One of the world’s oldest retailers A.S. Watson Group will be pumping $70 million in Big Data technologies to optimize marketing campaigns and drive powerful sales promotion activities. Established in 1841, the Hong Kong-based retail group revealed its intention to expand Big Data capabilities, investing significantly in a Canadian AI venture firm. It has partnered Toronto-based retail intelligence platform – Rubikloud to achieve scalable Big Data objectives.
The A.S. Watson Group or ASW will consolidate its retail brands across geographies by leveraging customer data using Big Data technologies and AI. The new investments will be directed at developing performance-based marketing platforms and predictive analytics capabilities for independent sales teams. Partnership with Rubikloud will enable retailers at ASW to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency using data visualization and machine learning capabilities.
ASW introduced the Rubikloud app across European stores on a trial basis starting in 2015. It witnessed a significant rise in sales from personalized promotion activities, forcing ASW to partner Rubikloud for all future retail marketing integrations.
“We are investing in big data amid global economic uncertainties because we believe that technology is a critical enabler for successful retailing in today’s world,” said Malina Ngai, chief operating officer of A.S. Watson Group, in a statement. Ngai added that Rubikloud’s technology will enable the company to “focus our resources, from back-end support to the shop floor, on building a better customer experience.”
Kerry Liu, CEO at Rubikloud
According to Kerry Liu, CEO of Rubikloud, the company aims to support ASW to further enhance its capabilities in personalizing customer offers through advanced targeting, as well as optimizing promotional effectiveness.
“We are thrilled to partner with a global retail leader like A.S. Watson Group. At Rubikloud we focus on applying machine learning and flexible big data architectures in practical applications, which means driving tangible business impact.”
Deploying marketing intelligence tools in retail is a growing trend. Rubikloud offers a robust retail intelligence platform, enabling the intersection of an enterprise SaaS for retail marketing, embedded machine learning, and elastic cloud compliant architectures to drive automation. According to CEO Kerry Liu, Rubikloud has a “head start” in the race to lead retail cloud computing innovations.
The rise of tech-savvy CMOs is an ominous sign of how quickly marketing teams are adopting new technologies to fine-tune business decisions. Technology in marketing campaigns drives brand awareness and keeps CMOs accountable, enabling them to focus on strategic business goals rather than spending (unprofitable) attention over silos. While digital marketing in 2005-2015 was largely confined to B2C and e-commerce, the latest statistics on marketing automation reveal how quickly B2B marketing professionals are inflating their budgets to automate omnichannel platforms.
An indispensable trend seen in digital marketing is the increase in its budgets. Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2015-16 reports the swelling of digital marketing budgets by 33% in 2017, whereas overall marketing budgets will increase by a mere 12% during the same period. The move from conventional advertising to digital could reach its tipping point in 2017 as marketing budgets of most firms would see an escalation in their spending on marketing technology, especially as more non-tech companies adopt mobile-first marketing as their priority.
This article is a quick read covering five marketing technologies that CMOs prefer to invest in –
Marketing Automation
Omnichannel Marketing
Analytics and Tracking
Optimization and Conversion
Programmatic
Marketing Automation
via Marketo
Marketing technologies delivered from the cloud is replacing software at a breakneck pace. The success of any digital marketing campaign is judged from the extent of its automation capabilities. Marketing automation used in B2B and B2C enterprises prove vital in enterprise content and digital assets management.
Providers like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Marketo help marketers reorganize their lead-gen, customer segmentation, prospect nurturing and lead scoring, customer LTV, cross-channel marketing and brand engagement strategies to extract maximum ROI. Most B2B companies are currently using marketing automation with an objective to manage their entire digital presence across channels.
via Email Monday
The trend of increasing spending on digital marketing automation allows marketers to explore other options that offer scalable marketing automation for SMBs and start-ups. Like Lego blocks, marketing automation can be assembled and scaled at will, allowing marketers to assiduously manage and optimize data, information, and knowledge over a centralized platform.
Omnichannel Marketing
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs
Customer experience or CX is the most powerful revenue-churner, and therefore the most sought-after objective of every CMO. According to a Walker study, CX will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020. According to the survey, 86% customers are ready to pay more for CX than other product features!
via DataMentors
CMOs refer to omnichannel as the holy grail of every marketing campaign, leading to seamless CX, regardless of the number and type of devices they use. The ability to leverage omnichannel technology ensures that the brand’s message is seamlessly delivered on desktop laptop tablet or smartphone or through a catalog or in a brick and mortar store. Location based services also tie in with this as smartphones would enable users to tag their whereabouts and brands could use this to send customized offers and services to such consumers.
Analytics and Tracking
Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. The essence of adopting analytics and tracking technology in marketing lies in its freedom of application. As the most populated technology of digital marketing, analytics allow marketers turn insights from scrambled data into ROI-driven actionable results. Online and offline tracking of customer behavior analytics extracts the most out of your market research based on geo-location tracking, user-list targeting, and top-search inventories.
The most challenging part of deploying tracking and analytics technology is its ambiguity in delivering ROI. Though marketing attribution modeling attempts to solve this gap, lack of integration between channels like social media and community building with CRM makes it hard to identify the first-touch platform.
Marketers are expected to spend over 11% of their budgets on digital marketing but only 22% of marketers said that they had data-driven (analytics) marketing initiatives that were showing significant results. Some marketers have also said that they were unable to clearly calculate a return on investment for their digital marketing programs. Integration with legacy systems and the ability to produce customer centric date would drive this market. The wide variety of analytics data options in the market means that CMOs would have to be discerning in their choice and fully test a solution before deploying it.
Optimization and Conversion
via Marketo
Digital optimization and conversion are the techniques to convert online visitors into loyal customers. The theories of digital optimization have been revised over the years and with the rise of online marketplaces, many firms have rolled out software that deals with this. Most firms are looking at conversion rates as online advertising is still in PPC or CPC. Firms are looking to leverage their online marketing spends by seeking solutions and combining their marketing approaches for an integrated campaign that ensures that highest visibility and conversion rates.
Firms are looking to leverage their online marketing spends by seeking solutions and combining their marketing approaches for an integrated campaign that ensures that highest visibility and conversion rates.
Programmatic
Programmatic real-time bidding (RTB), done for display advertising exclusively, is the future of all advertising. Simply put – programmatic marketing empower marketers and advertisers to pay only for highly effective ads, delivering the right message to the right set of customers at the right time. Marketers are adopting programmatic to target segmented audiences with specific advertisements, limiting the ad spend to drive maximum ROI. Programmatic platforms running on adaptive algorithms help analyze data and in real-time, canvassing fully-personalized ad experience across multiple screens. Sales partners can also leverage digital inventory advocating B2B programmatic commerce. Programmatic-as-a-platform and programmatic-as-a-solution allow marketers and advertisers to bridge gaps in “brand awareness”, targeting audience at scale at much lower ad spend using classical audience extension as well as account-based data.
Sales partners can also leverage digital inventory advocating B2B programmatic commerce. Programmatic-as-a-platform and programmatic-as-a-solution will allow marketers and advertisers to bridge gaps in “brand awareness”, targeting audience at scale at much lower ad spend using classical audience extension as well as account-based data.
Supporting technologies
Marketers can grow their marketing technologies’ stack by adding technologies for remarketing, retargeting, content and social listening technologies. Artificial intelligence and Account-based marketing (ABM) are slowly galvanizing marketing automation platforms, providing CMOs a vantage point to engage thought leaders and vendors who are making the most noise. From making an effective market research to driving advocacy campaigns, ABM outperforms other marketing investments in terms of customer retention and market expansion. B2B enterprises achieve 24% faster growth in annual revenues when ABM is aligned to sales and marketing operations. Top CMOs advocate the idea of spending more on ABM in 2017, promoting it as the most vital cog in the entire marketing technologies’ stack.
Then, there is remarketing technology. Contextual remarketing, which is used to turn one-time visitors into repeat customers, ensures that there is an increased possibility of them buying your product. Social listening is a niche field which is growing rapidly. Online reputation management based on social listening and monitoring capabilities help brands know what people think and feel about them. AI technologies with cognitive learning capabilities help manage and derive insights from the huge data pool that all the digital marketing tools generate. AI capabilities in marketing technology stack can calibrate and calculate the efficacy of such campaigns, engaging more audience over most “ideal” platforms across web, mobile and social.
Marketing Technologies removes the Guess Move in entirety
CMOs are not afraid to explore creativity in data collection and implementing ideas. Split testing and customer experience modeling ensure that digital marketing is not a standalone part of the overall marketing plan. The development, integration, and application of intelligent marketing technologies will continue to inflate in 2017. Mobile and social intelligence capabilities tagged alongside performance-based marketing would increasingly gain more attention from CMOs this year.
WhiteSmoke, the leading all-in-one English content writing tool, announced the acquisition of Tel Aviv-based ad monetization platform – Wise Data Media. The buyout will help the digital marketing services provider to expand its business from web and mobile to video and programmatic in the coming months. The terms of the deal remained undisclosed at the time of reporting.
WhiteSmoke, founded in 2002, provides linguistic services that assist users to generate grammatically accurate and well-organized English content. The latest acquisition of Wise Data Media for approximately $5.3 million will boost WhiteSmoke’s growth strategy, deepening its operations in web and mobile ad services and expand operations in video ads
Itay Meroz, CEO at WhiteSmoke & Omnivid
Itay Meroz, CEO at WhiteSmoke said, “The acquisition of Wise Data Media’s operations is the realization of our business strategy of rapid growth in income, improved profitability and WhiteSmoke’s augmentation of income sources. The acquired operations, which significantly improve our competitive positioning, has outstanding technological features such as the ability to carry out programmatic media buying which is expected to improve the profitability of our video field alongside a strong ability to quickly reach large volumes of activity.”
“Wise Data Media’s operations join the acquisition of GMS Digital’s operations which led us to show record income in the recent years with the strong growth of the video advertising field in the third quarter of 2016. We estimate that there will be a synergy between the two operations so that we can grow rapidly in order to generate a high value to the Company’s shareholders.”
via WISE Media
Wise Data Media Corporation, founded in 2012 by CEO Tomer Sade, offers a wide-range of ad media solutions through WISE for mobile, video, content and analytics. WISE Platform provides real-time, relevant and customized ad monetization suite using data to understand, engage and retain customers through integrated marketing strategies across web. CEO Sade has previously donned the role of CEO of Israeli digital advertising agency Publicis e-dologic and Saatchi and Saatchi Interactive Israel.
The latest acquisition highlights the growing number of martech-related start-ups being scooped up by Unicorns. The Acquisition Timeline maintained by MarTech Series expects at least 250+ acquisitions in marketing technology industry in 2017.
inMarket, the leading beacon proximity platform based, has its first CMO to lead global integrated mobile marketing strategies in 2017. The mobile-at-retail marketing platform acquired award-winning mobile and creative digital marketing veteran Cameron V. Peebles. inMarket’s first CMO will lead a team in integrated marketing, strategy, pipeline optimization, creative design, public relations and strategic positioning.
Cameron V. Peebles via LinkedIn
“The strategies and technologies that brands use to engage with consumers in mobile have been consistently improving since the introduction of smartphones nearly a decade ago,” said Cameron in a release issued by inMarket.
“inMarket’s industry leading technology, impressive track record of driving ROI and history of consistent growth is second to none. I’m very proud to be leading the company’s marketing initiatives as we expand even faster and reach many more exciting milestones.”
inMarket, founded in April 2010, identified the necessity to hire a CMO to expand its business operations globally, innovating cutting-edge mobile-first solutions for apps, brands, and retailers. Bringing Peebles to inMarket will help integrate its marketing initiatives with disruptive technologies.
Cameron has previously served as CMO of Airpush, Inc., taking the company to World Number 2 position in the 2014 Forbes list of “Most Promising Companies”. He was Director-Head of Marketing at mobileStorm, a renowned SaaS-based marketing communication platform. His experience in the mobile app industry will enable inMarket to tap into the emerging technology domains and grow strong mobile ad tech platform.
“Since 2010, inMarket has set the standard for real-time engagement at the moment of truth and helped brands gain unprecedented advantage through beacon technology at scale. Now, as our space matures and we enter a seventh consecutive year of growth, we know that sharing our vision with the community will be an integral part of our next chapter,” said Todd Dipaola, CEO and co-founder of inMarket. “Cameron has the perfect blend of marketing experience, savvy and the entrepreneurial spirit to lead our marketing team to continued success in the future.”
Cameron Peebles will make his first official presentation as CMO inMarket in an hour-long webinar titled “Mobile Location & The Tale of Retail ROI” on February 22. He will be presenting his insights on the best practices of location-based marketing, beacon technology and quality case studies from top retail-centric advertisers.
IPG Mediabrands, the leading digital media, and automated buying platform unveiled a global social media and digital content agency called Mediabrands Society. The announcement comes following the media firms latest hiring of Rob Bernstein as EVP, managing director at IPG. Bernstein will report to COO Chris Loll, IPG Mediabrands. The global leadership program at Mediabrands Society is yet to be announced.
IPG Mediabrands will offer a comprehensive suite of social media tools and on-demand media agency operation designed to curate and serve relevant social messages in real time. The new entity will also offer automated influencer marketing and advisory services to serve global publishers and brand marketers.
“Our promise to our clients has always been to assist them in unlocking the power of dynamic marketing,” stated Henry Tajer, global CEO, IPG Mediabrands. “Part of that promise requires IPG Mediabrands to always be at the forefront of the media landscape, and the evolution of Mediabrands Society into a global full-service social agency embodies this.”
Mediabrands Society’s proprietary system called “HEART” will enable marketers to identify emotional resonance in social conversations. Built on the concepts of Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and AI, HEART will help marketers analyze unique and news, blogs, social media, and TV to spot content resonating with relevant audiences to drive maximum ROI. The series of offerings will be delivered through Mediabrands Publishing, launched in 2013, helping clients produce content and other publishing-type services.
Mediabrands Society will open offices in the US, Canada, England, Australia, UK, Philippines, Malaysia, and Mexico, growing into new emerging markets throughout 2017. Bernstein as EVP has been brought onto the management to develop cross-platform social media channels. Previously, Bernstein served as SVP, digital content WWE Network (OTT) and WWE App.
Mediabrands Society will also acquire the services of Nick Childs as Chief Creative Officer. He joins the new operation from sibling media agency Initiative, where he served as Global Creative Officer. Also joining the Society is Havas veteran Josh Greenspan, as Executive Creative Director.
Linkfluence, the leading social media monitoring platform, has announced a key partnership deal with social marketing platform Spredfast. The international agreement between the two social data intelligence firms will enable marketers to capture and analyze real-time consumer data to enhance brand engagement across channels.
“Linkfluence and Spredfast share strong technological standards and performance, a deep sense of customer service and a DNA where innovation is omnipresent. We are proud to be able to offer our customers access to our technology and innovations within one of the market’s best engagement platforms,” commented Herve Simonin, CEO of Linkfluence.
The new deal allows Spredfast clients to directly activate Radarly from their existing account. Spredfast users can leverage Linkfluence’s Radarly for social media listening, performance management, community engagement and real-time conversation management to boost consumer experience.
Linkfluence has made a significant number of innovations in social media intelligence solutions, providing breakthrough performance analytics and interactive dashboards for comprehensive profiling of influencers. The click-only Social CRM by Linkfluence is a unique service for users that will enable Social Media Managers to gain in productivity and performance within a single platform.
Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast
“Our commitment to building an ecosystem of strong, global partners has never been stronger. We’re dedicated to bringing together technologies that help our customer solve their own unique challenges. This latest partnership furthers our ability to connect our customer with the people they care about the most,” said Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast.
Linkfluence, founded in 2006, recently raised $12 million in Series C funding. The Paris-based social media intelligence firm has so far acquired $24 million in five rounds of funding. On the other hand, Texas-based Spredfast has managed to raise $138 million in six funding rounds since its inception in 2008.
Leading marketing automation software firm Marketo released its first marketing survey on the maturity of contemporary marketers. The report titled, “2017 Marketing Benchmark Report: North America” carries survey results seeking insights from 1300+ Marketo customers on adoption of marketing technologies and integration.
Marketing Benchmark Report: North America measures the maturity of marketers based on their marketing strategies and how they execute campaigns using technologies. According to the report, 60% modern marketers deploy six or more MarTech stacks in their campaigns. However, the underlining fact is that there is a huge scope for growth in the industry.
Top insights from 2017 Marketing Benchmark Report: North America
65% marketers running global campaigns use a centralized marketing automation strategy. Centralized strategy, compared to regional stacks, enable marketers to scale marketing activities into newer regions more effectively.
Content, centralized alignment with the parent base and skill mapping of people using marketing technologies remain the top challenges in deploying marketing automation strategy. Other challenges are budget allocation and autonomy.
Only 3% companies use 20 or more marketing technologies to run their businesses. 40% respondents consider 6-10 MarTech solutions enough to suffice their requirements.
68% respondents have a full-fledged long-term plan to build their MarTech stack. While 37% marketers have a mix-and-match strategy of short and long-term plan with MarTech in contrast to 32% respondents who have no plans.
A whopping 96% of the respondents agree that siloed data and MarTech solutions can derail the purpose of bringing technology on board. Marketers want a single MarTech vendor to offer solutions that allow them to seamlessly integrate all existing technologies at an enterprise level.
34% marketers are practicing ABM to target and engage high-value accounts at scale. Most marketers, as many as 22%, consider content development as a major challenge in ABM adoption. Other challenges involve understanding the ABM basics and navigating through the ABM landscape using reporting and analytics.
39% of marketers devote less than a quarter of their budget to customer engagement programs, and more than two-thirds of marketers do not have customer referral programs. While the emphasis is on customer acquisition, marketers are beginning to understand the significance of engagement marketing and how this approach will become critical to all marketing strategies.
Marketers must embrace a multi-channel approach towards engaging with today’s empowered buyers and ultimately drive revenue for their organizations. Only 42% have a mobile-optimized website, and 26% are incorporating mobile advertising into their mobile marketing strategy, even though many marketers do not identify as mobile marketers.
Based on these findings, Marketo has identified the challenges and opportunities addressing marketers based on their technology adoption and maturity. Marketo insists on creating Centers of Excellence (CoEs) to enable marketers in shifting away from siloed inefficiencies.
via Marketo
Overall, bringing MarTech on board helps drive higher ROI from marketing campaigns by fostering enterprise collaboration, improving brand identity and improving customer experience across channels and mediums. 2017 is projected as the year when mobile and social advertising becomes more advanced, forcing marketers to allocate budget allocations towards omnichannel digital platforms. Providing best customer experience and gaining highest audience engagement remain the top priorities for marketers, achievable through a scalable centralized marketing automation platform.
Button, a mobile app monetization platform, scooped $20 million in Series B funding from Norwest Partners and its existing investors Redpoint, DCM, and Greycroft. The NYC-based mobile app marketing firm uses deep-thinking algorithm to integrate multiple apps, delivering improved user experience and switching.
The latest Series B funding will allow Button to focus on developing products that help solve ambiguity in the mobile app industry. Button enables marketers to make meaningful revenue by connecting people to actions across multiple apps and websites. By giving users access to multiple apps within the same app, Button enhances engagement significantly. It also offers a cutting-edge avenue for app discovery in overcrowded app stores, placing them within sight of already engaged users.
“We unlock the intent that’s distributed across the entire mobile landscape. We provide an efficient channel for app acquisition for our merchants that taps into the distributed intent across a range of publisher partners,” said Mike Jaconi, CEO and Founder, Button.
Negotiating past the overcrowded app market is a vicious challenge that every app developer has to deal with to build a viable user base. More than 3 million apps fight for customer attention across app stores. Button plays a crucial role in delivering the right app experience to the right audience across prolific app stores.
Button dashboard
Button was founded in May 2014 with a seed funding of $2.5 million from 16 investors. The NYC-based tech mobile app monetizing firm has so far raised $34 million in four rounds of funding from investors that include Accomplice, DCM Ventures, Atlas Venture, Basset Investment Group and Mesa Ventures.
mParticle, the leading multi-screen API provider, has been selected as Snapchat Partner to enable easy onboarding for brands. The NYC-based mobile marketing accelerator platform will feature as an Audience Match API partner, providing Snapchat clients to seamless connect to first-party customer data. Marketers can toggle Snapchat’s ad API to create 1:1 customizable cross-device ad experiences using mParticle’s customer data platform.
The latest integration with Snapchat’s Ad API will allow marketers to build mobile-first and multi-screen ad campaigns more effectively, delivering immaculate customer experience with unprecedented results. mParticle’s API platform will integrate with Snapchat real-time, enabling marketers to create and synchronize audience engagements across all channels and partners. Syncing data directly from mParticle also enables marketers to coordinate Snap Ads with all other marketing efforts, across both paid advertising and CRM channels.
“Our Snapchat partnership is one more high-value destination where brands can easily connect their customer data through mParticle,” said CEO and co-founder Michael Katz. “Coordinated, cross-channel marketing is critical to marketing success today, and enabling Snapchat as an end point was essential to keeping pace with our client’s customers. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with them to create a ton of value for mutual clients.”
via mParticle
Last week, mParticle partnered comScore to ease the pain publishers take to measure campaign performance. The seamlessly deployable audience and advertising measurement solutions offered by comScore over mParticle platform will also be available to Snapchat clients. The comScore-mParticle partnership is a significant step towards refining mobile marketing and advertising strategies. It paves the path for customers to implement comScore SDK with minimal add-on resources.
“The most important initiative on nearly every media company’s agenda in 2017 is to synthesize data and measurement across mobile and connected devices,” explained Adam Biehler, the Head of Partnerships at mParticle. “We are thrilled to work with comScore to make it easier for leading publishers to improve third-party measurement without the complexity of deploying and maintaining multiple SDKs.”
Mobile users spend 60% time searching relevant app. However, customer experience remains the biggest challenge in app monetization efforts. mParticle partnering with Snap will help amplify app monetizing, enabling marketers to remove developmental barriers that come with silo attitude and cross-platform engagements.
Marissa Ann Mayer, “Ginni” Rometty, Sheryl Sandberg, and Susan Wojcicki – women and technology make a formidable pair, especially when they are leading enterprises that create and propagate them. Most tech investors acknowledge that the industry would do better with women leading global and regional businesses. After all, world’s youngest entrepreneur is a 12-year-old girl — Lauren Boyle (EU Digital Girl of the Year 2015). Considering the gender gap in marketing and advertising technologies, Goodway Group is incubating the idea of recruiting more women across digital technology verticals in 2017.
Goodway Group, a leading managed services programmatic partner to local, regional and Fortune 500 brand agencies, is ramping up hiring efforts for 2017 with a special focus on women in tech. Goodway is looking for qualified candidates to service its regional business operations. Goodway’s workforce is 100% remote, meaning all employees work from home. Most candidates have the ability to live in any location within the U.S. The company grew by 30% in 2016 and enjoys 75% women in its workforce based in over 40 states. This hiring effort is consistent with Goodway Group’s strong growth. In 2016, the company added over 100 employees to its workforce.
The management style explains why Goodway has been honored with Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2017. The Employees’ Choice Awards program, now in its ninth year, relies solely on the input of employees, who elect to provide feedback on their jobs, work environments, and companies via Glassdoor®.
“Our virtual workforce model has enabled us to grow quickly and tap into a huge pool of high-tech experts, many of them women, who live outside of the typical tech hubs such as, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles,” said Jay Friedman, COO, Goodway Group. “We love that we have representation at our company from almost every state. This diverse group brings us so much value, which is made even more apparent with the tech and advertising industries facing diversity and gender inequality issues.”
Unlike its competitors, Goodway has maintained consistent 10:1 sales to support ratio. Only about 10% of Goodway is directly in sales while 75% is direct client support – media traders, account managers, campaign coordinators, strategists, and planners, etc. The remaining 15% of the workforce is administrative.
“Our strategy is to build lasting relationships with our clients through support and expertise, and our success in this strategy is demonstrated by our 96% client retention rate,” added Friedman. “Our independent nature has also been a huge benefit. It allows us to make decisions in the best interests of our clients and also partner with technology companies in the industry that best suit our and our clients’ needs.”
Here’s what women employees at Goodway Group had to say about their role and experiences in ad tech industry.
Jennifer Bird, VP Client & Creative Services, Acworth, GA
Jennifer Bird
I first came to Goodway because I had very young kids, and both my husband (sales = travel all of the time) and I were traveling quite a bit. I also had a 2-hour commute both ways so after school activities were out of the question for the kids. I took a couple of steps back to come to Goodway, but have been able to exceed all of my goals and dreams in my career AND family life at the same time by working remotely. In April, my son was life-flighted to the children’s hospital and diagnosed with a seizure disorder. As you can imagine, our lives were flipped upside down, but I haven’t skipped a beat work wise. I am able to continue to get my son to doctor’s appointments while continuing to work from waiting rooms or flexible hours because Goodway understands that life happens.
Lindy Jones, VP Media Operations, Waco, TX
Lindy Jones
I think it’s pretty safe to say I am the only person working in digital or programmatic advertising for about a 100-mile radius from my city! I started my career in Austin, Texas which has ample technology opportunities but with that came a 2x a day hour(ish) commute to central Austin and time lost with my loved ones, time lost for myself, and many times was a drain on my sanity. Goodway has afforded me the opportunity to move back ‘home’ to the country which fits my pace of life with the luxuries of fields, farms, night skies, and family. I have a 10-month old, 2.5 years old, and a 6-year-old and the flexibility of working remotely has increased my quality of life with that flexibility which in turns allows me to be more productive at work.
Lindsay Downing, Digital Research and Strategy Specialist, Lake Tahoe, CA
Lindsay Downing
Working remotely for Goodway has been a dream, to say the least. When I was looking to make the move from a regional agency to ad tech, I thought I would probably have to leave my tiny cabin in the woods of Lake Tahoe, and move to San Francisco, LA or another major metropolitan area to find a good job within a great company. I have lived in Lake Tahoe for the past six years and love the rural, small town feels coupled with world-class skiing, hiking, and numerous outdoor activities. Working virtually for Goodway has allowed me to stay in this amazing place while working for the best company (I may be biased) in the industry. Depending on the season, during my lunch breaks or before work, I am able to go hiking with my dog or cross-country skiing in my backyard, and then return to work with the best team I’ve ever had the pleasure working for. It is truly the best of both worlds.
Charisse Klock, Director, Client Services, Fort Lee, VA
My husband is a Sergeant First Class in the US Army and has been for 13 years. Since working at Goodway, we’ve been stationed at Fort Campbell, KY and Fort Lee, VA and this summer, we’ll make the move to Fort Bliss, TX. If not for my virtual position, I would have to find a new job every couple of years, and I most likely would not have been able to progress in my career as I have at Goodway. Also, Army posts are usually located in remote places, outside of big cities, with very little professional jobs around. When we were stationed at Fort Campbell, I had to commute an hour each way to work in Nashville, TN because that’s where the professional jobs were. Goodway has allowed me to work in the field I went to school for, continue to progress in my career and have peace knowing that no matter when or where we move, my career will be the one thing I won’t have to worry about.
Becca Smith, Marketing Designer, Peoria, IL
Becca Smith
As a new mom, I am learning every day how important the battle is of finding time for myself. With Goodway Group, I am able to use my lunch hour to get out of my house for a walk and enjoy some fresh air and Vitamin D that I think everyone needs and cherishes. This was an unachievable goal when working in an office where the workplace attire was not comfortable for walks in the hot summer sun or cold winters! Also, I know that they respect the fact that family comes first and when I had faced health issues with my son, there were no questions asked. I received only 100% support from every member I was in contact with at Goodway Group. This company helps ease the mind of every working mom who knows they need to be available at the drop of a hat if their child has a health scare, and Goodway understands that.
Julie Quick, Supervisor, Client Services, Oak Park, IL
Julie Quick
I am a single mom and know how much this virtual environment benefits single moms. When you are the only one doing everything for the family… getting 2 hours back in the day that you used to spend commuting is more precious than money. Having flexible hours so you can drive kids places, be there for their games or just have dinner on the table before 8:00 pm is the most amazing thing in the world.
Amanda Martin, Director Account Strategy & Research, North Kingstown, Rhode Island
Amanda Martin
To put it simply, I’m still in the workforce full-time in the industry I love. I have been and will always be someone who takes great pride and accomplishment from my career and not going back to work after having children never seemed to be an option that would make me happy until I was faced with the reality of working full-time and having two children. After juggling my career and two sons for 5 years, I felt like no matter what I was doing I wasn’t doing the right thing. If I was home with the kids I wasn’t at work, if I was at work I wasn’t at home with the kids. To compound the situation, my first son is medically complex. As my husband and I were considering if staying home was an option for me, both financially and mentally, I was approach by Goodway Group with an opportunity. With a virtual environment, Goodway meant staying in the industry I love, living in the state I love, Rhode Island is not a digital hotspot, and being home with my family. The decision to come to Goodway was my last attempt at making being a working mom work. The decision has been a success, I’m more engaged at work, receiving a promotion in my first year, and with my family than ever before. By eliminating daily commutes and office distractions, I’ve become more productive and more present with my kids. If Goodway had not found me, I might have become one of the 43% of highly qualified women with children who leave their career or off-ramp for a period of time (Lean-In source).
Chelsey White, Digital Media Trader, Melrose, WI
Chelsey White
I live in rural Southwestern Wisconsin (Melrose). The closest job opportunity that isn’t a bar or a cheese factory (not kidding! lol) is at least a 45-minute commute, not including snow & construction delays (our 2 seasons here). I have a 10-month-old son & absolutely refused to spend 2 hours of my day driving, leaving me with maybe an hour with him before bedtime. My husband & I had made the difficult decision that I would find a part-time job that I was way overqualified for to reduce the drive time & be able to see my baby. This would really have impacted our finances & limited the opportunities that we could provide for Tucker. I was completely stuck between a rock & a hard place. Tucker goes to daycare about a quarter mile away, & I am able to go nurse him during my lunch. Also, in working with my amazing supervisor, Darcy, we put together a flexible schedule where I work 7am-3pm, then as necessary after Tucker goes to bed. And on top of it all – I LOVE what I do! I get to use my degree, am mentally stimulated every day, and feel fulfilled with the work I accomplish.
Jessica Murphy, Digital Media Supervisor, Atlanta, GA
Jessica Murphy
As a single mom, working for Goodway Group has been a huge blessing for my little family. I now have the flexibility to go eat lunch with Addison on Friday’s if I want or attend her dance recitals without feeling stressed out about missing work. I always felt like I couldn’t have a career and be the best mom to Addie but Goodway Group has shown me that it’s truly possible to have both. I’m so thankful to work for a company that values family.
Anne Lehr, Digital Research and Strategy Specialist, Holly, Michigan
The benefits of a virtual environment have allowed me to cut 4+ driving hours out of my day (for work and childcare) and has allowed me to be only a room or two away from my son every day! This was important for me when evaluating new job opportunities and with Goodway, I found everything I wanted… and more!
Jennifer Hadley-White, SEM Coordinator, Ft. Worth, TX
Jennifer Hadley-White
After working in corporate America, I became a stay-at-home mom for six years. Once my son was old enough for full-day school, I was ready to re-enter the paying workforce again. Because I had grown accustomed to being productive at home all day, I decided home was where I performed best and sought a work-at-home solution. As well as enjoying the work, being with Goodway Group allowed me to take my son to school and be home when he got off the bus. My son requires special education so being available after school was imperative the first few years.
Roohie Iqbal, SEM Supervisor, Houston, TX
Roohie Iqbal
When I had my first child, I was working in an office from 8am-5pm, which would actually mean leaving the house 7 am and getting home at 6 pm. I would barely catch some time with my daughter in the mornings and then a couple of hours in the evening before she would fall asleep. I did this for around three months when I realized I wasn’t happy and was being deprived of time with my child, which made me miserable in the office. Fortunately, a friend who had kept telling me about joining this great company called Goodway reached out to me again around the same time and told me there was an opening in their SEM department. I was a little hesitant at first wondering if I could fit the work from home lifestyle and whether this company really was as good as my friend raved about. However, I took the plunge, applied and got the job.
As soon as I started it definitely felt like the right decision. I had a chance to peek in on my daughter throughout the day, take breaks when I could and literally see her grow up. Instead of feeling like I was missing out, I was now happy that I was getting to see more of her and it actually made me more productive in my role at work to the point where I was promoted within 6 months of joining the company. I then had my second daughter last year and was so grateful to not have to go to an office after my maternity leave was over. My first daughter is now in daycare and the second with a babysitter in my home so I have the ability to drop off, pick up and if either of my daughters have doctor’s appointments, get sick or I have to be at a meeting at daycare, I am able to attend by having the flexibility of working it into my day.
2017 is expected to see a significant rise in innovations and technology adoptions. With new talent blending into the existing workforce, ad tech industry is turning into a well-rounded ecosystem with balanced gender ratio.
What kale was to the food industry in 2012, ABM or account-based marketing is to the world of marketing in 2017. Much like how kale has been around for centuries before becoming every celebrity, A-lister, and the Instagram populace’s food-to-swear-by, the now-talked-about ABM too has been around for a while, albeit on a structurally different plate and without being explicitly termed as ABM.
Corporate giants have been using account centric strategies for a while now, but of late, ABM is redefining the world of marketing on a massive scale, especially vis-à-vis companies engaged in enterprise-level sales, like B2B.
With 92% of marketers eager to act on adopting account-based marketing, it’s time for B2B marketing teams everywhere to gear up for the ABM wave.
But first, what is ABM?
Account-based marketing literally means marketing to a particular account, wherein organizations target an individual company – current customers or prospects – delineating them as a market in its own right.
Considering the paradigm shift engendered by marketing technology advancement, instead of acquisition marketing strategies, organizations are now gearing towards targeting companies as a ‘Market of One’ and conceptualizing campaigns to engage with both – the entity and stakeholder holding influence over purchase.
An ABM strategy has the added benefit of making sales and marketing teams work in tandem. This aligned model enables organizations to formulate tactical marketing campaigns based on assigned sales goals. Both teams need to constantly assess and reassess target accounts, audit individual information, and prioritize account(s) to focus on.
Combining sales and marketing insights with the right technology make ABM a winner in the B2B marketing domain.
But why has ABM suddenly become the buzzword?
ABM gives a company the power to choose high-potential accounts and personalized content for maximum engagement. Also, 86% of marketers claim that ABM also helps build stronger and sustainable customer relationships.
Advances in technology – from marketing and sales-force automation tools, customer intelligence management and profiling tools to superior analytics– all led to account-based marketing garnering so much attention.
This software-centric approach is attracting droves of new ABM adherents today because it enables marketers to automate some of the traditional ABM steps. Researching accounts and collecting customer insights has never been more easier, thanks to advanced software products for account identification, lead scoring, and qualification and also through tools for digital and social monitoring.
Programmatic delivery of targeted advertising has advanced to a point where marketers can use technologies like reverse-IP recognition to link individual lead nurturing programs to overall account progress through the funnel.
Not sure where to start? Here’s a handy ABM checklist
With all this technology at your disposal, implementing an account-based marketing strategy might sound challenging to those just starting off. This checklist should help you flesh out an effective ABM strategy relevant to your organization.
Who will you market to?
This step is of paramount importance, as without thorough research of the target audience, you wouldn’t find the best account to market to. Therefore, a collaborative sales and marketing effort towards identifying, assessing, and zeroing in on priority accounts is the first step towards successful marketing.
Once you have chosen the potential account, do the homework – research the account. Unlike traditional marketing, ABM does not involve marketing to individuals. Hence, the idea is to draw up an organization-level and not an individual persona by recognizing the entire structure of the company and their influencers.
What do you say to them?
Besides a solid understanding of whom you are speaking to, you also need to know the right things to say.
Superior, customized content devised to address not just the pain points of the individual stakeholders but the entire account as a whole will quickly move them through the funnel.
How do you say this?
Which platform does your targeted audience mostly thrive on? Are they spending their maximum digital time on LinkedIn or do they rigorously check their Facebook profile? Ideally, you should look for this information when researching your account.
Unless you choose the right channel to launch your campaign, you might as well be speaking to a wall.
However, there’s a need to ensure that the message is consistent across channels, even if your focus is on a single channel. This would deter your target audience from getting any mixed signals and facilitate aligned receptivity of the intended information.
What are the results?
Once you’ve researched your target audience, created tailor-made content, and launched the campaign, it’s time to see how you fare.
A majority of marketers get stuck at this step – they find that proving the ROI of their marketing efforts is difficult. Using conversions as a strict measurement of ROI is a parochial approach.
Therefore, besides revenue, marketers should look for changes in engagement with the key players, level of interaction, increase in readership within the account to use as a baseline to tweak the campaign along the way for increased ROI.
While this checklist gives you a framework to build an ABM strategy on, remember the success of this depends upon how well you follow each step.
Measuring each step to better understand how the efforts are panning out and what measures are to be taken to make it more effective. The extent of CRM/IT integration with evolving technology and multiple data streams will define how much value you can extract.
ABM is Poised to Transform B2B Marketing
Account-based marketing might be an overwhelming concept to deal with, considering it flips the traditional approach to demand creation, but it has the potential to revamp B2B marketing on a granular level. Among other benefits, the efficiency gain from bridging the gap between your own Sales & Marketing teams working together in an integrated manner are significant.
And companies attempting to stay on top of their game this year would likely reap the benefits from implementing ABM as a core strategy.
Success is the biggest incentive to innovate further and lead others as well. Snap Inc., the leading tech innovation and social media firm, is gearing up to build a competitive martech solution platform for omnichannel marketers and advertisers. Tech investment firm R/GA Ventures announced Snap as the Lead Partner for the R/GA Marketing Tech Venture Studio with IPG. The partnership will be culminated at R/GA’S NYC headquarters, focusing on martech firms.
“We believe that mobile engagement has given rise to some of the best and most unique advertising opportunities,” said Imran Khan, Snap Inc. Chief Strategy Officer. “We are excited to work with R/GA and IPG to support innovative companies that help marketers provide creative and effective advertising experiences.”
R/GA Marketing Tech Venture Studio partnering with Snap is a significant step towards empowering mobile marketers and advertisers. The program is aimed at start-ups and developing app builders who are in quest of technology that will improve customer experience in mobile advertising. The studio is focusing on creating omnichannel video advertising platforms with engaging mobile experiences, ad delivery optimization, accurate in-app targeting analytics and AI capabilities.
“The strategic value that Snap Inc. brings to the program will provide a crucial differentiation for startups developing the next wave of innovation in marketing technology and mobile video,” said Stephen Plumlee, R/GA Global Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner of R/GA Ventures. “We look forward to working with both Snap and IPG to provide both critical momentum and enormous network effect for the companies chosen to participate.”
Snap, as the Lead Partner in R/GA Marketing Tech Venture Studio, will collaborate with at least ten startups selected in the program, providing insights on transformational martech and branding strategies. The program will also provide access to industry-leading experts from across the full range of IPG operating companies as well as access to the global networks of R/GA and IPG including clients, industry partners, mentors, and investors.
“Our support of the Marketing Tech Studio will help drive innovation for marketers and agency brands by finding more engaging, efficient and effective ways to reach consumers,” said Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO of IPG.
“We expect our investment in the program will lead to new tools and technologies that lower the barriers for brands and advertisers to create measurable, customized content in a mobile world.”
Startups selected into the program will have a shot at attending the Cannes Lions festival in June. The “Ghost’s” affirmation to lead R/GA Marketing Tech Venture Studio comes just days ahead of its official unveiling of the IPO prospects – the most awaited martech event of 2017. If the millennial-magnet manages to convince the Wall Street about its potential in growing into a mega-technology enterprise, it could well open the floodgates of opportunities for others competing in the addressable market.
Artificial Intelligence is promulgating its significance across verticals in the marketing industry. Unfazed by the daunting challenge of taking on some of the biggest names in the domain in the dynamic AI marketplace, a newbie has made a major breakthrough on Monday. Cien, Inc. scored a $1 million seed funding from leading tech investors and equity firms. The Miami-based AI startup plans to expand its product line further and scale up its workforce in the US and Europe.
“We are thrilled by the reception our AI enabled mobile Sales Productivity app has received from both the business and investor communities,” said Rob Käll, CEO and Co-founder. The round closed in late 2016 and Stanley ‘Stash’ Jacobs of Greenberg Traurig represented the company.
Cien, Inc. currently offers Cien AI app to sales professionals, providing them an opportunity to leverage Cien’s revolutionary AI-backed sales enablement and intelligence capabilities. The sales AI app from Cien provides informative insights on SaaS software and technology, capturing lot more than just data from the customers. According to the Cien team, AI will replace the traditional SaaS platforms, enabling scalable automation to improve sales operations in the future. Research firm Tractica evaluates the AI industry touching $36 billion by 2025. IDC’S Worldwide SaaS Enterprise Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares projected SaaS enterprise applications industry will plateau at $50 billion in 2018.
Despite accelerations in SaaS CRM applications market, the competitive AI industry is fast catching up. Between 2017 and 2022, worldwide revenues from AI market will grow 10X; mostly driven by startups providing AI solutions based on machine learning, natural language processing and cognitive learning.
Co-founder Margot Carter who also sits on multiple public and private company boards added, “Virtually all forward-thinking companies are discussing how to use AI to gain a competitive edge. Cien offers an easy solution where it matters the most; in improving Sales Productivity.”
Optimizing Sales Productivity is the easiest way to make any company grow faster and more profitably. However, until now, many things that affect productivity; like team mood, macro factors such as competition and the quality of leads have been intangible and impossible to measure.
Jerome Rose, VP of Sales at a multinational IT services firm said, “The revolutionary tools that Cien offers executives, helps them identify areas of improvement within their sales team and helps them report meaningful metrics to their executive leadership team and investors. Cien’s mantra: ‘Measure what Matters’ means that things that previously were just gut feelings can now be incorporated into our management strategies.”
“People are talking a lot about Predictive Analytics, the ability for AI enabled tools to see into the future, but to be truly useful you also want Prescriptive Analytics, i.e. what you should do next with this information,” Ben Strum, CTO and Co-founder said. “That’s what our new ‘Cien Mentor’ feature delivers. When you act on these insights you can get ROI of over 1,000%,” Rob Käll added.
Cien, Inc., founded in 2016, has affirmed with its immediate plans to use the fundraising proceeds to expand their sales and marketing efforts, and set up a product development and operations center in Barcelona, Spain.
“We chose Barcelona because of the excellent balance of quality of life and cost of living, which attracts world-class talent from all over the world. The current strong US dollar also makes this a very attractive economic proposition,” Rob Käll said.
Online advertisement publishers can now compare how their ad campaigns fare across channels with respect to Facebook. Facebook has announced a series of updates on ad performance analytics available as part of its measurement partnership program. It also rolled out a marketing mix modeling (MMM) portal, enabling advertisers to gain direct insights from Facebook, Instagram and the Audience Network platform. The social media and tech innovation firm also scaled its partnerships with Nielsen and comScore, apart from acquiring a new partner DoubleVerify (DV) to bolster Facebook MMM portal for ad marketers.
Facebook, in April 2016, had invited three new third-party ad verification partners to leverage their insights on supply-side platforms (SSP). Integral Ad Science, Nielsen and comScore were invited to provide ad viewership and attention metrics for display and video ads posted on Facebook. Partnership with DV will enable Facebook to identify “Fake News” advertisers and prevent malvertising via Facebook MMM.
At the end of last year, Facebook offered a plethora of metrics malwares and bugs that misrepresent data, leading to inaccurate reporting. By relying on third-parties like comScore and Nielsen, Facebook MMM intends to deliver trustworthy ad metrics on data, enabling brand partners to accurately measure ad impressions, audience reach, in-target campaign performance and other important metrics.
via DV Pinnacle
At the end of last year, Facebook offered a plethora of metrics malwares and bugs that misrepresent data, leading to inaccurate reporting. By relying on third-parties like comScore and Nielsen, Facebook intends to deliver trustworthy ad metrics on data, enabling brand partners to accurately measure ad impressions, audience reach, in-target campaign performance and other important metrics.
At the end of last year, Facebook offered a plethora of metrics malwares and bugs that misrepresent data, leading to inaccurate reporting. By relying on third-parties like comScore and Nielsen, Facebook intends to deliver trustworthy ad metrics on data, enabling brand partners to accurately measure ad impressions, audience reach, in-target campaign performance and other important metrics.
Advertisers can now use Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product in cross-channel environments across 25 global marketplaces. comScore, collaborating with Facebook on viewership data verification of video impressions, is offering Campaign Essentials product to measure in-target audience reach across the US.
The latest string of updates will allow advertisers and brand marketers to place more in-target advertisements across Facebook, expanding audience reach by integrating mobile marketing, social intelligence, performance-based marketing and video marketing strategies.
Partnership with DV is a key development in Facebook’s fight against Fake News phenomena. The DV technology eliminates ads from sites that promote malvertising and inflammatory subjects. The DV Digital Impression Quality suite is a powerful ad service available on all programmatic buying platforms, enabling advertisers to supersede contentious sites before bidding process. Once integrations with DV are complete, Facebook will provide advertisers a rock-solid pack of 24 global third-party measurement partners.
via DV Pinnacle
By launching a battery of new updates on ad authenticity and measurement accuracy, Facebook aims to provide advertisers a friendlier independent, third-party verification platform, instilling confidence in brands to purchase Facebook inventory over others.
Ebates.com, the leading online cash back shopping platform has acquired Cartera Commerce, a performance-based marketing, and loyalty rewards solutions provider. The acquisition is aimed to scale commerce revenues from online merchandising and flyer programs.
As per the terms of the acquisition deal, Cartera will continue to operate independently as an Ebate’s company. “Ebates is thrilled to join forces with an industry leader like Cartera to provide even richer opportunities to our customers,” said Kevin H. Johnson, CEO of Ebates. “We are both working on similar opportunities and together we will be able to provide ever more compelling rewards and offers to consumers as well as more effective marketing programs to our clients.”
Ebates.com, a Rakuten company, is a pioneer in online cash back shopping solutions. By adding Cartera, the CA-based company will readily provide marketers an established loyalty rewards marketing platform across multiple devices.
“Ebates has demonstrated success as a leading independent loyalty marketer and has built its brand around providing the best service to retailers and consumers,” said Tom Beecher, CEO of Cartera Commerce. “We are excited to leverage Ebates’ expertise and solutions to enhance the loyalty marketing services we provide to our clients – and to work together on new and exciting offerings for our customers.”
Cartera Commerce is an established loyalty marketing platform, enabling campaign marketers to build a rewarding customer experience while driving loyalty and engagement across all touchpoints. Ebates will leverage Cartera’s brand engagement with elite companies who use loyalty programs to reward their customers. Cartera offers partner-brand engagement solutions to global companies, including American Airlines, Barclays, Citi, and so on. It also offers loyalty-based reward solutions to retail chains like J.C. Penny, Macy’s, Lowe’s and Sears.
Ebates.com was acquired by Tokyo-based tech firm Rakuten in September 2014. Founded in 1998, Ebates has acquired seven marketing and sales enablement firms, including mobile app notification platform Shopular, e-receipts management app OneReceipt, and online shopping deal app fatwallet.com. Meanwhile, Cartera Commerce has so far raised $36 million in eight funding rounds since its inception in 2005.
Salesforce has closed its acquisition of Sequence, a creative design transformation company. The UX design firm will readily integrate with the CRM development team at Salesforce, complementing customer experience design capabilities. The acquisition deal was announced by Jashojot “Jojo” Roy, CEO at Sequence via corporate blog post.
Jojo Roy wrote on his blog post:
“Over the past 11 years, we’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with some of the world’s best-known and most innovative companies. Our mission has been to lead design-driven transformation by creating innovative digital products and connected customer experiences.”
Sequence CEO Jashojit “Jojo” Roy
Roy added, “We look forward to continuing that work at Salesforce. Once the transaction closes, we’ll enhance Salesforce’s experience design capabilities, helping companies use the power of design to better connect with their customers in entirely new ways.”
Jojo Roy confirmed that his team, including co-founder Seth Bain, will join Salesforce “helping companies use the power of design to better connect with their customers in entirely new ways.”
Salesforce continues to pace ahead of its CRM rivals, acquiring companies providing a diverse range of services. The objective of the leading cloud-based marketing automation software provider remains clear – acquire companies to bring customers best experience and engagement. By acquiring Sequence, Salesforce intends to build interactive customer experiences across both digital and physical environments.
Sequence is currently based out of San Francisco and New York, offering sophisticated visual design strategies and solutions to brands like Facebook, Best Buy, Peets, EA, Logitech, L’oreal, Amazon, Apple, Google, WebMD and more.
UX services have evolved into an important aspect of digital marketing, helping brands to engage customers across multiple devices. Salesforce already offers experience design capabilities through its “Add-Ons” consultancy services. Though UX is not something Salesforce intends to offer as an exclusive platform for businesses, adding Sequence in the team will help implement customer experience capabilities within its existing CRM platform.
Earlier in January, Salesforce’s Quip acquired Unity&Variety, affirming its intention to build a state-of-the-art designer studio for its “next generation of productivity tools”. Having UX research firm Sequence within Salesforce will bolster efforts to achieve its expansion plans laid out for 2017.
Return Path, the leading email data solutions provider, scored a major procurement by acquiring ThreatWave, a peer firm providing data sourcing and provisioning solutions for email deliverability. The acquisition will enable Return Path to secure and scale its existing Email Optimization Suite, enabling marketers to capture all and unique data source parsed from email messages. In short, the convergence will boost email data intelligence based on heightened insights on deliverability issues.
“ThreatWave’s global email data provides unparalleled visibility into the threats facing the email ecosystem—spam traps, bad senders, and more,” said Matt Blumberg, Return Path CEO. “Through this acquisition, Return Path will be able to help marketers and email service providers to pinpoint which data sources, list acquisition practices, email programs, and customer segments are driving deliverability issues.”
Return Path has confirmed that the company will integrate ThreatWave’s extensive global email sensor network with its Data Exchange. The integration will fuel new innovations in email data intelligence and mailbox optimization, offering mail providers a unique, holistic opportunity to advance their products and services. Currently, Return Path aggregates insights from 80+ mailbox providers with a reach of 2 million consumer inboxes.
via Return Path
“ThreatWave derives its email data from a variety of unique and proprietary sources, making it distinct and complementary to our industry-leading Data Exchange. Combined, this new data set will offer our mailbox provider partners an unparalleled view of sender activity and potential threats,” elucidated Blumberg.
The terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed. However, ThreatWave will operate independently as a Return Path company, servicing their existing clientele exclusively.
“We are incredibly proud of the technology we’ve built, and we’re thrilled to find the right home for it,” said ThreatWave CEO and Return Path alum Tom Bartel. “We believe data is most valuable when it empowers users to solve significant business problems. With Return Path, we’ve found a partner to help us accelerate the impact and influence of our data.”
ThreatWave offers a comprehensive email sensor dataset to enable marketers to find out real-time as well as historical data based on specific search criteria. Marketers can now expect to drive fully-secured email engagement campaigns leveraging Return Path’s all-in-one email data intelligence solutions.
132%.That’s the increase in the instances of malvertising reported across digital landscape in 2016 compared to the preceding year. RiskIQ, a leading online risk monitoring and threat management SaaS provider, has released its latest annual malware detection data card titled, “2016 Malvertising Report”. The report squarely links the ascent of programmatic advertising capabilities to growing number of ad blocker users.
Malicious advertising in digital parlance is referred to as “malvertising” (a portmanteau derived from “malicious advertising). According to online threat management companies, malvertising campaigns are growing in number, proving to be a scarier alias of the “Fake News” events. Following closely the rise of malvertising in the last couple of years, RiskIQ identified programmatic profiling aspects that “malevolent” advertisers leverage to target precise user groups via an array of techniques.
Why advertisers resort to programmatic malvertising? Well, the vicious practice offers a huge ROI for its practitioners by virtue of its highly targeted operations. On top of it, targeted user groups have no viable threat management tool to detect and mitigate programmatic malvertising or any malvertising for that matter! Threat actors – the practitioners of malvertising use high-traffic ad networks like Google, Facebook and YouTube to spike users with malware, ransomware, and scams. Some even con victims using redirects and phishing pages.
via eMarketer
“Malvertising is so nefarious because it’s a direct attack on the lifeblood of the internet as we know it. Digital media marketing is what funds the ‘free’ websites we all know and enjoy online. The success of the internet and all the people that rely on it is inextricably linked to online advertising success and safety,” said James Pleger, threat researcher at RiskIQ.
“Publishers, ad platforms, and ad operations teams need active visibility, forensic information, and mitigation capability to enable them to effectively detect and respond to malicious ads in the wild,” he added.
According to the report, disingenuous advertisements and redirects to the phishing page have registered highest growth between 2015 and 2016. Surprisingly, third-party malvertising detections fell by 14% in 2016.
RiskIQ’s 2016 Malvertising Report
“Malvertising threatens this online marketing growth,” James said. “For example, users wary of malvertising will block all ads, hampering the success of the digital advertising industry. By the end of 2017, more than 86 million people are expected to use ad blockers.”
According to eMarketer, the stakes are growing bigger in ad tech security and threat management. For an industry that is expected to touch $670 billion in 2020, programmatic advertising fraud pose a definitive challenge that can derail any omnichannel campaign. Increasing number of online customers in the US are embracing ad blockers to keep disturbing promotions at bay, threat actors will continue to use promotional malvertising to poach customers. Ad blocker users in the US are projected to rise by 24% in 2017 compared to the previous year.
via eMarketer
Many questions arise from the report’s findings. Ad publishers should be interested in one — Will programmatic advertising turn into a vicious technology without self-regulation in ad tech?
The leading mobile data exchange platform – adsquare has officially moved into the US, opening its first office in New York. The news was confirmed through a blog post published by adsquare’s Berlin-based Marketing Manager Alexandrina Hadzhiyska. The expansion will allow adsquare to forge US-centric DSP integration solutions in the near future.
“The United States are the most advanced market and mobile data already plays a crucial role for advertisers and agencies. Our self-service Audience Management Platform is a solution for programmatic pros that gives them control and transparency. The world of mobile data is way more than location data and needs dedicated companies,” said Tom Laband, the CEO and Co-Founder of adsquare.
CEO Tom recently moved to the US to lead a series of North America-based operations that included adding data providers like Neustar, Grapeshot, V12 Data, oneAudience, Reveal Mobile, Cuebiq, Mobilewalla and Qualia to the existing mobile data exchange. The mobile-data exchange platform offers a unique self-service Audience Management Platform to marketers looking for simplified programmatic solutions.
Currently, adsquare offers pre-bid integrations with The Trade Desk, AppNexus and Sizmek, enabling clients to access bidding data in real-time. In September 2016, adsquare opened its ingeniously conceived marketplace for first-party mobile data. The marketplace provides complete onboarding support, data ownership, and secured DSP integrations with fair SSP contracts.
To create awareness among marketers on contemporary mobile data trends and opportunities, adsquare announced the hosting of “Audiences In Motion” event in New York on February 16.
Centerfield Media, an end-to-end marketing, and sales engagement solutions provider announced its acquisition of Qology Direct, a Performance marketing firm. The acquisition was realized with $156 million venture capital financing, part of which has been set aside for future procurements. Qology Direct has been readily absorbed into Centerfield Media operations from Tuesday.
Centerfield’s Technology Stack
“Aligning offerings with Qology Direct to create the largest front-end through back-end marketing platform is transformational for the market and our customers,” said Centerfield co-president and co-founder, Jason Cohen.
Centerfield co-president and co-founder, Jason Cohen
“We frequently audit how big brands work with their ‘blue chip’ media agencies to reach prospects, and have found that not only is there a tremendous amount of wasted spend. These programs often fall short of their desired results. Bringing Centerfield together with Qology Direct is a multi-billion dollar market opportunity that delivers greater accountability and increases return on ad-spend by enabling brands to more effectively identify, reach, cultivate, care for and convert customers.”
By adding Qology Direct into its brood, Centerfield will be able to provide a unified fully-integrated Performance marketing and sales engagement platform using initial touch-points along the entire customer journey up to the conversion. Marketers and sales professionals can identify high-value, intent-driven consumer engagement channels with a scalable approach for the web, mobile, social and email platforms.
The latest funding round is the second scooped by Centerfield Media. In November 2015, the El Segundo, CA-based company had acquired an undisclosed funding from HIG Growth Partners. Since then, it has managed to expand its front-end through back-end technology platform to leverage Big Data. Centerfield’s Dugout platform caters to global brands, including ADT, AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum, Sprint, Verizon, Vivint, and Vonage. The newly furbished combined marketing engagement platform is aiming to deliver 2,000,000 sales per year.
via Centerfield Media
Centerfield Media currently provides ‘best-of-breed’ marketing technologies focusing on customer experience and acquisition campaigns. Popular tools for marketers and advertisers available in Centerfield’s Dugout suite are Automated Bid Optimization, Content Library, Reporting Center, Link Center and Experiment Center.
Performance-based marketing capabilities play a significant role in delivering targeted customer experience. It helps lower the cost of customer acquisition and retention, enabling marketers to evaluate the true worth of the customer. As mainstream marketers and web publishers increase their rate of martech adoptions for omnichannel campaigns, Performance marketing and advertising platforms offer significant growth opportunities in the marketplace.
