Bank of America Becomes First Company to Achieve Certification
Building on the trust consumers and brands have put in J.D. Power studies for decades, the marketing data and analytics company today announced the J.D. Power Mobile App Certification ProgramSM to recognize brands that provide an exceptional mobile app experience.
This exclusive program reflects the commitment and dedication of select brands to provide their customers with a mobile app experience that meets today’s consumer expectations.
Bob Neuhaus
“The Mobile App Certification Program will assist consumers who are looking for an exceptional mobile app experience,” said Bob Neuhaus, Senior Director of Banking and Credit Card at J.D. Power. “Certified brands also will benefit by leveraging the J.D. Power brand and promoting their organization’s commitment to an outstanding mobile app customer experience.”
Bank of America is the first organization to achieve J.D. Power Mobile App Certification powered by Centric Digital.
“With 24 million mobile customers and growing, we remain committed to delivering solutions that make it easier for our clients to manage their financial lives as an extension of their daily digital activities,” said Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America. “Receiving the J.D. Power Certification is a testament to this commitment and we’re pleased that with more than two million apps on the market, we’re the very first app to accomplish certification on behalf of our customers.”
As the first qualification criterion, brands must rank among top performers in the most recent J.D. Power North American Mobile App Satisfaction IndexSM. Benchmark rankings are based on overall customer satisfaction with the mobile app experience for 259 brands across 11 industries.
In addition, qualifying brands must pass a rigorous evaluation of 250 mobile app experience and operational best practices conducted by J.D. Power in collaboration with Centric Digital. The 250 are a subset of Centric Digital’s DIMENSIONS, a classification system comprised of more than 3,000 digital best practices called “classifiers” and used by industry leaders to benchmark digital performance. These mobile best practices include, but are not limited to, navigation design; messaging & notifications; mobile channel management; app store performance; user interface design; and digital process and governance.
Once certified, a brand is permitted to market its achievement for 12 months with such marketing tools as a J.D. Power Mobile App Certification trophy, online marketing collateral and in-store merchandise displays. Certified brands also will be listed on jdpower.com for consumers to search while shopping.
Dentsu Aegis Network today announces that it has acquired Detroit, Michigan-based HelloWorld, a digital marketing solutions provider focused on promotion and loyalty solutions. The business will be rebranded “HelloWorld, a Merkle Company.”
“The acquisition of HelloWorld increases our collective scale in providing loyalty strategy, technology, and engagement services that support the life cycle of our clients’ programs, across industries”
With 370 people and a proprietary technology platform, this acquisition will further scale Merkle’s people-based marketing disciplines, including loyalty solutions, performance media, customer relationship marketing, customer experience, and enterprise technology services.
HelloWorld has developed a differentiated practice that links response-driven consumer promotion with loyalty strategies and program execution. The company operates at the intersection of data, technology, and marketing strategy, enabling marketers to more effectively engage consumers and drive desirable emotional and behavioral response. HelloWorld creates promotional and gamified campaigns to spark interest, loyalty programs to retain and reward, insights-driven communications to continue the brand-consumer conversation, and analytics to optimize marketing execution. Long-standing clients include Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft.
HelloWorld was founded in 1999 in Detroit, Michigan and has expanded to offices in Seattle, WA, Chicago, IL, New York, NY, and Los Angeles, CA.
Michael Hemsey
“The acquisition of HelloWorld increases our collective scale in providing loyalty strategy, technology, and engagement services that support the life cycle of our clients’ programs, across industries,” said Michael Hemsey, executive vice president of Merkle Loyalty Solutions. “Bringing together two recent Forrester Loyalty Wave™ strong performers makes us one of the most significant and strategic players in our industry. We will continue to expand our global client roster, working with brands that leverage the sophistication of our people-based loyalty marketing and technology solutions.”
Peter DeNunzio
“HelloWorld and Merkle share the vision to help our clients transform their marketing through insight-driven personalized experiences,” said Peter DeNunzio, CEO of HelloWorld, who will retain his position. “Leveraging the growth we have seen in recent years and joining forces with Merkle creates a true industry leader in people-based marketing solutions. Adding HelloWorld’s expertise in promotion and loyalty to Merkle’s comprehensive suite of solutions, our combined organization offers clients world-class capability, from acquisition to retention to ultimate loyalty in the brand-consumer ecosystem.”
comScore services measure addressable impressions across connected TV, mobile, desktop, and traditional TV
comScore today announced that it is partnering with Sling TV, the top skinny bundle provider by household penetration and viewing time*, to offer cross-platform addressable advertising measurement for campaigns that joins the live OTT service’s impressions and DISH set-top box impressions. comScore is the first company to offer services that measure addressable television impressions across all platforms, including over-the-top (OTT).
As the inaugural user of this new service, Sling TV brings comScore verified addressable TV impressions and OTT impressions together. This gives Sling TV advertisers a fluid view of their campaign’s performance across the OTT service’s connected TV, mobile and desktop impressions, as well as linear TV impressions on DISH.
DISH Media Sales, which oversees ad sales for DISH and Sling TV, first introduced addressable advertising on its satellite TV platform in 2012 and opened cross-platform addressable advertising across both platforms earlier this fall. Cross-platform advertising enables brands to reach DISH and Sling TV viewers in a premium, brand-safe environment with a single buy. Using anonymized data, ads are delivered during live and Video-On-Demand content with pinpoint accuracy across any device, while the viewer watches TV. With the introduction of comScore’s new service, advertisers can now validate the performance of these campaigns with addressable advertising metrics across platforms, using consistent third-party measurement.
“Bringing Sling TV’s impressions into the measurement fold gives advertisers an apples-to-apples view of their campaign across platform, device and even alongside traditional TV,” said Adam Lowy, head of Sling TV advertising sales. “We’ve partnered with comScore to offer advertisers a single, trusted metric to validate their campaigns and bridge these targeted, addressable TV impressions, regardless of where they run.”
comScore’s linear TV addressable advertising measurement has been used by major agencies and brands for more than five years. This new offering will operate similarly, but extends measurement of addressable campaign delivery to multiple platforms.
Cathy Hetzel
“Addressable advertising for television content is projected to grow 66 percent this year to $1.3 billion in media spend**,” said Cathy Hetzel, comScore executive vice president. “As more addressable TV inventory becomes available in OTT, there’s a growing desire among advertisers to take advantage of the premium quality of television with the benefits of greater addressability. At the same time, it’s important that this inventory can be valued alongside traditional linear formats with consistent independent measurement.”
Acquisition Expands KPMG’s Enterprise Security Capabilities and Helps Firm to Meet Emerging Digital Consumer Identity Demand
KPMG LLP has agreed to acquire the Identity and Access Management business of Silicon Valley-based Cyberinc, which provides cyber security solutions globally. Cyberinc, the largest independent identity and access management (IAM) technology provider in the world, will enhance KPMG’s existing capabilities as a leader in information security consulting services* and expand the firm’s ability to provide clients with emerging and more agile IAM solutions. The transaction also bolsters KPMG’s talent and resources in the rapidly growing area of digital consumer identity and privileged user management, which are evolving security-focused capabilities to enhance important elements of customer-engagement.
Cyberinc
Lynne Doughtie
“Cyber security remains a top risk to organizations as threats grow in scale and cyber criminals develop new ways to access protected information,” said Lynne Doughtie, US Chairman and CEO of KPMG LLP. “KPMG’s identity and access management solutions team can assist clients, across all industries, protect their information and enable their digital strategies and growth plans.”
Cyberinc’s IAM business is a 190-person global team with significant presence in the U.S., India, Australia, and the U.K., and extensive experience providing advisory, strategy, implementation services, and managed services for organizations that need to transform their enterprise or consumer identity capabilities.
“Over the last decade, Cyberinc’s IAM business has risen to industry leadership position on the strength of some of the largest IAM deployments globally, investments in IP and an array of premium partnerships. I am very pleased that Cyberinc’s truly world class team will continue this journey with KPMG,” said Samir Shah, CEO, Cyberinc. “Cyber threats continue to accelerate and remain a top business risk. This transaction will allow us to sharply focus on Isla – our industry leading Malware Isolation Platform.”
KPMG’s strong position with existing information security alliance partners Oracle and Sailpoint, along with KPMG’s recently announced alliance with Ping Identity, will be further enhanced by the transaction with Cyberinc to better enable information protection for large enterprises while pursuing new digital interactions and business transformations.
Tony Buffomante
“As organizations innovate and transform their back, middle and front offices, identity and access management solutions that effectively bridge the gap between risk mitigation and customer experience are key to driving sustainable growth,” saidTony Buffomante, US Leader of KPMG’s Cyber Security Services practice. “The addition of the Cyberinc team and capabilities is yet another example of how KPMG is investing in cyber security and helping clients succeed on their digital journey.”
Cyberinc is a subsidiary of Aurionpro Solutions Limited – a global technology product and solution provider, headquartered in Mumbai, India and San Ramon, California. The Cyberinc transaction is KPMG’s second acquisition in this area, following the October 2014 acquisition of certain assets of Qubera Solutions, a privately-held Redwood City, C.A. – based cyber security firm that provides IAM services.
Social Media Marketing Moves from Megaphone to Targeted Conversations
The emergence of social media in marketing has drastically revolutionized the ways marketers and brands engage with consumers. Moving away from more traditional digital tactics, brands have started leveraging influencers to amplify their messaging, assist with reaching out to new and existing audiences, and, ultimately, to aid in driving increased sales. A recent study conducted by Demand Gen Report suggests that 87% of B2B buyers give more credence to content with influencers. Yet, many brands are not fully embracing influencer campaigns with B2B companies running only 11% of ongoing influencer marketing programs.
With the rise of ad blockers, more strict European regulations around privacy and use of data, and the continuous decline of TV and radio viewership, brands will soon compete for visibility on social channels. 2018 will be a crucial year for brands and agencies to steer social media away from a media-focus approach to a more community and influencer-based model.
With a stronger focus on innovative ways to reach out to consumers on social channels coupled with the goal of standing out across competing brands, agencies and brands should be focusing on three elements when approaching social influencer campaigns:
KPI and ROI:
Have clear objectives regarding an influencer strategy and align them to your brand’s goals.
Stop attributing success solely to leads and begin to think about engagement and how people are communicating and recognizing your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
Closely track your brand’s efforts by using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) tracking codes and pixels.
Integration:
Don’t treat influencer marketing as a standalone tactic. Integrate the influencer campaign into your brands’ content, social, paid, and email strategies.
Include influencers working with your brand in your marketing strategy. Invite them to strategic meetings; have them work with your brands’ content team to create product videos or other content; invite them to events.
Track your brands’ influencer campaign within your overall digital campaign. Did the influencers help grow your social channels, and time spent on site drive by user-generated content?
Strategic Partnerships
Build strategic partnerships with agencies or vendors that specialize in influencer marketing for your brand’s target audience.
Influencer platforms provide flexibility in how your brand runs its influencer campaigns by offering management services and/or access to influencers. Think carefully on which approach, in-house or otherwise, is best suitable for your brand.
Create strategic partnerships with influencers and/or smaller specialized boutique agencies or vendors.
If your brand wants to engage with your audience on a deeper level and cut through the clutter of your competitor’s content across social channels, integrate influencers’ campaigns into your brand’s monthly digital strategy. Set clear expectations between your brand and the influencers; make sure to track your collective efforts and link them back to your brand’s overall digital marketing goals. The power of influencers is letting them unfold your brand’s story with their unique and authentic voice.
“The power of influencers is letting them unfold your story with their unique and authentic voice.”
Ars Logica Names SDL Among Top Three Web Content Management Leaders
SDL Tridion Sites Leads in Content Marketing Tools, Scalability and Enterprise Tech Leverage
In their latest report, titled “Compass Guide“, Ars Logica, has named SDL Tridion Sites among the top three web content management (WCM) platforms on the market. SDL Tridion Sites ranked highly across both business and technical criteria, leading the industry in content marketing tools, extreme scalability and enterprise tech stack leverage.
SDL is a leader in the global content creation, translation, and delivery.
According to Ars Logica’s Compass Guide report for SDL, the SDL Tridion Sites product – coupled with SDL’s second-to-none globalization and localization capabilities – offers global brands a highly scalable best-of-breed WCM platform that incorporates one of the broadest sets of feature-functionality available on the market.
The combination, according to Ars Logica, helps global corporates overcome the complex challenge of managing and marketing their multiple online brands across geographies, languages, and channels from one global content management system.
The Compass Guide series, which benchmarks the top 15 WCM providers, also highlights SDL Tridion Sites’ longstanding customer base, which represents some of the largest global web presences.
Tony White, Founder of Ars Logica, said, “SDL Tridion Sites is particularly well-suited to global enterprise deployments with rigorous brand management and digital marketing requirements. The vendor produces an extremely scalable best-of-breed platform that helps businesses manage complex global web properties.”
SDL Tridion Sites offers excellent content marketing tools that increase engagement and deliver unique personalized customer experiences across touchpoints.
SDL Tridion Sites “boasts superb enterprise tech stack leverage and extreme scalability (co-ranked first in both these areas).” This means brands can easily integrate critical business applications such as BI, BPM, CRM, e-commerce, campaign management and marketing automation, which is critical for large organizations with a heavy dependence on the omnichannel experience.
SDL remains the undisputed WCM market leader in globalization/localization technologies, and its expertise in these areas spills into all of its products, regardless of functional classification.
Arjen van den Akker, Director Product Marketing, SDL, said, “SDL Tridion Sites has a long tradition of helping multinational corporations combine central brand governance with agile marketing tools to market global and local brands across multiple geographies, languages, channels, and touchpoints.”
Arjen added, “Our customers run some of the busiest websites on the planet, and our platform is helping them to engage with customers in compelling new ways, creating superior digital customer journeys.”
SDL Tridion DX, which includes SDL Tridion Sites and SDL Tridion Docs, provides a complete environment for marketing, commerce and product-led content across the global web, mobile, and other digital properties. Using a headless approach and the latest cognitive machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, it does more than simply allow for content management on a global scale; it enables the customized creation of engaging and personalized content in a model that sits alongside human insight and cultural dynamics.
SDL Tridion DX customers include Allianz, Atlas CopCo, Blackboard, China Airlines, Chrysler, DAF, DNV GL, Hach, KLM, Kone, Lexus, Life Technologies, Meyn, Neilson, Panasonic, Ricoh, Unilever, to name a few.
Achieving those tricky EOY sales goals before the holiday slump
Every year around this time, sales reps may start thinking about what they would ask Santa for Christmas, given the chance: More leads, because every sales team is always on the lookout for new prospects. Simple legal negotiations to speed up those drawn-out but necessary contract proceedings. A bluebird, or a rare deal that comes out of nowhere and is a perfect fit for your company, because who doesn’t love receiving a gift they wanted but didn’t think they were getting?
And, while all of these wishes are something a sales rep could hypothetically receive (especially if they’ve made the nice list this year), there’s one holiday present reps can give realistically themselves this year through planning and thinking ahead: meeting their end-of-year sales goals.
As any good business-to-business salesperson knows, deals can really start to slow during this time of the year. Prospects begin traveling, getting sick or mentally checking out, making the chances of closing a deal a before the holidays much lower. So, how can a sales rep close the remaining deals he or she has, without hounding their lead? Here are a few tips closing those last, elusive deals before the holidays.
To close those last few deals, your sales team should take the following steps:
Start early and a create sales strategy in advance: Your team should develop a “final sprint” sales strategy today and use it to guide you through the last few weeks of the month. Design this strategy to have the bulk of your work completed in the first two weeks of the month, and use the last 1-2 weeks for finalizing contract details. The next aspect of this plan should include a risk review of every remaining deal in your pipeline. For this, you should examine the risk of losing a potential deal before pursuing it more intensely. You should know the next 2-3 actions to take in each deal before the clients start to check out for the holidays in order to react quickly should the timeline change. This includes planning any meetings now, preemptively scheduling emails to send on a specific date and keeping any communications brief but concise.
Optimize your content and its timing: Most people don’t check their emails the day of holiday celebrations, but we have had great success in the past sending our prospects optimized content during holiday weekends. People only scroll through their emails every now and then over the holidays to ensure they haven’t missed anything pressing, so you should be respectful of their time and attention. Craft your subject lines to be concise and direct regarding the reason for your email. For the body, stay to-the-point, list specific action items for the person to take and tell them you will follow-up in a few days’ time. By doing this, you’re showing that you respect their time off, all while remaining on their radar.
Incentivize your employees: Incentivize your employees to power through the holiday slump with programs like call blitzes and SPIFs (Sales Promotion Incentive Funds). Sales reps notoriously love a little friendly competition, and the idea of some extra holiday cash would certainly motivate them to stay focused as your company closes out the year.
Incentivize your clients: Sometimes your prospective clients may be on the fence about closing a deal and ask to think about it until after the holiday. This is one of the riskiest things you can agree to, because the longer you let a deal sit, the more likely you are to lose it. You and your sales team need to get a little creative and incentivize your leads to close the deal before end-of-year: add an opt-out clause that allows the customer to use the product or service for a trial period (that ends after the New Year), offer a quarterly contract rather than yearly one, etc.
Final thoughts
The end of a year is always a slower time for B2B sales, so reduce some of this risk by planning in advance and getting a little creative, and your EOY sales targets will thank you. While the techniques listed above are useful for achieving those final, elusive targets, keep in mind that this is also the time for celebrating your team and its accomplishments. The end of the year is perfect for reflecting on how things are going in your company overall, boosting team morale and celebrating your culture. Use this time to take the lessons you’ve learned from the entire year to craft an effective strategy for next year.
Let’s imagine you have an idea for a business that seems bulletproof. You can’t find anyone who will tell you it’s not. With this confidence, you build a prototype, and by golly, it works. Your friends and colleagues love it, and it looks like there’s real potential here. The good life beckons. So you throw more of your own money, and maybe some more from other people, into the project and launch it. And it fails, miserably.
What went wrong?
Our budding entrepreneur put the cart before the horse and missed the parade. All the focus was on the product, with no attention paid whatsoever to building a knowledge base about potential customers, different price points, and the market more generally.
The lesson: Consumer and market analysis needs to be the keystone of your business plan before you take your product to market.
The central aim of consumer analysis is to illuminate and ultimately lead to an understanding of the interaction of products and consumers. It focuses on the purchase decision-making process, consumer motivations, shopping patterns, and consumption habits. Market analysis is concerned with the attractiveness and dynamics of a market. It looks at the size of the market regarding volume, value, competition and consumer segments.
A well-constructed consumer and market analysis also impacts product development and product lifecycle initiatives. A recent Forbes article states that 81% of enterprises leverage consumer analysis to understand their customers. Yet for many entrepreneurs without enterprise size budgets, the focus is on investing in product development while struggling to keep the office lights on. This too is a case of putting the cart before the horse.
At some point, you will most likely have to stand in front of investors and plead your case for funding, especially after burning your cash and maybe more. Investors are acutely curious as to the relationship between your product, its customer, and the market more widely. In the data-driven world of investing, you better have well-researched consumer and market analysis to present a strong case.
To present yourself in the best light to both potential investors and your target market, you first need to understand your future ecosystem. This means taking a deep dive into your customers: what they use, wish for, what they appreciate and criticize, issues they may face using existing products, etc. Then go to the competition: what they offer, how they price it, how they communicate, etc. when you have all of this info, defining your new product or service may not be easy, but it does become more focused.
Next, you need to be able to describe your product or service so that you can ask the key questions of your potential market. Minimum viable products (MVPs) and demos take time and cost money. In many situations, it’s beneficial to describe what you want to offer and list the key elements of your future value proposition. Try to make the proposition concise and differentiated so that you can clearly articulate why and how this product or service is different from other existing ones.
Finally, you will be ready to ask your potential market and customers about your idea, your competitors, pricing, naming,package design, advertising concepts, etc. Now you will need to find the right market research company; here are several steps start-up entrepreneurs can take to develop a high-quality, low- cost market research firm to reduce the risk of moving your product to market.
Look for automation. A traditional market research agency works through a process that comes at substantial cost, and takes time. Next generation services leverage automation and AI technologies to deliver a quality analysis much faster and cheaper. This can be crucial to the ability of a start-up to even contemplate doing market research.
Determine your priorities. For starters, you may need basic data on the size and characteristics of your potential buyers. With that data in hand, you can then focus research on product design, brand awareness and customer satisfaction tracking.
Budget appropriately for regular market research check-ups. The digital economy moves quickly; your research should enable you to track growth trends and changes in consumer behavior.
Make sure the market research firm provides you with easily understood results. Unless you’re an expert at crunching data and you have the time, you will need to ensure that the outputs from a research projects are clear, visually attractive and actionable for your business. There is a trade-off between full automation and the skills of an expert human analyst, but some emerging research technology platforms deliver the best of both worlds.
To sum up, startups that rely on market research to test their ideas not only leverage data to validate or improve their initial idea, but also to bring credibility to potential investors. Once you get off the ground, market research can help you monitor and increase consumer satisfaction, customer retention, brand loyalty – and ultimately your financial results!
According to a recent insight from SAS, 2018 is set to present more opportunities for location intelligence platforms. Placecast, a leading location intelligence platform leverages deterministic carrier data to deliver a better audience, verification, and insight solutions. What does that mean for business operations, and how could marketers utilize location intelligence solutions to increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. To understand the finer nuances of the integration between Placecast’s location intelligence solutions and traditional marketing technology tools, we chatted with Jake Moskowitz, VP, Measurement Solutions.
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MTS:Tell us about your role at Placecast and the team you handle?
Jake Moskowitz: As the VP Measurement Solutions at Placecast, I lead all measurement initiatives at the company. Essentially, I design, launch, and run new solutions leveraging Placecast’s unique access to mobile carrier data to benefit all parts of the digital marketing ecosystem. Location Verification is the core of our measurement offering, using a truth set of carrier data from multiple major carriers to verify the accuracy of location data and location-targeted media.
MTS:How does Placecast’s content adapter framework enable easy data ingestion into Mobile DMP? Jake Moskowitz: Our content adapter framework refers to the flexibility of our platform to adjust to a wide range of data formatting on ingestion. This is a critical element for our business on two counts. First, it allows us to provide DMP services to wireless carriers by dealing with whatever format the data is in without requiring the carriers to make adjustments on our behalf. In our experience, carrier data looks very different depending on the carrier, and we need to blend it all together into a consistent structure to support our use cases. Second, it allows us to offer Location Verification for all the prime use cases for location data, namely audience segmentation, real-time geo-fencing or geo-targeting, in-store visit attribution, and consumer insights.
MTS: How do you see Data Normalization and Matching Platforms evolving with the adoption of predictive intelligence within DMPs? Jake Moskowitz: We believe sources of historic deterministic truth data can be used as a training data set to create a predictive algorithm. That’s exactly what we’ve done by using historical Location Verification deterministic data to create our Pre-Bid tool, which populates for clients in real time a percentage likelihood that a given location data point is accurate, so clients can make a decision for themselves which data points to trust and use. Given its name, the primary use case for Pre-Bid is for programmatic bidding, but we can build algorithms for any context so long as we have enough quality metadata associated with location data points in order to do so. Clients can use our tool to make sure only accurate location data is used to associate with a given consumer within a DMP environment, to maximize the efficiency of any insights made or actions taken for that consumer based on location data.
MTS: How can Location Verification improve the quality of data that lives within a DMP? Jake Moskowitz: Location Verification is a data accuracy filter based on a truth set of data from carriers. Within a DMP environment, we can filter through raw location data points and eliminate the specific data points we know aren’t accurate. That’s true of first party data a DMP client stores in a DMP or third party data a DMP client might purchase to append to its user database. Our normative database shows a consistent pattern of 30-50% of data points being inaccurate across location data sources, including SDK-based data as well as data and audiences from even prominent vendors in the space. Using our filter can ensure even the least accurate data sources are useful because we can weed out the data points that aren’t accurate.
MTS: What are the major pain-points for advertisers and media publishers in optimizing location-based mobile marketing campaigns? Jake Moskowitz: First and foremost, there is a deep underlying trust issue in the location space, that marketers and agencies don’t inherently believe in what they’re buying. According to a recent survey from AdAge and Factual, more than 80% of marketers are concerned about location data quality, and nearly 65% are concerned about data source transparency. We built Location Verification to bridge that gap, so buyers feel confident they’re getting what they pay for, and sellers are confident they’re doing what they say they’re doing. Only by bridging the trust gap can the location industry fulfill its enormous promise.
Secondly, marketers are faced with the challenge of optimizing to multiple objectives that sometimes are negatively correlated. For instance, today marketers sometimes need to include mobile web inventory if they want to achieve their scale goal at a minimum level of viewability. But mobile web inventory is notoriously inaccurate and imprecise when it comes to location data. Our feeling is, if location is important, then location accuracy should be the primary objective, because if someone is 1000 miles from the nearest store, who cares if the ad is viewable?
MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Jake.
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
Sizmek Fortifies Transparency and Brand Safety Standards for Better AI-Enabled Ad Performance
Latest Move Reinforces Sizmek’s On-Going Commitment to Empower Agencies and Advertisers With Greater Transparency, Control, and Superior Ad Performance
Leading DSP provider, Sizmek has announced it will now offer full transparency across its AI-enabled platform. The decision is designed to empower and differentiate agencies and advertisers with increased visibility, control and performance over their media planning and buying. Currently, Sizmek is ranked as a leading independent buy-side advertising platform delivering impressions that inspire. The fortification of brand safety standards to deliver better ad performance and transparency comes on the heels of Sizmek’s recent acquisition of Rocket Fuel.
In 2017, trust/transparency had emerged as a major challenge for the brands and advertisers. Now, media buyers demand greater insight into where their dollars are going and the ROI associated with their investments into media inventories, especially if it’s programamtic inventory. 90% of advertisers review programmatic ad contracts specifically seeking out the providers who offer greater transparency — and this demand isn’t going to reduce in 2018.
By combining Sizmek’s powerful AI-enabled media recommendations with greater control and transparency, agencies and advertisers no longer need to compromise campaign performance for visibility into true campaign cost.
At the time of this announcement, Mark Grether, CEO of Sizmek, said, “The industry has spoken and Sizmek has listened and reacted. Agencies and advertisers are demanding greater visibility and control. They want their partners to move away from black box practices which hide true campaign costs and weaken confidence that media investments impact results.”
A recent study from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) found that 90% of advertisers review programmatic ad contracts specifically looking for providers who offer greater transparency. The study further revealed by offering greater transparency into the fully loaded cost of a media plan, agencies felt they could better evaluate and communicate ROI to their clients.
Grether added, “There’s no question that agencies and advertisers value AI-driven insights, but they want full visibility in the process. That’s why we’ve decided to lead the industry with AI-powered recommendations for traders and AI-powered optimization across the entire media plan offered with full transparency.”
Sizmek is offering transparent pricing across its media, creative, data, technology, and service related costs. This move will help agencies and advertisers to gain a clearer understanding of AI-driven campaign performance and cost. Further, Sizmek expects that the new platform would help set up a more contemporary standard in an industry often criticized for its hidden pricing and selective access to campaign insights.
In the past, agencies and advertisers were forced to make difficult trade-offs between transparency, control, and performance. Concerns about limited visibility into campaign pricing and ease of data access were cast aside in favor of the enhanced performance automated solutions afforded. Agencies either chose to work with non-transparent providers who delivered impressive results or working with more transparent providers offering lesser results.
Andrew Casale, President & CEO at Index Exchange, said, “With an increased emphasis on trust and transparency in our industry, having a clear view of overall costs drives confidence and demand. Every piece of the ecosystem has a role to play in ensuring transparency is the standard, and we’re proud to partner with Sizmek to help raise the programmatic
bar together.”
It’s never been easy for agencies and advertisers to strike the right balance between the control they need, knowing what their true costs are, and getting big results. Sizmek is changing that—they’re making it easier for agencies to understand, use and benefit from AI to make better, more informed media decisions.
Currently, Sizmek is the world’s largest independent buy-side advertising platform that creates impressions that inspire. In the digital world, creating impressions that inspire is vital to fostering relationships of trust with agencies and brand as well as building meaningful, long-lasting relationships with customers.
Sizmek provides powerful, integrated solutions that enable data, creative, and media to work together for optimal campaign performance across the entire customer journey. Our AI-driven decisioning engine can identify robust insights within data across the five key dimensions of predictive marketing—campaigns, consumers, context, creative, and cost.
Vaki Games Finds New Breakthrough for Easily Creating VR Content
Vaki Games, a Specialist in VR,Released Their First Unity Plugin Cinext VR Runtime Editor
Everyone working in the VR space knows how challenging and often tedious the process is to compose VR movies in a 2D space. Always switching between desktop and VR. With Cinext this is no longer a problem. Vaki Games, a specialist in VR, released their first unity plugin Cinext VR runtime editor. Cinext VR Runtime Editor is simple and easy to use tool that allows you to edit your scene geometry in VR.
Now you can intuitively edit real-time material in the VR space. No need to switch between your desktop and VR headset. Modify the environment, effects, lights and physics in VR play mode. You will always see what’s really happening in the VR space. No blind spots. Focus on storytelling.
VR development made easy. Edit real-time material in the VR space:
Flexible and collaborative workflows help you get the highest quality results – fast.
Modify the environment, effects, lights and physics in the VR space
Releases more time to focus on creating high-quality immersive experiences
One of series of useful tools with more coming soon!
Los-Angeles based Emmy award-winning visual effects supervisor and technical director, Allan McKay, said, “Vaki’s CEO has been part of our Live Action Series course and I’m proud and frilled to see the release of VR content creation toolset Cinext and believe this will be a game changer for those of us creating VR content.”.
Vaki makes games and provides professional services to clients outside of the games industry, consulting on the application and adoption of virtual reality technology, supporting the design and development of VR. Vaki was established after winning an innovation competition in 2016. The team combines UK and Finnish games industry veterans and fresh young talent, creatives, 3D graphics artists, software engineers and experienced business advisors.
“AI is here to stay and people should embrace it. We like to say that AI is actually augmented intelligence and we believe that the best results come when machine learning combines with human perception.”
On Marketing Technology
MTS: Tell us about your role at Influential? What inspired you to be part of an influencer marketplace?
I am the CEO and founder of Influential. I was inspired to start the company because I was an influencer myself and saw a hole in the marketplace for a data-driven solution to influencer marketing. Several years ago, I had over 30M followers on Twitter and Instagram. I wasn’t personally well known or famous, so to speak, but what I had built are called niche accounts, like @Travel, @Automotive, and @FashionAndStyle. I was building these accounts and growing the followings very rapidly and quickly learned that I could monetize them, but found that without transparent data, brand safety, and technology, brands wouldn’t spend significant budgets.
MTS: How do AI-enabled technologies impact influencer marketing campaigns?
AI-enabled technologies have revolutionized influencer marketing campaigns and are a key element of what has made us a leader in the influencer marketing space. Influential is the only influencer marketing Developer Partner for IBM Watson. While we currently use 3 different APIs from IBM Watson, the primary one we use is called Personality Insights (PI). PI taps into the Big 5 Personality Traits, a century old theory that posits that all humans are made of 47 key traits, like “extroversion,” “openness,” and “self-expression.” The AI reads the last 22,000 pieces of content on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and analyzes the words, syntax, and even symbols, like emojis, and on a scale of 1-100, indexes the influencer’s traits. We do the same thing with the brand’s social handle and match the influencer and brand, based on high-indexing traits. Through this process we’ve seen, on average, a 30% lift in the influencers engagement on FTC compliant posts (#Ad or #Sponsored) versus the influencers native, non-paid post.
MTS: What are the core tenets of leveraging influencer marketing tools for better targeting and sales ROI?
For us, the core tenets are our 3-pronged approach of demographic, contextual, and psychographic targeting. In terms of demographics, we’re looking at elements like age, gender, geographic location, and affinities of our influencers. Next, we’re looking to see if there’s a contextual match- meaning, does the influencer talk about the brand or relevant proxies in their organic posts? Lastly, we use personality traits to find the perfect match, psychographically, between influencers and brands.
MTS: How are you preparing for a post-GDPR era? We are still working through how the regulation will impact all areas of our business and our anticipated growth in 2018, to ensure that we will be in full compliance and, with any luck, ahead of the game, come May.
MTS: How do you see influencer marketplaces coping with the tightened brand safety and transparency regulations?
I can’t really speak for others, but as far as Influential is concerned, brand safety and transparency have always been paramount to our company, so it’s not like we’ve had to change our ways or backtrack on previous methodologies. Using #ad and #sponsored is something we’ve done since the beginning. In addition, one of the first things we did as a company was creating a brand-safe gateway, where we wouldn’t allow influencers to release a post on their social channels until there was a double opt-in by both the influencer and the brand.
MTS: What startups in the martech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?
We work with 10+ data vendors in our technology stack, all with unique offerings, and we watch them and their peers closely.
MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Our product assists with influencer selection, content creation/execution, optimization, and reporting. We also have vetting tools that assign MPAA ratings for influencers, we use visual recognition to identify brands, and we can even search for DUIs and felonies.
MTS: Would you tell us about your standout digital campaign? We recently completed a great campaign with Hyundai, which was featured in Adweek, alongside the CMO of Hyundai, Dean Evans. Our target audience was adults, 30-55 years old, in the US. Unbelievably, the campaign had 100% positive sentiment, which is extremely rare. We also had multiple influencers, who participated in the campaign, that had higher engagement on these FTC-compliant posts than some of their own native, non-sponsored posts.
MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
AI is going to be affecting and improving so many aspects of our life, in the near future, and as someone who is at the forefront of it within my own industry, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be invited to speak at conferences around the world about it. I think that people need to be open-minded about it and not believe that it is going to become Skynet from the Terminator movies. AI is here to stay and people should embrace it. We like to say that AI is actually augmented intelligence and we believe that the best results come when machine learning combines with human perception.
This is How I Work
MTS: One word that best describes how you work. Tirelessly
MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Uber, Postmates, and Coinbase
MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Sneaking off after my fiancé goes to bed to set up emails to be fired off early the next morning even before I wipe the crust from my eyes.
MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?) Twitter, at 280 characters it’s become a novel.
MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? “Be like water” – Bruce Lee
MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Elon Musk. If anyone is attuned to AI, he’s the man.
MTS: Thank you Ryan! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.
Ryan is the CEO of Influential, A.I. influencer technology that matches brand and ad agencies to influencers through transparent data and machine learning. Influential is one of 6 IBM “With Watson” partners, the only partner for Influencer Marketing. He was originally an influencer himself, with more than 30 million followers, across Twitter and Instagram.
Influential is an A.I. influencer technology and developer partner of IBM Watson. Influential’s patent-pending app is on the hip pocket of more than 17,000 of the most highly engaged influencers on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube, reaching over 5 billion users. Brands and agencies are able to make a digital media buy on social via Influential’s in-demo impression guarantee, which mirrors traditional and digital media spends. Influential conducts all campaigns through a brand-safe vetting process and provides robust reporting via 3rd party analytics partners. Influential and IBM Watson have also co-created technologies that allow brands and agencies to identify psychographic data on influencers, as well as three first-to-market A.I. products. Influential runs campaigns for Fortune 100 companies including Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé, General Mills, Kia Motors, Fox TV, Sony Pictures and more. Influential has offices in Beverly Hills, New York City, and Las Vegas.
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.
When It Comes to Marketing and Customer Engagement, Content Rules the Martech World. A Recap of What Experts Had to Say About Content in the past Year
‘Condense All Content into One Central Management System’
Daniel Rodriguez
Daniel Rodriguez – VP, Marketing, Seismic: The most important aspect of content management is that the various repositories are integrated and that there is a centralized process in place to ensure that content creators and marketers know what content is being used and when. If there is no centralization and integration, then you start to see content sprawl, where there are a host of different repositories in which old, unbranded, and potentially non-compliant versions of content still exist and are available for employees to use at their whim. This is, obviously, a nightmare for CMOs who have invested so much in the maintenance and upkeep of their brand.
Ideally, this is solved by condensing all content into one central management system, making an oversight, management, and content upkeep exponentially easier. But particularly at large enterprises with a host of different teams and behaviors, I realize that this is a challenging endeavor. However, if you’re able to integrate them and centralize content management into an overarching platform, then you can see which content is being used when and by whom, which content is effective for whatever purpose it is supposed to serve, and, just as importantly, which content should be retired.
‘When People Finish Reading an Article, They’re Predisposed to Discover Something They May Like’
Adam Singolda
Adam Singolda – Founder & CEO, Taboola: There are three places digital marketers can spend dollars in – Google, Facebook, and the open web. I believe we’re going through a unique transition, where publishers want to have a plan in place to improve their access to data, and in light of brand safety concerns within the walled gardens, publishers can offer a scalable, targeted — and safe — way to spend on campaigns. When people finish reading an article, they’re predisposed to discover something they may like and never know existed. That moment is magical for brands as they can be introduced or reintroduced to consumers, adjacent to a premium piece of content. My hope and my thinking is that the next 2-3 years will be around unlocking that opportunity.
‘Our Staff Has Personal Experience In CPA’
Alexander Bachmann
Alexander Bachmann – CEO, admitad: At admitad, we think that, in order to succeed, publishers do not only have to be supplied with innovative tools and technology; we also focus on providing guidance and support to them from the very beginning of their journey in affiliate marketing. This year we opened the Admitad Academy for Publishers which provides courses and webinars that help our publishers develop their skills in CPA. Since it was founded, admitad has been different from others in that our staff has personal experience in CPA as publishers and we all understand our affiliates and their practical needs in this business. Another important thing is admitad support service. From the very beginning, we have been cultivating three important features in our support: fast response, deep expertise in all marketing niches we work with, and knowledge of multiple languages and cultural sensitivity. Apart from the personalized service, admitad offers our publishers all innovations they need in order to be successful and competitive. At admitad, publishers find an adaptive toolbox, online statistics available 24/7, cost-effective and predictable results, and an opportunity to work globally with over 1500 brands from Europe, America, Asia and the CIS region.
‘Using Data to Ensure That the Quality and Relevancy of Content Increases’
Jim Eustace
Jim Eustace – CEO, Bound: The building of the infrastructure for reaching people online is clear, so I think the biggest evolution will be in using data to ensure that the quality and relevancy of content increases. Engagement is much deeper than simply reaching people. It is as much about quality, relevant content as it is targeting and I think data feedback can be very helpful here. I was just talking with Christoph Becker, CEO at Gyro in New York and their mission to deliver “humanly relevant ideas” is very inspiring when thinking about online engagement. We should strive to create marketing that is a relevant and welcome experience.
‘Marketers Often Resort to Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall to See What Sticks’
Dan Ushman
Dan Ushman – Founder & CEO, Concurra: The most difficult part when leveraging analytics can be knowing what to change and what to leave alone; what to remove and what to add. Marketers often resort to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks – but so much spaghetti is being thrown today that they don’t even know what’s working and what’s not. Concurra provides a scientific way to test changes and see what works. That’s proving to be something that most businesses and agencies are not accustomed to. Learning to change behavior can be the biggest challenge.
Datonics Partners with Kochava Collective, Allowing Mobile Marketers to Reach Desired Audiences
Leading online data marketplace Datonics has announced that its audience data will be made available in the Neustar Data Directory, part of the Neustar Identity Data Management Platform (IDMP). Advertisers and publishers can streamline targeting, strengthen analytics and improve ROI by applying Datonics’ newly added data to their existing audience profiles.
Datonics offers marketers 500+ pre-packaged and an unlimited number of custom keyword-derived segments, based on high-quality search, purchase intent, life-stage and B2B data on 180+ million U.S. and Canadian users. Advertisers tapping into Datonics data within the Neustar Data Directory can more precisely target key segments of consumers, who are most receptive to their product offerings. Publishers can access Datonics’ data to help them make more informed decisions about the audience data they sell to advertisers.
Michael Benedek, CEO of Datonics, said, “With the recent advances in first-party and third-party data integrations, programmatic advertising has made strides in allowing advertisers to more precisely target consumers. Publishers now also have better insight on their readers and the value they provide for their advertisers. We are delighted to be working alongside Neustar and helping the advertisers and publishers on their DMP have better access to data.”
“Data is the driving force behind digital advertising. Without accurate data and scale, both advertisers and publishers are simply not able to keep pace with the industry. We’re pleased to add Datonics’ data to our data directory to give advertisers and publishers a way to build high-value custom audiences from a blend of data sources, which are authoritatively corroborated and validated with the Neustar OneID system,” added Michael Schoen, VP and GM, Marketing Solutions, Neustar.
Shifting Sands in B2B Marketing in 2018: New Avenues in Self-Service Customer Portals, Contextual Targeting, and Smartphone Metrics
Part Three of the Predictions Series for 2018 Covers Futuristic Insights on Marketing to the Millennials, Mobile Marketing Trends, and the Changing Face of Contextual Targeting
The Holiday Season is over, and the New Year has brought a fresh battery of B2B marketing ideas to showcase what modern marketers are set to achieve in 2018. 2017 has been a big year for B2B tech with the rise of Alexa for business and increased integration of machine learning technologies.
On the top of every marketers’ list is the millennial buyer and a community of loyalists, who would not just buy but also advocate, influence and nurture other prospects. In our Part Three of the Predictions Series 2018, we gathered predictions on what top-of-the-line marketers and business leaders think about B2B marketing in 2018, keeping in mind the millennials, mobile marketing trends, and the changing face of contextual targeting.
Here is what B2B tech leaders shared about B2B marketing in 2018.
2018 Will Be the Year of Gen Z for Marketers
So, millennial consumers are pacing sales transformation already. In her guest post, Brenna Vallar of the ABC Creative, mentioned, “With the constant exposure to media, millennials have already witnessed the major missteps and triumphs of brands, resulting in a different set of expectations for advertisers.” So, marketing to millennials is ‘mission numero uno’ for organizations.
Brand Messaging to Reflect Relevant Connectivity with the Millennial Buyers
Sara Spivey, Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice
Sara Spivey, CMO at Bazaarvoice, predicts that marketing in 2018 would be all about ‘millennial engagements’. Sara said, “Gen Z consumers are coming of age and they command $44 billion in buying power. In 2018, marketers will need to pivot their “marketing to millennials” mindsets to reach this younger audience. Generation Z is value-oriented, inclusive and socially conscious. Rather than marketing to “all about me” consumers, companies need to adapt to Gen Z’s “all about us” mentality and reflect that in their business practices and brand messaging to earn their attention and loyalty.”
Top Versus Down-Funnel Content Strategies: What’s Going to Be More Influential in 2018?
Kim Kosaka, Director of Marketing, Alexa
Kim Kosaka, Director of Marketing, Alexa, suggests, “As businesses increasingly turn to aggressive growth hacking experimentation in 2018, the corresponding challenge for marketers will be identifying which growth metrics are truly most relevant and worthwhile to their brand — and finding ways to sufficiently measure that data and confidently refine strategy based on that knowledge.”
Kim adds, “The success of growth hacking is undoubtedly dependent on accurate and reflective data to identify gaps in strategy, areas for improvement, and (ideally) successful tactics that deserve more investment. But, what will really become more utilized in 2018 is marketers taking a longer-term, down-funnel look at the metrics that matter.”
Kim explains, “Take content marketing as one key component many brands use as part of an overall growth hacking strategy, for example. Currently, brands’ content marketing campaigns are measured in a decidedly top-of-funnel way, usually hinging on metrics such as site engagement, page views, visitors, social shares, etc. But, those metrics are probably too superficial to tell the full story of how execution is ultimately driving conversions and building brand loyalty.”
“Look for 2018 to accelerate growth hackers’ understanding of whether the top-of-funnel content is influencing conversions by introducing their brand to new visitors that convert weeks or months down the line (and exactly which content, authors, topics, format, media mix, or other variables are doing the best job at that),” added Kim.
Self-Service Customer Experiences Powered by Marketing Automation and Data Management
Increased Focus on Self-Service
Ray Grady, President and Chief Customer Officer, CloudCraze
Ray Grady, CCO and President of CloudCraze on Salesforce, understands that digital capabilities have turned business into a 24/7 operation and business buyers expect access to self-service capabilities that allow them to make orders at their convenience. It’s clear that businesses are already taking advantage of self-service capabilities. Recent CloudCraze data shows that more than half of B2B businesses (56%) already report giving self-service access to all of their customers.
The report states–
For the first time in history, nearly half of B2B organizations offer their full suite of products online. This dramatic shift as a part of the digital revolution has already led to explosive growth for those who have invested in building out an eCommerce channel.
The report also reveals that as digital technologies mature, B2B organizations would continue to demonstrate more adaptability to them. “In fact, 89 percent of B2B decision makers attribute the future growth to the success of their eCommerce program.”
Benefits of Connecting Marketing Automation Tool to Customer Data Management for Truly Digital Experience
Jason Chang, Director of Marketing Operations, Liferay
Jason Chang, Director of Marketing Operations at Liferay, predicts, “Throughout 2018, I think we’ll continue to see a sharp rise in businesses requiring foundational technology that’s capable of serving customers across all of the varied interactions and brand touch points — for example, tying together the customer call center with a customer self-service portal or loyalty site. This need to unify will also continue to extend into the enterprise level, where companies want to bring together their systems to share data and content in order to deliver better user experiences.”
Jason further explains, “Companies will benefit from building and connect their marketing automation tool with their CRM and their customer portal on a single foundation in order to share customer data across business groups that touch the customer. I think it’s unlikely that a single software will meet all the needs of a digital business, but I do believe it’s critical to deliver consistent experiences that make sense and are connected from one interaction to another. That’s where the power of a digital experience platform will play a larger role in 2018.”
The Consumer Experience Will Be Paramount as Their Borderless Shopping Journey Continues, Inspired by B2C
Curtis Tingle, CMO at Valassis
Curtis Tingle, CMO at Valassis, says, “Consumers will expect even more value from brands, restaurants, and retailers – getting access to relevant savings, convenience, and an easy shopping experience. It will be critical that marketers improve consumers’ shopping experiences – online and in-store. This also means they need to have a consumer-centric approach to marketing – blending first-party and third-party data to reach, engage, influence and activate consumers.”
Time to Move Away from Cookies to Contextual Ad Targeting
Jeff Finn, CEO at zvelo
Jeff Finn, CEO at Zvelo, predicts, “In 2018, we should witness more marketers turning away from cookie-based behavioral targeting, toward contextual ad targeting. The latter focuses on webpage content, and not on the behavior of visitors (behavior that requires those pesky cookies). But even though it’s a change that’s at least in part brought about due to regulation, I believe marketers will benefit in the long run.”
Jeff adds, “Contextual targeting adds the ability to identify brand-objectionable content and steer marketers clear of web pages that could be bad news for brands to be associated with. Contextual targeting has also been shown to have higher click-through rates, and this kind of ad targeting with website categorization can deliver a superior method for constructing audience behavioral profiles. The push to contextual will end up being positive for all involved.”
2018: The Year We Finally Talk About Smartphone Bounce Rate Metrics
Gregory Wester, EVP Marketing, Mobile Posse
Gregory Wester, EVP Marketing and Business Development, Mobile Posse, crystal gazed into smartphone bounce rate metrics growing into an important parameter for Customer Experience Managers. Gregory predicts, “Almost every digital screen today is tracked by its bounce rate – the percentage of visitors to a particular page who immediately navigate away. That is true for ALMOST every digital screen – EXCEPT the one we interact with more than any other – our smartphones!”
Websites and apps have tailored their landing experience based on consumers interests and behaviors – and the bounce rate measures how engaged consumers are as a result.
“Smartphones, don’t have a tailored landing experience – when you unlock your phone you find the last app you used, 100% of the time, no customization, no personalization, and it’s been the same since the smartphone was invented 10 years ago,” said Greg.
Gregory added, “This is the experience coming from a device that has more knowledge about the user than any other screen in history. In 2018, the smartphone experience will get smarter. Our smartphones already know what apps we typically use during the day, where we are and more. Understanding all of this should allow the smartphone to know what we want on any given unlock. As a result, in the year ahead we will see a sharp rise in the automatic opening of relevant content and a reduction in smartphone bounce rate.”
As the asymmetry of data between the market, customers, and products begin to vanish, marketers should continue to play a bigger role in choosing their marketing technologies and data management platforms. Companies that leverage and advocate the personalization of content using automation tools, and find new B2B communication methods would lead the pack in adopting technological advancement in 2018— and this would be across geographies, industry segments, and customer demography. 2018– This will be a year of ‘Growth Hacking‘. Do you agree?
TiTAN Platform Inks Global Content Distribution Agreement with VUBIQUITY
Makes Content Available on TiTAN’s Next-Gen Streaming Platform in the US with Intent to Roll Out to Asia Markets Including China, Korea, Singapore, India & Japan
TiTAN Platform, a smart content and device company with a next-generation streaming platform launching in the U.S., today announced a content distribution agreement with VUBIQUITY, the leading global provider of premium content services. The agreement encompasses film and television content that will be available on the TiTAN Play platform.
Beginning in Q1 2018, a catalog of new and recent films from major and independent studios will be offered on a VOD basis in the U.S. only. The addition of movies and TV content for electronic sell-through or download to own, expansion to Asia and other consumption models are intended for the future.
Distribution in Asia is planned to span China, Japan, India, Korea and Singapore, facilitated in part by TiTAN’s existing strategic partnership with China Unicom, the country’s third-largest telecom, and its internet content Provider license allowing TiTAN to distribute content broadly in mainland China. TiTAN and VUBIQUITY will be leveraging that relationship in an effort to overcome the barriers confronted by U.S. content owners in gaining access to the massive Chinese market.
The VUBIQUITY agreement marks the latest milestone in TiTAN’s rollout of its streaming platform. The company’s offerings uniquely combine software, hardware, e-commerce, artificial intelligence (AI), smart encryption and other advanced technologies in a complete global content ecosystem that provides critical benefits for content developers as well as consumers.
On the consumer side, for example, the company’s TiTAN Core is the first all-in-one entertainment and smart home hub, providing one-stop access to videos, music, games, ebooks, podcasts, VR applications, lights, thermostats, home security and other digital content and smart home systems. On the industry side, TiTAN offers groundbreaking transactional encryption and AI capabilities allowing targeted brand messages to be embedded in content for seamless consumer purchasing while also dramatically improving the consumer experience based on smart personalization of user behavior.
Jae Young Yoon, founder and chairman, TiTAN Platform said, “The VUBIQUITY agreement is an important building block in our go-to-market strategy, giving us a strong content lineup to help us quickly build a large install base in both the U.S. and Asia. With our initial content distribution partners now including VUBIQUITY, TV4 Entertainment and Frequency, we will offer a powerful combination of premium film titles, TV series, OTT channels and digital-first content that will help drive adoption and enable both content developers and consumers to reap the broader benefits of our ecosystem.”
Kris Brown
Kris Brown, SVP at VUBIQUITY, added, “TiTAN has made a significant investment in their vision of creating a content platform that brings all the disparate components of digital entertainment and the connected home together into a single access point. This is a highly enterprising new approach to the market, and we have recognized that it provides a promising new platform for content.”
YOYOW Releases New Version of Whitepaper, Listed on Bitfinex
YOYOW, Which Stands for You Own Your Own Words, Is a Blockchain-Based Network Aiming to Quantify Contribution and Give Rewards to Participants in the Content Producing Sector
YOYOW, a blockchain based content rewards network, released a new version of a whitepaper, revealing the latest updates and changes to their network. The company aspires to become China’s first public blockchain for content platforms. They also plan to expand their reach to a global market by leveraging their new ability to enable third-party developers, writers and bloggers to build their own branded content platforms on the top of YOYOW network.
Qiang Liu
“We will provide SDKs and detailed development documents for third-party developers to help them build their own customized content platforms, like blockchain version of Quora, Twitter or Facebook. Different types of content platforms can be built on the top of YOYOW network, for independent bloggers or writers. We will provide plug-ins to enable them to create their own branded platforms. All these platforms use the same system token – YOYO token – to reward content creators, curators, and consumers and the same user account system on the same blockchain YOYOW will become the underlying content rewards network for content platforms,” stated Qiang Liu, founder, YOYOW.
In the past few months, the team has completed the YOYOW blockchain, command line wallet, desktop version of wallet, web wallet, a blockchain explorer and a beta version of WordPress plugin had been released for evaluation.
Beside of releasing the new version of the whitepaper, the ERC20 version of YOYO token has also been listed on Bitfinex – a bitcoin exchange.
YOYOW, which stands for You Own Your Own Words, is a blockchain-based network aiming to quantify contribution and give rewards to participants in the content producing sector, with decentralized consensus methods so that content producers, content investors, curators, and consumers of the content ecosystem can be provided with incentives and returns as appropriate.
YOYOW is designed for establishing a rational content-generated income distribution mechanism and a value network based on users’ ratings on content. Any content platforms, including but not limited to websites and APPs, regardless of their themes presented in the format of text, video, image, audio or live broadcast, etc., are eligible to create the corresponding content-oriented incentive platforms based on the YOYOW network. Content producers, content investors, curators and builders of the content ecosystem will be rewarded according to the YOYOW eco-environment and users’ ratings of content.
Tech Industry Veterans Mark Hill and Bill Godfrey Join the Lumavate Leadership Team
Tech Veteran Mark Hill Announced as the Chief Executive Officer of Lumavate. Bill Godfrey Takes the Position of Vice President of Business Development
Lumavate, an exciting new platform for building cloud-based mobile apps, has announced that Mark Hill and Bill Godfrey have joined as the Chief Executive Officer and as vice president of business development, respectively.
Mark Hill, CEO at Lumavate
At the time of this announcement, CEO of Lumavate, Mark Hill said, “There is a fundamental shift happening in mobile technology, and it’s affecting how to interact with consumers on mobile devices. Lumavate is positioned to help brands transform their mobile strategies and truly think differently about what mobile means for their business. Our vision is to empower enterprise organizations with the platform to design and deploy an unlimited number of highly-personalized mobile experiences quickly and at scale. I’m also thrilled to be working alongside someone as talented as Bill Godfrey.”
Prior to joining Lumavate, Hill was a co-founder and the president of Baker Hill Corporation, which was acquired by Experian in 2005. Hill is also a managing partner at Collina Ventures, where he has invested in more than 40 early stage companies in Indiana including Lumavate. He serves on the board of numerous companies, including KAR Auction Services, Bluelock, Octiv, Ascend Indiana and TechPoint. Last year, he received the TechPoint Foundation for Youth Bridge Builder Award.
Bill Godfrey, VP of business development, Lumavate
Bill Godfrey–also an Indianapolis tech veteran–expressed his excitement about the company’s future.
Bill said, “As a co-founder and board member of Lumavate, I’m thrilled to take on a leadership role in the day-to-day operations of the company,” said Godfrey. “With Lumavate, organizations now have the ability to harness the power of an enterprise platform built for speed and scale to truly make mobile exponential throughout their entire customer experience. The future of customer engagement is all about the proliferation of mobile experiences, and Lumavate provides the platform for brands to do just that.”
With more than 25 years of SaaS experience, Godfrey was previously the co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Aprimo. Godfrey is also a managing partner at 4G Ventures and serves on the boards of numerous companies, including PERQ, Bolstra, DemandJump, Emplify, and Sigstr. In 2017, Godfrey was appointed to the Next Level Indiana Trust Fund by Gov. Eric J. Holcomb.
Godfrey was also a recipient of the TechPoint Investor of the Year Award in 2016 and the TechPoint Trailblazer in Technology Award in 2012. In his role as vice president of business development, Godfrey will lead the strategic partnership and alliances efforts for Lumavate.
Currently, Lumavate, by providing an enterprise SaaS platform for building cloud-based mobile apps at scale, helps companies deliver highly-personalized mobile experiences throughout the entire customer journey. These mobile experiences drive increased adoption and long-term engagement via smart activation methods.
Terminus Adds Marketing Analytics and Multi-Touch Attribution to Build Modern B2B Platform for Executing and Measuring Go-to-Market Initiatives
Terminus, the leader of the account-based marketing (ABM) movement, announced that it has acquired BrightFunnel, the pioneer in B2B marketing analytics and attribution. The acquisition accelerates Terminus’ vision of building a platform that unifies B2B go-to-market teams as they create, measure, and operationalize account engagement in support of efficient growth and exceptional buyer experiences. Terminus is proud to welcome 40 new “Terminators,” who will continue to be based in the office BrightFunnel established in the heart of San Francisco.
“We are excited to help solve one of the top challenges our customers face — how to measure and optimize the impact of marketing and sales initiatives on revenue,” said Eric Spett, CEO and co-founder of Terminus. “Our customers want to understand the influence of campaigns throughout the buyer’s journey, create a 360-degree view of engagement that supports one revenue team, and close the loop on measuring account-based marketing and advertising. Together, Terminus and BrightFunnel deliver best-in-class account-based execution and B2B analytics for today’s unified revenue team.”
The Terminus ABM platform is used by marketing teams at more than 400 companies to orchestrate account-based advertising, operationalize account web engagement, and report on target account progression through the funnel. BrightFunnel helps nearly 100 companies connect marketing to revenue through market-leading B2B analytics, including AI-powered multi-touch attribution, account-based measurement, and revenue funnel analytics.
The combined solution will help customers execute and measure go-to-market initiatives, whether they are account-based or a mix of ABM and inbound.
“Terminus and BrightFunnel are essential tools for efficiently growing a business,” said Chris Mann, CEO of BrightFunnel. “These products should be at the foundation of every modern B2B marketing tech stack. I’m thrilled for our customers, who will have the best-in-class solution that both creates account engagement and delivers deep intelligence into contact activity, account activity, and which marketing programs drive revenue.”
“The BrightFunnel acquisition accelerates our product vision by at least two years,” said Bryan Brown, chief product officer of Terminus. “We are adding more engineers to support the combined vision of making marketing analytics and attribution more accessible to all B2B teams, and more focused on account-based practices as we continue to build Terminus, the most widely used ABM platform.”
Since the launch of its ABM platform in 2015, Terminus has experienced incredible growth and has been recognized as Atlanta’s fastest-growing software company and the #1 account-based execution software on G2 Crowd. Terminus has scaled from three co-founders to more than 150 full-time “Terminators.” The company has been named one of the Top 50 Best Workplaces in America by Inc. Magazine, the #1 Best Place to Work by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, and #1 in Employee Appreciation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Additionally, Sangram Vajre, CMO and co-founder of Terminus, has spearheaded the ABM community’s growth through the #FlipMyFunnel movement and by authoring the first-ever book on ABM.
When 20 percent of existing customers account for 80 percent of your future revenue, it’s vital to keep them engaged and satisfied. While this may fall under the label of ‘Customer Relationship Management’ at your organization, many organizations are now referring to this function as ‘Customer Success.’ Customer Success Management entails much more than checking in with a customer periodically to see if they have questions or issues with your solution. It’s a process which is dedicated to delivering continuous value to customers. Increasingly, this process is being supported with platforms designed specifically for enabling your best Customer Success practices.
Operationalizing customer success with a platform that not only helps reduce churn, but also facilitates an increase in Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR) is an investment in your future as a XaaS provider. There are several customer success platforms on the market now, and figuring out what works best in your organization is challenging. I’ve spent some time understanding the offerings, and have identified five things you should look for when evaluating a solution to support your Customer Success efforts:
Agile Workflow Management
The agile approach is being adopted in ways well beyond software development. As a methodology in which teams are incrementally building relationships, consistently reevaluating the efficacy of processes, increasing flexibility and reducing wasted time, the agile approach is a perfect fit for the work management of customer success. To help CSMs continually provide a superior client experience, a customer success platform must itself be agile to compliment the agile nature of the CSMs work.
While it’s ideal that all of customer data is housed in one place, that’s not typically the case. Most organizations have sales data in one CRM, contract and financials in another system, and marketing data in yet another. This is far from ideal. A customer success solution should integrate all customer data from every resource. This provides a 360° current and historic view of customers for every person who deals with an account.
Historical Perspective
When did an account launch? Who is the main point of contact? When was the last touchpoint and what was it about? When is the contract up for renewal? These are all vital questions that your customer success platform should be able to answer easily. Customer Success Managers should not need to go hunting to find a full history of an account.
Time Tracking Capability to Use for Capacity Planning
Tracked time is vital data to use in planning and forecasting around account load and employee efficiency. Spreadsheets, be gone! There’s nothing more inefficient than using a spreadsheet for your employees as a time tracker for capacity planning. A great CSM platform will do this for you, with a tool for employees to track effort and a dashboard for managers to view time spent on tasks and accounts. Ideally, a platform will track duration and actual time spent on an account and an activity.
Ease of Entry and Functionality
If your CSM platform is not user-friendly, it’s likely that company-wide adoption will suffer. How intuitive and easy are the platforms you saw demoed? If you found them difficult to use and disconnected, then your employees will likely feel the same way, and will resist adoption. You’ll need to have team-wide buy-in to truly get the most out of a customer success solution. A recent CIO article echoes my perspective on a great user experience stating, “Without a good UX, software users are unlikely to adopt the software, or they’ll use it unwillingly. Poor software adoption can negatively impact the KPIs the organization aimed to improve in the first place.”
Companies that have buy-in from executives for a customer success solution need to properly evaluate the platforms available to ensure the best possible fit for their organizations. Attributes that make a stand-out solution include agile workflow management, cross-functional data access, historical perspective, time tracking capability, and ease of entry/functionality. Our customers have seen a 15 percent average increase in customer lifetime value by implementing such a platform — a statistic that reinforces the value that customer success brings when chartered along with a great platform.
When 20 percent of existing customers 
