Why Organizing Business Intelligence Is a Necessity These Days (and How It Increases Sales)

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October 11, 2017

[mnky_team name=”Jim Kaskade” position=” CEO, Janrain”][/mnky_team]

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

[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Brand marketers pay a lot of money to drive unique visitors to their digital properties, only to see more than 95 percent of them go away and 5 percent or less register. Then of those 5 percent registered, less than 15 percent remain active.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to join a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) company?
I was on a hike with John Kim, managing partner at HighBar Partners, just before New Year’s 2015. John was very excited as he described a “Portland-based identity company called Janrain.” “We’re looking at a team that invented social login,” I recall John saying. “The company has evolved over the years to provide identity cloud services for some amazing marquee brands.” As he described founder Larry Drebes and the team, it was easy to get sucked in. It was an amazing story.

But to be honest, what intrigued me equally as much as the identity space itself was the fact that the company was based in Portland. Larry, the founder, was part of Jerry Yang’ team at Yahoo! back in 1997, and later decided to move from Silicon Valley to Portland.

“Interesting, John. I wonder what the talent is like in Portland.” I found out later that not only was Janrain’s culture exactly what I was interested in, but that the Portland tech talent pool itself was less prone to chasing “shiny objects” (i.e., less likely to job hop) and much more loyal than those in Silicon Valley. I learned that the people made up the company’s competitive advantage.

My story for John was far less interesting. It was my third year at DXC Technology, created from the merger of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). I had just finished pulling together several disparate lines of business into one organization called Digital Applications ($1 billion in the Americas, and $2 billion worldwide). I was finishing up a big milestone for me in the DXC business, and what would later become my final chapter there.

As John and I finished our quarterly hike, I said “Happy New Year, John! Let me know how things go.” “See you next year, Jim!” That was the last thing John said until I received a phone call from him two weeks later.

“Jim, remember that company I was telling you about? Janrain? Well, we made a significant investment in them, and the founder, Larry Drebes, is really excited to meet you. Can you come into the partnership so we can talk about you coming onboard as Janrain’s CEO?”

The rest is history.

MTS: How does Janrain analyze customers’ expectations and link it to drive personalized experiences?
Janrain is in the business of making it easy for end consumers to access any and all of their digital applications, no matter which device.

I was taking my typical Uber ride from the Portland airport to Janrain’s headquarters on a Monday morning. The driver asked me, “So, what do you do?” I smiled because I love telling the Janrain story to anyone interested listening.

“What do I do? Well, let me first ask you, ‘did you happen to log into an application on your smartphone this morning, like the Uber application itself?’” The driver answered, “Sure did, I actually logged into my credit union mobile application this morning.”

Well, what if I told you that most of the largest companies in the world use our company to handle that experience of you logging in? That we actually make sure ‘you are who you say you are,’ and once we prove that you’re not the ‘bad guy’ we allow you into your application. Then based on who you are, we provide you access to certain parts of your digital world. For example, are you an Uber driver or an Uber passenger?

Simply put, I’m the CEO of the coolest digital identity business. We have over 1.5 billion identities under management—that’s about half of the connected world!

“That’s so cool! You guys must be killing it!” was my Uber driver’s last words as I was dropped off at the Janrain office. I was still smiling and nodding my head up and down.

Janrain is in a unique position because every consumer starts their digital experience with us (through Registration-as-a-Service) and then, later, is allowed access (or not) through our authentication services (Login-as-a-Service). We’ve been in the consumer identity business since Larry’s social login concept was envisioned at Yahoo! back in 1997. It was the basis for the founding Janrain in 2002.

Some companies, like our banking clients, create experiences which require a higher degree of security. These experiences may include biometrics (thumbprint, facial scan, retinal scan, voice scan, etc.) instead of a username and password; it may include asking you personal questions to gain a higher level of assurance that it’s you or “multi-factor” authentication using your mobile phone to receive a text from the bank (via Janrain) before you are allowed to log in.

Most of our Global 1,000 clients want a seamless experience, where security needs to be “hidden” or less intrusive. In these cases, we may automatically log you in (if you were in the digital application recently), or only step up your level of authentication if our fraud analytics determine that you are a high risk due to abnormal behavior.

User experiences differ based on the industry, or the application itself—does it allow monetary transactions, or simply provide access to account preferences?

We can tailor your experiences depending on what you are trying to access—normal login for access to a news article, two-factor authentication if you want access to your bank account balance and multi-factor if you want to perform a wire transfer.

MTS: How should businesses leverage social login and registration conversion analytics to segment customer data?
Enterprises have been attempting to use digital experiences to enrich their view of the customer for quite some time now. Most of our clients, a good number of which are Fortune 500/Global 1,000, have sophisticated analytics teams leveraging technologies like Hadoop, NoSQL databases and real-time stream processing frameworks to capture and operationalize their view of customer. Analytics start with segmentation because if you understand how different groups of customers behave, you can tailor your experiences, promotions and even your products for those segments of similar consumers.

Larry’s vision for social login back in 1997 called for users to be able to use their Yahoo credentials to log into their websites. Yahoo at the time was sitting on the largest social identity pool in the world. Why not simply remember your Yahoo login to access every other website? What Larry didn’t realize was that this idea would come with a host of Yahoo-based information that the website using social login could leverage for customer segmentation! That’s right, your interests, preferences, likes and a host of other social data can be used to enrich your profile for Janrain clients who deploy social registration and login.

In addition, Janrain’s identity services are unique from other website analytic services because we don’t summarize or aggregate behavioral data. We literally score each and every individual consumer with rich behavioral information that can be used for that user’s individualized or customized experience.

Brand marketers pay a lot of money to drive unique visitors to their digital properties, only to see more than 95 percent of them go away and 5 percent or less register. Then of those 5 percent registered, less than 15 percent remain active—that’s less than 1 percent of the unique total. Thus, for every $100 of marketing spend you get $1 of value in registered and active users!

What if I told you that with Janrain’s customer journey analytics, we can triple registration conversions and login activity? Well, it’s true, and that equates to almost a 10-times increase in ROI.

MTS: What is your vision of Identity and Access Management evolving with new-age regulations like GDPR? How would businesses benefit from using Janrain’s Consent Life Cycle Management to comply with such regulations?
Our vision starts with empowering end users with a simple approach to managing their own data. Our vision also includes turning more end-user control into an increased level of trust in our clients’ brands.

Can you imagine a world where more control for end users equates to increased revenue for the brand?

GDPR represents a major market opportunity for us. So much so that we are offering and engaging our customers in readiness assessments to accelerate their compliance.

Janrain’s solutions are built for a post–GDPR world. The company has adhered to the Privacy-By-Design standards that GDPR will require due to Janrain’s inherent data architecture, conceived by Larry Drebes during his time at Yahoo. Janrain allows brands to apply policy to every individual element in the consumer’s profile. We have a unique advantage over our peers in identity because we’re a data-centric company vs. those who are simply offering a transactional authentication service.

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions are inherently geared toward the opt-in–based approach that GDPR mandates. Janrain’s recently released Consent Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions, which you mentioned in your question, will play a pivotal role in GDPR compliance by providing brands fine-grained consent forms that make it easy and clear for end users to provide explicit consent by profile data element.

If you wake up one morning and decide that you don’t want anyone to have access to your last name, your gender or your zip code, you simply change it. Users can review, validate, revoke or make other changes to their consent declarations with Janrain’s CLM, and those consent changes are immediately realized and guaranteed.

Aside from our CLM, Janrain’s Identity Cloud enables brands to meet all of GDPR’s articles associated with technology-enabled regulations, including data portability, the “right to be forgotten” and the procurement of progressive permissions, to name a few. But in the bigger picture, the real impact GDPR should have on brands is to change their mindset on how to engage their users.

Companies will no longer be able to retarget or collect personal data in a “bundled” way (i.e., collecting consent using pre-checked “opt-out”–type boxes), and they will need to view this new opt-in–based approach as an opportunity to get to know their customers better and earn their trust.

Our clients are preparing for when GDPR will become the global norm. The UK is considering its own version of GDPR for a post-Brexit world, and it’s a good bet that Canada and Australia will soon follow suit with similar legislation. Consent-based customer communication will be the norm before you know it, so brands might as well embrace the change.

MTS: What startups in MarTech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?
There are now more than 5,000 martech solutions, per Scott Brinker’s marketing technology landscape, with almost half of them investor-funded startups! It should be no surprise that the analytics space represents the largest category, fetching over $1.5 billion in funding! So I say analytics!!!

We’re using some real Big-Data horsepower under the Janrain identity hood now. Leveraging the domain experience of our Big-Data past, we deploy technologies like Confluent, the developers behind Apache Kafka, a real-time messaging and streaming Big Data engine. We also use Imply, which helps us collect real-time and historical events, and provides instantaneous reports through interactive visualizations, SQL or your own custom apps. Imply is powered by Druid, a massively scalable column store—it can scale to thousands of columns, billions of unique values and trillions of rows. These may seem like building blocks rather than packaged marketing solutions but, in fact, they are the future for better collection and analysis of real-time customer behavior.

We at Janrain can say with resolve that with our experience in Big Data dating back to the founding of Cloudera in 2008, we have the most sophisticated identity data platform in the world. But our success in the this area is also a result of standing on the shoulders of these analytic technology giants.

It’s sometimes forgotten that the power of Google’s infrastructure was disclosed in a paper that was published in October 2003. This paper spawned another one from Google—”MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters”—and fueled the Apache Nutch project, which was later moved to the new Hadoop subproject in January 2006 by Doug Cutting, another tech wizard from Yahoo. Well, this technology is at the core of Janrain’s massive petabyte-scale analytics platform.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Janrain’s Identity Cloud includes a host of registration and login cloud services including traditional registration and login aaS, social registration and login aaS, single sign-on aaS, preference and consent management aaS, as well as a number of security and marketing analytics solutions. But the real power of the Janrain Identity Cloud is its ability to connect to hundreds of digital applications and provide a single “customer identity hub.”

Using Janrain to build a customer identity hub, on one hand, provides a seamless experience to end users no matter where they go; on the other hand, we allow our enterprise clients to consolidate those digital applications into a single view of customer across them all.

We deliver a consolidated view of the consumer (the identity profile) to any downstream marketing solution and any downstream data infrastructure, analytics and/or business intelligence platform that an enterprise has configured. So I guess, in a nutshell, I’m saying that our “marketing stack” consists of the marketing stacks of every one of our clients.

Brands build a single common identity platform with our Identity Cloud, taking advantage of our pre-integrations. We integrate with leading marketing clouds from Adobe, Salesforce, IBM, Oracle, Nielsen and others. We have blueprints which allow our clients to connect to any of the leading CRM, marketing automation, ad tech, email marketing, CMS, e-commerce and marketing analytics applications.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
Janrain and British television broadcaster Channel 4 began a journey in 2006—the latter began by launching its on-demand website 4OD, making programs available to people on smartphones, laptops and internet TVs on demand. Janrain’s journey began when it moved its identity services into AWS’s infrastructure to support its vision of becoming the largest digital identity network in the world. It wasn’t until 2012 that the two companies came together with a joint vision to help better connect with Channel 4 viewers, leveraging viewer profiles to power innovative and customized advertising, and tailor web and mobile content experiences.

Channel 4 has the third-highest reach of all of the UK broadcasters across its portfolio of TV channels, behind only the BBC and ITV, and well ahead of fourth-place Channel 5. Channel 4 reaches more than three-quarters of all UK viewers every month.

Channel 4’s digital network has grown its base of registered users to almost half of the UK population of 65 million, including a staggering half of the region’s coveted 16- to 24-year-old demographic.

Channel 4 illustrates how to use CIAM services in an ideal way to expand the customer base and bottom line. The organization personalizes viewing experiences based on the insights gleaned from each individual viewer’s unique personal identity data. The network is able to share more accurate demographics with their advertisers and help them better engage their target audiences, providing significantly more value.

Channel 4 not only has a more direct relationship with its viewers, Janrain has helped the broadcaster raise the bar for its interactive marketing efforts as well. The network has built creative campaigns, like its award-winning digital marketing campaign with Coca-Cola, which have resulted in the following highly successful metric:

Individual campaign reach of 11 million users
Campaign awareness increases of 17 percent
Ad recall of 71 percent
Purchase intent increases of 24 percent
Forty-four percent interaction rate
A 98 percent complete view rate

Imagine that you are watching a Coca-Cola “Share a Coke” advertisement on a Channel 4 property and you see your name printed on the coke bottle label as part of the video?

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI/ML-centric world as a business leader?
Simply put, every business will soon be touched by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. So if these sophisticated analytics aren’t part of your digital transformation in the coming years, you will most likely be left behind relative to your competition (which isn’t so complacent).

These technologies are already being deployed and constantly enhanced as part of Janrain’s Identity Cloud product roadmap. Using data from individual digital properties, all properties within a single client’s domain and across the Janrain network of clients, we create a value proposition that is inherently a large part of Janrain’s Identity Cloud future.

This becomes even more interesting when identity analytics are applied to consumer and Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT) use cases. Janrain already powers more than 50 IoT applications, including IP-connected toasters, smoke alarms, pet devices, scales and coffee makers, for consumer IoT and healthcare devices such as CT scanners.

A Janrain-enabled experience starts as I’m driving home in my new Tesla Model 3. I’m coming back from my usual travel week, listening to easy-listening music. When I drive up to my connected home, my home and my Tesla communicate. My identity is associated with both my Tesla and home devices, of course.

My Google Nest cameras notice that with high probability “Jim is home” through visual recognition as I walk across my front stairs. My wife and two sons are not home yet, so the house quickly enables my preferences—lower lighting with my Philips Hue lights, warmer temperature with my Google Nest Thermostat, Spotify music on my Bose Wave® SoundTouch® music system which, of course, is set to my easy-listening Spotify station at a medium volume.

As I place my thumb on my Locstar digital doorlock, the house locks in—“Jim has been 100-percent authenticated. All preferences are permanently set.”

Had it been my wife, of course, the lights would have been bright, temperature cold and music set to modern rock!

Savvy folks with Identity Cloud offerings like Janrain’s quickly realize that saving and transferring state from one digital application to another is one of the many benefits of having a centralized real-time profile. Moving my easy-listening station from the Tesla to my mobile device to my home entertainment system is a simple use-case for those using Janrain’s Identity Cloud.

So how does AI and ML apply to this? Well, just imagine the identity analytics associated with preference management, security and recommendations for an improved customer journey. Learning about my “favorites” is something we’re doing today with many of our retail customers. Analyzing anomalies with user behavior to apply adaptive authentication is something we’re doing today with our financial services customers.

Not long from now, multichannel experiences will include dozens of “things” in addition to the typical web and mobile properties. A single consumer might soon have over 100 touchpoints, and Janrain’s Identity Cloud will ensure that each individual has a seamless, deeply customized and secure experience across every one of them.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Passionate.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Google applications (Android, Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, Gmail).

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Using IFTTT to text me when certain customers send me emails (customer response time is one of my pet peeves).

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
I’m reading two books, “People Over Profit,” by Dale Partridge, entrepreneur and CEO of Sevenly based in Southern California, and “Customer Success,” by Nick Mehta, one of my favorite peer CEOs here in the San Francisco Bay Area who founded Gainsight.

I consume information through many different channels including my morning Netvibes RSS feed review, Ubersocial app on my Android (tweets from those who I follow) and Google news feeds (which ping me with daily summaries), to name a few. Judging by how quickly my new Samsung S8+ battery drains with alerts from various applications, I’m somewhat overconnected.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Wow, that’s a powerful question! My life in business has advanced manyfold through an inner circle of about 15 other CEOs, whom I meet with every month for a full day. When I relocated my family from San Diego to Silicon Valley, where I live today, I took the advice back in 2010 to establish a mentor network of peer CEOs. It has been seven wonderful years of being challenged by CEOs who run $1 billion to pre-revenue startup companies.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
I’m curious about what our famous Jeffrey Preston Bezos is dreaming of these days. His impact has been nothing less than phenomenal.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Jim” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e90ab-f5e0″]

I currently lead Janrain, the category creator of Consumer Identity & Access Management (CIAM).

Prior to this I led CSC’s newly formed Digital Applications business in the Americas, a team of over 7,000. The convergence & mutual reinforcement of disruptive technologies such as analytics, mobile, cloud & cyber security were leveraged to help our clients become digital businesses. Prior to this, I led CSC’s global Big Data & Analytics (BD&A) business unit, CSC’s fastest growing business.

As a senior executive/CEO, I’ve built companies in Big Data, Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS), Online & Mobile Digital Media, Advertising, & Semiconductors. I also spent 10+ years in leadership roles developing enterprise data warehousing, data mining, and business intelligence solutions.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Janrain” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e90ab-f5e0″]

janrain
Janrain makes it easy to know your customers and personalize every interaction. Our Customer Identity and Access Management Platform helps companies build a unified view of their customers across all devices by collecting accurate customer profile data to power personalized marketing. The platform encompasses social login, registration, customer profile data storage, customer insights, single sign-on, and engagement. Janrain powers customer identity management for brands like Pfizer, AMC, Samsung, Whole Foods, Fox News, Philips, Marvel, Mattel and Dr. Pepper.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

[mnky_heading title=”MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmartechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com%2Fcategory%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

Tremor Video DSP Expands Leadership Team to Drive Growth

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October 11, 2017

Tremor Video Dsp Ceo Lauren Wiener Spoke To Martech Series About The Objectives Of Expanding Leadership Team To Reach New Customer Base

Tremor Video DSP, a Taptica Company, announced changes to its executive team. The company announced three key promotions—

Anthony Flaccavento has been promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for the overall revenue achievement and sales process for all of Tremor Video DSP. Flaccavento has been a member of the team since joining in 2011 and most recently he served as Senior Vice President, Sales, running the CPG and retail verticals.
Abbey Thomas is Tremor Video DSP’s new Chief Marketing Officer, based out of Los Angeles. Thomas brings her 10 years of experience at Tremor to this new role, including establishing the entertainment vertical, and will continue to help the company grow its business and revenue. Thomas previously served as Senior Vice President, Sales, in charge of the auto and entertainment verticals.
Jay Baum has been promoted to Head of Global Partnerships to oversee all partnership channels including supply and data partnerships. In this role, Baum will work closely to craft ongoing agency business deals, renegotiate data partnerships and drive supply revenues. Baum previously served as Senior Vice President, Agency Partnerships.

New Leadership is a Mix of Talent, Experience and Achievement

We spoke to Lauren Wiener, CEO, Tremor Video DSP, about how the company planned the latest round of executive promotions.

Lauren said, “As a customer centric company, we started our strategic process with planning for how to best serve global advertisers who need to reach and engage consumers who are rapidly migrating from watching live TV on linear devices to watching video on their own time across portable devices and smart TVs.We understand how capturing consumer attention across screens requires a high level of innovation in data targeting and measurement and also requires deep understanding of customer needs to create customized solutions for a range of verticals. “

Lauren mentioned how Tremor Video DSP identified the leadership qualities and personalities to fill their executive roles. She said, “We profiled the type of leaders and cross functional expertise we need to serve these customers, first looking internally to our best in class talent to build our executive team which made our choice evident. Collectively, we put together a highly innovative team with backgrounds from agencies, TV companies and ad tech along with a demonstrated track record driving revenue and unique partnerships, and deep relationships with Tremor Video DSP’s customers.”

Programmatic Rush and Challenges Galore: Tremor Video’s Roadmap

Despite the programmatic rush, brands are yet to fully achieve true ROI from their video inventories. Lauren explained the recurrent challenges facing the industry,, “Consumers are watching hours of video per day via digital sources but there are several challenges in capturing and measuring their aggregate attention in this fragmented landscape, the number one challenge being standardized measurement across all screens.”

Supported by numbers, Lauren took us deeper into the changing landscape of TVs and connected TVs around digital video consumption.”

Lauren identified –

82 million households have connected TVs and CTV accounts for 20% of digital video usage. While CTV has both very high viewability and completion rates, Nielson’s reporting for CTV still has some limitations in terms of audience validation for reach and performance due to data inconsistency across devices and apps
As an industry we are looking to advanced technology to solve the measurement issue via cross device graphs that link device identifiers from CTV to other devices. In addition to improving measuring this will also allow for more granularities in targeting.

Tremor Video 2020: Views on the Chief Digital Officer

Intrigued to know how the Tremor Video DSP team would like in 2020, we asked Lauren if the company is planning to hire a Chief Digital Officer!

Lauren replied—“We are embarking on our next chapter today as a leading global video and mobile DSP with a deep and diversified data bank and data tech capabilities as our core differentiators. We expect the leadership team to look very similar by the end of 2018 as it will at the end of 2020. As a digital centric company, digital DNA is at the core of all 200 employee’s roles, not held within one position solely. With digital overtaking television in spend, I believe, the practice of having digital as a siloed expertise will be extinct by 2020.”

Lauren added, “This is an important time for Tremor Video DSP, after an exciting few months with the announcement of the acquisition by Taptica. With this new leadership team in place, we are accelerating our global strategy and our laser focus on serving the largest TV advertisers seeking to reach and engage consumers across all video screens through innovation in data and technology.”

TechTarget and DiscoverOrg Announce Partnership to Accelerate ABM Success

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October 11, 2017

TechTarget’s And DiscoverOrg’s Joint Customers Can Now Identify, Prioritize And Accelerate New Pipeline Opportunities More Efficiently Than Ever Before

TechTarget, a leader in intent-driven purchase technology, and DiscoverOrg, the leading sales and marketing intelligence provider, announced the integration of DiscoverOrg’s trusted contact data and buying intent into the TechTarget Priority Engine platform.

In a unified feed, the solution combines TechTarget’s insights into account purchase intent and named active prospect activity with DiscoverOrg’s deep reach into accounts’ contact databases, planned projects and organization structures.

TechTarget delivers direct, real-time access to the most active accounts and named prospects conducting purchase research across hundreds of market segments within key geographies, and ranks those accounts based on likelihood to engage.

The addition of DiscoverOrg’s highly accurate and comprehensive contact and buying intent creates a world-class ABM solution that combines breadth of reach, purchase power insights, and ability to pinpoint and influence key prospects in one place.

Mike Cotoia, CEO, TechTarget, said, “Our goal is to help B2B tech providers discover and influence the Total Buying Unit (TBU) at accounts in their market segment. Our partnership with DiscoverOrg means that our joint sales and marketing customers have the ability to create, prioritize, influence and convert new pipeline opportunities faster and more cost-efficiently than ever before.”

Jointly, TechTarget and DiscoverOrg customers now have unlimited access to DiscoverOrg’s contacts at the accounts that the Priority Engine identifies as being in market. TechTarget-only customers will be able to access a limited number of DiscoverOrg contacts from within the Priority Engine.

Henry Schuck, CEO, DiscoverOrg, said, “Sales and marketing teams need to be able to execute ABM at scale without jumping between a dozen different platforms to get a comprehensive view of their target accounts. We are committed to accelerating our customers’ pipeline and revenue growth by providing easy access to DiscoverOrg data in whatever sales or marketing system they are working in, and our partnership with TechTarget only strengthens that commitment.”

In a recent blog, TechTarget had explained how classical B2B targeting methods rely on the size and seniority titles. For effective ABM strategies, B2B marketers must operationalize micro-messaging to create a clear picture on the roles/titles that are critical to the initial phase of targeting. The TechTarget-DiscoverOrg partnership would enable customers to generate more revenue with near-perfect B2B marketing and sales intelligence that helps close deals faster by targeting, connecting, selling and engaging to the targeted buyer with the most relevant messaging.

Flipboard Launches Self-Service Publisher Program, Embracing Mobile Standards

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October 11, 2017

Flipboard launches a new self-service program for publishers: for the first time publishers around the world can easily join Flipboard, have their stories discovered by readers on the platform and build a new channel for traffic to their websites. Flipboard is also rolling out the Reader Enhanced Display (RED) Bolt performance mark to give fast, reader-friendly websites more visibility on the platform.

Every month more than 100 million people are on Flipboard reading and sharing stories they discover, and publishers are seeing that engagement reflected in their traffic. In a post on August 7, 2017, Parse.ly reported: “One key thing to note is that this (Flipboard to publisher) traffic almost exclusively comes from a tablet, phone or other mobile device; 99.4% of Flipboard’s referrals in the first half of June were via mobile. In fact, when we narrow our scope to mobile consumption, Flipboard becomes the fourth most common referrer to sites in our network, right behind Twitter.”

“With the bulk of traffic now coming from mobile devices, it’s an important time to invest in fast, quality experiences that readers love. And, with the advancements in design and mobile standards, we are now able to open our platform to millions of sources,” said Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard. “The tools we are rolling out today allow us to welcome new publishers and celebrate great content, which has been a key part of our mission from the beginning.”

The Mobile Web and the RED Bolt
Starting today, the RED Bolt will appear next to articles on Flipboard that have mobile-optimized pages. The first titles that will receive the RED Bolt include world-class publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Verge, Axios, The Economist, People, Esquire, Self, Conde Nast Traveler and Mashable.

“With Flipboard we’ve been able to develop a new, high-quality channel for web traffic and social discovery of our content that is consistently one of our top referring sources,” said Regina Buckley, Senior Vice President, Digital Operations and Business Development, Time Inc. “Premium mobile products are a priority for Time Inc. and Flipboard’s new RED Bolt program is a great innovation that allows us to benefit from that work.”

To receive the RED Bolt, mobile sites need to load in one second or less, be free from aggressive pop-up ads and not redirect readers to an alternate site. Generally, publishers that have implemented AMP technologies will meet the core requirements for the RED Bolt and AMP optimized sites will be fast-tracked in the process. In the coming months, the RED Bolt will roll out to thousands of publishers on Flipboard and by the end of the year it will be automatically awarded to all sources that meet the user experience standards.

Publisher Self-Service – How It Works
In addition to the RED Bolt recognition, Flipboard is simplifying how publishers join its growing platform with a new publisher sign-up tool that lets them automatically add, edit and organize their content on Flipboard. Starting today, publishers not yet on Flipboard can go to www.flipboard.com/publishers, select “Sign Up,” and follow the steps to submit an RSS feed for review. Once approved, a publisher’s content will be live on Flipboard and articles will be algorithmically indexed and surfaced in related topics and Smart Magazines across Flipboard.

“Mashable’s referral traffic from Flipboard has increased ten-fold in recent months,” said Jenni Ryall, Mashable’s Vice President of Content Strategy. “It’s proving to be one of our top four drivers of traffic, outperforming many other more traditional platforms.”

Existing publishers on Flipboard can log into their accounts on flipboard.com, go to their profiles to add or manage the RSS feeds that power each of their Flipboard Magazines. Publishers can now edit, add and update feeds associated with any of their Flipboard Magazines. This new functionality gives publishers a new interface to control their feeds on Flipboard and ensures fresh stories and important coverage are reaching their audiences on the platform as stories are published.

etouches Unveils Comprehensive Event Management Platform Integrated to Its Venue Sourcing Solution

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October 11, 2017

Event Managers Now Equipped to Manage Entire Event Lifecycle, with Award-Winning Venue Sourcing Solution

etouches, a leading global provider of cloud event management software, has announced its Venue Sourcing offering. Venue Sourcing is an innovative and robust solution now fully integrated into the etouches event management platform. Announced at IMEX America, Venue Sourcing integrates sourcing and booking with meeting registration and approval, along with an enterprise calendar. The result is a first-of-a-kind solution that enables data incorporation throughout the entire event lifecycle, including unprecedented visibility to drive value and ROI through strategic venue sourcing.

Currently, etouches is demonstrating its full event lifecycle solution, including eVS and Loopd, at booth #G859 at IMEX America, taking place October 10-12, 2017.

With a strengthened venue sourcing offering, the platform now provides the industry’s most complete, end-to-end solution that supports the entire event lifecycle.

Mike Tenholder, vice president, Sourcing and Hospitality Solutions, etouches, said, “Travel and meeting professionals must validate their success to senior management and stakeholders, making quick access to meetings data vital. They can drive millions and even tens of millions of dollars in savings through strategic venue sourcing.”

Mike added, “Using Venue Sourcing, they don’t have to spend days gathering data or duplicating entry of the same information on multiple spread sheets. All the data they need is instantly available all in one place. We make strategic sourcing simple, so our customers can focus on creating incredible meetings and events, while we handle the data and analytics to maximize success.”

Empowered by etouches’ 2016 acquisition of venue sourcing and booking platform Zentila, the Venue Sourcing solution combines the features and functionality of Zentila’s award-winning platform with etouches’ best-in-class event management software (EMS) solution.

Venue Sourcing provides access to 225,000 venues worldwide and is unique in that it automates the heavy lifting needed to source, negotiate, and book a meeting. As a result, it captures 10 times more data to increase event performance while reducing sourcing and booking time by 70 percent, enabling organizations to handle more meetings with the same size staff. Travel and meeting professionals gain instant access to data-driven insights in real time.

With greater visibility to manage meeting spend, they can enhance the attendee experience while also driving significant gains in productivity, profitability, and compliance with travel protocols.

This latest integration enhances etouches’ industry-leading ability as a global provider to provide an end-to-end solution for clients with tools to enhance every aspect of an event, including venue sourcing, event management, real-time attendee engagement, and ROI.

Most recently, etouches finalized the integration of Loopd technology to create a first-of-its-kind solution to manage every aspect of the event and meeting lifecycle—including unprecedented visibility into real-time performance of live events.

Combining an exclusive wearable smart badge with bi-directional CRM, data analytics, and mobile technology, Loopd transforms the attendee experience and provides data-driven insights that help meeting planners realize ROI and monetize their events.

Shane Edmonds, Chief Technology Officer, etouches, said, “In recent years, etouches has struck a balance between strategic technology acquisitions and organic product development to build out our event management solution, with a mission of making events and meetings better for all parties—participants, planners, and sponsors.”

Shane added, “With Venue Sourcing integrated into our comprehensive end-to-end platform, etouches now offers an unrivaled solution that lets our customers measure and manage the entire event lifecycle.”

Earlier this year, etouches announced the company was acquired by HGGC, a leading middle market private equity firm. HGGC’s investment will help etouches expand its business and further invest in its market-leading cloud platform. More than 1,300 customers use etouches’ integrated event management and sourcing platform to organize and execute world-class events around the world. Over the past 12 months, etouches has executed 46,000 events totaling 5.8 million registrations.

MIT Technology Review Study: Iconic Firms Embrace AI and CX Technologies Without Compromising on human capital investments

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October 11, 2017

Iconic Firms Place A High Value On Human Capital Investment, And Are Keen To Strike The Right Balance Between Human And Automated Customer Channels

The MIT Technology Review has unveiled a report of its latest global survey on how AI and Customer Experience (CX) technologies are fueling iconic brands to take customer satisfaction to an all-new level without cutting down on investments in human capital. The report titled, “Getting to Iconic: How world-leading brands balance talent and technology for CX excellence” reveals how firms are using technology to improve customer experience and how artificial intelligence, despite its advancement, is not likely to supplant a human’s role in customer service.

A Balance of AI + CX

A global survey of over 550 senior executives across 30 markets revealed that ‘Iconic’ firms – those that maintain the highest levels of customer experience (CX) satisfaction, and have world- leading brand recognition – are more than twice as likely than others to employ comprehensive, leading-edge technology solutions in such areas as Next Generation Self- Service, loyalty program management and ‘voice of the customer’ survey analytics. The study, sponsored by Genesys, also found that—

Iconic firms are nearly three times as likely to consider leadership in technology adoption crucial for maintaining CX excellence.
Only half of firms with low levels of CX satisfaction and low brand recognition currently employ enabling technologies.
Iconic firms are far ahead in the deployment of AI in their CX operations: 91% currently deploy AI solutions to increase customer satisfaction, as compared to 42% overall.
Despite their strong technology leadership, Iconic firms are driven more by customer satisfaction than efficiency in CX management strategies.
Nearly 90% of Iconic firms feel they are adept at managing CX from an omnichannel perspective; this figure drops to 66% for low-performing firms.
Unique customer insight as a competitive advantage: a third of the Iconic firms indicate that they actively do not share their customer insights across their ecosystem.
CSR is also a differentiator for Iconic firms: 75% feel it is one of the most important components of their brand value, compared to 21% among low-performing firms.

The Increasing Importance of Big Data Analytics, Virtual Assistants and Automated Communication

Mastering CX has always been a core growth strategy for successful global firms. This involves use of optimizing tools, applications, and operational processes to engage with customers across every stage of their shared journey.

“The leaders of Iconic companies know that they also have to be leaders in customer experience technology investment. They also know that over-reliance on technology in search for efficiency gains can reduce, rather than increase, the levels of customer intimacy required for success,” says Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau, CEO and Publisher at MIT Technology Review. In recent times, this has only accelerated with the advance of technologies, such as ‘big data’ analytics, which turns customer information into predictive insights, and virtual assistants (or ‘chatbots’) which help firms more efficiently manage customer inquiries.

The report outlines clearly how the technology adoption is only part of the CX strategy. This is the conclusion of “Getting To Iconic”, a new report from MIT Technology Review which analyzes the results of a global survey of over 550 senior executives asked to define their CX management strategies and how they introduce new technologies and optimize human capital as they seek to improve it. The report also includes case studies and insights from CX leaders at such firms as Alibaba, Uber, and Zurich Insurance.

CX Operations and the Adoption of AI-powered Tools and Analytics

The survey asked the executives to provide a detailed audit of their use of technology and technology-enabled processes in their CX operations, particularly in their current and planned usage of AI-enhanced tools and analytics (see Figure 1).

Respondents were also asked to evaluate how well they executed technology planning and implementation, to achieve CX objectives.

Elizabeth added, “Iconic firms, realizing the limitations of a technology-centric approach to maintaining desired customer management levels, place a high value on human capital investment, and are keen to strike the right balance between human and automated customer channels.”

In the survey, the respondents analyzed their own level of ‘true’ omnichannel experience management, their ability to manage their surrounding ecosystem in support of their customers, and the role that broader objectives, specifically Corporate Social Responsibility, played in achieving CX goals.

The survey reveals distinct differences between the responses of Iconic firms – those which maintain industry-leading levels of customer satisfaction and brand recognition–and others, both in terms of their current level of technology deployment in their CX operations, and in the way they blend their technology and customer satisfaction strategies. Overall, Iconic firms are much more advanced in their deployment of leading-edge CX technologies, including the use of emerging AI applications (see Figure 2).

AdMediary Generates 100,000th Investor Lead

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October 11, 2017

AdMediary has surpassed 100,0000 investor leads generated on a cost per acquisition basis making it the leader in online performance marketing

In less than two years of marketing and technological expansion within the finance vertical, AdMediary LLC has developed many strong demand generation partnerships in crowdfunding, precious metals, and real estate investing.

AdMediary focuses on providing the advertiser with investor leads on a CPA (cost-per-action) basis to deliver ROI-focused results. Most companies in the investing vertical offer advertisers expensive inventory on a CPM (cost per thousand) or CPC (cost per click) basis, which does not guarantee any investor leads for their marketing spend and typically puts them at a huge loss. The goal is to disrupt that model with proper media planning and financial accountability so that AdMediary becomes the performance marketing agency of choice for the vertical.

“It is certainly a great achievement within a challenging vertical, but 100,000 leads are just the start. We see a huge need for CPA based campaigns for companies that seek investors for their products and services, and we intend to roll this out to a wider financial audience that is in dire need of new investment opportunities” said Peter Klein, President and COO of AdMediary.

Earlier this year, the launch of the AdMediary SiteROI technology helped increase performance results for clients. This technology has helped the AdMediary team optimize the right targets for companies that seek investors, spanning clients with products and services in gold and silver, real estate, sports, food and beverage, entertainment, solar energy, and technology.

Local Media Consortium Announces Partnership with Facebook’s CrowdTangle

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October 10, 2017

The Result Could Mean Making Social Insight Tools More Readily Available To Newsrooms

The new partnership means Local Media Consortium‘s (LMC) members will have access to CrowdTangle‘s tools for real-time social media monitoring and tracking in newsrooms across the U.S. This partnership has resulted in the onboarding of 100 percent of the LMC’s membership, which is comprised of more than 75 companies representing more than 1,700 digital news properties.

The partnership enables the LMC members to onboard to the CrowdTangle platform, providing real-time dashboards to monitor trending stories and hyperlocal content, track keywords and conduct competitive analysis across more than one million Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit accounts. Additionally through CrowdTangle, members will be able to create cross-platform reports and dashboards that can be customized for use in newsrooms and on-air broadcasts; journalists can also use CrowdTangle’s Chrome browser extension to quickly monitor content performance across the social web, and track influencers sharing their content. The platform’s video search tool can be used to help journalists find videos trending on Facebook as well.

“To remain competitive and relevant, it is imperative for community news providers to actively monitor content trending on social media in their own communities,” said Rusty Coats, executive director of the LMC. “This partnership with CrowdTangle provides our members with a platform to help them better engage with their audiences. We welcome the opportunity to work with technology leaders such as Facebook and CrowdTangle to identify best practices for engaging social media to shape hyperlocal news delivery.”

As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, in January CrowdTangle became free for publishers and journalism schools to help give partners the data and insights they need. In the first half of this year, CrowdTangle on boarded over 1,600 new partners around the world. Moreover, overall usage of the tool tripled, the platform is growing quickly in emerging markets like India and Brazil and is now being used in over 1,000 local newsrooms.

“Local news is one of the largest and most important verticals we work with at CrowdTangle and is a key focus of the Facebook Journalism Project,” said Brandon Silverman, CEO, CrowdTangle. “The Local Media Consortium’s incredible network of members, their knowledge of the industry and their overall passion for the space has helped make sure we’re building tools that make a real difference for local newsrooms and journalists. And the best part is that this is hopefully just the beginning.”

The LMC used CrowdTangle to track member coverage during hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and share coverage with its entire membership. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, one of 130 daily newspapers and 555 websites owned by GateHouse Media, used a national live display provided by the CrowdTangle platform to identify story ideas throughout Hurricane Irma. GateHouse’s newsrooms also use CrowdTangle to source stories from alerts generated from topics over-performing on CrowdTangle, which has resulted in additional stories generated across the GateHouse network.

McClatchy, a longtime member of the LMC and parent to the Miami Herald, the Sacramento Bee and more than two dozen other news properties across the country, uses CrowdTangle at both the corporate and local levels. “Our real-time teams use CrowdTangle’s over performing and viral alert features to monitor content from our competitors, local organizations, and people in the community,” said Jessica Huff, McClatchy’s Social Media Director. “The reporters on our real-time teams are often the number one traffic drivers in our company, and for good reason. They’re our first-responders, and the folks who are keeping up with the social media conversations happening in our markets.”

The partnership includes bespoke training from CrowdTangle to help the LMC’s members get the most from the platform. In return, the CrowdTangle team is able to tap the LMC members’ collective expertise to gain insight on best practices for product use in local newsrooms. To further the relationship, CrowdTangle will host a series of webinars for the LMC members, and Silverman is scheduled to speak at the LMC’s semi-annual meeting in Dallas this November.

PerformLine Acqui-Hires Silverback Social; Chris Dessi Named VP of Sales

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October 10, 2017

The Acqui-Hire Accelerates Performline’s Sales And Marketing Growth

PerformLine, the leading RegTech company that delivers automated compliance solutions, announced the acqui-hire of leading social media technology company Silverback Social, with former CEO Chris Dessi joining as VP of Sales. Former Silverback Social CMO John Zanzarella will be joining PerformLine as Director of Sales and Marketing Operations.

The acqui-hire of Silverback and appointments of Dessi and Zanzarella will help PerformLine meet the accelerated demand its sales and marketing functions are facing for their RegTech and compliance SaaS platform. The deal comes at an ideal time for the company, with PerformLine recently announcing a $4 million debt facility from Bridge Bank to build on the milestone of sustained profitability and high growth.

Dessi was CEO of Silverback Social since 2012 and brings 20 years of sales leadership expertise in the software and tech sector. He’s written three highly regarded books on digital marketing, and is a regular contributor to FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC. Zanzarella is a natural marketer with a background in events who will assist in the growth of PerformLine’s industry leading RegTech and compliance conference COMPLY. He joined Silverback Social as CMO in 2013 and acted as CEO of the Westchester Digital Summit.

“This acqui-hire is a clear sign of how intelligently PerformLine is growing. When your customers are the largest and most complex financial institutions in the world, you recognize the need to bring in highly skilled A-level talent quickly. After closely tracking the success of Dessi and Zanzarella for the past five years, we knew that the most impactful way to further enhance our sales growth and COMPLY event was to integrate their leadership into the PerformLine team,” said Alex Baydin, CEO of PerformLine.

How Marketing Ops Runs Marketing Like a Business

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Debbie Qaqish

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October 10, 2017

Revenue Marketing — How Marketing Ops Runs Marketing Like a Business

Two basic principles of running an effective business include efficiency (doing things right) and effectiveness (doing the right things). This is the secret sauce that marketing operations bring to the business of marketing that enables marketing to meet financial goals such as ROI, pipeline, and revenue. In the technology-rich environment of martech today, it’s easy to get sidetracked by all the bright and shiny toys available. This article looks at how marketing operations injects a new sense of purpose and perspective into the business of Revenue Marketing™.

Doing Things Right = Efficiency

The core tenant of any operations team is to drive efficiency. Marketing might be considered akin to a manufacturer in that marketing’s job is to produce tangible MQLs that convert to revenue. If we stay with this analogy, how efficiently that MQL can be produced can be a game changer for an organization. Think about how much “waste” a typical marketing organization generates over the course of a week, a month, a quarter or a year. Waste is generated in every part of marketing – planning, building, executing, communicating, reporting, etc. We must admit that project management, process streamlining, and finding more efficient ways to produce ANYTHING is not a natural marketing talent.

In many companies, this is the first charge of a marketing operations group – get rid of the waste, streamline processes and optimize current resources. Given this as an early charter, the marketing ops group brings not only operations talent to bear, but also key technologies that move efficiency improvements into the status quo of marketing.

Efficiency Example

Let’s look at conversion rates as an example of doing things right. If I am working with a company and they can’t instantly quote their conversion rates, I know we have a lot of work to do. Lead conversion rates from the beginning of the funnel (name) to the end of the funnel (contract) is the most fundamental example of efficiency. The more the conversion rates can be improved, the more efficient the production process. Using the same set of resources to produce more or better product is the hallmark of an effective marketing operations group. Efficiency measures are always numbers such as conversion rates, cost per lead, pages per visit, number of website visitors per month, etc. Becoming a more efficient organization is typically what marketing operations addresses first.

Doing the Right Things = Effectiveness

The second part of the marketing operations’ charter has to do with effectiveness or doing the right things. Marketers are often caught in the loop of “this is the way we’ve always done things.” Once the marketing ops group has most of the efficiencies in place, they begin to look at the higher-level picture of what marketing could be doing differently. This alternate view is very much based on running marketing like a business in order to affect top line revenue growth. The marketing operations group is often charged with creating new processes, new metrics, new alliances and new results.

Effectiveness Example

Marketing operations takes on a leadership role when addressing the effectiveness (Are we doing the right things?) of the marketing organization. Late last year I was working with a marketing operations leader who was responsible for the budgeting and planning process as well as the ongoing management of the budget. The company began a small inbound program early in the first quarter and increased the budget in small increments in the next six months. As the marketing ops team looked at the returns on the different areas of marketing spend, they noticed a very high conversion rate of inbound leads as well as a higher average deal size. Based on this analysis, doing the right thing was to take money out of lower performing programs and place more money into the better performing inbound campaigns. Without the overall analysis and comparison of different areas of marketing, this switch might never have happened.

Beyond the Bright and Shiny Toy

The marketing operations function is growing quickly and making a significant impact in redefining marketing’s contribution to the business. I first wrote about The Rise of the Marketing Operations Function in 2016.

Since that time, I’ve worked with many marketing operations leaders as they pioneer this new element of marketing. Establishing the right core technologies as the foundation and ensuring the right marketing operations talent is essential to success. Equally important is the mindset of the marketing operations team.

If they view themselves as key to improving efficiency and effectiveness as it relates to financial goal achievement, they will lead the transformation of marketing from a cost center to a revenue center. This dramatic transformation is the essence of Revenue Marketing and what determines an organization’s profitability and long-term success.

50-50 Familiarity with AI Causes People To Be Cynical, says Report

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October 10, 2017

It’s The “50-50 Familiarity” With AI That Cause US People To Be Unsure, Cynical And Concerned About It

In A Recent Syzygy Report, 79% Of Americans Believe The Use Of AI In Marketing Should Be Regulated By A “Blade Runner” Rule

As Blade Runner 2049 hits movie theatres, new research by SYZYGY (a WPP digital agency group) shows that concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) are top of mind for American consumers. Research titled “Sex, Lies and A.I.” from SYZYGY reveals that 79% of Americans believe a new “Blade Runner rule” is needed to make it illegal for AI applications such as social media bots, chatbots, and virtual assistants to conceal their identity and pose as humans.

The study, “Sex, Lies and AI: How the American Public Feels About Artificial Intelligence” was conducted in Q3, 2017 with 2000 American adults aged 18-65 years from the WPP Lightspeed Consumer Panel.

AI versus Human Service: How use of Artificial Intelligence Impacts Sentiment

Interestingly, 89% of Americans believe that the use of AI in marketing should be regulated with a legally-binding code of conduct and almost three-quarters (71%) think that brands should need their explicit consent before using AI when marketing to them.

Megan Harris, Managing Director, SYZYGY North America, said, “This is a human-centric study designed to uncover people’s positive and negative feelings about AI. As the advertising and marketing industry expands its use of AI and develops more AI-powered technology solutions, we need to collectively develop ethical and operational guidance grounded in the attitudes, values and fears of the consumer.”

71% of Americans think brands should have consent before using AI to market to them
28% would feel negatively towards their favorite brand if they discovered it was using AI instead of humans for customer service

Impact of AI Usage
Feelings towards AI being used in advertising were more neutral. Only 21% of respondents would feel negatively if they discovered the latest ad for their favorite brand was created by AI rather than humans, compared with 28% who would feel more negatively towards their favorite brand if they discovered it was using AI instead of humans to offer customer service and support. This rises to a third (32%) among women.

Meanwhile, 21% would feel more negatively towards their favorite brand if they discovered it had been using AI in their marketing campaigns to profile them.

AI Understanding Still Limited
Only 11% of Americans say they know a lot about AI. When asked to choose from among 17 words that describe their feelings towards AI, “interested” was the top descriptor, given by 45% of US respondents. Close behind was “concerned” (41%), “skeptical” (40%), “unsure” (39%) and “suspicious” (30%). Most Americans expect that AI will have benefits, saving them time (40%) and making things safer (15%) and more useful (13%).

What an Ideal AI-assistant Should Feel Like

A first in many ways, the report clearly outlines what Americans expect from their interaction with the AI-assistant. 70% of them want the AI-assistant to demonstrate emotional intelligence; 87% anticipate a sense of humor; 93% want the virtual assistants to exhibit a combination of extraversion, emotional stability, openness, and agreeableness.

Job Transformation vs. Job Loss
Almost a third of people (30%) most fear that AI will replace jobs. Americans believe that over the next five years, a machine could take over 36% of their individual job duties (this rises to 44% among Millennials).

Marketing AI Rule Book
However, if brands use it fairly and transparently, consumers aren’t completely averse to them using AI to market products and services: as many as 79% would not object to AI being used to profile and target them in marketing.

SYZYGY has defined a Marketing A.I Rule Book, with guidelines as follows –

Do no harm – AI technology should not be used to deceive, manipulate or in any other way harm the well-being of marketing audiences.

Build trust – AI should be used to build rather than erode trust in marketing. This means using AI to improve marketing transparency, honesty and fairness, and to eliminate false, manipulative or deceptive content.

Do not conceal – AI systems should not conceal their identity or pose as humans in interactions with marketing audiences.

Be helpful – AI in marketing should be put to the service of marketing audiences by helping people make better purchase decisions based on their genuine needs through the provision of clear, truthful and unbiased information.

Dr. Paul Marsden, SYZYGY’s consumer psychologist who managed the study, added: “This research reveals how consumers are conflicted when it comes to AI. Many see advantages, but there are underlying fears based on whether this technology or the organizations behind it have their best interests at heart. Brands need to be sensitive to how people feel about this new technology. What we need is a human-first, not technology-first approach to the deployment of AI.”

How Precisely Accurate Is Your Geo-intelligence?

By

LotaData

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October 10, 2017

Location data is an important source of real-world context and geo-insights for many industry verticals. Market research pundits are projecting USD $20 Billion will be spent on geo-insights by 2020.

As location intelligence continues to become mainstream, marketers, advertisers, and smart city planners are busy purchasing as much 3rd party location data as they possibly can. Our blog post this week revisits the fundamentals to ensure the best return for your location data investment.

What is a Location Signal?

A location signal is a sequence of numbers that represent the geo-coordinates [ latitude and longitude ] for a point on the map. As an example, below map shows a marker for the Parson’s School of Design located at 5th Avenue, New York. The geo-coordinates for Parson’s are : [40.735316, -73.994583]

How precise is this blue marker? How accurate is the location for the place it represents? We’ve all heard that location data needs to be both accurate and precise in order to be actionable. What does that really mean? What is the acceptable accuracy and precision for data signals used for location intelligence?

LotaData has put together this cheat sheet to unravel the mysteries of location accuracy and precision, for the benefit of everyone in the industry.

How Precise are Location Signals?

Precision indicates the exactness of the location signal. The precision of the raw latitude and longitude is represented by the number of digits after the decimal point, ranging from 1 to 9. The table below lists the precision levels and explains the significance of each digit.

Decimal Place	Queen’s Distance	American Distance	Translation
1	10 kilometers	= 6.2 miles	Town or City
2	1 kilometer	= 0.62 miles	Neighborhood
3	100 meters	= About 328 feet	City Block
4	10 meters	= About 33 feet	Street Address
5	1 meter	= About 3 feet	Store Entrance
6	10 centimeters	= About 4 inches	Drone Control
7	1.0 centimeter	= About 1/2 an inch	Military Operations
8	1.0 millimeter	= As thin as a paper clip wire	Civil Engineering
9	0.1 millimeter	= As fine as a strand of hair	Likely Fabricated

Turns out the blue marker for Parson’s is actually very precise. When evaluating sources of location signals, it is important to verify the precision of the dataset to ensure that latitude and longitude values include at least 4 digits after the decimal point. In other words, the signals should be precise to at least 10 meters or 33 feet for the location dataset to be useful for geo-targeting and audience segmentation.

How Accurate are Location Signals?

Accuracy indicates conformance with reality. Represented by a 2 digit number measured in meters, accuracy is the error margin in the reported latitude and longitude values relative to the ground truth. Most smartphone GPS receivers have an accuracy of 5 meters or approximately 15 feet. However, the accuracy could worsen near buildings, structures, trees, or indoors. Accuracy could also fluctuate with cloud cover and weather conditions.

Accuracy can be horizontal or vertical. The accuracy reported in location datasets is almost always the horizontal accuracy. GPS receivers in mobile phones are not designed to capture vertical accuracy beyond 5 meters, rendering such measurement moot in dense urban or downtown settings.

It is not uncommon to see location datasets with accuracy ranging from 1 meter to 100 meters. Below is the horizontal accuracy distribution for one of our datasets comprised of approximately 2 billion location signals obtained from 20 million mobile devices in the US.

When considering location datasets, it is important to understand the accuracy distribution of geo-signals to ensure that the bulk of the data has an accuracy better than or equal to 10 meters. Any more than 20 meters would be unacceptable for deriving actionable intelligence and meaningful geo-insights from your location data.

Blueshift Receives Patent for AI-Powered Marketing

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October 10, 2017

Patent Validates Blueshift’s Innovative Approach in Using Real-Time Streams of Customer Data for AI-Powered Marketing on Every Channel

Blueshift, the leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered Marketing across all channels, announced that the company has been awarded Patent No. 9779443 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for “EVENT-BASED PERSONALIZED MERCHANDISING SCHEMES AND APPLICATIONS IN MESSAGING”, further validating the company’s innovations in applying AI to real-time streams of behavioral data.

Blueshift's Interaction Graph drives Segment-of-One Marketing powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) — Blueshift’s Interaction Graph drives Segment-of-One Marketing powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Blueshift’s platform ingests and understands real-time streams of customer interaction ‘events’ from websites, apps, point-of-sale and other systems. These ‘events’ can include any customer behavior across any platform or marketing channel, e.g. a customer watched a video on a media platform, or submitted an online inquiry for a reverse mortgage with a financial-services company.

Blueshift’s patented method builds an “Interaction Graph” from the event data along with historical customer data and the brand’s catalog of products or content, and uses the graph for continuously computing various forms of AI-Based predictions and recommendations (“personalized merchandising schemes”) continuously. The patented technology also integrates these predictions into customer experiences on channels like email, direct mail, SMS, websites or mobile app notifications, enabling brands to seamlessly use the power of artificial intelligence to deliver 1:1 personalized experiences.

“Brands continue to generate more and more customer data in the form of behavioral ‘events’, that represent customer interactions on digital, mobile and social channels,” said Blueshift co-founder & Chief AI Officer, Manyam Mallela. “AI is the key to activating this fast moving stream of event data and delivering segment-of-one personalization on every channel.”

The flexibility of the Blueshift system to adapt to all types of customer interaction events and content catalogs makes it possible for a large variety of consumer facing industries to benefit from the platform’s innovations, ranging from consumer goods to retail, consumer finance, travel, healthcare, subscription services and marketplaces.

“We are proud to have been awarded a patent for our AI-Powered Marketing IP, especially in an increasingly stringent regulatory environment for patents, is further validation of the tremendous technological innovations by the Blueshift team,” added Blueshift CTO Mehul Shah, who has previously been awarded 10 other patents across various technology domains. “Unlike other systems that have a rigid data schema, our innovation enables us to build 1:1 predictions and recommendations that adapt to any stream of real-time behavior from websites and mobile apps, or even from IoT devices. By flexibly adapting to the nature of the data, Blueshift is able to drive true cross-channel personalization for companies across a range of industries.”

The innovative capabilities outlined in the patent have previously caught the attention of key industry analysts. David Raab, founder of the Customer Data Platform Institute, states that Blueshift’s “recommendations are exceptionally sophisticated,” and that “… the system’s ability to load and expose imported data in near-real-time remains impressive.”

“With the explosion of customer data, AI is no longer a nice-to-have for brands that are looking to deliver personalized experiences at every touchpoint,” said Vijay Chittoor, co-founder & CEO of Blueshift. “Customer Experience is the new battlefield for competitive advantage. In an AI-first world, the only survivors will be the ones who embrace AI at the core of their marketing and customer experience strategies.”

Blueshift’s other recent innovations in AI-Powered Marketing include the launch of “AI-Powered Customer Journeys,” a next generation solution that enables marketers to deliver content rich & personalized customer engagement across every marketing channel. Blueshift also recently hosted a webinar on the theme of “AI in the Inbox” with partner Sparkpost and customer LendingTree. Blueshift also recently announced the general availability of its “Live Personalization” offering powered by AI.

Interview with Tony Zito, CEO, Rakuten Marketing

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October 10, 2017

[mnky_team name=”Tony Zito” position=” CEO, Rakuten Marketing”][/mnky_team]

[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/tonyzito” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-zito-4373865/”]

[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Consumers find ads interruptive and even associate online advertising with fake news. However,81 percent of US consumers feel that advertising is OK when the content is useful and doesn’t interfere with their online experience.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be a part of an integrated marketing company?
My career with Rakuten Marketing began in 2012 when my display company, mediaFORGE, was acquired by Rakuten Marketing. Directly following the acquisition, I served as Chief Revenue Officer of Rakuten Marketing. In early 2015 I was appointed CEO, and it’s been an incredible ride as we’ve navigated our way through several acquisitions and integrations, evolving consumer trends and the accelerated pace of innovation that’s driving our industry.

I was very familiar with Rakuten and Linkshare prior to the mediaFORGE acquisition. It was clear that, as leaders in the industry, they understood the necessity of integrated marketing – both in the value it brings marketers and the improved experiences it can deliver to consumers. In my world, integrated marketing means that there’s transparency and communication happening across all channels, teams, technologies, etc. And from that transparency comes crucial insights that fuel more efficient spending and more effective touchpoints. To be a part of a company that can bring all of this to advertisers and marketers around the world is both exhilarating and challenging, but it’s definitely what makes me excited to go to work each day.

MTS: Given the changing dynamic of online engagement with customers, how do you see integrating marketing strategies evolving by 2020?
Recently, Rakuten Marketing Insights released a report highlighting Consumer’s Online Ad Sentiments, and the insights were quite astounding. Despite the innovation in ad tech over the last 20 years, a lot of consumers find ads interruptive and even associate online advertising with fake news. However, we also found that 81 percent of US consumers feel that advertising is OK when the content is useful and doesn’t interfere with their online experience. We can all use this knowledge to spur changes across the industry that will create genuine and beneficial engagements with customers, so by 2020 those negative feelings and damaging experiences will be far less. We’ve started our own campaign to Save the Web, calling for a dedication to use targeting and advertising practices that put the experience of the customer as the number one priority.

At the crux of bettering experiences is understanding what’s actually happening with your marketing strategies. Emerging platforms and media are changing consumer behaviors, so we have to not only keep up but stay one step ahead to ensure we’re properly measuring and understanding touchpoints. I hope that by 2020, multichannel attribution is the norm and that we as an industry have moved beyond simple last-click measurement. Truly successful integrated marketing can only happen when marketers have a holistic and transparent view of the consumer journey.

MTS: How does Rakuten Marketing extend the benefits of audience and product data to B2B marketers?
It seems like often times the studies and insights related to digital marketing are focused solely on B2C marketers and audiences. We haven’t forgotten that B2B audiences are people and consumers who, at the end of the day, are looking for something to solve a specific need or problem. To this point, we regularly release reports through our Rakuten Marketing Insights program that can be utilized for both B2B and B2C. Reports like our Brand Affinity Report, Facebook Measurement Divide and Consumer Online Ad Sentiment s uncover insights around device adoption, product and catalog trends, social media usage, year-over-year performance changes and more.

Rakuten Marketing has been working on a major data initiative focused on audience data and this is now available for B2B and B2C marketers as a part of our Audience Acquisition solution. We utilize transactional data from in-market shoppers that includes global brands from verticals like retail, travel, electronics, and digital media.

MTS: What are the new avenues for affiliates considering the growing prominence of Influencer Marketing?
Affiliate marketing has always been about empowering influencers and content creators. The rise of social media and other new content platforms have created so many new opportunities for influencers to have a voice and unique ways for consumers to find and interact with brands and products. From a recent survey we conducted, we found that 57 percent of consumers follow an online blogger or a social influencer and 88 percent of those who follow an influencer have made a purchase the influencer recommended.

We’re seeing the wide-reaching impact of influencer marketing in our own affiliate network, including a 51 percent increase in sales year-over-year. We know that influencers have a large role in introducing and reaching new consumers. Our data shows that, of all the touchpoints tied to an influencer, 53 percent are the first touchpoint. And they’re touchpoints that are driving traffic and interactions! Last year in Q4, 84 percent of the traffic driven by influencers was new visitors.

MTS: How do you see the definition of Personalization changing with cross-screen viewability and expanding audience segments?
We’re in a unique place right now in our industry. Consumers are expecting and demanding personalized, meaningful interactions with ads and brands – but in order to deliver on this, we must capture, analyze and use data across dozens of sources, and in a manner that keeps consumers and their personal data safe. It’s with that data that we can precisely identify and target consumers as they move beyond the reach of cookies – switching between devices and platforms. We tackle this with our consumer graph, built with probabilistic and deterministic data and signals.

The expectation for personalized and relevant experiences doesn’t just sit with current customers of a brand. First time and introductory interactions between a brand and new audiences have to be completely on point. That old saying of one chance with a first impression absolutely applies in advertising. To find new audience segments, marketers need to use high quality, accurate consumer data as a base or a seed. We’ve seen awesome results with lookalike campaigns using proprietary data for the seed audience – it always comes back to the quality of data you’re using. And then once you reach the new audiences, the message/product/promotion being used must be based in actual data. Many of our advertisers leverage product or message insights from other channels or campaigns with existing customers to inform their prospecting strategies.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
What I’m most excited about right now are start-ups that are effectively using AI technology to solve big challenges facing marketers, like improving the sophistication of cross-device personalization, developing more impactful product recommendations, getting better at predicting consumer behavior, avoiding fraud and brand safety risks, and measuring the impact of digital marketing strategies.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
The Rakuten Marketing business is built around our Integrated Marketing Solutions that encompass Affiliate, Display and Search. These solutions sit atop a platform that’s comprised of technologies, tools, and capabilities including:

User Identification: Consumer Graph for cross-screen identification and targeting.
Proprietary Technology: Cadence (attribution & insights), DSP, DCO, Bidder, Ad Server and Feed Management.
Unique Data: Consumer Intent Data, Ad Interaction, Product Scoring
Emerging Media Inventory: Social, Influencer, Video, and Audio

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success?)
One campaign that stood out this year was for our retail client Cariloha. With the objective of driving engagement and retention with its increasing site traffic, Cariloha leveraged traditional and Facebook retargeting strategies to increase sales of its bamboo fabric products. Over the first seven months of the campaign, Cariloha saw a 42 percent increase in returning visitor traffic and a 50 percent increase in revenue from returning site visitors.
Cariloha was also exceptionally innovative with this campaign in their use of fractional attribution. By evaluating the influence of the campaign throughout consumers’ purchase journeys, Cariloha could see that its retargeting strategies influenced 54 percent of its sales, accounting for 68 percent of revenue. While the brand knew that its retargeting campaigns were driving sales, it didn’t become clear how much of its online revenue was being driven through retargeting until they started looking at attribution this way.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
At the heart of digital marketing is connecting consumers with products, services and experiences they want to buy. Artificial intelligence has revolutionized our ability to do that, and will continue to drive the innovation in the space. With the advancement of voice assistants, AI technology has shifted from operating primarily behind-the-scenes to being an in-home companion that takes orders, makes recommendations, plays games and even tells jokes. As consumers become more comfortable with their personal AI devices, they’ll increasingly rely on them for shopping and will be more receptive to the custom recommendations they make. At the same time, it will be harder for digital marketers to reach consumers directly, as their advertising messages will be filtered through consumers’ AI. This is something MarTech and AdTech companies will need to prepare for, as it will change the nature of how we reach and influence consumers through digital advertising.

One of the best ways to prepare for that future is to invest in better understanding the marketing that influences consumer behavior. While it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the technology itself and in using it in ways that are new and competitively different, it will be increasingly critical to consider the value it’s bringing to the consumer. If it’s not enhancing consumer shopping experiences and making it easier for them to connect with what they want to buy, it won’t pass the AI filter to reach to consumer. We will need to advance the level of sophistication with which we leverage data to understand consumers, so we can get the right ads in front of the right consumers, and maximize the influence and performance of digital marketing campaigns.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Passionately.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Right now, the tools and apps I rely on most for day-to-day business operations are Domo and Box. I also spend lots of time on the road, so I am frequently using apps like Lyft, Open Table and Seamless Web. For more personal reasons, I love Vivino – I am always on the lookout for a great bottle of wine.

MTS: What’s your smartest work-related shortcut or productivity hack?
The smartest thing I’ve done as a business leader is to learn how to rely on the people around me. With roots as an entrepreneur, it can be difficult for me to give up control of aspects of the business – when you’re working with a team of 20, it’s possible to have a sense of what everyone is working on, and to become invested in every problem that needs to be solved. In a company the size of Rakuten Marketing, it is impossible for one person to be that involved in every aspect of the business. I have learned to surround myself with people who have strengths that complement mine, and I put my trust in them to tackle challenges and create opportunities for the business. Learning how to do this has given me a lot more space to focus on my own areas of strength, and the business is stronger because we have a whole team of outstanding leaders.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
At the top of my reading list is Creative Change by Jennifer Mueller. It’s extremely important to me to nurture a culture of creativity, innovation and risk-taking. I want to be sure that, as a leader, I am primed not only to create opportunities for that thinking, but to recognize the potential of the ideas that come from it and to take action on the ideas that can drive the business forward.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I ever received is to stay attuned to the opportunities that the universe puts in front of you. A big part of that is being sure you never become too complacent about where you are and what you’ve achieved. Recognizing and capitalizing on opportunities is like a muscle that can be lost if it isn’t flexed.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
One thing I’ve strived to do well as a business leader is to take opportunities to celebrate achievements and meaningful milestones, and to recognize people who are accomplishing great things, while at the same time, never getting too comfortable in success. No matter how well the business is doing, I challenge myself and my team to consider what opportunities are out there that we aren’t capitalizing on, and I empower those around me to pursue the ideas and opportunities that they believe will better our business.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Jeff Green, CEO, The Trade Desk
Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath
Babak Hodjat, CEO, Sentient Technologies

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

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As CEO of Rakuten Marketing, Tony leads the company’s vision to empower marketers to achieve the full potential of digital marketing through its integrated multichannel solutions and consumer insights. Tony also serves as an executive officer for Rakuten, Inc., whose internet services span ecommerce, ebooks and reading, travel, finance, online marketing and professional sports. Tony’s entrepreneurial spirit has always fueled his vision for technological innovation and has been a driving force throughout his career. He started working in ad tech when he co-founded Precision Data Link in 1995. Shifting his focus to digital marketing, Tony became passionate about developing better ways for advertisers to measure and attributes their marketing success, which led to his next start-up venture mediaFORGE, acquired by Rakuten in 2012. Tony has carried this passion forward as CEO of Rakuten Marketing, Inc., driving the company’s innovation in omnichannel marketing and attribution. At the core of Tony’s motivation is a desire to have a positive influence on the world and his community, demonstrated through his commitment to serving his clients and providing a positive work environment that fosters creativity, innovation and a dedication to excellence.

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Rakuten Marketing Logo

Rakuten Marketing empowers marketers to transcend the conventional and achieve the full potential of digital marketing. We deliver data-driven personalized ad experiences that engage consumers – across screens, platforms and traditional publishers – and influence them to purchase. Our commitment to transparency provides consumer journey insights that allow us to continually optimize for performance.

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The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

TechBytes with Reshef Mann, CTO and Co-Founder, AppsFlyer

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October 10, 2017

Reshef Mann
CTO and Co-Founder, AppsFlyer

In September, mobile marketing analytics and attribution company, AppsFlyer, announced a novel integrated solution to immunize advertisers against mobile install fraud and loss of mobile customers. Branded as the Protect360, AppsFlyer’s latest anti-fraud technology provides near real-time protection against suspicious behavior on mobiles and anomalous activities. We spoke to Reshef Mann, CTO AppsFlyer, to familiarize with DeviceID Reset Fraud and how it poses big risks to mobile marketers that are yet to justify their investments in mobile marketing campaigns.

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MTS: Tell us about your role at AppsFlyer and the team and technology you handle?
Reshef Mann: As the CTO and co-founder, I lead a great research and development team. AppsFlyer is a mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform, providing the world’s most advanced marketers with granular insight into which marketing efforts drive their mobile business growth. Our global teams work incredibly hard to make sure that the billions of data points we are processing in real-time all run smoothly and as expected for the marketers that count on these insights.

Recognizing the importance of marketing data integrity, we have developed a number of proprietary technologies and solutions that provide an enhanced, bulletproof layer of protection against fraud.

MTS: What is the foundational tenet of Device ID Reset Fraud?
Reshef: DeviceID Reset Fraud was born out of necessity. The tens of billions of dollars flowing through the mobile app marketing ecosystem hold incredible promise for unsavory characters looking to make a quick buck. However, as marketers have gotten better at protecting themselves against your run-of-the-mill click flooding, install hijacking and device farms, fraudsters needed to find new ways to tap into marketing budgets.

DeviceID Reset Fraud works well for most fraudsters because it hides fraud behind a fresh IP address, a fresh DeviceID, a real click, a real app install and even real in-app engagement. Resetting a DeviceID is pretty easy, and the payouts are very lucrative.

Protecting yourself against DeviceID Reset Fraud requires a massive database – one that already recognizes nearly every app capable device on the market – as well as machine learning that can quickly identify criminal DeviceIDs and publishers. Building this solution wasn’t easy, but the results have been very powerful.

MTS: What apps are most likely to open threat pools related to Device ID Reset Fraud?
Reshef: Tools apps on Android are hit particularly hard by DeviceID Reset Fraud, followed closely by entertainment, finance, gaming and shopping apps across both iOS and Android.

However, this is all at a macro level. Marketers need to remember that DeviceID Reset Fraud hits them extremely hard on both Android and iOS and across verticals. Advanced fraud tends to target regions with the lowest barriers to entry (weak protection against the fraud) and the best payouts (high CPI). With 1 in 10 marketing-attributed installs coming from fraud, there is a good chance that if you are investing in mobile growth, you are facing some serious loss to fraud.

MTS: Together with Ad Fraud, Device-based fraud would expose brands and advertisers to poor ROI? Doesn’t that pose a greater risk for mobile marketers who are yet to justify their campaign investments?
Reshef: While marketers today certainly take ROI into account, most optimize their spend based on upper funnel KPIs – installs, early activity and short-term retention. This “lean marketing” allows for faster insights and optimization. For example, we have seen fraudsters that clearly know day 3 retention matters, and are willing to engage the necessary 3 days before resetting their DeviceIDs and repeating. In the short-term, these spurts of engagement often fool marketers lacking the means to identify the DeviceID Reset Fraud.

Furthermore, marketers using “open” SDKs with exposed code are highly susceptible to fake in-app revenue event reports, which can easily indicate positive ROI when none in fact exists. In one recent example, a large bank discovered that over 50% of their alleged mobile deposit transactions had in fact never occurred. While the criminals were not able to actually withdraw funds, they had fooled the marketer into doubling down on fraudulent traffic for quite some time.

We have also seen many savvy marketers use their ROI reports as part of a monthly or quarterly review. While these marketers may discover that their short-term “leading indicators” of eventual ROI did not result in actual revenue, this realization often occurs weeks or months into their campaigns after tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars have already been spent on fraudulent traffic.

MTS: How would the combination of machine learning and human intelligence neutralize the newly discovered threat in mobile marketing?
Reshef: There are many tasks optimally suited to machine learning, and others that are best addressed by real, human analysts. The optimal solution leverages both approaches to deliver comprehensive coverage. Machine learning is ideal for new pattern and anomaly recognition, optimizing models based on false positives and the like.

In the context of DeviceID Reset Fraud, the latest advances in machine learning are ideal for scaling and optimizing our fraud recognition solutions, where analysts are often limited by the sheer size of the data that must be crunched. On the flip side, analysts still serve an important role – both here at AppsFlyer, by monitoring the changes to protections made by our machine learning solutions, and at the marketing organization, by performing their own fraud analysis based on Protect360’s unique fraud indicators.

MTS: How do you see App tracking and audience targeting analytics converging to create a unified omnichannel user experience?
Reshef: The one constant in the omnichannel environment is the mobile phone. Nearly everyone has a personal mobile device within reach 24×7. Our phone is our digital identity – it is where we surf the net, engage with our favorite brands and more often than not, is with us when we shop, watch TV and commute to work. Marketers are leveraging this identity to build highly targeted and engaging campaigns and in-app experiences, in addition to retail and web experiences.

When a consumer or user says to a brand, “Hey, I want to install your app,” what they are saying is that they are ready for a deeper, more engaging and often longer-term relationship. They will carry your app in their pocket, hold it in their hand when watching TV and use it as both a first and second screen. Brands that are going to succeed over the next few years are those that succeed in mobile, bridging relationships and data into a broader omnichannel experience. We have only begun to explore the true power of mobile.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Reshef.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com

Germany’s RTL II Selects Nevion for Video-over-IP Solution

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MTS Staff Writer

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October 10, 2017

Germany’s RTL II Selects Nevion for Video-over-IP Solution

VideoIPath and Virtuoso central to meeting RTL II’s requirements

Nevion, award-winning provider of virtualized media production solutions, announced that German broadcaster RTL II has selected Nevion and partner LOGIC media solutions to deliver a video-over-IP solution for its OTT-playout.

Following the acquisition of three channels-in-a-box servers for OTT programs, RTL II decided that all the routing in the new environment should be exclusively IP-based, using SMPTE 2022-6/7. All new devices also need to be free of traditional SDI-BNC connections.

In order to achieve this, RTL II chose a solution from Nevion consisting of its eMerge 10G IP switches, Virtuoso software-defined media nodes and VideoIPath network management and service orchestration software. The eMerge switches handle the routing, while the Virtuosos provide the bridge between the SDI and the IP environments. The equipment is under the control of VideoIPath, which provides the OpenFlow-based SDN control and monitoring. Users interact with VideoIPath both through its web GUI and a classic CP Touch panel.

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Bryan Bedford, Global Business Development, Strategy and Channel Lead, Sports, Media and Retail, at Cisco said, “Expanding our relationship with Nevion demonstrates the growth in the industry and progress with multi-vendor interoperability. Working together, we can offer joint customers a full portfolio of the tools they need to launch new services quickly.”

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Andy Rayner, Chief Technologist at Nevion added: “We are pleased to formally cement our relationship with Cisco, already having a proven track record of delivering successful key projects for broadcasters and service providers together. Nevion is a firm believer in customer choice and working with leading switch vendors such as Cisco, means that our customers can decide the solution that best fit their needs.”

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V12 Data Introduces New Holiday Audiences Powered by Leading Purchase-Intender Solution, V12 Signals

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October 10, 2017

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People-based audience provider, V12 Data, announced the launch of its’ holiday audience segments, powered by the company’s industry-leading purchase intender solution, V12 Signals. Utilizing V12 Data’s holiday purchase intender audiences, retail brands can now target consumers who have indicated high purchase intent based on off-line shopping indicators integrated with on-line (mobile and desktop) content consumption, web visits and keyword searches.

“As a leader in identifying actively engaged shoppers, I’m thrilled with the launch of our newly developed holiday audiences. These audiences include consumers who are known to be highly engaged and have expressed real-time purchase intent via web visits and digital content consumption versus more traditional data sets which include only modeled and off-line demographic data,” said Michelle Taves, EVP of Data Strategy and Product Management.

Examples of key audiences include:

Holiday (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day)
Season (Graduation Gift Buyers, Back to School, Outdoor Entertainers, Spring Break Planners, and Holiday Travelers)
Shoppers (Holiday Toy Shoppers, Luxury Holiday Shoppers, Early Holiday Shoppers, Holiday Entertainers, Holiday Cooks, and Post-Holiday Bargain Shoppers)
Sports (NFL Football Fans, Super Bowl, March Madness, and Summer and Winter Olympics Followers)

“The moments when consumers express an intent to purchase are key opportunities for brands to engage and convert shoppers at the right time and with the right message,” said Anders Ekman, CEO of V12 Data. “V12 Data’s holiday audiences represent exactly this group of highly-engaged shoppers who are most apt to respond to marketing messages that have been tailored to their unique needs. Our clients have experienced tremendous success using our purchase intender data, and these new audiences represent the next evolution in the V12 Signals set of in-market solutions.”

Akamai Content Delivery Network Now Available to Enterprises on the IBM Cloud

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October 10, 2017

New Solution Accelerates Global Delivery Of Cloud-Based Content And Applications

Akamai Technologies, the world’s largest and most trusted cloud delivery platform, and IBM announced that Akamai Content Delivery Network (CDN) capabilities are now available on the IBM Cloud. The new offering is part of the IBM Cloud Content Delivery Network and is designed to optimize the performance of content and applications deployed and delivered via the cloud.

Enterprises in industries ranging from ecommerce to finance to media need to deliver valuable content such as video, web content and mobile apps quickly and reliably to end users, especially in times of peak demand. To meet this need, Akamai and IBM have come together to provide a new content delivery network service that can be configured and deployed in the IBM Cloud.

To help increase delivery speed and performance, the new service combines Akamai’s presence in nearly 1,700 networks in 131 countries with IBM’s global cloud footprint of nearly 60 cloud data centers across 19 countries. This expanded footprint enables storage of content at the edge of the network, positioning users for faster and more consistent delivery of web content, media and applications to end users.

“Enterprises are increasingly relying on the cloud to transform and deliver a spectrum of critical business applications to their users,” said Faiyaz Shahpurwala, general manager, IBM Cloud. “By combining the global reach of IBM Cloud with Akamai’s delivery and optimization capabilities, we’re giving businesses the tools they need to innovate in the market and deliver better customer experiences.”

“The promise of what the cloud can do for business is nearly limitless,” said Rick McConnell, president and general manager, Web Division, Akamai. “At the same time, as an increasing number of business-critical workloads move to the cloud, enterprises seek the assurance of scale, performance and security supporting their applications. This is an exciting time to be part of the cloud ecosystem, and we look forward to further collaboration between Akamai and IBM to help our joint customers achieve their goals.”

IBM is Akamai’s longest tenured global partner and an established reseller of Akamai Web Performance and Security solutions. By making Akamai technology available directly to IBM Cloud customers, the two companies are helping enterprises to optimize the performance of their applications, ultimately speeding time to market and improving the end-user experience.

CARTO Survey Shows Businesses View Location Intelligence as Critical to Success

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October 10, 2017