pro Calendar achieves this by including the following features in the core event registration plugin:

Accelerate will feature the following prominent speakers, among others:

First off, What Is GDPR?

How Did GDPR Come About?

How Does GDPR Impact the US Companies?

What’s the Upside of GDPR?

The companies will initially deliver two new integrations to drive brand engagement and boost team productivity:

Expanded Partnership with Continued Focus on Customer Success

The Four Fundamental Elements of Data-Driven-Decisions

A Methodology for Putting this into Practice

Start the Transformation

The Criticality of a KPI Roadmap

Choosing KPIs Is a Fundamental Function of Leadership

Keep It Inquisitive

The “Connectors” roster includes:

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