Architects of the Intelligent Future from Across Industries to Speak at ONWARD ’17
Yext, the leader in Digital Knowledge Management, has unveiled its first day of panels for its ONWARD 2017 global conference. Featuring talks by some of the world’s leading innovators, the day will take ONWARD attendees on a tour of the Intelligent Future.
Kicking off on November 1st at the Conrad New York, ONWARD will convene leaders in marketing and technology to explore how AI, digital assistants, and intelligent services will shape our world in the years to come.
Highlights from the first day of ONWARD include:
A keynote fromMegan Smith, former CTO of the United States, followed by a discussion of technology and philanthropy in the Intelligent Future with CNBC “Squawk on the Street” Co-Anchor & “Squawk Alley” Anchor Carl Quintanilla.
Ed Doran PHD, Co-Founder of Cortana and Director of Program Management, MSR Artificial Intelligence, at Microsoft, and Wally Brill, Chief Persona Designer for Google Assistant, will discuss how voice search is changing the business landscape as we know it on a panel moderated by Bloomberg News tech reporter Jing Cao.
Mike Linton, Enterprise Chief Marketing Officer of Farmers Insurance, will join Yext Chief Customer Officer Wendi Sturgis in a fireside chat about how Farmers is evolving to serve the consumers of the future, and what their vastly different expectations mean for financial services and the world at large.
Chris Karpenko, Executive Director of Brand Marketing for the United States Postal Service, will speak with Kasha Casey, CEO of global advertising agency Universal McCann, about how the USPS, the ultimate local presence, is innovating in an age of mobile and intelligent devices.
Jeffrey K. Rohrs
“ONWARD ’17 will feature incredible conversations with the key minds writing the next chapter of the Intelligent Future,” said Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Chief Marketing Officer of Yext. “We’re looking forward to bringing ONWARD attendees together to discover how intelligent services will change the way the world does business.”
Adtoniq Releases Comprehensive Products For Websites To Maximize The Value Of Their Blocked Audience
Google Analytics customers are missing data and information, cannot segment and differentiate their blocked audiences, often without realizing it, because ad blockers prevent Google Analytics from working properly. Adtoniq released the first in a series of breakthrough products designed to put website owners back in control of their blocked audiences and accurately measure Key Performance Indicators. The company is first to solve this problem with Adtoniq for Google Analytics (A4GA). The solution detects all known ad blockers, reliably ensuring Google Analytics continues to work and delivers previously disrupted information about blocked audiences. It provides tools to take action to maximize the value of websites while allowing customers to engage with and show deference to ad blocked users by offering them choices. All of this is accomplished without asking the user to disable their ad blocker or whitelist the website.
Gary Portney
“Ad blocking is negatively affecting many website owners. Without reliable information and insights, it is virtually impossible to make informed decisions and take appropriate actions,” said Gary Portney, CEO of Adtoniq. “Equally, publishers can’t answer questions that advertisers are asking about their blocked audiences, one of a host of issues that arise from ad blocking, and more importantly, they cannot implement strategies to increase KPI’s for their blocked audiences. We are excited about solving this massive problem and providing easy to use tools in a way that is acceptable to consumers and publishers alike.”
Adtoniq detects how an ad blocker is configured and sends that data to Google Analytics using custom dimensions, including whether the blocker is hiding parts of the page (element hiding), whether the blocker has “acceptable ads” enabled, and which services like ads or analytics are being blocked. With this rich and reliable information, Adtoniq’s Ad Blocking Best Practice Reports offer unique insights to help Google Analytics users understand the behavioral and demographic differences among different segments of their blocked audience and design and implement better monetization strategies.
A4GA is built on Adtoniq’s core technology platform, Adtoniq TruBlock™, which allows website publishers to communicate with their blocked audience to better understand their needs and uniquely enables them to control the entire end-user experience. “We urge companies to respect their ad blocked audience and the reasons they are using blockers, starting with explaining clearly what steps they are taking to address ad blocking, and what choices their blocked users have,” said David Levine, CTO of Adtoniq. “We think all web publishers should proactively disclose to their ad blocked audience that they are using Google Analytics when blocked, and let their audience know how to opt out of being tracked. We respect that choice.”
yellowHEAD Has Launched Alison, A Machine Learning Technology That Predicts How Mobile Advertising Campaigns Will Perform.
yellowHEAD, a leading provider of holistic mobile marketing solutions that include paid user acquisition (UA), app store optimization (ASO) and search engine optimization (SEO), debuts its proprietary technology Alison, which uses machine learning to enable advertisers to predict revenue opportunities.
Engineered by top university math professors in close cooperation with yellowHEAD’s campaign managers, the unique technology builds itself on precise analysis based on millions of historical data points. Alison examines over 70 parameters of campaign performance, identifies trends in real time and draws actionable conclusions using an advanced machine learning model. With a broad range of clients and products, as well as cross-platform and full funnel insights from large-budget campaigns across various ad platforms (including Facebook, Google and more), Alison is already delivering impressive results by predicting campaign performance for companies like Playtika, Zynga, Gett, Liveperson, Scientific Games and more.
Eyal Argon
Eyal Argon, Marketing Relations Director at Playtika, says, “Since we’ve been working on Caesars Casino with Alison and the yellowHEAD team, we’ve seen a 27% increase in ROAS from our User Acquisition campaigns.”
An intelligent subsystem constantly analyzes the accuracy of the results predicted and teaches itself how to improve based on previous experience. With Alison, yellowHEAD experts can take actions to optimize campaigns based on predicted results across ad platforms.
Alison adds the power and scale of machine learning to yellowHEAD’s holistic user acquisition approach that combines paid and organic solutions. In addition to bringing higher LTV users to the app, this gives advertisers the ability to uncover previously inaccessible insights and minimize advertising budget waste.
Gal Bar
“Since the inception of yellowHEAD, our solutions have been driven by the vision of full-funnel impact, understanding the user behaviour from the first impression of an ad all the way to becoming a top-value user. It demands continuously refined methodology, data-driven automation, and persistent innovation. The age of artificial intelligence is already here, marking the next generation of mobile advertising, and we’re happy to be a part of it,” said Gal Bar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of yellowHEAD. “I have confidence that Alison will move the needle in the advertising space. This technology is a strategical supplement to our holistic solutions implementing the company’s vision of full-funnel measurement and lifetime value (LTV) prediction modeling. And we will continue to further intensify our technological development to better understand and predict the user journey from an ad click throughout the entire lifetime in the app.”
Automation Helps Assure Clearer, More Readable And Engaging Content
VisibleThread announced a strategic partnership with OpenText, the world’s leading software vendor in Enterprise Information Management.
OpenText, with $2.3b in annual revenue will now resell VisibleThread’s Language Analytics solutions. This allows their customer base to not just manage content, but vet the quality of the content using VisibleThread’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) platform. OpenText Customers can now create the most engaging and lowest risk web and doc content.
VisibleThread’s products are already in use by over 350 global customers including; Boeing Corporation, Fannie Mae, Accenture and the Australian Government. They use it to support organization wide plain language initiatives for better communications. Sales and contracts teams use it to quality check business documents such as RFPs and legal contracts.
VisibleThread’s functionality perfectly aligns with OpenText’s Enterprise Information Management (EIM) solutions.
It compliments OpenText’s WEM (Web Experience Management) offerings to help produce clearer, more engaging copy that converts. It helps legal teams spot risk in documents already stored in the OpenText eDocs platform.
Fergal McGovern
VisibleThread CEO Fergal McGovern said: “I am delighted that VisibleThread and OpenText have partnered together. OpenText recognised the unique value VisibleThread can bring to their existing global customer base.”
He continued: “We compliment both the WEM and Portfolio Management product lines, and add significant value to customers’ existing investment in OpenText solutions. We look forward to working with the OpenText team to demonstrate that value to their global customer base.”
Utilizing A State-Of-The-Art Titan Content Identifier (TCI) Encryption, Smart Content Platform ‘Titan Play’ Launches On Ios And Android Apps With A Growing Library Of Premium And Digital-First Content – Providing A New Transactional Platform
TiTAN Platform, a smart content and device company with offices in the US, South Korea, Singapore and China, officially launched its US product line. TiTAN Play and TiTAN Core are now available to consumers for the first time, pairing a secure smart content platform with a smart home device that will create a seamless, all-in-one experience for consumers and creators.
“The time has come for content, platforms, networks and devices to be unified. We will continue to expand our business here in the US and around the world providing smart services that will help users be more connected to their content and smart home devices,” said Jae Young Yoon, Founder, TiTANplatform Corporation Korea. “Backed by our TCI patented encryption technology, we have created a secure ecosystem through which consumers can safely integrate their entire home through one device, and content producers can reach viewers on a highly transactional platform that protects their intellectual property.”
Mr. Yoon was the opening speaker at last night’s launch event in Hollywood, California where TiTAN Platform demoed their integrated smart content platform and smart home devices for Hollywood creators, technology partners and investors.
TiTAN Play is a highly-encrypted, transactional content platform that allows content owners to securely upload their IP and have access to consumers through a secure content marketplace. TiTAN Core is a smart home hub device married with a lean-back living room entertainment experience, allowing consumers to manage their connected or smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices and appliances.
Behind TiTAN Play and TiTAN Core is TiTAN Platform’s exclusive content protection technology, TiTAN Platform Content Identifier (TCI) which protects all digitally uploaded content from illegal downloads and reproductions while allowing for advanced measurement, analytics and transactions to optimize the consumer experience.
Adrian Sexton
“With TiTAN Play and Core, we are creating a new ‘OS for the Home’ – a unified ecosystem that provides a smarter content experience and device connectivity. Consumers are increasingly buying smart IoT devices to improve their lives, yet few of these devices truly talk with each other,” said Adrian Sexton, CEO, TiTAN Platform US. “TiTAN Core’s open platform changes that and does it with security being paramount. With TiTAN Play, content creators and studios will be able to monetize their content with a major access point in China – a difficult entry market for YouTube, Netflix, Facebook and Amazon – thanks to our joint venture with China Unicom, a top Chinese telecom.”
Mr. Sexton, former head of digital at Lionsgate Entertainment, Participant Media and Endemol Shine, also announced content distribution deals with TV4 Entertainment (tv4ent.com) and Frequency (frequency.com). As a result of these deals, TiTAN Play users will have access to libraries of premium content including the ability to access content from TV4 Entertainment’s portfolio of passion or niche-based OTT channels and original productions; and watch videos from hundreds of the world’s top digital producers, including TV and multichannel networks from Frequency.
Disrupting the SVOD and OTT sectors, TiTAN content creators will also be able to quickly launch SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) channels by uploading content directly through either the TiTAN Core smart device in their homes or via TiTAN Play on their mobile devices.
The free TiTAN Play apps are available on TiTAN Core as well as iOS and Android devices. The first prosumer or pro version of TiTAN Core – the TiTAN Core 5 – is available at shop.titanplatform.us, and will be sold at over 10 retailers including b8ta stores in Santa Monica, San Francisco and San Jose, on Indiegogo’s new ecommerce marketplace, Newegg, HSN, NEX / Navy Exchange and multiple flagship IoT department stores in advance of the holidays. A new, mass market basic version of the TiTAN Core line for big box retailers will also be released with wide distribution before the end of the year.
EXLRT, a global content and language technology agency, announced the expansion of its core offerings in alignment with the growing customer experience needs of multi-national enterprises around the world. The agency recently expanded its web and content technology capabilities to include language and translation management offerings that combine to help large organizations go global faster and more effectively.
“Enterprises today must market globally just to stay in the game. But to win the game, they must market locally too. That’s why we see the worlds of experience management and translation management converging. With EXLRT, leading global brands can now truly capitalize on ‘glocal’ marketing through a single technology partner,” remarked Karl Johnson, Managing Director, Americas at EXLRT.
Adolfo Hernandez
EXLRT will showcase its new combined offerings as the Gold Sponsor of SDL Connect, the premier annual event of content and language software and services firm SDL (LSE:SDL). SDL Connect will take place on October 25th and 26th in San Jose, CA with a keynote address from SDL CEO Adolfo Hernandez. EXLRT will also host a talk at the event showcasing its successful development of Turkish Airline’s global digital experiences that serve 250 countries in over 30 languages.
Heather Guntrum
“Going global means speaking to customers, across different languages and touchpoints, around the clock. This puts enormous pressure on companies to scale their content creation, translation, and delivery efforts to meet global ambitions. Companies like EXLRT are leading the way, providing customers with the content and language solutions that tackle these converging issues,” said Heather Guntrum, VP Partnerships, SDL. “We’re delighted to welcome EXRLT as a Gold Sponsor to SDL Connect, where businesses can see how the company helps unlock the value in their content – transforming it into personalized local experiences that customers love.”
To ensure EXLRT’s Fortune 1000 clients like Pentair, SCA, and Kaiser Permanente get the most out of these combined capabilities, the agency has also developed a customer experience strategy practice, led by Johnson, that develops an overall data-driven approach for personalized local customer experiences first before implementing the most appropriate technologies.
Anodot’s Real Time And Automated Anomaly Detection Technology Recognized For Making A “Striking Impact” In The Analytics Space
Anodot, the AI-powered analytics company, announced that Ventana Research declared it the winner of the 2017 Digital Innovation Awards in the Analytics category. Anodot’s technology was recognized as the best analytics innovation across business and IT.
“It’s an honor to be recognized by Ventana Research for shaking up the business intelligence world with a completely new paradigm,” said Anodot CEO and Co-founder David Drai. “Traditional BI and visualization are limited to answering the questions you think of asking, but there are infinite possibilities and knowing what to ask of big data is nearly impossible. Our patented machine learning algorithms solve this major business challenge and provide businesses with invaluable insights that would have otherwise remained hidden.”
The Digital Innovation Awards recognize technology providers that have introduced noteworthy innovations in technology that advance business and IT. The award showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency, productivity and the performance of an organization.
Companies can easily lose millions of dollars from preventable glitches. Anodot uses its patented artificial intelligence to uncover hidden insights in vast amounts of business data by identifying outliers in key performance indicators and correlating across multiple data sources. Anodot’s practical and innovative AI analytics solution can track highly complex data patterns with its unsupervised machine learning algorithms.
David Menninger
“Our research shows that most organizations do not have the skills needed to create and manage machine learning algorithms,” said David Menninger, SVP and Research Director of Data and Analytics Research at Ventana Research. “We selected Anodot for the Digital Innovation Awards because of their ability to make machine learning more accessible via automation and offering it as a service, allowing more businesses to identify issues and opportunities in real time that otherwise could have taken weeks to discover.”
Industry-Education Report Outlines the Uses, Challenges and Evolution of TV and Video Ad Measurement
In addition to this, the Knowledge Lab explores the evolution of measurement in both TV and digital video, including a detailed timeline of the path of TV measurement, the path of digital video measurement, and where the two intersect. The lab found that that the convergence between TV measurement and digital video measurement occurred in the early 2000’s.
To help advertisers navigate the often-complex world of measurement, the Knowledge Lab also provides a detailed look at measurement opportunities that are available in TV and video today including brand, action, sales and audience verification studies.
“The reason all marketers advertise is to drive a given set of results, and accurate measurement is the only way to understand if those results are achieved,” said Aleck Schleider, SVP of Client and Data Strategy, Videology. “Fortunately, advances in measurement have accelerated in the past few years. We are approaching the Holy Grail where exposure to TV and video advertising can be tied directly to a variety of brand and business metrics. It’s important—and challenging—for advertisers to fully understand these fast-moving metrics in order to drive the greatest ROI from their advertising. We wrote this Knowledge Lab with that goal in mind.”
RTB Video Advertising Platform Feature Forward Continues Pursuit Of Technological Advancement For Publishers
Feature Forward, one of the largest players in the programmatic space, announced the launch of their header bidding technology code, pushing the advancement of ad technology by releasing its Header bidding adaptor to all publishers.
The code, already singular in its unique targeting and yield optimization abilities is now available for publishers worldwide for implementation. Partners can freely download and use said code to efficiently and easily access Feature Forward’s large-scale demand and increase monetization. This adapter release makes Feature Forward’s advertising solutions more seamless than ever.
Gal Topaz
“For over nine years, Feature Forward has supplied our partners with a scalable RTB platform powered by our AI algorithms. What’s great about this adapter is that it’s based on all proprietary Feature Forward technology, from the bidders to the decision-making algorithm. And it’s all based on our end to end stack, allowing publishers to make the most out of their inventory without sacrificing safety and response time; we’ve created a unique proposition for publishers, I’m very excited about that,” said Gal Topaz, CEO, Feature Forward. “For the first time ever, our publishers can utilize our solution through a simple pre-bid interface, creating a better, more efficient user experience.”
After recently onboarding a roster of acclaimed partners and double-digit growth in the U.S., Feature Forward intends to use these new partnerships to push their unique digital advertising capabilities to the next level.
Guy Poreh
“Feature Forward is first and foremost a tech company with a deep and talented tech bench,” said Guy Poreh, Feature Forward GM USA. “As our expansion gains momentum we intend to release more tech products that will increase programmatic ease of use for all players in the ecosystem.”
The Event Headliners Include Speakers From Evernote, Beachbody, Facebook, Microsoft
Tealium, the leader in real-time customer data solutions and enterprise tag management, has confirmed its line-up at Digital Velocity San Francisco.
Digital transformation leaders to headline Digital Velocity San Francisco
Taking place at Pier 27 on October 18th and the Grand Hyatt Hotel on October 19th, the two-day event will bring together industry influencers to explore the power of data – sharing ideas, advice and best practice on how businesses can elevate customer experience by embracing the new digital economy.
Keynote speaker sessions include:
Gerry Campbell, Chief Technology Officer, Beachbody, will share the story of how the billion-dollar fitness empire forged a new, transformative path in the face of changing customer behavior, and expectations
Andrew Malcolm, Chief Marketing Officer, Evernote will explain why marketers need to make data their best friend, sharing advice from his experience managing the marketing for two start-ups now valued at over a billion dollars
Fatemeh Khatibloo, Principal Analyst, ForresterResearch will share her recommendations on how marketers can prepare for the changing global privacy environment, including the imminent arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation
Steve Setzer, Program Manager, Marketing Operations, Facebook will share advice on how marketers can future-proof their analytics strategy
There will also be a series of educational sessions and roundtable discussions on topics such as data governance and privacy, identity resolution, data storytelling, and actionable business intelligence.
“The speakers at Digital Velocity have all harnessed the power of data to transform their businesses and are passionate about sharing these insights with their peers”, said Jeff Lunsford, CEO of Tealium. “Today’s most successful companies are engaging their customers on an individual level and they’re able to achieve this by using data in real time. Digital Velocity San Francisco aims to provide marketers, analysts, and developers with the tools they need to thrive in this customer-at-center era.”
Company’s Latest Product Innovation Marks the Industry’s First Video Ads with 3D Effect Available for Advertisers at Scale
Teads, the inventor of outstream advertising and the No. 1 video advertising marketplace in the world by unique visitors, according to comScore, announced the release of inRead 3D, the company’s latest video format which leverages depth of field perception to create a 3D effect for any video creative.
This new format is powered by Teads Studio, the company’s in-house creative strategy platform, which is dedicated to helping brands and their agencies build more engaging video ads through interactivity, dynamic creative optimization, advanced analytics and by injecting elements of artificial intelligence into video ad campaigns.
Teads’ inRead 3D format is well-suited for branding, and delivers an eye-catching effect that will drive high engagement with users. Teads’ sales design team can build the 3D effect for brand clients using existing video creative or the client can provide their own video with a 3D effect to be inserted into Teads’ inRead ad slot. inRead 3D will be sold in the same way as the standard inRead product and is available on a CPM, vCPM and CPCV basis.
“Teads led the way for innovation in video advertising with the launch of our inRead format several years ago and we have not stopped looking for ways to empower brands to engage consumers with stunning, impactful and highly dynamic creative in premium editorial environments,” said Bertrand Quesada, CEO, Teads. “inRead 3D is the next of many advancements that brands can expect from Teads as we continue our mission to inject creativity into advertising.”
eMAM Support For Adobe Premiere Pro CC And Adobe Indesign CC Will Be Showcased At IBC 2017.
Empress Media Asset Management, LLC (Empress) will showcase the upcoming release of its flagship eMAM™ platform featuring integrations with Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC and Adobe InDesign® CC, part of Adobe Creative Cloud at IBC 2017 in booth 7D05. eMAM is a Media Asset Management system offering customers a feature-rich online digital library with best-of-breed integrations for a complete workflow process solution. eMAM unites different on-premise and cloud storage and archive systems, in different locations into a unified workflow with a single web or tablet-accessible interface.
Adobe Premiere Pro CC is a market leading video editing system, and a key component of Adobe Creative Cloud®. The release of Adobe Team Projects allows users to collaborate across locations on the same project files. Users can sync changes and share updates as needed. The eMAM extension panel inside Adobe Premiere Pro CC shows all of the available projects, categories, and individual assets-regardless of location. Video editors can search and browse the content, pulling only required native resolution media to local storage for editing. They can also export media and sequences from Adobe Premiere Pro CC back to eMAM for review and approval, email and social media sharing, digital delivery, and archiving. eMAM users worldwide can collaborate with editors by creating projects, adding media, marking, subclipping, and rough cut editing directly from the tablet or web interfaces. Additional features include intelligent archive/restore, project and file versioning, mezzanine/proxy edit support, media localization, and now-team project support. The eMAM system extends a Team Project environment with support for non-technical users, for remote users, for media management and sharing, and for any type of cloud system.
Adobe InDesign® CC is the industry-standard layout and publishing app that lets users design rich digital and print experiences, from eBooks and electronic magazines, to books, brochures, and whitepapers. The InDesign panel can track graphics elements used inside the InDesign documents and store them in one or more storage locations managed by eMAM for easy collaboration. Designers can now find the best graphical elements regardless of where they are stored by using the powerful search tools or the hierarchical category structure in the eMAM library. Check-In, Check-Out and Versioning makes it easy for multiple designers to work on the same project. The Export option in the panel makes the review and approval and final delivery processes seamless by automatically making PDF copies. Completed projects can be safely archived without affecting other documents.
David Miller
David Miller, COO of Empress commented, “We are excited to expand our combined system to support more media workflows and to now include graphics workflows, empowering creative teams to maximize the value of their digital assets throughout the organization, crossing traditional departmental boundaries.”
Sue Skidmore
“Creating different deliverables, often from the same set of core assets, is increasingly becoming the norm with digital media,” said Sue Skidmore, head of partner relations for professional video at Adobe. “eMAM support for Adobe video and design applications shows how integrated workflows can simplify production and delivery of content for any company in any industry.”
G2 Crowd Finds Salesforce CRM And Hubspot CRM Tie For Top Satisfaction Rating And Salesforce CRM Earns Highest Overall Market Presence Score
G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business software review platform, today released the Fall 2017 CRM Software Grid® report to help businesses make the best CRM technology buying decision. Salesforce CRM, HubSpot CRM, Pipedrive, and Zoho CRM were named Leaders in the report, receiving a strong customer satisfaction score with a large market presence.
Freshsales, ProsperWorks CRM, Nimble, PipelineDeals, Less Annoying CRM, Base CRM, Salesnet, Nutshell, Pipeliner CRM, OnePageCRM, Workbooks.com, bpm’online, Salesflare, amoCRM, InfoFlo Software, Bullhorn CRM, Vtiger CRM, Redtail CRM, Salesbox, Relenta CRM, Insightly, Prophet CRM, Membrain, Contactually, Really Simple Systems, Maximizer CRM, NetHunt CRM, Efficy CRM, Cosential, Close.io, iSEEit, and LeadSquared CRM were named High Performers in the report, earning strong customer satisfaction marks with smaller market presence scores. Salesforce CRM and Hubspot CRM tied for the highest overall satisfaction score while Salesforce CRM earned the highest overall market presence score.
This report also breaks down the CRM category, based on market presence and customer satisfaction score, for Small-Business, Mid-Market, and Enterprise reviewers. At the small-business level, Pipedrive and ProsperWorks CRM tied for the highest overall satisfaction score and Salesforce CRM earned the highest overall market presence score. In the mid-market segment, Salesforce CRM received the highest overall satisfaction score and earned the highest overall market presence score. Finally, at the enterprise level, Salesforce CRM earned the highest overall satisfaction score and the highest overall market presence score.
The Grid® leverages customer satisfaction data reported by authenticated users along with vendor market presence determined from social and public data. Based on a combination of these scores, each software solution is categorized as a Leader, High Performer, Contender or Niche.
Key Findings:
Integration issues — Many users discussed the lack of integration between CRM solutions and third-party services; some users mentioned that the tool they used didn’t have the ability to support APIs, either. Users said that they struggled when they wanted to sync customer information and data with other tools such as marketing automation or applicant-tracking systems. Many users explained that the biggest hurdle when utilizing CRM solutions—aside from the expected learning curve—was the difficulty in customizing them to work well in their environment.
Difficult-to-use interface — The majority of users mentioned that the interfaces of CRM solutions are outdated and clunky. Some of the users admitted that that dislike may be minor, but others explained that an unintuitive UI makes the tool difficult to use. Users said that the solution’s layout can be scattered and unintuitive, which results in an unnecessary number of steps to follow to simply input or pull data. Users said that when they’re faced with an excess of options, it becomes difficult to train new users and makes reporting and tracking data cumbersome.
Jetlore, the leading AI-powered customer data platform for top-tier retailers and beyond, announced that Montse Medina, co-founder and COO, has been selected as a finalist for a Stevie Awards for Women in Business in the Female Executive of the Year—Business Products category for companies with more than 11 but less than 2,500 employees. The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s preeminent business awards for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run. Finalists for 2017 were announced, and the Stevie Award winners will be announced on November 17 in New York.
After graduating at the top of her class in Spain with a degree in Aeronautics, Montse worked as a researcher in China before moving to the United States to pursue her PhD in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University. During her three years at Stanford, Montse received two full fellowships from Stanford University and the WSDM 2011 Best Student Paper Award. She took leave from the PhD program and started Jetlore in 2011.
As COO, Montse’s responsibilities range from developing business strategies, serving as Jetlore’s chief financial officer, overseeing data science projects, building predictive statistical models and acting as the GM of Jetlore in Spain and Latin America. Montse is currently a board member at COTEC, where she discusses innovation trends alongside the King of Spain, government officials, and several CEOs from Spain’s top 35 companies. Under Montse’s leadership, Jetlore’s Spanish and Latin American client roster has grown to account for more than a third of Jetlore’s total revenue.
“I am thrilled to be named a finalist for such a prestigious award,” says Medina. “I am a passionate innovator with a commitment to making Jetlore not only one of the best software companies in the world, but one of the best companies in the world. Thank you to the Stevie Awards’ judging panel for honoring me with this designation among so many incredible women. I am humbled by your recognition.”
Fastest Growing Data-As-A-Service Platform Teams Up With Premier Data Integration Platform To Allow Users To Enrich, Clean And Grow Their Contact Database To Improve Their Overall Marketing Strategy
Synthio, formerly known as Social123, the fastest growing data-as-a-service platform, announced its partnership with TMMData, a premier creator of flexible data integration and data preparation platform Foundation. The relationship aims to give enterprises access to over 180 million contacts worldwide with all data managed through one platform.
Synthio’s platform automates data cleansing, standardizing and synthesis. Their global contact database empowers international organizations to enrich existing data, gain net-new contacts and enhance their ABM strategy. With CRM and MAP integration, Synthio’s platform provides marketing and sales professionals with a competitive edge.
This partnership provides TMMData’s users with access to Synthio’s robust platform where they can enrich existing contacts and gain net-new contacts. Users can also integrate Synthio’s data with hundreds of pre-built applications and data source connectors through TMMData’s platform.
Aaron Biddar
“TMMData’s platform and Synthio’s accurate contact data together create a dynamic partnership that synthesizes our strengths to provide end users with the best data possible,” said Aaron Biddar, CEO, Synthio. “We look forward to providing their users with accurate contact data to use with TMMData’s multiple APIs.”
Darren Wagner
“Organizations adding thousands of new contacts need to efficiently manage and integrate that data with other best-in-class analytics and business intelligence tools, which is why this partnership is a natural fit,” said Darren Wagner, CMO, TMMData. “We’re excited about the seamless connectivity that this partnership will enable for our mutual users through Synthio’s global contact database.”
New Artificial Intelligence, Data Lake And Data Integration Capabilities Accelerate Business Insights, Enabling Customers To Drive Better Business Outcomes From Data
Oracle announced three major enhancements to Oracle Big Data Platform Cloud. The new services deliver critical capabilities essential to Big Data projects, and enable customers to simplify and accelerate data-driven business outcomes while making it easier for them to leverage adaptive intelligence in their own applications and services.
Big Data projects are critical to innovation, but can be challenging to execute due to complexity and the gap in skills required to coordinate all the necessary pieces. To help customers address these issues and more easily manage the entire Big Data lifecycle, Oracle is announcing integrated Big Data services in Oracle Cloud Platform.
“Big Data initiatives are an important part of growing an organization, but the process is still complex and challenging for everyone involved,” said Greg Pavlik, senior vice president and CTO, Oracle Cloud Platform. “By delivering an end-to-end, unified platform that simplifies and accelerates Big Data analytics projects in the cloud, we are minimizing challenges and helping customers increase their rate of success. Our vision is to empower our customers to analyze any type of data from any source for everyone.”
Zendesk CFO Brings Saas Expertise, Proven Management Acumen To Smartsheet Team
Smartsheet, the world’s leading SaaS platform for managing and automating collaborative work, announced the appointment of Elena Gomez to its board of directors. Gomez, CFO of Zendesk and former senior vice president of finance and strategy at Salesforce, brings to Smartsheet deep experience in growing profitable SaaS companies.
Mark Mader
“Elena combines significant knowledge of the SaaS business model with a proven ability to partner with senior business leaders,” said Mark Mader, CEO of Smartsheet. “Her experience in optimizing growth across enterprise sales and multiple products will serve us well as we continue our rapid growth in the work management and automation market.”
Gomez’s appointment follows a $52.1 million Series F funding round for Smartsheet earlier this year and a period of significant momentum in which Smartsheet’s revenue increased by more than 60 percent year-over-year in each of the past five years.
Elena Gomez
“Smartsheet is among a small handful of true SaaS innovators; they face both a rapidly growing and constantly evolving landscape,” Elena Gomez said. “This is a wonderful opportunity to work with Mark, the rest of the board, and the senior leadership team to help guide the company’s next stage of growth.”
Gomez has served as Chief Financial Officer at Zendesk since May 2016. Prior to that, she served in a number of senior roles at Salesforce, including senior vice president of finance and strategy, senior vice president of go-to-market distribution, and vice president of sales and support and marketing finance. She previously held senior roles at Visa and Charles Schwab. Gomez holds a B.S. in business administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
Study Commissioned by TAG Highlights Progress from Industry Campaign to Protect Brands and Tackle $2.4B Piracy Problem
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an advertising industry initiative to fight criminal activity in the digital advertising supply chain, released a new study – “Measuring Digital Advertising Revenue to Infringing Sites” – showing the impact of industry efforts to reduce ad-supported content piracy. The study found that anti-piracy steps taken by the digital advertising industry have reduced ad revenue for pirate sites by between 48 and 61 percent, notable progress against the $2.4 billion problem of infringing content.
Among the study’s findings:
Digital ad revenue linked to infringing content was estimated at $111 million last year, the majority of which (83 percent) came from non-premium advertisers.
If the industry had not taken aggressive steps to reduce piracy, those pirate site operators would have potentially earned an additional $102-$177 million in advertising revenue, depending on the breakdown of premium and non-premium advertisers.
Ongoing industry efforts against piracy have therefore reduced the advertising revenue of pirate sites by 48 to 61 percent.
“We have not won the war against ad-supported piracy, but the battle is joined, and we are making good progress,” said TAG CEO Mike Zaneis. “The collaborative efforts of hundreds of companies using TAG-validated providers of anti-piracy tools is cutting off the revenue for the criminals who profit from stolen content and reducing their incentive to distribute it. Despite the advances made, there is more work to be done, as companies work together to protect their brands against the interrelated challenges of ad-supported piracy, fraud, malware, and lack of transparency.”
TAG commissioned Ernst & Young LLP’s Media & Entertainment Advisory practice to perform a benchmarking study of the US market, with two objectives: estimating the annual revenue that piracy operations earn from digital ads served linked to copyright-infringed content and estimating the financial impact of the quality control steps taken by the digital ad industry to address this area. EY conducted this study independently on behalf of TAG between July 2016 and July 2017. The data used in the study were provided by various digital advertising ecosystem participants.
“This critical study demonstrates the progress we have made in stopping the flow of ad revenue to pirating sites,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, Co-Chair of the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus. “But it also shows that we still have much work to do. Online pirates plunder millions of dollars from American businesses each year, denying content creators the full benefits of their work. Blocking all ad revenue to pirating sites will reduce their prevalence by making their illicit activities less profitable. My friends in the online advertising community should take heart; this report shows that we are gaining ground in the battle against online piracy. We need to intensify our efforts, however, if we are to eradicate this illegal practice once and for all.”
“For years, the International Creativity and Theft-Prevention Caucus has advocated ‘following the money’ to identify and cut off revenue streams to websites that profit from digital piracy,” said Representative Adam Schiff, Co-Chair of the International Creativity and Theft Prevention Caucus. “As part of that effort, the Caucus helped push the online advertising community to take decisive action and to keep high profile American brands from unwittingly funding online criminals, an effort which led to the creation of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). The study recently completed by Ernst and Young on behalf of TAG shows that those efforts are bearing fruit, and that voluntary efforts by advertisers and agencies kept well over $100 million out of the pockets of pirate sites last year alone. It also demonstrates that we have more work to do, as over a $100 million in digital ad revenue nonetheless flowed to the owners of these sites. With continued efforts by all stakeholders, I am confident we can continue to make progress to protect the intellectual property of content creators.”
Since early 2014, TAG has built a robust anti-piracy program with industry leaders to address this complicated issue, including a seal program, anti-piracy pledge, information sharing, and engagement with law enforcement. Among the elements of TAG’s anti-piracy efforts:
Sixteen companies have now earned the TAG “Certified Against Piracy” Seal, an assurance that the anti-piracy services provided by those companies meet stringent requirements and industry best practices. Seal recipients include ten companies approved by independent auditors and six that underwent a self-attestation process.
More than 50 leading brands and advertising agencies – including all four of the world’s largest ad agency holding companies – have signed the TAG anti-piracy pledge to take “commercially reasonable steps” to reduce ad supported piracy, such as working with companies that have received TAG’s Certified Against Piracy seal.
As the first and only Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) for the digital ad industry, TAG activates its network of hundreds of compliance officers to address emerging threats, respond to incidents, and promulgate best practices.
TAG works closely with law enforcement officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and Department of Justice to help them learn about intellectual property theft and other criminal activity in the digital ad space.
John Montgomery
“This represents real progress,” said John Montgomery, EVP Global Brand Safety, GroupM. “Many people have put a lot of hard work into getting us to this stage, and these findings will surely encourage the entire digital sell- and buy-sides to divert advertising away from IP infringing sites so that we can protect content creators and brands from this type of fraud.”
David Green
“NBCUniversal is pleased to see so many reputable brands making substantial progress keeping their advertisements off copyright infringing sites,” said David Green, VP of Public Policy for NBCUniversal.“Advertisements on infringing sites harm creators, consumers, and the brands that unintentionally associate their products with criminal behavior. We look forward to our continued work with TAG to cut off advertising revenue for the operators of these sites.”
Ruth Vitale
“As representatives of the creative community active in alerting brands when their ads appear on infringing sites, we commend advertisers, ad agencies, and ad networks that take effective action to ensure good ads don’t appear on pirate sites, cutting off revenue to those sites,” said CreativeFuture CEO Ruth Vitale. “We urge everyone in the advertising ecosystem to increase efforts to protect not only the reputation of brands, but also the millions of creatives who contribute so much to our society and economy.”
Deltek To Pay $9.00 Per Share. Transaction Valued At Approximately $70 Million
Onvia the leading provider of sales intelligence and acceleration technologies for businesses selling to the public sector, announced that it has entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (the “Merger Agreement”) with Project Diamond Intermediate Holdings Corp, the parent entity of Deltek, and Deltek, the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for government contractors, professional services firms and other project-based businesses. Under the terms of the Merger Agreement, Project Diamond Intermediate Holdings Corp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Onvia common stock for $9.00 per share in an all-cash tender offer. The purchase price represents a 100% premium to Onvia’s last closing stock price of $4.50. The value of the transaction, which was unanimously approved by Onvia’s Board of Directors, is approximately $70 million.
“We are extremely pleased with this transaction, which we believe is a winning proposition for all of our stakeholders,” said Van Skilling, Chairman of Onvia, and Russ Mann, CEO of Onvia. “The transaction represents a substantial cash premium to our stockholders and follows a robust process and comprehensive review of strategic alternatives undertaken by our Board of Directors earlier this year.”
Russ Mann
“Further,” said Mann, “Deltek is a large and highly regarded firm in the enterprise software and solution space for project-based businesses, with complementary product and services offerings to Onvia’s. As part of Deltek, we intend to focus on innovating and expanding our data and product offerings, which will benefit our customers, employees and partners.”
Today Principals from DemandBridge and e-Quantum, Inc. announced that they will be merging the two companies, effective immediately. The announcement was made on stage at the PSDA Technology Summit held in New Orleans. The new company will retain the DemandBridge name.
e-Quantum, Inc.
DemandBridge and e-Quantum, Inc. have been providing premier Distributor Management software for more than 30 years. Together, the two companies bring more than 60 years of experience and growth within and beyond the Independent Print Services Industry. The new, independent company will be led by current DemandBridge CEO David Rich, who himself brings more than 35 years of Enterprise IT experience. He will combine the vision, talent, technology prowess and investments of both organizations in order to remain vital and competitive in the marketing automation software industry. Together, the new company will evolve and transition its products to leverage DemandBridge’s presence on the Microsoft Azure Cloud and to integrate technologies in the pipeline—from Microsoft PowerBI and Cloud Foundry, to other digital marketing technologies planned for 2018. The combination and strategic focus will offer the scale, strength and flexibility to help customers and partners succeed with minimal disruption and the same/improved level of customer service.
