AdColony Announces Full Compatibility with IAS, Double Verify and MOAT

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February 13, 2018

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How is Location Data Landscape Shaping Up in 2018? — LEFT: Kjartan Slette, COO & Co-founder; RIGHT: Thomas Walle, CEO & Co-founder, Unacast

If a Tool Is Limited by the Availability of Low-Quality Data, It Just Won’t Be of Value. As the Data Market Becomes More Crowded, It’s Also Important to Focus on Transparency, says Unacast CEO Thomas Walle

When a Location Data platform raises significant funding from leading investors in the industry, it ought to make waves. Unacast, the makers of Real Time Graph, scooped $17.5 million. Clear with their plans for the future and ambitious in taking their product road-map to new territories, the Thomas Walle-led company is set for a phenomenal year ahead.

Marketers can leverage Location Data to improve their marketing campaigns by better understanding customers and building highly-targeted audiences. With a structured array of location data at your fingertips, you can not only measure the campaign’s effectiveness but also deliver highly optimized and personalized experiences at scale.

At the time of Unacast’s latest funding announcement, we spoke to CEO and Co-founder, Thomas Walle to understand how marketers can leverage Location Data and Intelligence tools to better navigate along a buyer’s journey.

The Current State of Location Data and Analytics Reporting Tools

Location data and analytics reporting tools are, for the most part, only getting better, and Unacast is very excited to be at the forefront of that. Simultaneously, it’s important to remember that tools like this are only as good as the data that powers them.

If a tool is limited by the availability of low-quality data, it just won’t be of a value. As the data market becomes more crowded, it’s also important to focus on transparency – something that we’re seeing a greater demand for both within the industry and from partners and clients, and rightly so.

Clients need to be able to understand how data is collected and processed in order to use it in way that gets the best results for their business. A tool without quality data and transparency, no matter what it promises, won’t hold up.

How Would Unacast Extend the Benefits of This Funding to the Location Data Customers?

One of the main focuses of this funding is the continued improvement of our data quality and products. We believe that a solid, transparent foundation of the highest-quality data is a necessity to everything we build, and we’re looking forward to spending even more time on both data quality and new product initiatives to the benefit of our clients and partners.

We’re also ready to expand our offerings into new verticals like real estate, hedge funds and e-commerce – spaces that we believe could see some fantastic benefits from using location data.

Recommended More: Do Your AdTech Goals for 2018 Look Like These?

Location Data Is the Perfect Tool for Hyper-Personalization

We’ve seen a remarkable response from marketing and advertising technology providers, which makes perfect sense. Location data is the perfect tool for hyper-personalization, and of course targeting and attribution.

But. there’s also a steadily growing interest and application in the research, finance and city-planning industries, which equally need to know how people move around in the real world to make the right decisions and build great products.

I think as the location data industry itself matures, we’ll see higher levels of adoption across a broad range of markets.

New Technologies in 2018 to Make Location Data Platform Better and Readily Available

We’re all about the focus on quality.

There will always be hype surrounding new technologies or tools in the location space, but the fact is that all of that is useless if you haven’t built a strong foundation for your products. We also want to make sure we’re putting transparency at the forefront of our offerings, so clients are confident not only in the quality of the data, but the sources as well.

AC Business Media appoints Infogroup Media Solutions as Data and Media Management Partner

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February 13, 2018

infogroupmediasolutions AC Business Media

AC Business Media, a Prominent B2B Media, and Business Intelligence Company, Will Retain Infogroup to Provide Data Management Services

Infogroup Media Solutions, the leading provider of business and consumer media management solutions, announced that it has added AC Business Media to its client roster.

Through this new partnership, Infogroup will deliver advanced data processing, media management, and market strategy services to help AC Business Media expand its list rental opportunities, gain a more complete view of prospective subscribers, and maximize the value of its data.

Also Read: 5 Things You Gain by Closing the Marketing Operations Gap

“We are pleased to strengthen our partnership with AC Business Media and help them better monetize their own data assets,” said Gretchen Littlefield, president of Infogroup Media Solutions. “Our team is here to support their data needs and generate more revenue for their business. We look forward to being part of AC Business Media’s continued success in 2018 and beyond.”

“Our growth in clients over the past several months shows the expanding demand for forward-thinking solutions in data-driven marketing,” said Michael Iaccarino, chairman, and CEO of Infogroup. “At Infogroup, we take pride in our ability to deliver new and innovative ways to help our partners maximize the value of their data and drive bottom line results.”

AC Business Media is a leading business-to-business media and business intelligence company with a portfolio of renowned brands in heavy construction, asphalt, concrete, paving, rental, sustainability, landscape, manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain markets. Most recently added to the mix is New York City-based DMN, a resource for senior marketers that covers all aspects of digital and data-driven marketing. AC Business Media delivers relevant, cutting-edge content to its audiences through its industry-leading digital properties, trade shows, videos, magazines, webinars and newsletters and provides advertisers the analytics, data, and ability to reach their target audience. Infogroup Media Solutions empowers business, consumer, and nonprofit marketing professionals.

Also Read: 3 Reasons Why Data Storytelling Will Be A Top Marketing Trend of 2018

Accelirate Partners With Chirrp.AI to Deliver Enterprise-Class Chatbot Solutions

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February 13, 2018

Accelirate Offers Disruptive 'RPA on Demand' Consumption Model

Accelirate Announces Its Partnership with Chirrp.AI That Strengthens Its Enterprise Chatbot Solutions Capability

Accelirate, a Business Process Automation services leader, announced its partnership with Chirrp.AI that further strengthens its enterprise-class chatbot solutions capability.

Accelirate Partners With Chirrp.AI to Deliver Enterprise-Class Chatbot Solutions — Ahmed Zaidi

“We have been delivering Business Process Automation solutions using RPA and AI technologies to our clients for the past two years and many clients have been asking about the feasibility of using chatbot solutions for internal and external use cases. We found the chirrp.ai product to be very interesting as they have been refining their capabilities over the last three years and have a competitive product,” says Ahmed Zaidi, managing partner and chief automation officer of Accelirate.

“There are many chatbot solutions out there, however, we wanted to make sure that the platform should be able to handle low-, medium- and high-complexity use cases. A moderate-complexity use case can simply be a chatbot answering employee or customer queries but should also be capable of integrating with back-office systems and push/pull data. The high-complexity use cases are where many clients envision using chatbots as an NLP/NLU-powered application-delivery mechanism which can handle complex user queries as well as application rules and workflows right from within the chatbot interface.”

Also Read: Chatbots and Virtual Assistants are Fast Becoming the New Graphical User Interface

“At chirrp, our mission is to enable enterprises to provide relevant and accurate chatbot conversations. We want to do that by using best-in-breed A.I. technologies to create the right enterprise-class solution. This has enabled enterprises to achieve desired results while providing the flexibility to use their choice of a broader cloud platform. Partnering with Accelirate will allow us to provide additional integration capability,” said Chirrp CEO and co-founder Mallesh Murugesan.

Also Read: AWS Announces Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab

The chatbots can be initially configured and set up to understand structured as well as unstructured customer queries and provide them with appropriate answers without involving a human. For example, if a customer is unable to interact with the self-service portal for whatever reason, they could ask their question to the chatbot, for example, “What is my credit balance?” The chatbot can be trained to handle multiple variations of such questions through pre-trained data. The chatbot can then gather the relevant customer information, query the backend systems (which can be accomplished by using RPA robots) and present the information to the customer interactively. This entire workflow can be completed without human intervention thus reducing the call center costs considerably. However, the chatbots must be properly trained to handle corner cases and hand over to a human at the appropriate times otherwise a negative customer experience can quickly erode any benefits from deploying such technology.

Harmonic Appoints David Krall to its Board of Directors

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February 13, 2018

Harmonic Appoints David Krall to its Board of Directors

David Krall Most Recently Served as the Strategic Advisor to Roku Inc

Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery and cable access virtualization, announced it has expanded the company’s board of directors with the appointment of David Krall.

“I’m delighted to welcome David to our board. David’s extensive executive leadership and board experience, and particularly his strong digital and streaming media background, make him an excellent addition. We look forward to David’s insights and guidance as we continue to transform the video and broadband industries with our OTT SaaS and virtualized cable access solutions,” said Patrick Harshman, president and CEO of Harmonic.

Also Read: Anaplan Appoints Tech Veteran Sue Bostrom To Add Depth And Experience To Its Board Of Directors

Krall currently serves as a strategic advisor to Roku, Inc., a leading manufacturer of media players for streaming entertainment, and on the board of directors of Progress Software Corp., Universal Audio, Inc. and Audinate Pty Ltd. Previously, he served as president and chief operating officer of Roku. Earlier in his career, Krall served as president and chief executive officer of QSecure, Inc., a developer of secure credit card technology, and of Avid Technology, Inc., a provider of digital media creation tools for the media and entertainment industry.

“Harmonic is well positioned to drive a new phase of growth through its market-leading VOS OTT streaming and new CableOS virtualized cable access innovations. I am looking forward to helping the company deliver on its market leadership and shareholder value creation vision,” said Krall.

Krall holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA, with distinction, from Harvard Business School.

Also Read: Roku Introduces New Ad Insights Suite to Better Quantify OTT Advertising Results

Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery technology and services, enables media companies and service providers to deliver ultra-high-quality broadcast and OTT video services to consumers globally. The company has also revolutionized cable access networking via the industry’s first virtualized CCAP solution, enabling cable operators to more flexibly deploy gigabit internet service to consumers’ homes and mobile devices. Whether simplifying OTT video delivery via innovative cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies or powering the delivery of gigabit internet cable services, Harmonic is changing the way media companies and service providers monetize live and VOD content on every screen.

Meredith Corporation Partners With Google On Launch Of New Product, AMP Stories

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February 13, 2018

PEOPLE Is First Meredith Brand to Launch on AMP Stories

Meredith Corporation announced that it is among the beta publishers launching AMP Stories, which was created in collaboration with the open source AMP project and Google. AMP Stories provides a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information as visually rich, tap-through stories. PEOPLE is the first Meredith brand to work on developing the format for the developer preview at the AMP conference in Amsterdam.

“AMP Stories have extraordinary potential to enhance how we create mobile content. Our team can easily create beautiful, media-rich stories that our users can now access quickly across the web,” said Doug Parker, Vice President of Digital Design at Meredith. “We continue to be focused on creating the best content for every platform, and the creative possibilities on AMP Stories are endless.”

“AMP stories provide a mobile-first experience for storytelling that digital news publishers can publish on their own sites and can easily distribute across the open web,” said Rudy Galfi, Product Manager for AMP at Google. “Meredith’scollaboration has played an important role in building a flexible format that taps into the creative DNA of journalists and empowers newsrooms with new approaches for engaging their readers.”

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

Meredith uses multiple distribution platforms — including broadcast television, print, digital, mobile and video — to provide consumers with content they desire and to deliver the messages of its advertising and marketing partners.

Meredith’s National Media Group reaches nearly 200 million unduplicated American consumers every month, including 85% of US millennial women. Meredith is a leader in creating content across media platforms and life stages in key consumer interest areas, such as celebrity, food, lifestyle, home, parenting, beauty, fashion, news and sports. Meredith also features robust brand licensing activities including more than 3,000 SKUs of branded products at 5,000 Walmart stores across the US and at walmart.com, as well as innovative business-to-business marketing solutions provided by Meredith Xcelerated Marketing.

Meredith’s Local Media Group includes 17 television stations reaching more than 11% of U.S. households. Meredith’sportfolio is concentrated in large, fast-growing markets, with seven stations in the nation’s Top 25 and 13 in Top 50 markets. Meredith’s stations produce 700 hours of local news and entertainment content each week and operate leading local digital destinations.

Also Read: Forget Click-Through Rates, Focus on Emotional Engagement

UJET Focuses On Expansion With $25 Million Series B

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February 13, 2018

UJET, The Company Reimagining Customer Support, Adds Top-Tier VC’s GV and Citi Ventures In Latest Funding Round

UJET Inc, a real-time customer communications platform that makes it simple for any company to provide intuitive, modern-day support, announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B round of funding led by GV (formerly Google Ventures).

UJET has raised over $45 million to date and is leading the transformation in how today’s call centers can leverage contemporary technologies to be more efficient and customer friendly. Citi Ventures, a new investor in UJET, also participated in the round, along with existing investors, Kleiner Perkins and DCM Ventures.

UJET’s secure, cloud-based and mobile-ready platform delivers a holistic voice and chat experience across all customer entry points—phone, web, and app. It replaces expensive legacy providers with a simple solution that makes it easy for customers and businesses to instantly connect so they can resolve problems faster. UJET is reshaping the future of customer support with its best-in-class reliability, security, and mobile SDK, enabling users to reach support teams from directly within their existing smartphone apps.

“Consumers want and expect instant resolution to support issues. Americans are estimated to spend more than 30 hours per year talking to customer support with well over half churning out after a bad experience,” said Karim Faris, GV general partner. “UJET is a modern customer interaction platform, built to equip call centers and consumers with better tools to tackle support problems. The team is transforming customer support from a necessary cost center to a differentiator and revenue driver for enterprises.”

The market was clearly ready for a new approach: since its launch, UJET has experienced rapid adoption from the likes of Blink, an Amazon Company, Ring and SpotHero. In addition, activity levels across the UJET platform have nearly doubled every month since launch.

Also Read: 60% of Customer Success Teams Are Unaware of Critical Client Issues

“We live in a world where both customers and call center agents have access to sophisticated, multi-modal computing platforms on their mobile devices and desktops,” said Ramneek Gupta, managing director and co-head of venture investing at Citi Ventures. “Yet customers are still engaging with call centers essentially using voice-technology invented by Alexander Graham Bell. The UJET team recognized this as an opportunity and has built a customer support platform that promises to dramatically transform how customers will interact with companies by truly leveraging the power of smartphones.”

In addition to investing in scaling the business, UJET is expanding its geographic footprint. The company will be opening a New York office next month and plans to open its EU headquarters in the second quarter of 2018.

“From the top companies in our target markets, to highly reputed investors, to some of the best and brightest minds in technology, we have an amazing amount of energy behind us. It’s an exciting time for UJET,” said UJET founder and CEO Anand Janefalkar. “We plan to leverage this investment to drive our ambitious growth targets and further invest in developing a world-class platform.”

Also Read: The Age of Choice: How Marketing & Business Will Change in 2018

Qubit’s 2018 Travel Survey Confirms Important Role that Mobile, Personalization and Reviews Play in Searching for and Booking Vacations Online

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MTS Staff Writer

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February 13, 2018

Survey Data Also Reveals the Behavior Gap Between Travelers Under and Over 35 Years Old

The state of the travel and tourism market is in transition based on a number of factors, including the maturation of personalization and mobile technology according to new survey data released by Qubit, the leaders in marketing personalization technology.

Qubit’s 2018 Travel Survey revealed that younger and older travelers have different approaches to booking travel and taking vacations in general:

42 percent of travelers under 35 are more likely to use a mobile device when it comes to looking for travel inspiration and thirty-six percent use their mobile device to book travel. In contrast, 24 percent of those over 35 use a mobile device to search for travel, and just 20 percent rely on mobile to book.
Travelers under 35 go on vacation more-22 percent go on four or more vacations per year compared to 14 percent older than 35.
Overall, 80.5 percent of US respondents said they planned to stay in the US for travel in 2018, only 18.5 percent planned to go abroad.

Survey results, based on data from more than 1,000 respondents in the US and the U.K., also found certain segments of the population respond more positively to personalization efforts that travel and tourism companies are now employing in an effort to provide a customized and more relevant online booking experience. The three segments that respond best to personalization are: consumers under 35, families and last-minute bookers.

Also Read: New Evergage Study Shows Compelling Personalization Benefits

According to our data, US travelers are significantly more loyal to the sites they’ve booked travel with previously – 27.19 of US travelers said they wouldn’t switch from the site they booked before versus 9.49 percent of UK consumers.

The survey also found that most travelers welcome recommendations based on previous searches or purchases, finding these recommendations somewhat or very helpful. Again, travelers in the younger age bracket appreciate personalized recommendations more than members of the older age bracket:

In the UK, 69 percent of consumers under 35 found recommendations helpful, versus 40 percent of over age 35.
Similarly, in the US, 78 percent of travelers under 35 found recommendations helpful, versus 64 percent of over age 35.

Customer reviews are now extremely important to all consumers researching travel, regardless of the age bracket that they fall into:

In the UK, 78 percent of travelers under-35 and 72 percent of those over-35 judged travel reviews as important
Reviews play a bigger role to US travelers than UK travellers, with 88 percent of the 35 and under age group and 82 percent over 35 agreeing that reviews are helpful.

Survey data also found that US travelers to be more open to sharing their travel experiences by leaving a review with booking websites than UK travelers. While 75 percent of US consumers under 35 will leave a review only 54 percent of UK consumers under 35 will do the same.

Qubit“Our survey results show that today’s travel customers are increasingly fickle, but the data also shows that their behavior can be modified through personalization features such as recommendations. This confirms our belief that personalization should be standard practice across the board. We also identified a clear trend towards mobile, with younger demographics starting to favor mobile as their booking channel of choice. Travel companies should expect 2018 to be the year when customers expect the experience of researching and reserving travel on our wireless devices to be just as easy and trouble-free as on the desktopk,” said Graham Cooke, CEO, Qubit.

Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff to Speak at The New York Times New Work Summit

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MTS Staff Writer

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February 13, 2018

Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff to Speak at The New York Times New Work Summit

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, announced that Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff will be speaking at The New York Times New Work Summit today, February 13.

Benioff will participate in a fireside chat with New York Times Deputy Managing Editor Rebecca Blumenstein in a conversation entitled, “Leading Change.” The conversation will start at approximately 10:55 a.m. PT and will be live-streamed. Benioff, the cloud computing pioneer, will be sharing his insights on the evolving role of today’s chief executive, and the leadership that’s required for companies to succeed in the fourth Industrial Revolution.

The two-day summit is ongoing at The Ritz Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California. Other speakers at the event include Jeff Wilke, CEO. Worldwide Consumer Amazon; Mike Schroepfer, CTO. Facebook; Peggy Johnson, EVP. of Business Development, Microsoft; Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn among others.

Also Read: Salesforce to Invest $2 Billion in its Canadian Business Over Five Years

The summit is being held to discuss the as the impact of artificial intelligence which is accelerating across a myriad of industries. Leaders in technology and business will be seen exploring unprecedented questions, challenges, and opportunities that AI is unleashing for leaders of organizations. The summit will address important questions such as what sectors are experiencing the most dramatic transformations, and how does that impact top decision-making? How can CEOs harness the power of AI to optimize their companies’ performance? Is China posed to surge ahead of the rest of the world on AI? And — more broadly — what kind of role should regulators play in managing the disruption from AI and its impact on the global economy?

Benioff also announced the availability of Google Analytics for Salesforce Communities dashboard, yesterday on Twitter.

Google Analytics™ for Salesforce Communities Dashboard
The Google Analytics for Salesforce Communities package contains three dashboards that visually display the key metrics tracked in the dashboard. https://t.co/vr1SbC3Lr1 pic.twitter.com/9ARY5X2c5y

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) February 12, 2018

This is not the first global discussion that Benioff will be attending this year. Last month, Benioff participated in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting taking place in Davos, Switzerland, from January 23-26, 2018. At the event, Benioff was a part of panel discussions such as “In Technology We Trust?” and “Future Shocks: Rogue Technology.” He also joined a press conference titled Friends of the Ocean.

Unacast Scoops $17.5 Million to Add More Power and Transparency to Location Data

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February 13, 2018

Unacast Scoops $17.5 Million to Add More Power and Transparency to Location Data

Company Will Continue to Empower Businesses to Make Smarter Decisions by Providing Unprecedented Access to Human Activity Through the Real World Graph

Barely months before GDPR comes into force, Unacast, the maker of Real World Graph, has announced that is has raised $17.5 million in a new funding round. The leading contextual and transparent location data platform scooped the funding round from its lead investors, Transatlantic fund White Star Capital, and joined by strategic investor Telia, a leading European telco, and co-led by existing investors Open Ocean Capital and Investinor, the Norwegian Government-backed investment company, both increasing their commitments.

New Funding to Help Growth in New Markets and Launch Quality Products

At the time of this announcement, Thomas Walle, CEO and Co-founder of Unacast said, “Trust, both to data partners and clients, is crucial to what we do as a company. Our goal is to understand how people move about the real world and present the best possible contextualized data so that businesses can build better products and make better decisions. That is not a trivial task, but this new funding will allow us to accelerate our investment in innovation and quality products for our partners, clients and the ecosystem.”

Headquartered in Oslo, Unacast is on a mission to understand human movement and behavior in the real world, empowering companies across a wide range of industries to better understand how people move, act and behave while maintaining and protecting user privacy.

Recommended Read: Interview with Jeremy Fain, CEO, Cognitiv

With clients in marketing technology, research and analytics, finance, governments, and city planning, Unacast will continue to expand the use of its human movement and behavior data throughout 2018, engaging across more verticals than any other company in the location data intelligence space and expanding into the European market.

Impressive Run in the Data Market

The funding will be instrumental in Unacast’s expansion and in educating businesses on how the use of high-quality, transparent location data can provide them with the information they need to make better decisions and build the next generation of products and services. Unacast’s data can be applied across a wide range of industries and use cases.

Most recently, Unacast partnered with TVadSync, creators of a TV Audience Platform, to help them connect the dots between TV, digital, and offline through opportunities like linking brand TV spots and online video interaction to audience location visit propensity and understanding the location behaviors of TV audiences. Other use cases across industries range from retargeting and attribution for marketing technology providers to foot traffic trends that inform market predictions and population behavior insights for research reports.

Jeremy Fain, CEO and founder of Cognitiv, said, “When we input Unacast’s data into our neural networks, we saw a significant increase in model accuracy —giving marketers even more powerful deep learning solutions and helping advertisers to drive better returns on their media investment.”

Jeremy added, “Unacast’s data enabled improvements in algorithms led to an increase in accuracy and a decrease in wasted impressions. We look forward to our continued partnership with Unacast as its data helps us describe the intricacies of daily human behavior more completely.”

Unacast will be expanding its global presence while maintaining the Nordic values of quality and transparency that have always been at the heart of its business, product development, and working culture. The latest round of funding will be dedicated to continually improving the company’s overall data quality, ensuring that Unacast is representing real-world behavior data as accurately and transparently as possible. The company plans to invest heavily in product and innovation in 2018 while continuing to make strategic hires to strengthen its leading position.

Investors Speak

Uncast is a Trusted Name in Location Data

Christian Hernandez Gallardo, Managing Partner, White Star Capital said, “The location and human behavior data space is still nascent, but Unacast has proven that it is one of the most trusted names in the market.”

Christian added, “Location is a complex data set to interpret and understand, and as the segment grows and businesses require not just data, but the context to extract value from it, they will have a greater need of partners that can support them. Both the industry and Unacast have grown substantially in a relatively short time, and we believe Unacast is primed to extend its leadership position throughout.”

Brendan Ives, Head of Division X at Telia Company, said, “By investing and forming a partnership between Unacast and Division X, Telia’s unit for emerging businesses and innovation hub, we can combine our datasets and offer real-time and richer insights to support a wider range of customer needs.”

Brendan added, “Over time, as more industries get connected we foresee the need for data orchestration so that companies can share and trade data in a secure and trustworthy way, and provide more seamless and personalized experiences to their end-users.”

Jon Eriksen of Investinor, said, “Unacast has built the leading global location platform. The company is well positioned to capture a substantial part of real-world data market, which is estimated to be worth $5 billion USD by 2020, according to market analysts.”

Sisense Adds Analytics Veteran Paul Zolfaghari to its Board of Directors

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February 13, 2018

Sisense Adds Analytics Veteran Paul Zolfaghari to its Board of Directors

Sisense Continues to Build Its Market Momentum by Strengthening Its Product Offering, Adding Domain and Operational Expertise, and Growing Its Technology Industry Endorsements

Sisense, disrupting the BI market by simplifying business analytics for complex data, today announced the appointment of software industry veteran Paul Zolfaghari to its board of directors.

Zolfaghari has a deep understanding of the enterprise analytics, business intelligence, and database industries, having spent nearly two decades as an operating executive in those markets. Over a fourteen-year career at BI provider MicroStrategy, Zolfaghari served in many senior executive roles, including EVP of Global Operations and President. Zolfaghari is also the former COO of ParAccel, the analytic database company whose platform serves as the foundation for the Amazon AWS’ “Redshift” enterprise warehouse platform. Currently, Zolfaghari is a Managing Partner, Operations, with Carrick Capital, a private equity firm that partners with leading software and technology-enabled devices companies.

“I am very excited to be joining Sisense’s board at this key time in the BI market,” said Zolfaghari, adding, “The market is undergoing a profound shift as organizations seek newer, more agile, business user focused solutions to address their rapidly growing demand for actionable insight. Sisense has delivered a powerful, flexible, full-stack analytic solution that should become the standard for the new generation of BI requirements. Sisense’s combination of product innovation, return on investment, and customer satisfaction is truly impressive. And they have even more ambitious plans for the future.”

Also Read: New Free Business Intelligence Offering From Global Database Will Disrupt the Marketing Database Industry

“Paul is one of the most successful leaders in the analytics software industry. He joined MicroStrategy shortly after the company went public and during his extensive tenure there, helped them become one of the second-generation leaders in the BI space. As we now enter the third wave of innovation in BI and analytics, Paul’s experience, reputation, and knowledge will help ensure that Sisense continues to lead, and deliver even more business intelligence breakthroughs for our customers and the market,” said Amir Orad, CEO of Sisense.

Sisense Releases Version 7, Receives Industry and Analyst Endorsement

Sisense recently announced the release of the 7th version of its product (“Sisense 7.0”). Sisense 7.0 continues to deliver on the company’s vision for a revolutionary, visual approach to complex data, driven by smart recommendations, making it easy for business decision-makers to discover actionable business insights. This follows numerous other product breakthroughs introduced in 2017, including Sisense Pulse, which uses machine learning algorithms to proactively detect and alert users to important changes in data to drive action.

Continuing its impressive recognition by the business and technology communities, Sisense was named a Top 25 Business-to-business Technology Company in the State of New York by G2, and won the Best Business Intelligence Software Award from FinancesOnline for the second consecutive year. This adds to numerous other high-profile recognitions in 2017, including Sisense being recognized with a CODiE award from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) for Best Business Intelligence Tool and Platform, a “Perfect Recommend” ranking for the second consecutive year in Dresner’s 2017 Wisdom of Crowds BI market study, a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms for 2017, and inclusion in the Forbes “Cloud 100” list for the second consecutive year.

Mobile Marketing Platform Adikteev Raises $12 Million

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February 13, 2018

Mobile Marketing Platform Adikteev Raises $12 Million

Series B Round for Adikteev Was Led by Ring Capital and BNP Developpement

Leading mobile marketing platform, Adikteev has secured $12 million in its Series B round for further international growth outside of its home base in France, as well as research and development efforts. Ring Capital and BNP Developpement led the round to which ISAI, Ventech, and Laurent Asscher also contributed. Adikteev uniquely combines state-of-the-art creative technology, data, and artificial intelligence to deliver ROI for advertisers and app developers.

Xavier Mariani, CEO of Adikteev, said, “In just five years, Adikteev has reached an unprecedented level of strategic growth from seizing new opportunities in the marketplace. This new round of funding will help strengthen our research and development efforts, as well as accelerate our international expansion, particularly in the US, where we have a strong retargeting offering.”

Two prior fundraising rounds enabled Adikteev to quickly acquire and enhance its mobile solutions, spurring profitably represented by more than 6,142 percent growth in France since its founding. The first was Motion Lead, a Y Combinator-backed company based on mobile dynamic creative technology. This was followed by Trademob, the first European mobile DSP specializing in user acquisition and app retargeting. Both became part of Adikteev’s technology stack. Adikteev now has more than 100 employees and 30 percent are engaged in research and development in Paris and Berlin.

Geoffroy Bragadir, CEO and co-founder, Ring Capital, said, “We are particularly happy to partner with a talented French team such as Adikteev to hasten their expansion with this investment. Beyond financing, we are confident we can help this fast-growing ad tech company to scale-up and increase their international footprint by bringing operational expertise from the Ring team and high-value connections with our mentors.”

Adikteev’s platform combines retargeting with dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and playable ads. Its key differentiator is a testing framework that focuses on incrementality measurement, predicting user lifetime value and adjusting bidding price accordingly, helping advertisers across all channels.

The round’s closing follows the recent opening of offices in New York City and San Francisco in 2017. This has enabled even more regular improvement of Adikteev’s core product based on more immediate client feedback.

Currently, Adikteev offers its mobile advertising platform to advertisers and app developers with a global solution for their communication needs in every step of the user’s lifetime: from awareness through branding and qualified traffic to conversion through user acquisition and retargeting.

Cloud Planning Pioneer Adaptive Insights Launches Comprehensive Offering for Sales

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February 13, 2018

Cloud Planning Pioneer Adaptive Insights Launches Comprehensive Offering for Sales

New Purpose-Built Sales Planning Solution Extends its Business Planning Cloud, Embraced by Acquia, Apptio, Ivanti, MongoDB, and WinShuttle to Drive Corporate Performance

Adaptive Insights extends its Business Planning Cloud with a comprehensive offering for sales planning. Adaptive Insights for Sales is a purpose-built planning and analytics solution driving performance and predictability. Designed for companies of all sizes to maximize sales efficiency and sales investments, the new solution modernizes sales capacity, quota, and territory planning. Built on Adaptive Insights’ scalable platform, Adaptive Insights for Sales links sales and territory plans to the overall financial plan, so business leaders can align strategy with execution.

“We saw an opportunity for innovation because historically sales planning has been a blend of art and science. We’ve taken the guesswork out of this kind of planning with Adaptive Insights for Sales. Now teams can easily get territories and quotas right with models rooted in real-time data and analytics. This lets sales organizations dynamically leverage performance data like actual bookings and sales pipeline as well as quota attainment and quota recovery to optimize performance—while linking with the corporate plan—all in real time,” said Bhaskar Himatsingka, chief product officer, Adaptive Insights.

Market leading early adopters include Acquia, Apptio, Ivanti, MongoDB, and Winshuttle. These high-growth technology companies, already planning with Adaptive Insights for Finance, now optimize their sales plans with Adaptive Insights for Sales, all using the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud.

“Adaptive Insights for Sales gives us, for the first time, the predictability that allows us to manage our business. Our sales operations team can do what-if scenarios in real-time, analyzing data driving trends and then course-correcting to optimize our performance. As important, linking our sales plans to our financial plans on the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud gives us one common language across our business,” said Scott Spilker, head of sales operations, Winshuttle.

Also Read: PublicRelay Partners with Consumer Technology Association To Power Communications Media Hub Nerve Center At CES 2018

Real-Time Data, Impact Analysis Drives Predictability and Performance

Adaptive Insights for Sales combines Adaptive Insights’ trademark ease of use with a new, interactive interface for real-time, what-if scenarios and high-fidelity planning and includes a specialized extension for territory planning.

For sales operations teams and sales leaders, the ability to understand the impact of changes to assumptions ranging from productivity and attainment to ramp times and quota over an assignment means better and more predictable performance from sales. For finance teams, the ability to integrate operational and financial plans means more timely and precise forecasts and improved visibility into business performance. And, with all users on the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud, plans are integrated across the business so each change impacts other plans throughout the planning hierarchy, enabling a comprehensive real-time, continuous planning process.

For MongoDB, getting territories balanced appropriately is a priority. “MongoDB operates in a large market with a massive community of developers, which makes focus and prioritization critical. We need to ensure that our account executives are investing their time in the right places. Adaptive Insights for Sales enables us to evaluate territories and assign the accounts with the highest ROI, making our sales team more productive,” said Meghan Gill, vice president of sales operations at MongoDB.

Also Read: Amazon Marketing Channel Outshines Google and Facebook Says New Research

Integrates with Leading Software and Platforms to Enhance Visibility

As with its flagship Adaptive Insights for Finance, the new solution easily integrates with other software and platforms across the enterprise, such as Salesforce CRM, as well as ERP systems. Winshuttle has connected Adaptive Insights for Sales with Salesforce to bring opportunity and sales representative data into their model, enabling better prediction of sales, according to Spilker.

Advanced Sales Models Powered by Capacity, Quota, and Territory Planning

Built on Adaptive Insights’ industry-leading modeling platform with integrated analytics and reporting, Adaptive Insights for Sales solution includes:

Capacity & Quota Planning. Purpose-built solution templates deliver best practices quickly and include top-down allocation of targets across time, regions, segments; bottoms-up model of productivity; and setting quotas to ensure acceptable coverage.
Territory Planning. Easily scales to address the challenges with territory planning, eliminating the need to wrangle large volumes of data. Makes data-driven territory planning accessible for companies of all sizes and includes the ability to assess and segment the market by factors like geography, company size, vertical, and product, as well as assign resources to named accounts or geography/segment.
Performance Monitoring & Model Maintenance. Enabling sales teams and executives to leverage real-time analytics, the solution manages plan vs. actuals for staffing, productivity, ramping across segments and territories, and guide execution.

TimeTrade Launches New Partner Program for Intelligent Customer Engagement — Sheryl Kingstone

“In today’s fast-moving world, sales teams need to respond instantly to changes in the market. Sales teams need improved insights for sales onboarding, setting quotas, and constructing effective territories. However, it’s also critical to tie sales planning to financial planning for transparent communications and improved decision-making. Adaptive Insights for Sales lets people do just that: optimize resources and improve sales predictability while integrating with the corporate plans using its business planning cloud,” added Sheryl Kingstone, research director, customer experience & commerce, 451 Research.

Already receiving accolades for having the best financial management solution of 2017 in the 32nd annual SIIA CODiE Awards, the company expects the release of Adaptive Insights for Sales will continue to help organizations realize their vision of integrated financial and operational planning.

According to Mark Chamberlain, vice president of sales operations at Ivanti, “When you get to the final stages of planning and you’re tweaking the model to try and eke out additional EBITDA or revenue growth, you need an integrated tool that enables you to see the impact of changing a single variable on the rest of the business.”

Postr Scoops $2.5 Million Funding; Hires New CTO to Accelerate Product Innovations

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February 13, 2018

Postr’s Latest Funding Round Will Help the Adtech Company to Accelerate Into The Next Phase of Growth

Ad tech company, Postr, has announced that it has closed a $2.5 million funding round led by an investment group of Koh Boon Hwee. MDI Ventures, the corporate VC of SEA giant Telkom Indonesia, participated as well as existing investors, NZVIF (The New Zealand Venture Investment Fund) and Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1. This latest round brings the total raised since the company’s launch in 2014 to $5.5 million.

Currently, Postr brings sponsored data to consumers via white-labeled lock screen technology, launched in partnership with mobile network carriers. Postr has offices in Wellington, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, and Lisbon.

Postr is Prepared for the GDPR-led Disruptions

At the time of this funding announcement, Milan Reinartz, Postr’s founder, and CEO said, “This latest raise will help to accelerate our next phase of growth across APAC, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa while we prepare for a larger funding round next year. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force in May 2018, we will also be focused on facilitating opportunities for a value exchange between consumers and advertisers.”

Milan added, “We plan to explore additional Aad-sponsored services through the launch of our audience network and a feed of incentivised offers that work on Android, iOS, and the web. The support from high profile investors is testament to the value proposition, which has been downloaded over one million times globally and resulted in 250%+ revenue growth year on year.”

Recommended More: Do Your AdTech Goals for 2018 Look Like These?

Postr enables carriers to integrate lock screen advertising and sponsored data capabilities into their apps, generating new mobile ad revenues and offering rewards such as free data and minutes to subscribers. Advertisers gain high-quality inventory and guaranteed viewability with users unlocking their phones up to 80 times a day.

Postr is Transforming the Mobile Adtech Industry with New Hirings

Postr is building technology that is transforming the current mobile advertising model; creating lucrative opportunities for telcos and engaged audiences for advertisers. To date, Postr’s SDK has integrated sponsored data into carrier-branded apps for global operators such as Telkomsel in Indonesia, Optus in Australia, and MEO in Portugal.

The funding coincides with three new appointments to Postr’s management team; Julian Rayner, who was previously the CEO of Sprite Software in NZ which sold to AVG Technologies in 2011, joins as CTO, John-Paul Randall joins as Chief Revenue Officer, previously head of digital sales and ad strategy at Mediaworks, and Avon Compton, with background in senior financial leadership roles across banking and government in New Zealand, Hong Kong and London, joins as Finance Director.

These latest additions raise Postr’s global team to 25 employees. Postr’s board, led by Chairman David Akers, includes Chon Phung Lim and Mun Kein Chang, proven leaders and industry experts in the fields of telecommunication and scaling of information technology across the Asia Pacific and beyond.

Lock Screen Technology: A Lucrative Avenue for Telcos and Omnichannel Marketing Companies

Lead investor Koh Boon Hwee said, “The team at Postr is highly skilled, innovative, and building technology that is transforming the current mobile advertising model. Lock screen advertising and ad-sponsored data provide a lucrative source of revenue for telcos, a highly engaged audience for advertisers, and rewards for mobile users such as free data and minutes. It’s a winning solution for all parts of the ecosystem. I look forward to supporting Postr through the next phase of the team’s journey.”

Nicko Widjaja, CEO at Telkom Indonesia’s MDI Ventures, said, “Our recent participation in Postr is to support our expansion in ad tech vertical in the region. Since the early days, we have been investing in global ad tech companies including Geniee, Ematic, Adskom, Kofera, and LotusFlare; and we believe Postr will strengthen our ad tech portfolio. We look forward to working with Postr to build synergy and collaboration with our group.”

In addition to the investment, Postr has also received R&D funding support from Callaghan Innovation, a government agency supporting hi-tech businesses in New Zealand.

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

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Tricia Heinrich

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February 13, 2018

[Guest Post] AI, Big Data And Digital Transformation – And The Potential ‘Buzzword Backlash’

As we move into 2018 and look at today’s hot topics in B2B tech marketing and public relations, many key trends and solution-centric buzzwords come to mind – most notably artificial intelligence (AI), big data and digital transformation. Each of these represents meaningful and beneficial trends to business and society, and companies are certainly leveraging AI, big data and digital transformation for real gains. I know this to be true, because my “day job” revolves around demonstrating the use cases and proof points that drive these trends, and results are real and highly compelling.

But as it happens, more and more companies are trying to paint themselves with a “new technology brush” that has a potential downside. My specific concern is that AI and these other terms became the “tech media clichés” of 2017, with numerous vendors trying to jump on the bandwagon through spin and optics.

Also Read: AI-Powered ‘Intelligent’ Marketing Will Keep It Real

In fact, I’d kindly suggest that AI, big data, and digital transformation are something of a trifecta for lazy marketers! This is natural and understandable given the amount of press, analyst and financial market attention these emerging industries obtain, but we are headed to a point of sophistry, as well as a potential reckoning. And while “newsjacking” is certainly a proven PR tactic, attempting to latch on to a trend that really isn’t relevant is in danger of becoming the new marketing crutch – and the time is now to inject some reason and common sense into the discussion.

So, with that in mind, I believe that this year we will see an AI, big data and digital transformation backlash on the part of analyst firms and the press. This will result in greater selectivity about the vendors and stories they cover and make it harder for PR professionals and marketers to break through the noise. I think that claims around these buzzword-y trends will be subject to much greater scrutiny and, potentially, debunking.

Also Read: Separating The Fake From The Factual – Why AI Is Revolutionizing Marketing?

Frothy marketing based on a mashup of trends means that “legit” companies with demonstrated solutions will rightly continue to receive media attention, while those that are not really delivering will struggle with the development of relevant stories. The latter will potentially be exposed as pretenders while attempting to get on the AI, big data and digital transformation bandwagon. Though still trendy, each of these market categories is mature enough to have well-established use cases and customer results, providing the validation that press and analysts really seek. And if you don’t possess the proof points, you’ll be quickly discarded by overburdened reporters and researchers, who must navigate truth and fiction in an environment where there are almost five PR people for every reporter!

As marketers, my prescriptive advice is to not over-promise results to clients or executives and to stand up and be brave when it comes to calling for truthful and accurate messaging and product claims. If your company or client really is a fit, that will be evident. But when it comes to PR pitches, teams need to be sure that pitches pass the “red face” test that one of my colleagues learned early in his PR career, to wit: if you can’t make the pitch without blushing at its hype and implausibility, you know that you’re peddling something unsavory. Kids are learning to write algorithms in grade school these days, and no matter how rosy a view one takes, it isn’t AI, in the same way that an Excel spreadsheet isn’t really “big data analytics” and the new point-of-sale system at the coffeehouse down the street isn’t digital transformation.

Also Read: Pessimistic Security, Embedded AI and GDPR to Reign Supreme in the Legal Sector in 2018

As such, the tradeoff that comes with excessive hype simply isn’t worth it. Being a Texan at heart, I often think of the saying “big hat, no cattle” – and specious vendor claims about technology will lose their metaphorical hats and find themselves alone in the pasture with “no cattle.” Your influencers will see through the ruse(s) in a second, and if you’re telling tall tales, those same influencers have the potential to become your most prickly critics.

To sum up, as we tech PR pros evaluate where we’ve been and where we’re going, many trends and buzzwords come up – most notably artificial intelligence, big data and digital transformation. So, for 2018 I would caution my industry colleagues to avoid misguided attempts to align with “hot” technologies without a real solution and further advise them to dedicate substantial energy to the development of accurate and articulate messaging, as well as real proof points behind those claims. There’s a happy medium when it comes to PR spin and optics, and when it comes to communicating with influencer audiences today, the vendor and PR community will need to walk that fine line between trend amplification and hype.

Adstream And The TEAM Companies Expand Relationship

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February 13, 2018

Also Read: Local Media Consortium Partners with Integral Ad Science to Deliver Better Results to Members for Brand Safety, Ad Fraud, and Viewability

Adstream And The TEAM Companies Expand Relationship

Companies Combine Distribution with Talent & Rights Management, Aiming to Save Clients Millions of Dollars in Litigation

Global digital asset management and advertising delivery tech company Adstream, and talent and rights management firm The TEAM Companies (TTC) have expanded their existing collaboration to form a comprehensive strategic partnership. Together, the two companies will provide end-to-end advertising services that will enable brands, agencies and production teams to manage talent use, rights, and content delivery through a single process.

The partnership will benefit both parties: The TEAM companies, which specializes in payroll for crew and talent as well as business affairs and rights management, can leverage Adstream’s asset management, storage and delivery services. Simultaneously, Adstream will be able to offer U.S.-based talent and crew services to production teams and existing global clients including McCann, P&G, and Mastercard.

Addressing the redundancies in the advertising creative supply chain, Adstream and TTC are utilizing their expertise to build on the momentum of the Ad Consortium, an organization formed to establish best practices in the payment, tracking and distribution of talent and licensed elements across advertising assets, of which they are both members.

“Brands and their creative agencies demand more transparency a better, more streamlined experience when it comes to paying talent and tracking talent and licensed content use. Expanding our relationship will enable us to provide a best-in-class solution, provide EOR services to all our partners in the consortium, which ultimately is better for clients,” stated Greg Smith, COO of TTC.

“We know in the market, brands are being impacted by millions of dollars due to overusing assets with expired talent usage rights. From a technology perspective, we know we can alleviate this issue and make our clients’ lives easier, especially as they expand the channels they are delivering content to, to ensure all elements are being used in a contractually appropriate way,” stated Geoff Hoffman, CEO of Adstream, North America.

Recent litigation has brought this issue to the forefront of the advertising world. In 2017, a number of high-profile cases were filed against brands and their creative partners by talent and intellectual property owners over the use of their likeness or IP without permission. In one such case, two football players from Ohio State University sued their alma mater for using their likenesses “without their permission and without compensation” in promotional marketing collateral distributed after the contract expiration date.

TTC will integrate essential talent and licensed element rights data and support documentation into the asset management and ad delivery services of Adstream, and vice-versa.

Also Read: Top Efficiencies Gained by CMOs While Procuring and Managing Agencies

“Our goal has always been to provide transparency and streamline what can be a complicated and fragmented process,” stated Hoffman, adding, “Our customers – both brands and agencies – want everything managed in one place, and this partnership is big a step toward that solution. Brands and agencies will know right away what content is valid and what has expired right in our platform.”

The two companies share clients ranging from Fortune 100 advertisers and global ad agencies to production and post-production companies. This strategic relationship addresses needs on both the creative and operational sides of the business. With the shift toward total ad process integration and complete ad campaign management in a centralized location, users of both companies will benefit from increased visibility at all steps of the creative content creation process.

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

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February 13, 2018

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing to Host the Premier Conference for Online Performance Marketing Leaders at the 2018 Rakuten Marketing DealMaker Event

Rakuten Marketing's Dr Neal Richter Receives IAB Tech Lab's Esteemed Service Excellence Award

Dr. Neal Richter, Chief Technology Officer, Rakuten Marketing, Has Been Named a Winner of an Esteemed IAB Tech Lab Service Excellence Award

Rakuten Marketing, a leading technology company that that enables brands to increase sales through data-driven performance marketing, today announced Dr. Neal Richter, Chief Technology Officer, has been named a winner of an esteemed IAB Tech Lab Service Excellence Award for his significant contributions in developing trustworthy supply chain specifications and OpenRTB (open real-time bidding) 3.0 – a new revision of the core protocol powering the automated buying and selling of online ads.

Simultaneously, the IAB Tech Lab recognized Richter for his executive thought leadership and expertise, and industry participation driving rapid industry adoption of the organization’s ads.txt initiative and guidance in the development of ads.cert. Together, they promote and improve programmatic advertising transparency industry-wide and decrease publisher fraud by helping publishers inform buyers about which companies are authorized to sell their digital inventory. Richter received the award at this weekend’s IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, CA.

The awards recognize the top industry leaders demonstrating innovation and success in data science and technology. The IAB Tech Lab judged finalists based on their professional excellence, forward-thinking capabilities, and marked industry and organizational influence.

“We applaud Dr. Richter for his outstanding industry achievements and contributions. The IAB Tech Lab Service Excellence Awards recognize leaders who are paving the future of the digital ad industry, enabling publishers and brand marketers to positively impact consumers in their increasingly complex online experiences,” said Dennis Buchheim, Senior Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab.

Also Read: IAB Launches Programmatic Training Program for Marketers, Media Buyers & Ad Sales Professionals

As the CTO of Rakuten Marketing, Richter leads the company’s global technology organization and the innovative solutions used to optimize Rakuten Marketing business needs. This includes applying data science and scalable systems to create advanced software products for Rakuten Marketing clients. Neal has over 20 years of software experience and executive leadership expertise, leading tech teams to create data-driven products that drive bottom-line success. Prior to joining Rakuten Marketing, Richter worked for the Rubicon Project as CTO and Chief Scientist where he helped pioneer programmatic supply platforms and RTB bidding. Neal also worked as a data science lead for RightNow Technologies and was an early innovator of CRM systems where his team used AI/ML technology to optimize customer experiences for global 2000 companies.

“I am extremely honored to be recognized by the IAB and the Tech Lab. The Tech Lab is an amazing group of passionate technologists across the industry that solve problems together and evolve digital advertising to be highly personalized, relevant and creative for consumers. We are in a critical period where innovation in technology is accelerating, AI is changing how we solve problems, and our work with the IAB Tech Lab centers on staying ahead,” stated Richter.

Also Read: Rakuten Marketing Affiliate Network Ranked Top Program for Seventh Consecutive Year

The IAB Technology Laboratory is an independent, international, research and development consortium charged with producing and helping companies implement global industry technical standards with the goal of reducing friction associated with the digital advertising and marketing supply chain while contributing to the safe and secure growth of the industry. Richter serves as co-Chair of the IAB TechLab’s OpenRTB protocol that standardized the process of RTB, Deal-ID, Native Ads format, and the ads.txt and ads.cert standards.

Forget Click-Through Rates, Focus on Emotional Engagement

By

Shanna Heaney

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February 13, 2018

Forget Click-Through Rates, Focus on Emotional Engagement

In early 2017, a report circulated that Facebook was targeting users based on their emotional state. The report claimed that advertisers could identify users who were feeling stressed or anxious and use that moment to make their pitch.

Facebook denied the report, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Microsoft has applied for a patent for a technology for an advertising engine that would discern consumers’ emotional states from their searches, emails, facial expressions, movements and speech patterns.

Also Read: Inside the One-Two Punch Video Posting Strategy

It’s only a matter of time until a great deal of advertising is emotionally targeted. My company, GlassView, a major player in the video distribution industry, is betting its future on this prediction. In 2017, GlassView began working with Realeyes to track consumers’ emotional responses to ads, on an opt-in basis. Here’s why experts believe that emotional targeting is the future:

Emotion is what fuels virality. Think back to that last piece of viral content you shared. Why did you share it? Chances are, it made you curious, astonished, amazed, interested or uncertain, according to research. This so-called psychological arousal makes advertising more effective. Research has shown that campaigns with purely emotional content perform about twice as well as campaigns with rational content. Most of what we think of as good advertising is advertising that moves our emotions. Emotionally charged creatives win 80% of advertising awards, according to one study.
Emotion is what prompts people to buy. Emotional ads prompt consumers to like and share ads, but they also can cause them to follow through and actually buy the product. A 2016 Nielsen study supports this notion. The report found that ads that prompted a strong emotional reaction resulted in an average 23% bump in sales. Again, personal experience also supports this idea. If an ad moves me, I’m much more likely to buy the advertised product.
Testing ads for emotionality is a better indicator of performance than traditional metrics. These days, you can drop an ad and tell within just a few hours how much engagement it’s generating. Emotion-based A/B testing is a great method for gathering both qualitative & quantitative data surrounding creative performance. By reading a consumer’s emotional engagement in real time, you can tell whether that ad is worth further investment. For instance, an ad that is evoking strong positive emotions is worth a larger investment than one that is getting a mediocre response. By analyzing a large number of ads, we can predict with 75% certainty which ones will drive sales.
Targeting based on current emotional state will likely be effective. Our moods determine our receptivity to ad messages. Feeling anxious? Then an ad promising a solution to your problem will be effective. Feeling happy and content? Then you will probably be more apt to give to a charity. While a good salesman knows how to make these determinations, such facility hasn’t been available on digital media. But the recent explorations by Facebook and Microsoft show this is an area of interest. An experiment with M&C Saatchi in London included a billboard that read the emotions of passers-by. As facial recognition and AI begin to read data for clues about consumers’ emotions, this type of targeting is likely to increase.

Also Read: GlassView Harnesses Audience Emotion to Supercharge Awareness and ROI

Digital marketing has mostly ignored emotions until now. Such advertising has been based on data. But people aren’t robots. Now that we can start to read human emotions more accurately, we can add them into our calculations. That’s why emotionally targeted advertising is going to be huge, no matter how you feel about it.

Glispa Appoints Jon Hook as Their First Chief Commercial Officer

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February 13, 2018

Glispa Appoints Jon Hook as Their First Created Chief Commercial Officer

Glispa Also Unveiled New Branding Following Two Years of Acquisitions

Mobile advertising technology company, Glispa is bolstering its executive team with the appointment of Jon Hook to the newly created role of Chief Commercial Officer. Based at Glispa’s London office, Hook is charged with commercializing Glispa’s solutions and will report to CEO Itamar Benedy.

*Jon Hook, Chief Commercial Officer, Glispa*

Explaining the newly branded solutions and commenting on Hook’s appointment, Itamar Benedy, Glispa’s CEO said, “With a decade of advertising industry experience, Glispa has built its own technology specifically for the mobile consumer. In the last two years, we’ve bolstered our suite of solutions through five strategic acquisitions to include playable ads, a mobile discovery platform, retargeting capabilities and a programmatic exchange.”

Recommended Read: Do Your AdTech Goals for 2018 Look Like These?

Joining from AdColony where he was VP Brands and Agencies, Hook brings over a decade of brand and agency mobile experience to Glispa. His agency-side credentials include his role as Head of Mobile and Digital Investment at MediaCom. Here he was charged with running international digital and mobile investment, and leading mobile strategy and advertising for MediaCom Global and UK clients.

After co-founding mobile premium ad network Odyssey Mobile, Hook took up the mantle of General Manager Advertising following its sale to Phunware in December 2014. He has also advised several mobile technology companies including Vyking.IO and Kaizen App, and sat on boards of industry bodies including the Mobile Marketing Association and BPA Worldwide, as well as the IAB UK’s Video Steering Committee.

Glispa Adds New Brands to Mobile Advertising Suite

Following two years of strategic acquisitions and product development Glispa is established as an agile mobile ad tech company and is unveiling a new brand that reflects its unique offer to enable agencies, brands, and publishers to connect the dots in the mobile advertising value chain.

The new brands are:

Glispa Perform

Mobile app installation campaigns on a performance basis, including retargeting capabilities that drive app engagement to acquire high-quality users, cost-effectively and at scale.

Glispa Connect

Programmatic ad exchange that monetizes apps using high-impact ad formats.

Glispa Discover

A powerful mobile discovery platform that connects mobile network operators and manufacturers with their customers at every stage of their mobile lifecycle.

Glispa Create

Playable creative that boosts ad performance by creating engaging ad formats without any prior coding knowledge, using Glispa’s advanced platform.

Itamar added, “Jon joins at a pivotal stage in Glispa’s development, which will see him leverage his strong agency and brand mobile experience to commercialize Glispa’s newly branded solutions, synergies across them and further planned acquisitions in the product suite.’

Commenting on his appointment, Jon Hook said, “Advertisers are demanding transparency, compliant data and audience profiling and creativity from their partners. How can you deliver this if you do not own technology or if you operate within one siloed piece of the puzzle? Through acquisition and R&D via its 100-strong engineering team, Glispa owns all the pieces of the puzzle that advertisers require to succeed – from the creative platform to the exchange, to owned and operated distributions channels.”

Jon added, “This unique offering, underpinned by proprietary technology built for mobile, combined with a proven team of entrepreneurs supported by on the ground teams across eight global offices and profitable status with strong financial backing, places Glispa in a prime position to emerge as a long-term leader in the next phase of mobile ad tech. I’m thrilled to be joining the team charged with realizing this opportunity.”

Hook joins Glispa’s leadership team, which expanded in 2017 and includes Itamar Benedy CEO, Yariv Erel SVP Strategy Create, Dekel Boni SVP Glispa Discover, Conno Christou VP Glispa Connect and Gil Danziger CTO.

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

TechBytes with Jeff Smith, CMO and General Manager of Brands, LiveRamp

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February 13, 2018