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Hootsuite Adds Adobe Content to Empower Social Media Marketers

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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1
Hootsuite
Hootsuite and Adobe Collaborate to Unlock the Value of Creative Content across Social

Integration With Adobe Enables Hootsuite Marketers To Easily Discover, Create, And Distribute Content Across Paid And Organic Social Channels

hootsuite
Designer, photographer, filmmaker, webinar champion and much more—Hootsuite marketers can now master the ways of social media marketing by bringing the power of Adobe Creative Cloud to their arsenal. The leading social media marketing platform has announced a collaboration with Adobe which would give Hootsuite’s customers seamless ability to access, edit, distribute, and gain actionable insights into impact of creative content directly on their Hootsuite dashboards. The partnership between the two creative marketing giants comes just months after Adobe launched its Experience Cloud and partnered with Microsoft.

Recommended Read: Interview with Penny Wilson, Chief Marketing Officer at Hootsuite

The benefits of Hootsuite’s partnership with Adobe would be extended to over 15 million people and 800+ Fortune 1000 companies.

Creative Content Drives Engagement and Revenue

Leading brands rely on creative content as the fuel that drives audience engagement and business growth. Despite that focus, Altimeter notes that 70% of marketers still lack an integrated strategy, and struggle to consistently deliver high-quality content as demand increases.

The collaboration between Hootsuite and Adobe helps to tackle this problem by providing marketing and creative teams with the ability to quickly and easily develop content that powers their marketing initiatives.

Read More: Connect via Hootsuite Becomes a Milestone Event as an Online Social Media Conference

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Integration with Adobe Creative Cloud Adds Power to Hootsuite’s Social Package

In an interview with us,  Hootsuite CMO Penny Wilson had said, “Social media management technologies need to keep pace with the increasing adoption of social across job functions. From social marketing to social selling, our solutions must adapt to social’s rapidly evolving needs.” The integration with Adobe Cloud exemplifies that vision to connect customers to more cutting-edge technologies and help users to familiarize with existing marketing standards.

Claude Alexandre, Vice President of Adobe Stock, said, “Integrating Adobe Stock into Hootsuite’s platform will provide marketers with the ability to easily extend the reach of their content into social media. High quality and authentic imagery is critical for engaging and communicating with customers, and this partnership will enable brands to be more visually impactful with their digital and content marketing initiatives.

Matt Switzer
Matt Switzer, SVP Strategy and Corporate Development, Hootsuite

Matt Switzer, SVP, Strategy and Corporate Development, Hootsuite, said, “Modern marketers create more content on a daily basis now than ever before. Hootsuite’s integrations with Adobe give marketers the ability to create and distribute high quality content faster. Adobe leads the creative market, and we are thrilled to work together to offer our customers capabilities that will enable them to get more value from their content.”

Following a recent post by Adobe, Hootsuite marketers can actually leverage Adobe Stock to add more revenue that complements “creativity and portfolio.”

Hootsuite Customers Can Access High-Quality Creative Assets

With this integration, Hootsuite customers will be able to edit and optimize images for social using Adobe Creative SDK, as well as discover and license content from the Adobe Stock library of over 90 million high-quality creative assets.

Adobe Stock is available both as a standalone service and as a part of Adobe Creative Cloud. The integration with Adobe Creative Cloud allows users to search and license assets inside Hootsuite without interrupting the creative workflow. We could not confirm if Hootsuite marketers would be able to access the added benefits of Adobe Sensei or Media Optimizer.

In Salesforce, It’s Really About the Data

By
Patricia Gallagher
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2
Salesforce
In Salesforce, It’s Really About the Data

Salesforce has become one of the largest and most popular cloud platform providers in the world, and for 18 years, users have leveraged their marketing automation and CRM software to gain an edge over competitors. But when considering the advantages of using Salesforce, it’s important to take a step back and realize that Salesforce is only as useful for an organization as what goes into it. In other words, it’s really about data. Salesforce is a repository of information and a record of what your company has done. That information can be analyzed to inform what it should do in the future. The data in Salesforce is one of your organization’s most valuable assets, which is why data management is so important.

Recommended Read: Salesforce Einstein Analytics Drives Shazam to Achieve 752% Rise in ROI

How One Company Solved Its Data Management Problems

Day-to-day data management is a chore, which is why so many companies struggle with it. They need to implement better data management in order to resolve specific business challenges, but sometimes that is easier said than done.

Wolters Kluwer, a global information services company providing software and services to companies across many industries, had two main pain points they were trying to address: uncovering cross-sell opportunities for sales and tracking missing documents for compliance purposes. The first presented itself because it was hard for representatives to recognize which accounts were not yet using all appropriate products across a multi-product portfolio. Finding this information required time-intensive, ad hoc reporting, and the reps just didn’t have the bandwidth to do so. Wolters Kluwer also needed a method to locate records in Salesforce where necessary information was missing in order to remain compliant, but they had no way to do that. The company was looking for a way to resolve these issues without completely overhauling its processes.

Wolters Kluwer turned to ActionGrid to help uncover meaningful, actionable data for their sales team. The solution gave them an easy way to check Salesforce records for missing contracts, so they could track down the documents needed and associate them with the record. By providing automated data entry and report views, sales reps had instant access to upsell and cross-sell opportunities, which gave them back 25 hours/week as a team that they could use for selling, rather than pulling data. To solve their compliance-related issues, Wolters Kluwers no longer had to  dig through endless piles of data and instead relied on weekly reports to flag any potential problems. To call attention to compliance concerns, these reports revealed weekly closed opportunities with no attachment across unrelated objects, making incomplete records easy to spot and remedy and saving the operations team upwards of 16 hours/week.

Read Also: Salesforce Positioned as a Leader by Independent Research Firm

Data Management Makes All the Difference

Wolters Kluwer is a tangible example of how effective data management saved a company both time and resources. In reality, any company using Salesforce can see almost immediate improvements if they implement and stick with a data management solution that helps them better manage their CRM system. When it comes to the sales team, time is money. Finding a solution that will save business hours and resources will yield immediate, visible results that will positively impact your bottom line.

TechBytes with Emre Yenilmis, Chief Product Officer at Influenster

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Emre Yenilmis Influenster

Emre Yenilmis
Chief Product Officer at Influenster

Brands are increasingly relying on user-generated content (UGC) to communicate with their audiences. Earlier this month, Influenster launched a short-form video reviews feature that let users upload text and image-based reviews as 60-second videos. With new guidelines on social media marketing coming into force, it is imperative for marketers to utilize compliance tools for data capture and monitor. We spoke to Emre Yenilmis, Chief Product Officer at Influenster, to understand how AI/ML and emerging technologies impact social media, influencer marketing and B2B social selling.

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MTS: Tell us about your team and the technology you use for collaboration at Influenster?
Emre Yenilmis: We have a team of 20 employees in our tech team and we use a couple of tools to collaborate including Slack, JIRA, and Basecamp.

MTS: Tell us how The Real-Time Disclosure Monitor helps social media marketers and influencers comply with FTC guidelines?
Emre: At Influenster, we’ve always made social compliance a priority in all of our campaigns and communications. So The Real-Time Disclosure Monitor was a natural extension of our efforts – to hold our clients and members to the highest standards of disclosure in social influencer marketing.

The Real-Time Disclosure Monitor conducts a live data capture of user-generated content (UGC) created as part of brand campaigns and offers compliance checks in real time based on customized algorithms. Machine Learning is used to detect language sentiment in each social post and definitively identify disclosure. On top of that, Influenster has full-time staff support to manage the compliance of social posts generated by members. This combination of scalable machine learning and human accuracy ensures that social posts that are part of campaigns adhere to proper norms for disclosure.

MTS: With the changing dynamic of customer data and conversion analytics, how do you see social compliance tools evolving by 2020?
Emre: With social compliance becoming more of an imperative than ever before, agencies and marketers are going to be in tune with development technologies that offer clear solutions for proper disclosure. Much like how Instagram paved the way for the clear identification of sponsored posts, more social platforms will follow suit to offer native features allowing content creators to disclose their relationship with brands in social posts clearly. I would say that this would all come to play by 2018, not even 2020.

MTS: How does the analytic reporting on social media posts differ from that of a branded content hosted on a website or mobile apps?
Emre: For Influenster, when we report on the performance of social media posts or branded content on our website/app, the top thing we analyze and communicate to brands are the engagement rates measured by social actions taken – meaning social shares, comments, and likes. There isn’t currently a specific analytic reporting tool for The Real-Time Disclosure Monitor. The monitor works to programmatically identify non-compliant posts. Members are then notified that they are in violation of FTC guidelines and are advised to correct their social posts. A feedback loop is created to ensure that members are given the right prompts to respond with immediate correction and are given additional prompts about disclosure in the next campaign that they are in.

MTS: Wouldn’t it help if content marketers and influencers could do A/B testing for their posts if they meet FTC guidelines? Does The Real-Time Disclosure Monitor provide any such provisions or planning to provide such a feature in the coming?
Emre: We don’t offer any provisions for A/B testing to see how posts would perform with and without disclosure since meeting FTC guidelines is always our number one priority. Honesty is always the best policy…when transparency comes first, engagement will follow.

MTS: How do you see AI/ML capabilities empowering technology innovators to create a ubiquitous platform for social media, influencer, and B2B marketing/selling?
Emre: AI/ML capabilities will help to contextualize digital conversations across the board. Consumers will have a much clearer discernment of the relationships between content creators and brands in social posts, hence also building a bridge between content creators and consumers. Also, scaleable curation will enable content, ads, and the online discovery process to become increasingly customized and tailored to each user’s needs and interests.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Emre.
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

Interview with Adam Singolda, Founder & CEO, Taboola

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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1
Adam Singolda
Interview with Adam Singolda, Founder & CEO at Taboola

[mnky_team name=”Adam Singolda” position=”Founder & CEO at Taboola”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/AdamSingolda” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamsingolda/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“I believe we’re the last generation that will be looking for things, and the next generation will expect things to be recommended to them.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here? (What inspired you to start a technology innovation company?)
Taboola is the first job I’ve ever had. I spent nearly seven years in the Israeli army and was living with my parents before I was discharged. As I was trying to relax, I couldn’t find anything to watch on TV one day and thought, “I should not be looking for TV shows, TV shows should be looking for me.” Search engines changed our lives because if you know what you are looking for, you can find it, and get medical information, entertainment, products and more. But what happens when you have no idea what to look for?  When founding Taboola, our vision was to build a sort of search engine, but in reverse. Instead of expecting people to find information, the information should find people wherever they may be.

MTS: Given the changing dynamic of content engagement with online customers, how do you see the automation and analytics market evolving in the years to come?
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 knew 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.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make their predictive decisions work effectively?
I think, since the beginning, the main challenge (and opportunity) for CMOs was to balance quality, and protect their brand, while driving ROI — at scale. It’s very hard to do but when you look at emerging companies like Dollar Shave Club or Casper – you see there is a big opportunity for brands that cracked the code on finding new and innovative ways to achieve that. As an industry, we’re still facing a concentration challenge where while search and social drive massive value — 70% of every dollar is still going to two companies. This creates disadvantages in price as well as product innovation because marketers can’t truly affect the product pipeline.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
There is so much going on, it feels like there is more innovation than ever, not only in small startups — also in bigger companies, and it’s exciting. The companies I find interesting are in the AI/Deep-Learning space like Endor, Vi as well as drone companies like DJI, 3DR, medical companies like Zebra, or Kang (full disclosure, I’m on the board), cloud companies like Fastly, and many others.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?

We are a content discovery platform connecting 1 Billion+ consumers with content, products, in-feed videos, email and apps/games through different formats rendered in something we call Taboola Feed. Our stack includes:

–     Top of the funnel opportunities for brands via Taboola Video that appears in feed, natively for users.

–     Consideration and acquisition opportunities via sponsored content, app downloads, and more.

–     eCommerce via “products you may like” that can appear in the feed natively

–     Programmatic (autonomous, and PMP) – via AppNexus, Criteo, The Trade Desk, and other partners of ours.

–     Analytics & Insights – marketers who work with us get access to aggregated data about a billion people’s browsing habits, powering opportunities to target campaigns based on a variety of data points, as well as reporting and insights that help them better optimize with us.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?

Embrace it! In fact, we have embraced it – as we already have a large Deep Learning team in Israel that has been working on the core technology of Taboola for nearly 2 years now as we evolve from machine learning. I believe we’re the last generation that will be looking for things, and the next generation will expect things to be recommended to them. Discovery allows people to become more productive and we only have 24 hours a day. Things like AI, VR, Mixed Reality, autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones, audio (versus display like Alexa, or Cortana) and better medical systems will be our future. We need to find ways to re-invest ourselves as marketers to be relevant in that world we’re entering. As an example, we did a VR hackathon with UCLA to challenge students for great ideas about how they see the future.

This is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
I’ll refine the question and answer what we’re looking for in people joining Taboola, and if had to go with one word, I’d say passion-intelligence-kindness. I work in the same way as our culture, and I believe that good people will catch up to people with experience — they’re loyal, have less to lose, feel empowered to make mistakes, learn and move on – and that results in gaining more in the end. I like that.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Facetime, Blue Jeans and Google Hangouts for video chats, Spotify for music, Tripit for my travel, Uber for driving, Seamless for food, Netflix for content, Evernote for notes, FaceBook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Twitter for Social related stuff. And of course, Amazon for nearly everything.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
“Moments.” Life is only getting crazier and we only live once, so I believe it’s all about being present and appreciating the moments you have. Whether these moments are with a partner, a colleague, employee or my wife – I strive to be present. Don’t check your phone 1,000 times, don’t wonder about things. Be there. Make it short and to the point, if needed, but be present and appreciate moments.

I’d also say lots and lots of coffee. I am Israeli after all. 🙂

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consumer information?)
Not sure if it’s a great answer, but mainly emails and online content.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
If you have to bet – bet on people. This has had a huge effect of my life and Taboola. I’ve found I’ve made more mistakes when I haven’t followed this advice and created amazing things when I did.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Frank Wang Tao, the CEO of DJI

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Adam” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e2f5e-c914″]

Adam leads Taboola’s business strategy, execution and development while maintaining the company’s unique culture of quantification and innovation.
Prior to founding Taboola, Adam developed his analytical skills while serving as an officer in an elite mathematical unit of the Israeli National Security Agency for near 7 years (don’t ask, he can’t tell you).
Adam is an honored alum of the Israeli Defense Forces’ elite Mamram computer science training program, graduated first in his class at the Officers Academy of the IDF, and was recently named one of Israel’s top “30 under 30” business managers by TheMarker.
Adam authors a column for Mediapost on the video industry and is a regular speaker for Steaming Media, NAB, NewTeeVee, ELEVATE, Meetup, The Israel Conference, MIT (Sloan) , Bloomberg West, and others

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Taboola” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e2f5e-c914″]

taboola

Taboola is the leading discovery platform, serving 360B recommendations to over 1B unique visitors every month on some of the Web’s most innovative publisher sites, including USA TODAY, Business Insider, Chicago Tribune, and The Weather Channel. Headquartered in New York City, Taboola has offices in Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, London, Bangkok, New Delhi, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Istanbul.

Publishers, marketers, and agencies leverage Taboola to retain users on their sites, monetize their traffic, and distribute their content to drive high-quality audiences. Learn more at www.taboola.com and follow @taboola on Twitter and Instagram.

[/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.

Breaking Down the Best & Worst of Subject Lines

By
Olivia Milton
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0

It’s a sad truth, but even after spending meticulous hours crafting the perfect cold email, the most likely outcome is that it is going to end up getting deleted. That’s why you have to take into account every aspect of your message, which includes the subject line.

The first wave of attack, a solid subject line determines whether or not your email campaigns pierce the fog of war or stumble out of the gate. Maybe even more so than the actual email itself, the subject line can determine your cold email sales success. Here we will be breaking down some of the best and worst subject lines I’ve come across during my tenure at Reply.io and take a look at why they are considered either the cream of the crop or the bottom of the barrel.

Recommended Read: TechBytes with Olivia Milton, CMO at Reply.io

Good! – Whatever you do, don’t read this!

While it appears a little unconventional, when put into practice you can’t deny the results. This is reverse psychology at it’s finest and it doesn’t immediately come off as “markety”. I have found that the “cold” part of email campaigns is best left out of the equation; so starting things off on a more relaxed note can go a long way in making that sale. Also, most people generally don’t like being told what to do. Play into their ego and get them to open it anyway!

Bad – No Subject Line

They say curiosity killed the cat, but I’ve never known a cat to be enticed by stale air. Leaving the subject line blank is like giving up before you even start. You’re wasting an opportunity to get out your message before they even read it, so take advantage!

Plus it looks generally unprofessional. What you consider a strategic decision could easily be construed as an amateur mistake to the recipients of your campaign. Don’t look the fool and write something down. It’s literally better than nothing.

Good! – (NAME), we can help you (GOAL)

This subject line is a bit more generic but it is tried and true. You can’t go wrong with adding the contacts name in the subject and you are getting straight to the point. The contact will immediately know what the email is about and the personal touch only increases the likelihood of them opening up your email if you’ve targeted correctly.

Read Also: The Three Best Prospecting/List Building And Automation Tools

Bad – Hi (NAME), having trouble with (SERVICE ISSUE)? (COMPANY) can definitely help! Want to talk? Thanks!

There are a lot of things wrong with subject lines that follow this template, the main issue being that it’s far too long. If this ended up in my inbox I wouldn’t give it a second glance. An email client can only display so many characters before the subject gets cut off. Don’t waste that space!

Another major issue here is the presence of filler words. “Hi” and “Thanks” should be saved for the actual email. You only have so much time before the prospect loses interest and the precious seconds you sacrifice by including fillers could be absolutely fatal to your open rate.

Good! – (NAME) referred me to you

Professional, succinct and personal. You can’t get much better than this. While this may not be possible in all scenarios, if you can directly link your outreach to someone the lead has met in the real world you are exponentially more likely to land the deal. You instantly come across as trustworthy; you’ve established a personal connection and the prospect will already be inclined to agree with you on the merits of the recommendation.

Bad – Want to chat?

Questions typically beget answers, meaning that this isn’t the worst option you could choose, but there are a lot better. The biggest flaw with this approach is how vague it is. The recipient of the message has no clue who you are, what you want or where you came from, so why would they open the message? If you aren’t going for the personal or funny approach, leaving out vital information about the reason for the message could cost you a sale right off the bat.

Good! – Help me (FULL NAME), You’re my only hope!

Bringing back that personal touch while establishing a fun tone, this kind of subject line is a personal favorite! You’re establishing the connection vital to closing a sale and you are creating an inviting atmosphere for the prospective client. Nobody likes being “sold” to, so don’t start off the business relationship with sales lingo.

Plus, if there name actually turns out to be Obi-Wan Kenobi/ they’re a huge Star Wars fan you can just consider them sold.

Bad – Hey, I was wondering if…

These types of subject lines always leave a bad taste in my mouth. Unlike the humorous approaches to creating a subject line, this is just a cheap way of playing on a persons curiosity. By starting a sentence that ends in the email body you are essentially forcing the reader to open the rest of the message. If the body of the message isn’t all that appealing this could just end up annoying the prospect and make closing any potential deal all the harder.

If you’re going to play the curiosity card, do it with style. Or stick to a more traditional approach. It is better to have a low open rate with some goodwill as opposed to a high open rate with broken trust.

Read Also: Why Nobody is Reading Your Cold Email and How to Get Them To Respond

Three Steps Toward a People-Based Marketing Strategy

By
Manu Mathew
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0

People-based marketing has continued its meteoric rise since the concept debuted at Advertising Week almost three years ago. In fact, a recent study commissioned by LiveRamp found it “has become a strategic imperative for virtually every brand,” with 92 percent of marketers saying that the inclusion of people-based tactics in digital marketing is “vitally important.”

Defined as the ability to target real people across channels and devices using a persistent identity, a people-based approach enables marketers to deliver more relevant and coordinated content, messages and offers that enhance the consumer experience, and in turn, drive greater returns for their business. While the benefits are clear, capitalizing on the opportunity remains a key challenge—with data fragmentation, identity resolution and omni-channel consumer views cited in the study as major roadblocks.

So how can marketers overcome these hurdles and deliver on the promise of people-based marketing? Here are three key strategies to set your organization up for success:

Recommended Read: Interview with Manu Mathew, Co-Founder & CEO – Visual IQ

Break Down Silos

People-based marketing requires having insight into every touchpoint in the consumer journey, so marketers can deliver relevant messages and offers to customers and prospects at key moments of engagement or opportunity. Unfortunately, most marketing organizations operate in technical and operational silos—with marketing functions managed separately by different internal teams, and advertising managed by one or more external agencies. When channels and tactics are managed and measured in silos, it’s impossible to holistically assess performance, or track the consumer journey from first exposure to final conversion.

To successfully implement a people-based marketing strategy, brands must break down these silos. By merging disparate sources of audience and interaction data into a single, centralized repository, marketers can track the consumer journey across all touchpoints and use multi-touch attribution to analyze marketing and media performance in the context of key audiences. With a holistic and comprehensive view of what’s working and what’s not for each type of audience, internal and external teams can work together to maximize spend efficiencies while delivering a better overall experience for both customers and prospects. This kind of audience-based analysis, where marketing and advertising performance is tied to demographic, behavioral and other audience attribute data, provides some of the most powerful and actionable insights a marketer can ask.

Read Also: Martech Series Primer: How to Create a Mobile Marketing Strategy in 2017

Target Individuals, Not Cookies

Unlike cookies, people-based marketing gives marketers the ability to target real individuals that are linked across digital, mobile and offline environments using a unique identifier. While most customer relationship management (CRM) systems contain the information required to personalize communications with customers and sometimes even with prospects, many marketers lack the ability to resolve identity across all channels and devices. Without a single, 360-degree view of each individual, marketers can’t deliver relevant, coordinated communications across their preferred channels and devices.

To produce a richer view of individuals, marketers need to reconcile disparate online, device and offline point of sale data with deep demographic, intent, interest and other audience attribute data. By synthesizing all this data together, marketers can develop a more complete, people-based view of their customers and prospects, create high-value audience segments to target, and tailor messages and experiences to meet their unique needs and preferences.

Optimize Omni-Channel Experiences

A people-based marketing strategy prioritizes how brands connect and engage with customers and prospects in each phase of their journey. Consumers don’t engage with a brand in a linear fashion. Instead, they meander through the funnel and expect different interactions depending on whether they’ve just become aware of your product, are considering options, or are ready to purchase.

To optimize their omni-channel experiences, marketers need smart technology that helps them understand the journeys their customers and prospects take, and optimize their experience with individual touchpoints along the way. Marketing intelligence platforms have recently emerged that combine audience attribute data with tactical marketing performance, so marketers can see all the consumer touchpoints involved in the buying cycle and track how each interaction contributes to a desired action (e.g. engagement, online conversion, in-store visit, etc.) at each stage in the funnel. With visibility into how certain audiences respond to different messages, offers, creatives and other granular tactics, marketers can make the consumer’s whole journey a better experience, while optimizing their budgets to drive the online and offline success metrics they care about most.

As the meteoric rise of people-based marketing proves, there is a growing awareness that marketers must rethink their traditional approaches and target, measure and optimize their marketing and advertising at the level of real people. Marketers must base their efforts on an in-depth understanding of their customers and prospects, their journeys, and the marketing and media tactics that produce the best results. And this means having the right technology to produce effective and actionable people-based intelligence.

Read Also: Visual IQ Integrates Lotame Audience Data to Deliver People-Based Marketing Insights

TechBytes with Sudeep Eldo Cherian, Director, Head of Global Product Marketing, LinkedIn

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Sudeep Eldo Cherian
TechBytes with Sudeep Eldo Cherian, Director, Head of Global Product Marketing at LinkedIn

Sudeep Eldo Cherian
Director, Head of Global Product Marketing at LinkedIn

The world’s most widely used B2B networking site, LinkedIn announced new audience matching solutions to enable marketers to drive more focused and hyper-targeted campaigns. With interactive marketing in a state of perpetual flux, it’s important for marketers to rely on performance metrics such as clicks and impressions to understand how the target audience behave on your website. LinkedIn’s Website Demographics helps marketers discover the professional traits of website visitors.

We spoke to Sudeep Eldo Cherian, Director Monetization, LinkedIn, to understand how marketers can leverage the B2B networking website to refine their ABM campaigns using the right content for the right audience at the right time.

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MTS: How would you distinguish between Audience data, Customer data, Identity Data and Device Data?
Sudeep Eldo Cherian: Website Demographics leverages LinkedIn audience data to allow marketers to understand the professional traits of their website visitors. They can do this by filtering by 8 individual professional dimensions, including: Job title, Industry, Job seniority, Job function, Company, Company size, Location and Country. This does not include customer, identity, or device data.

MTS: How does Website Demographics measure the performance of marketing campaigns from the desired audience segments? Would you provide us a sneak preview into the analytics and reporting dashboard?
Sudeep: Website Demographics helps marketers see the professional demographic data of their website visitors so they can improve their marketing strategy. While you won’t see specific performance of your marketing campaigns here, you can see how your marketing activities are influencing the types of people visiting your site

MTS: How do you see Website Demographics improving people-based B2B targeting campaigns, especially for ABM and social selling?
Sudeep: People-based and account-based B2B marketing is all about matching the right content with the right audience at the right time. With Website Demographics, marketers can better understand their audience and create more tailored content to better engage them and improve their overall marketing strategy. For example, if your ABM strategy is focused on engaging a certain industry, you can validate if you’re attracting that audience to your website and potentially discover new audiences.

MTS: Does Website Demographics sync with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator and Matched Audiences?
Sudeep: Website Demographics is another way for marketers to leverage the LinkedIn Insight Tag. The LinkedIn Insight Tag offers marketers the ability to use conversion tracking, Matched Audiences, and Website Demographics from LinkedIn. With Matched Audiences, a marketer can retarget traffic from parts of their website. However, with Website Demographics, they can understand the professional traits of their website traffic and improve their marketing strategy. This does not directly sync with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

MTS: How is Website Demographics different from other marketing analytics tools? Is LinkedIn leveraging AI/ML technologies to make datasets more accurate for marketing campaigns?
Sudeep: Website Demographics differs from other analytics platforms on the market because it leverages high quality LinkedIn audience data to provide marketers with unparalleled insights on the professional attributes of their website visitors. Based on these insights, marketers can go directly into LinkedIn Campaign Manager and use the same professional traits to target the audiences that matter to their business.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Sudeep.
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

Adbrain Integrates with Narrative I/O’s Data Commercialization Platform (DCP) to Extend the Global Reach of its Customer Identity Data

By
Avinash Duduskar
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0
Narrative.io

Data marketplace and platform company Narrative has partnered with Adbrain, a global provider of intelligent customer identity technology solutions, as a premier cross-device data source for Narrative’s newly launched Data Commercialization Platform (DCP). The Platform is a digital data marketplace for buyers and sellers of raw data assets to easily discover each other and transact, avoiding the headaches and costs of lengthy contract discussions and one-off  integrations.

Adbrain is providing its powerful cross-device data sets to the Narrative DCP. Adbrain’s data is valuable for marketing technologists who want to build their own people-based marketing solutions.

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Bryan Everett, President, Narrative

“Our mission is to make data access, acquisition, and integration as simple and expedient as possible by transparently connecting data owners with relevant data acquirers. Our customers are consistently trying to tie together the data that they acquire through Narrative’s marketplace with highly scalable and accurate identity data that is portable to a variety of different ecosystems for execution.  Adbrain is a perfect fit for this given its global reach, intelligent cross-device technology and unique position in the market as being media agnostic with industry-leading ID mapping capabilities,” said Bryan Everett, President at Narrative. “.”

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Gareth Davies, CEO,  Adbrain

“We’re excited to be an early adopter of Narrative’s revolutionary new platform. The partnership with Narrative opens up a new network of potential clients for Adbrain given the broad base of buyers that are connected to the marketplace. It’s a huge step forward for the market to have easy access to customer identity resolution data, and given the transparent nature of the platform, we’re looking forward to building strong relationships with a whole new set of demand partners” said Gareth Davies, CEO, Adbrain.”

Also Read: Media iQ and Adbrain Alliance Enables AiQx to Deliver Cross-Device insights

Interview with Maria Osipova, VP Marketing, MediaValet

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Maria Osipova
Interview with Maria Osipova, VP Marketing at MediaValet

[mnky_team name=”Maria Osipova” position=” VP Marketing at MediaValet”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/MarketMO” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariaosipova/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Organizing and building a structure around content and assets is a critical first step and then prioritizing integrations that will have the largest impact.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role and how you got here? What inspired you to be part of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) company?
I joined MediaValet two years ago, at a really exciting time for our company and for the Digital Asset Management industry. The exponential growth of content, the explosion of video and media formats, increased buying power of marketers, sophistication of search and AI technologies – all of this was happening simultaneously, and I like to say creating a “perfect storm” for Digital Asset Management platforms to become a required part of marketing stack for majority of organizations.  Previously we’ve seen such momentum with CRM, Marketing Automation, BI and now ABM.  Not only is it incredibly exciting to be part of this dynamic, it also provides opportunities to provide education and value to the marketplace that is searching for information about Digital Asset Management initiatives.

I joined MediaValet to lead a marketing team and marketing strategy, after many years of working in a variety of technology and software companies, focusing on growth and customer experience.  I loved the opportunity to join the company built on the incredibly robust Microsoft Azure platform, being able to leverage our Microsoft partnership and seeing a fanatical dedication to customer success right from the start.

MTS: Given the changing dynamic of marketing technologies, how do you see DAM platforms integrating with rest of the automation stack?
The Digital Asset Management industry is going through a transformation.  From what used to be a highly organized, specialized platform for images and media, mostly used by creative and design teams, DAM has turned into a mission critical application for the entire marketing organization or even the entire company.

The ability to connect Digital Asset Management, as a system of record (single source of truth) for the company’s content to distribution channels, and to internal productivity platforms is where they have the biggest impact. Digital Asset Management technology has the capability to transform content flow and automation within an organization.

Organizing and building a structure around content and assets is a critical first step and then prioritizing integrations that will have the largest impact. For organizations that constantly upload media and visuals on their website, CMS integrations will have an immediate impact on productivity. At this time technologies that are automating content and media distribution through different channels (social, email, web, digital), collaboration, and analytics are a good first step.

MTS: How should CMOs leverage AI-based asset search and targeting capabilities to scale the challenges in content and email marketing?
Over the past years, marketing achieved a more and more prominent role within organizations because they were able to successfully solve problems of scale as they relate to revenue generation. Marketers were able to effectively communicate, educate and deliver value to a large number of prospects. Content creation reached has reached media production volume and quantity, with major brands competing with traditional media channels for a share of the audience’s attention.  However, all of these advancements were based on ability to segment and target groups of people with assumed similar interests and problems.  Well, the world no longer works this way.

Volumes of email and content diluted audience attention so much, that only the most relevant, personalized approaches can get through to busy prospects. Budgets are available and the challenges to be solved are ever increasing, yet only just-in-time, most relevant outreach through a preferred channel will work to engage buyers.  AI brings a promise to solve personalization of marketing at scale. Cognitive services and AI are already utilized to scale image and content organization and tagging with accuracy constantly improving.

Next, we’ll be able to leverage predictive abilities of AI – first for best performing or most fitting images and assets – Salesforce, Microsoft, and Hubspot are working on recommendation bots. So what we’ll see in a DAM context is AI – driven content optimized for one’s visual and delivery channel preference (email, mobile, social etc.), triggered by the digital behavior indicators and personalized to be relevant to the search.  Exciting times!

MTS: How should CMOs plan their MarTech stack integrations to maximize the benefits from predictive analytics and AI-assisted sales enablement engines?
The enemies of predictive analytics and AI are siloed technologies and lack of or bad data. So it’s important to build a stack around key systems of record, integrating other complimentary technologies.

CRM became de-facto system of record for customer data. Marketing Automation for a prospect’s digital journey.

Digital asset management is now a system of record for companies’ digital assets.  All of those systems require high levels of organization and record and data hygiene. Establishing good data processes, building asset structures that will scale and connecting investing into systems with robust APIs will enable CMOs to leverage AI across those technologies and along the entire buyer journey.

MTS: What startups in MarTech ecosystem are you watching/keen on right now?
Vidyard, Zoom, Kemvi (just acquired by Hubspot), AdMass, Phrasee

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We’ve built our internal marketing processes and then used automation to scale the most effective channels.  We have Salesforce.com as CRM, integrated with Pardot as a system of record for audience engagement through lead-to-customer cycles.  We also use our own solution, MediaValet DAM as a system of record for content and media, from production to content distribution and team and partner enablement.
Other than these, we are using—

  • Unbounce for A/B testing,
  • Vidyard for video engagement,
  • Rainking for account intelligence,
  • Salesloft for sales engagement,
  • And, multiple social media management tools to name a few.

MTS: Would you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
We’ve seen great success with our eBooks and this year we launched our CMO Digital Transformation Workout eBook with a multi-channel campaign. To build a winning modern marketing strategy, it takes vision, discipline, and effort across several different channels.

The eBook targets marketing leaders and provides actionable information to improve key marketing channels at the core level and then takes them to the next level, leveraging the Digital Asset Management platform. In the first few months of the launch, we’ve generated 400+ leads and created and influenced dozens of pipeline opportunities.

We’ve atomized the content into separate guides for each different channel, creating multiple sales enablement resources. However, our internal launch and social media campaign around #DAMworkout challenge are really near and dear to my heart – almost every employee supported the launch campaign by sharing their workouts on social, filling our social feeds for weeks  –  makes me so proud of our MediaValet team and culture that creates the level of employee engagement and support.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
AI will provide both disruption and incredible amount of opportunity.  As a marketing leader, one needs to at the forefront of the trend, taking small steps yet, having a vision and a strategy for the big picture of business transformation. That means experimenting with AI technologies in an area of low impact first, testing AI bots and evaluating insights provided, seeing results, then expanding the roll out.

On the other hand, AI will have the biggest impact in connected organizations both in terms of technology and team alignment. So, this is an incredible opportunity for marketers to build tighter alignments between technology, sales, support, product team leaders and drive intelligent insights into the business as a whole, expanding influence and benefits.

This Is How I Work 

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

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Slack, Salesforce, Asana, Notes

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Don’t do list.  A concept I learned from Patty Azzarello’s book Rise that I fall into during the busiest, most challenging times.  In addition to identifying “ruthless priorities”- the most impactful strategic work, I jot down the list of things I will not do for that period of time.

Things like answer emails other than in the last hour of the day, dig into Salesforce or Google Analytics reports, Social – things that are easy and nice and can take up lots of time compared to gut wrenching, hard but most impactful things that I resolved to tackle.

MTS: What are you currently reading?
I learn about new developments in marketing and tech industry from a curated over time list of experts via LinkedIn Updates. The articles I repost, I read in full and usually try to summarize and highlight the most impactful points. It helps me absorb the information and also adds value to people in my network.

However, in order to really grow in my field. I read a lot and often a few books at the same time. Right now in my reading stack are Move by Patty Azzarello (every page in Patty’s books is actionable and zero fluff), Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt and Flight of the Buffalo by James A. Belasco and Ralph C. Stayer.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
“There is nothing you can’t do.”  I’m not afraid to tackle unknown hard things and have the confidence to do them well.

Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
I have two, both are brilliant, and have taken some of the most recognizable brands to huge levels of success.
Bill Macaitis and Russell Fujioka.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Maria” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e1700-3136″]

Maria is the VP of Marketing at MediaValet, a cloud-based digital asset management company. She is a Revenue Marketer with 10 years of successful track record driving predictable and sustainable sales growth in SaaS, technology and software organizations. Specializing in development of lead to revenue strategies, she drives demand generation for complex B2B sales cycles with an emphasis on sales-marketing alignment and process improvement.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About MediaValet” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e1700-3136″]


MediaValet helps marketers manage, collaborate and share marketing assets and content, improving team’s productivity and increasing ROI on content investment.  As the only Digital Asset Management platform designed from the ground up on Microsoft Azure, MediaValet provides global accessibility, enterprise security, and scalability combined with a simple and easy-to-use interface.

[/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.

Bluescape and Buzzfire Partner to Bring Best-in-Class Collaboration Solutions to North American Clients

By
Avinash Duduskar
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1
Bluescape - Image
Bluescape

Bluescape, an innovator in visual collaboration software, announced a new strategic partnership agreement with Buzzfire, a leading provider of robust, integrated AV-meets-IT meeting room solutions. As part of the agreement, Bluescape will be the cornerstone technology for Buzzfire’s new Collaborative Technology Practice, which consists of a dedicated staff focused on delivering interactive and collaborative technologies to businesses throughout North America.

Randy Zahora - Image
Randy Zahora

“Bluescape has a product like no other in the collaborative and interactive space. They have vetted the best interactive touch display technologies and built a software solution designed to make the collaborative experience as immersive and intuitive as possible. This makes Bluescape a best-in-class collaborative technology and the reason we have chosen it as the cornerstone technology for our Collaborative Technology Practice,” said Randy Zahora president of Buzzfire.

With Bluescape, teams are able to collaborate with one another and their customers in one, persistent, visual, and entirely digital workspace. A cloud-based solution with an intuitive interface, Bluescape allows users to see the whole picture as they create, develop, and refine, resulting in better products and solutions, faster. The technology is used by some of the most respected and successful companies in the world.

Nicholas Brown - Image
Nicholas Brown

“Buzzfire is unique in that they bring a highly-personalized service to their clients and can expertly scale execution and delivery to meet customers’ needs efficiently and cost-effectively. They listen to their clients and design and execute solutions with flawless implementation. Now with Bluescape, they’ve created a virtually unbeatable combination.” said Nick Brown, VP of product and marketing for Bluescape.

 

Also Read: SintecMedia Names Lorne Brown as Global Chief Executive Officer

How Key Customer Loyalty Drivers Have Changed Over the Last Decade

By
Absolutdata
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2
Customer Loyalty Drivers
How Key Customer Loyalty Drivers Have Changed Over the Last Decade

The HVS Global Hospitality report A New Breed of Traveler finds that rising affluence, globalization, and increased access to communication technology have impacted the values of modern hotel guests. Experiences and the feeling of “being connected” are now more desirable than traditional hotel luxuries.

This new segment of traveler is no longer looking for white-linen service, bellboys to carry their luggage or a concierge. When millennial travelers look for a hotel or enter a hotel, they want to feel connected and to be in a setting where they can be part of a shared experience. A comfortable, modern lobby with stacked workspaces, hangout spots, and great Wi-Fi are more important than any single feature in a room. The changing nature of hotel guests is also prompting a change in traditional marketing methods.

Read Also: inMarket Leverages Its Location Data to Analyse Retailer Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty will always remain critical for the hotel industry, as over two-thirds of travelers will choose to vacation somewhere they’ve already been. What’s more, millennial travelers have shown an increased interest in loyalty programs, which increases the likelihood of creating a more loyal generation of travelers than expected. Studies show that millennials will pay more per night (and travel out of their way) to stay with their preferred hotel brand.

But with the drivers of customer loyalty shifting, how can hotels adapt? The top strategies to implement are improved technology, personalization of experiences and loyalty programs, and gamification in both loyalty programs and marketing.

Technology Improvement

Traditional loyalty programs are failing to secure a following among choosy younger travelers, which leads to the question: What else you can do? The answer lies in Technology advancement.

  • 52% of millennials want to use their mobile devices to take advantage of loyalty programs offered by restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Millennials want to be acknowledged, with personalized rewards that reflect their individual preferences. For the operator, this offers huge potential in collecting invaluable data about customer behavior and delivering targeted promotions to drive order value and revenue.
  • The rise of the self-check-in hotel feels like a long-awaited inevitability. Self-service machines dominate supermarkets and airplane terminals—so why not hotel lobbies as well? Many hoteliers worry that last-minute deal apps are retraining customers to stop booking early in hopes of getting a better deal. But what hoteliers need to keep in mind is that such bargain hunters are a different customer altogether, and they rarely overlap with the “brand loyal” base.
  • Make no mistake – millennials in every country are already using their mobile devices to conduct core functions with hotels. Among the findings: 20% had checked into a hotel using their mobile, while 46% had booked a hotel room through similar means.

Read Also: Yello Joins Thunderhead ONE Engagement Hub to Drive Customer Loyalty and Brand Advocacy

Personalizing the Experience

Personalization of loyalty programs and experiences can be achieved in three key ways.

  • Specific personas: The first step of providing a personalized experience is knowing your customer base. A recurring, loyal visitor does not expect to be treated the same as a new customer. Categorizing customers based on their preferences and behavior patterns is a simple way to better connect and engage the customers. Techniques like micro segmentation can help hotels categorize customers in small exclusive groups to better analyze buying patterns and other trends.
  • Targeted campaigns: Every customer likes a good deal but what that means differs from person to person. Tailoring your campaigns to cater to the needs of that customer (based on his/her profile) is a definite way to increase engagement. Techniques like key driver analysis and correlation analysis can help hotels shortlist the most significant drivers of customer loyalty.
  • Digital channels: Over the last decade digital media has taken the center stage in the marketing strategy of all businesses. A dominant presence in social media circles like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, etc. is a must for all hotels. The hotel industry can also benefit by using these channels to collect insights and data about their brand and customers, conduct social listening, and use text mining algorithms—all with purposeful intent.

Gamification of Loyalty and Marketing

Gamification is thought to be so successful because it engages the target audience and incites more commitment than passive methods of marketing and customer outreach. Increasingly, marketers are using gamification—or more specifically, the psychology of gamification—to attract, cultivate and retain brand enthusiasts over the coming years.

Hilton’s Embassy Suites has incorporated game techniques into its customer loyalty campaign. The campaign targeted 50,000 of Embassy Suites’ most loyal guests and solicited their participation with 10 different approaches, such as direct mail, email, and asking customers to play a game. The 5,000 people targeted by the game were most likely to open emails and later spent the most money. That group accounted for about $200,000 of the additional $1 million in revenue generated by the campaign.

Read Also: Anexinet Unveils New Mobile Customer Self-Service Platform To Increase Customer Lifetime Value

Don’t Let ‘Too Difficult’ Be an Excuse for Not Addressing Customer Engagement

By
Jason Hemingway
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0
Customer Engagement
Don't Let 'Too Difficult' Be an Excuse for Not Addressing Customer Engagement

Start To Listen To Your Customers And Look At The Organizational Silos That Exist In Your Business

Navigating the route to customer engagement can feel big and scary. And yes, customer engagement strategies will eventually be company-wide initiatives involving multiple departments – but they don’t have to start that way. Not all departments need to be in the room from the start, and this certainly shouldn’t be a deterrent or prompt to brush the topic under the carpet for another quarter.

You have to start somewhere. It’s rare to find the perfect moment, but there needs to be an urgency to take action and prevent your customers being poached by brands that are getting it spot on. In fact, 25% of consumers will switch provider after just one negative experience, and 59% of customers feel they’re in a one-way relationship with a brand.

Instead of making it such a big leap, take a step back and evaluate some small projects towards change. For example, start to listen to your customers and look at the organizational silos that exist in your business. Each silo has an ultimate responsibility to your customers, so it’s time to work together to put the customer needs first. Technology exists to help, not hinder, your efforts.

Read Also: Telstra and Content Guru Team up to Deliver Next-gen Customer Engagement

Rather than burying your head in the sand, here are four ways you can take the first steps towards customer engagement:

Listen

Listen to your customers now. Get to know them, understand what they’re doing and what is their need. What’s their journey? Put them at the centre and think about it from their perspective. A good example of this is SSAT (Schools, Students And Teachers network). With a constant spotlight on the quality of education across the country, it was crucial for SSAT to ensure its services added value to members nationally. Providing each school with the right resource, support and accreditation would ultimately help each become the best it could be.

SSAT realized that by really listening to its members, across any channel or device they interacted with, it could discover what members really wanted. Employing Thunderhead’s ONE Engagement Hub meant SSAT was able to join up digital, outbound and customer service channels with its CRM, ensuring a 360-degree view of the customer to fuel the right kind of conversation. Over the course of four weeks, the hub matched over 5,000 previously anonymous website interactions to specific CRM records. Consequently, high-volume, generic outbound emails became low-volume, ongoing and personalized conversations.

Connect

Connecting a couple of customer-facing channels is the beginning of piecing together your customer journey. Just by joining web and CRM, or mobile app to mobile website, you can make huge differences to the experience your customer receives. Connecting channels can equip you to engage in insight-driven conversations with customers who are at different points in their journey. Unlike businesses, customers don’t think in terms of channels. They are driven by their in-the-moment needs, but by connecting the channels you can improve this.

Read Also: EY Opts for Thunderhead’s ONE Engagement Hub to Drive Customer Engagement

Learn

Use insight gained from listening to make changes for the better and help your business prioritize projects that have the most value. Using the lens of the customer journey, create relationships with your customer to consistently meet their expectations and not annoy them. Learn from the insights that are available to you and use technology and AI to your advantage. Look to technology that can work with existing systems to deliver wins that can help coordinate activity, while developing longer-term engagement strategies across the wider business. A connected, relevant and personalized experience for your customer every time – what’s not to love?

Fast start

By proving ROI with smaller projects initially, it will be easier to persuade other stakeholders in the business about the benefits of striving for customer engagement. You don’t have to do it all at once.  It’s a journey for you, as well as your customers, but you do have to take the first step. This would mean moving towards a situation where sales, service, ecommerce and marketing can work together, and a culture of the customer is established throughout the organization.

Armed with these recommendations, a shift towards focusing on customer engagement becomes less daunting. The reality is that every customer interaction can eventually be personalized and relevant, and the opportunity is there to tailor actions in-the-moment to deliver the best conversation at the most relevant time for the customer.

Brands should aim to give customers something they’ll value each and every time they interact, which will ultimately result in engaged customers and trusting relationships.

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity” – Amelia Earhart. Instead of placing customer engagement on the ‘too difficult’ pile, CMOs should take the lead, starting small and building on their engagement strategy as the business starts to see real returns.

Read Also: AmplifyReach unveils ChatBot for Freshdesk Marketplace, To Enable 24/7 Customer Engagement

TechBytes with Dan de Sybel, CTO at Infectious Media

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Dan de Sybel
TechBytes with Dan de Sybel, CTO at Infectious Media

Dan de Sybel
CTO at Infectious Media

According to an eMarketer report, programmatic display ad spend will reach $33 billion this year and would hit $46 billion by 2019. Earlier this year, Infectious Media partnered with Screen6 to offer targeted, cross-device digital campaigns on a global scale. We spoke to Dan de Sybel, CTO at Infectious Media, to explore how businesses can maximize programmatic performance using data science, analytics and brand safety strategies.

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MTS: Tell us about your role at Infectious Media and how you arrived at this position?
Dan de Sybel: As CTO, I determine how we deploy technology to achieve our goals, whether that’s buying it in or building up from scratch. I also manage the team that builds the tech once the decision is made to go down that route.

Although I originally wanted to work in banking, I first started working at a local data company due to family commitments. By the time I was ready to move on in 2002, relevant opportunities in the banking sector had largely dried up, so I stepped into a business analyst role at Advertising.com.

This was right at the point when digital advertising grew rapidly, almost exponentially. I joined a team of 12, and when I left we were at 1,000 employees across the world. I joined Infectious Media shortly after and was lucky enough to find many of the people I worked with had moved into the programmatic space. This proved invaluable when building Infectious Media’s Impression Desk platform.

MTS: How do you see bot traffic clashing with programmatic results? Do bots negatively affect the programmatic ROI?
Dan: The greatest thing about programmatic advertising is its flexibility and openness. Unfortunately, these are the qualities that bots have been able to take advantage of, albeit for nefarious purposes. It’s incredibly frustrating to see how much this has negatively impacted the perception of programmatic and ultimately the real ROI that it drives.

One of the main problems has been the fact that advertisers haven’t been given the knowledge they need to properly interrogate the numbers given to them by agencies and root out the influence of fraudulent traffic. Bots existed long before programmatic advertising, as have the systems involved in detecting them. It’s just there’s never been any motivation to tell the client about those risks. With programmatic continuing to highlight the true impact of bot traffic, that’s quickly going to change.

The tools required to better protect advertisers are out there and becoming more sophisticated by the day. It’s just going to take a more honest and open dialogue across the media supply chain to ensure everyone is benefitting equally and programmatic advertising is delivering on its full potential.

Read Also: AD/FIN and Infectious Media partner to bring Greater Accountability to Programmatic Media

MTS: What is the correlation between bot traffic and ad fraud metrics? How can programmatic capabilities resolve false reporting?
Dan: It’s safe to assume that higher bot traffic results in higher levels of fraud, but there’s no accepted standard to measure this. The closest we have is measuring the probability of fraud. The level of acceptable fraud varies from advertiser to advertiser – for our clients we aim for no more than 1%.

Programmatic is a great tool to minimize false reporting, thanks to the fact that much of its data is transparent and open to quick analysis. We’re now seeing an influx of new ad verification companies focused solely on processing other company’s data to identify and remove threats. Rather than having to spend months looking through huge amounts of data on their side, the right ad verification company allows brands and agencies to hand three months’ worth of data over and have it analyzed in rapid time. With these capabilities and added protection, it’s then that programmatic truly shines.

MTS: Most programmatic advertising platforms, networks, and exchanges have come together to provide a brand safe environment for advertisers. How do you see such collaborations helping the international programmatic ecosystem?
Dan: I think consortiums are a good idea as long as they can achieve something. It’s all very well to say that you’re actively handling brand safety, but if you do nothing but set up independent audits then it’s all hot air. What we need is some agreed best practice standards to work towards, that can be shared and used to effectively measure brand-safe environments for advertisers. Some consortiums, such as TAG, are developing these to provide a way for individual companies (and other consortiums) to measure their efficacy.

This actually rings true for fraud as well. In an ideal world, collaboration between advertisers, agencies and anti-fraud companies would be instant and seamless. If we received a request to purchase high-value inventory and we suspected it was fraudulent, we could then let others know via the real-time pipes of programmatic. If other people flagged it using these methods as well, then the consortium could act to block the inventory and use the signals to predict fraud and prevent it from happening again. But in the real world, sharing information can be problematic, not least because many companies earn money from developing new ways of detecting fraud who could lose their value, if such data was shared.

MTS: How can analytics and optimization tools allow advertisers to continually evolve their campaigns to maximize programmatic performance?
Dan: Ad tech is now hugely focused on data science. We now can interrogate every single data point, using smart analytics to turn that data into useful insights. Optimization allows you to act on that insight, with programmatic technology ultimately allowing you to automate the actions to deliver continuous performance with little human intervention.

The adaptability of programmatic means a single person can make changes to a campaign in seconds, based on the real-time data that’s constantly being fed back. Advertisers gain a much deeper understanding of what’s going on in their digital advertising, with programmatic continually improving performance.

MTS: What would be your advice to CMOs who are planning to invest in programmatic adoption in the near future?
Dan: Don’t think of programmatic simply as a new toy to invest in – instead, consider how it fits into your advertising strategy and how it can improve your offering. Go in with open eyes, and work with partners you trust.

That being said, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Many agencies and advertisers are scared of programmatic due to concerns over brand safety, ad fraud or highlighting long-standing errors in the execution of their campaigns. These have always been concerns in the advertising industry; the transparency of programmatic simply makes them more visible. Brands shouldn’t be afraid of this visibility – we can certainly learn and achieve more because of it.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Dan.
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

Read More: Infectious Media and Screen6 partner to bring the promise of “Programmatic Everywhere”

Interview with Oliver Roup, Founder and CEO, VigLink

By
Avinash Duduskar
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1
Oliver Roup
Interview with Oliver Roup, Founder and CEO at VigLink

[mnky_team name=”Oliver Roup” position=” Founder and CEO at VigLink”][/mnky_team]
[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/oroup” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/oroup/”]
[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Affiliate marketing is just starting to make the leap from hard-coded links to a render-time decision, and the ability to utilize data to drive performance is going to have a huge impact.”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Affiliate Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us a little bit about your role at VigLink and how you got here? (What inspired you to start an affiliate marketing company)
Oliver: I was looking for a business to start and became interested in affiliate marketing, but after logging into an affiliate marketing platform, the process as it existed seemed remarkably complex. I reasoned that, even with two CS degrees, if I still had a hard time figuring it out, the average blogger and content publisher would struggle as well.  In 2008, I wrote a crawler that looked for links to Amazon to see how many websites and content publishers were effectively using affiliate links, and I found that less than half of the commercial links were affiliated. At that moment, I knew there was a real opportunity to help both publishers and merchants gain the ability to effectively and profitably execute affiliate marketing strategies. In 2009, I founded VigLink, and have been running the company ever since.

MTS: Given how quickly automated affiliate marketing strategies have been accepted, how do you see this market evolving over the next few years?
Oliver: Over the next few years, the techniques used in programmatic display advertising will be applied to affiliate in a big way. From both display and search, most advertisers are familiar with a demand curve, where if you pay more, you’ll drive more traffic to your intended destination. Affiliate marketing is a weak representation of this characteristic. Whereas in search you can change your bids and see the effects immediately, changes in affiliate pricing usually take months and a trip to Affiliate Summit before seeing a change in traffic flow (particularly from content). This delay, comparative to other marketing and advertising technologies, is changing.

MTS: What do you see as the single most important technology trend or development that’s going to impact us?
Oliver: Content-driven commerce is on the same curve that display advertising  was on over the last few decades. Hard-coded creative yielded to ad servers and onto the auction-driven demand-side, supply-side and data management platform eco-system are pushing the landscape to where it is today. Affiliate marketing is just starting to make the leap from hard-coded links to a render-time decision, and the ability to utilize data to drive performance is going to have a huge impact.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge for startups to integrate with a platform like VigLink into their stack?
Oliver: At VigLink, we initially pitched ourselves as a “lights out” operation – install it once and forget about it, and just wait for the revenue to roll in. We focused on ease of installation and, if you want, you can still use VigLink that way. To really crank out the revenue, though, publishers and merchants both need to be watching their dashboards for what products are selling and trending via VigLink’s Trends Explorer. The challenge there can be that, to have the bandwidth and know-how to do so, it requires training and in some cases an editorial team incentivizing them to drive revenue.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
Oliver: I’m a huge fan of Cloudflare. It was started by some classmates of mine and has grown tremendously – at this stage, they proxy about 10% of all web traffic. They have an amazing platform to give publishers a menu of services they can add.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
Oliver: Intercom, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and Looker.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a business leader?
Oliver: You prepare by being first. The lesson isn’t just that jobs can be automated into nonexistence, it’s that well trained computer systems can typically do the job substantially better than humans. Tesla’s relatively crude Autopilot system already decreases accidents per road mile by 10%, relative to the baseline. Functions such as ad operations and media buying seem highly prone to not just automation, but automation whose performance dramatically exceeds the performance of the humans it replaces.

This Is How I Work

MTS: One word that best describes how you work.
Oliver: Single-threaded.

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Oliver: Gmail. 25 years later, email is still the core of how I communicate on the Internet.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Oliver: Tripit is a great simple tool for managing travel. I simply forward my emails to their platform and they curate a master itinerary for all my travel.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
Oliver: The Creator’s Code. It’s a smart book on what differentiates highly productive founders.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Oliver: Never list your cell phone number on documents you file with the SEC. This tip has saved me from countless unsolicited phone calls.

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
Oliver: Having an engineering background helps a lot. It lends credibility when recruiting engineers and gives me a sense of what’s possible on certain projects and in certain contexts.

MTS: Tag the one person whose answers to these questions you would love to read:
Oliver: Elon Musk.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Oliver” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e”]

I am the founder / CEO of VigLink. We are making the web better by making every link intelligent and valuable.

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About VigLink” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740c5a4b-c27aca64-108e”]

viglink logo

VigLink technology instantly and automatically captures the value of content that drives commerce. We monetize ordinary links to over 40,000 retailers, whether they’re created by you or us. Our technology works across sites, apps, and social networks so you can focus on your business, earn more, and avoid the hassle of managing countless affiliate programs.

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[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.

Immersv Raises $10.5 Million in Series A Funding to Scale Mobile 360 and VR Advertising

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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immersv featured

Round led by Rogers Venture Partners, with participation from several other leading investors

Immersv, an interactive advertising platform for Mobile 360 and Virtual Reality, has raised a $10.5 million in a Series A financing. Rogers Venture Partners led the investment round, with participation from a top-tier group of institutional and strategic investors including Foundation Capital, The Venture Reality Fund, Initial Capital, East Ventures, HTC Vive, MCJ Co. Ltd., GREE, i-mobile, Metaps, and Gigi Levy. Rogers Venture Partners General Partner, Paul Sestili, and Gumi’s Founder and CEO, Hironao Kunimitsu, have joined Immersv’s Board of Directors.

Read Also: TwentyThree Integrates with HubSpot to Bring Video and Marketing Automation Together

Immersv Capitalizes on Growing Video Advertising Market

Immersv will use the funds to accelerate product development and deployment, rapidly expand its available inventory through direct publisher as well as SSP integrations, and bring Mobile 360 and Virtual Reality offerings to global brands and performance marketers.

Mihir Shah, President and CEO of Immersv, said,“We’re excited to partner with some of the finest institutional and strategic investors in the world. While the mobile video market continues to grow, we believe interactive advertising experiences will displace the current video advertising market in the next few years providing better results for advertisers, higher yield for publishers, and a significantly better experience for consumers.”

Recommended Read: 5 Ways to Disrupt Video Marketing in 2017

The Series A funding builds on a year of significant product and market momentum for Immersv, which combines interactive 360 advertising with a programmatic real time bidding platform. The company has recently signed programmatic deals with more than 15 of the world’s largest Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) and Supply Side Platforms (SSPs).

Read Also: Meet the Latest Facebook Marketing Partner for Video Content: Mosaicoon

Leading Video Firms and Brands Rely on Immersv

Immersv’s partners now include leading firms such as Tremor Video, YuMe, Bidswitch, ironSource, Supership and United in Japan.  Major brands such as Nissan, Hawaii Tourism Bureau, and Mountain Dew have executed successful campaigns using Immersv’s offerings.

David Arslanian Tremor Video
David Arslanian, VP Strategic Partnerships, Tremor Video

David Arslanian, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Tremor Video, said, “We’ve been really pleased with the Immersv partnership on our sell-side platform. We look forward to helping advertisers programmatically engage with 360 video at scale.”

Paul Sestili said, “Immersv is the leader in the next wave of interactive digital advertising. Mobile 360 and VR advertising provides some of the highest view completion rates, click through rates, and overall engagement rates for both brands and performance advertisers. As the central marketplace for buying and selling these new ad formats, Immersv is well positioned to drive significant value for both advertisers and publishers.”

Read Also: HubSpot and Brightcove Join Forces to Target Growing Video Analytics Space

Currently, Immersv is fully dedicated to driving new digital markets toward mass consumer adoption. Founded in 2015 by an experienced team of experts in app marketing and ad-tech, Immersv is built from the ground up to help advertisers connect with consumers through interactive mobile 360 and VR while enabling developers to drive both distribution and monetization for their content.

Read More: Screen6 Launches Advanced Householding for Advanced Attribution in Video Advertising

ThoughtSpot Unveils AI-Based Analytics SpotIQ, Powered by New $60 Million Investment

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot Unveils AI-Based Analytics SpotIQ, Powered by New $60 Million Investment

Thoughtspot Launches SpotIQ To Put The Power Of 1,000 Analysts In Every Business Person’s Hands

ThoughtSpot, a leader in search-driven analytics for  enterprise, has announced that it secured  a fresh investment of $60 million. The latest funding brings its total capital raised to more than $160 million. ThoughtSpot has affirmed that it would use the capital to accelerate research and development for its AI-driven analytics platform, expand globally into Asia Pacific, and hire industry-focused customer success experts to nurture and grow key accounts. Leading analyst firm, Gartner Inc. had recognized ThoughtSpot on its 2017 Magic Quadrant for BI & Analytics Platforms in February 2017.

Read Also: Will Artificial Intelligence Exceed Human Performance in Marketing and Sales by 2025?

Latest Funding Follows Phenomenal Year of Growth and Customer Acquisition

In the past year, ThoughtSpot has achieved 270% customer growth with a significant percentage coming from the Fortune 500. Customers include Amway, Bed Bath and Beyond, Capital One, Celebrity Cruises, Chevron Federal Credit Union, DeBeers, Scotiabank and numerous other Fortune 500 customers. ThoughtSpot customers have now executed more than three million searches on the platform.

All of ThoughtSpot’s existing investors, led by LightSpeed Ventures (LSVP), participated in the new funding round and were joined by Capital One Growth Ventures, as both a new investor and a new customer.

ThoughtSpot Claims Working with Corporate Data to Get  Easier

Ajeet Singh
Ajeet Singh, Co-Founder and CEO,  ThoughtSpot

Ajeet Singh, Co-founder and CEO of ThoughtSpot, said, “One-by-one, enterprises are falling in love with ThoughtSpot. That’s because we make it effortless for non-technical business people to gain valuable insights from corporate data in seconds. 10% easier is not interesting to us. We’re making it 10,000% easier. Our mission is to deliver data insights at human-scale and SpotIQ is a massive leap forward. It puts the power of a thousand data analysts in the hands of every business person.”

Recommended Read: Salesforce Einstein Maps a New Path for Developer Success Using Intelligence Apps

Jaidev Shergill
Jaidev Shergill, Managing Partner, Capital One Growth Ventures

At the time of this announcement, Jaidev Shergill, Managing Partner of Capital One Growth Ventures, said, “Data intelligence drives our decision-making and allows us to consistently deliver intuitive customer experiences. With ThoughtSpot’s Relationship Search technology and SpotIQ, even non-technical teams can now quickly access and analyze data using simple language. We look forward to playing a role in its continued growth and evolution.”

ThoughtSpot Driven to Scale Analytics Market by 2020

The previously undisclosed investment round closed in January 2017, six months after ThoughtSpot’s $60 million series C funding that closed in July 2016. Investors seized on the opportunity to invest again after seeing the accelerated growth of Fortune 500 customers and the massive market potential for AI-driven analytics.

Co-founded in 2012 by its CEO Ajeet Singh and six other co-founders from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle, ThoughtSpot’s mission is to enable analytics at “human scale” and put search-driven analytics in the hands of 20 million users by 2020.

SpotIQ Equals Work Done by 10,000 Analysts or 40,000 Man-Hours

ThoughtSpot’s next-generation analytics platform uses AI at its core to power its Relational Search solution. SpotIQ is an AI-driven solution built on the platform to leverage ThoughtSpot’s massively scalable high-performance computing backend.

Recommended Read: Biggest AI Collaboration Ever: IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein Unified for Fast-Track Adoption of Cognitive Applications

SpotIQ works with Relational Search hand-in-hand to curate deep and relevant insights for users that they may not have thought to look for on their own. With a single click, SpotIQ can automatically ask thousands of questions about billions of data points and bring back dozens of insights in seconds. The equivalent would be hiring a thousand analysts, knowing exactly what questions you want them to answer, and then waiting a week for them to come back with reports and dashboards.

Sathish Koteshwar, VP of Business Intelligence at TrueBlue, said, “We are always trying to identify the factors that have the biggest impact on our business. It can feel like trying to find a needle in the haystack, given the amount of data we have to sift through. SpotIQ accelerates the process by automatically uncovering insights into what’s causing shifts in our business results, which allows us to be nimble in our decision making.”

Using the power of AI, SpotIQ accomplishes in a single click what could take 40,000 man hours. SpotIQ will be included in the ThoughtSpot platform for no additional charge and will be generally available on September 30, 2017.

SpotIQ Brings Transparency in AI Deployment and Processes for Businesses

Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee

In an interview with CIO Magazine, Bruce Lee, Head of Operations and Technology at Fannie Mae underscored the importance of SpotIQ’s transparent AI processes. He commented: “AI in things like credit decisions is fraught with a lot of regulatory hurdles to clear. So a lot of what we do has to be thoroughly back-tested to make sure that we’re not introducing bias that’s inappropriate and that it is a net benefit to the housing infrastructure. The AI has to be particularly explainable.”

Microsoft To Join Partners And Consumers IoT Expo and WCIT 2017

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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IoT Expo
Microsoft To Join Partners And Consumers IoT Expo and WCIT 2017

Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President Of Microsoft Azure, Shares Deep Insight On Intelligent Iot Deployment With Global Industry Leaders

Microsoft, the leading platform and productivity company for mobile-first, cloud-first world, has announced that it is joining its partners and customers at the IoT Expo 2017. As Internet-of-Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), smart factories, and intelligent applications continue to advance, businesses are increasingly turning to these technologies to create new business solutions with greater agility and drive competitive advantage. The IoT Expo 2017 would provide opportunities for delegates to network and discuss on enterprise digital transformation using IoT technologies.

Jason Zander
Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Azure at Microsoft

Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure, overseeing the development and global deployment of cloud infrastructure and technology, including Microsoft Azure IoT, will deliver a keynote on “Leading Digital Transformation and Landing IOT Value with a Strong IoT Partner Ecosystem“.

In addition to sharing the success of Microsoft’s IoT Innovation Center and its partners, Zander will also provide Microsoft’s vision of the development of IoT and in-depth analysis on the integrated application solutions of the world’s leading IoT partners.

Jason will also speak about digital transformation at the WCIT on September 12th from 11:00-11:30, focussing on how businesses can accelerate the growth of the IoT ecosystem.

Microsoft IoT Expo: Connecting global partners to IoT opportunities

Microsoft launched its IoT Innovation Center in Taipei last October to spur development between IoT partners and international enterprises and organizations. In 2017, Microsoft will hold its second IoT Expo in conjunction with the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), a two-day event beginning September 11th.

Microsoft IoT Expo
The first Microsoft IoT Expo and IoT Innovation Center in Asia was inaugurated in October 2016, in Taiwan

The 2017 Microsoft IoT Expo X WCIT will be held over two days, from Monday, September 11th to Tuesday, September 12th, at Taipei International Convention Center (No. 1, Section 5, Xinyi Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City). The IoT Solution Expo will take place at Zone D, Taipei World Trade Center Hall 1 (No. 5, Section 5, Xinyi Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City), which will gather global and local IoT partners in Taipei, showcasing IoT solutions and technologies.

Extreme Reach says, Consumers are Spending 19% More Time Watching Video Ads in 2017

By
Sudipto Ghosh
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0
Extreme Reach
Extreme Reach says, Consumers are Spending 19% More Time Watching Video Ads in 2017

Q2 2017 Benchmark Report From Extreme Reach Shows Dramatic Improvement In Viewability, Completion And Time Spent Metrics For Video Ads

Extreme Reach

Extreme Reach, a cloud technology platform for TV and Video ad workflow management, today unveiled its Q2 2017 Benchmark Report. The quarterly numbers reveal a significant increase in consumer response to video advertising and also draw attention to an increasing advertiser focus on mobile.

“Quality video ads are stories told to elicit a consumer response – this creative process won’t change.” – Dascha Bright, ExtremeReach

The report, which compares video ad serving metrics from Q2 2016 to Q2 2017, finds evidence that advertisers are putting out better video content and consumers are responding in kind. Specifically, viewability, completion rates and time spent metrics have all significantly increased from this time last year.

Recommended Read: Oracle Data Cloud adds More Muscle to Brand Safety and Viewability with Moat’s Acquisition

Key Highlights of the report

– The average amount of time viewers spent watching video ads has increased across the board by 19%.

– Viewability has seen an overall increase of 20% over 2016.

– Completion rates are up by 20%, with a 36% increase for premium publishers since this time last year.

 Great Ad Is Something People Are Willing to Watch Irrespective of Their Length

Dascha Bright, SVP of Account Management at Extreme Reach
Dascha Bright, Senior Vice President, Account Management, Extreme Reach

At the time of the announcement of this report, we spoke to Dascha Bright of Extreme Reach to understand how different video ad formats are making an impact on customer experience, viewability, and retention.

Dascha Bright has lead client service teams supporting ad technology for many years, including at Atlas, Microsoft, and Razorfish. Recently promoted from VP of Digital to Senior Vice President of Account Management, which is a new role, Dascha oversees all client relations across Extreme Reach’s TV, Video, and Talent accounts, getting the bird’s-eye view into how advertisers and agencies deploy their campaigns across screens.

Under-30 Seconds Ads Have Near-Identical Completion Rates on Video

Most advertising leaders feel that shorter videos make a larger impact. We asked Dascha how much of it does she attribute to video ads served on mobile. Dascha said, “While platforms like Snapchat and Instagram have made the idea of six-second ads popular, I’ve actually been noticing a tendency toward more creative 15 or even 30 second video ads that, despite being of a traditional TV ad length, tell stories in a way that’s meant to be viewed on a mobile screen. In an analysis conducted one year ago by eMarketer, 30, 15 and less-than-15 seconds ads actually had near identical completion rates on video, which says to me that a great ad is something people are willing to watch, regardless of length or platform.”

Media Vendors Are Accountable for Bad Inventory

We were curious to know how could video ad platforms demonstrate more accountability towards declining GIVT. Dascha explained to us that the advertisers and agencies are holding their media vendors more accountable for bad inventory. She mentioned, “At Extreme Reach, we have a very strong filter for GIVT and we actively help our customers work with media vendors to develop plans to blacklist sites and IP addresses that contribute to high-frequency, seemingly non-human traffic.”

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She added, “Extreme Reach is registered and verified by TAG (the Trustworthy Accountability Group) which has many programs to reduce invalid traffic and fraud in the digital advertising ecosystem.”

In-Depth Behavioral Research Key to Delivering Relevant Ads

With stringent data privacy laws coming into the picture, we asked Dascha if the newer data privacy guidelines make it harder for video advertisers to deliver better Customer experience and relevant brand messaging with ads. Dascha told, “While data obviously plays a key role in delivering relevant ads to the right consumers, the creative brand messaging of an ad is often based more on in-depth behavioral research that goes far beyond simple online data mining.”

She added, “Quality video ads are stories told to elicit a consumer response – this creative process won’t change. But making sure that these ads are shown to consumers that will appreciate them the most do require an element of data-driven, targeted delivery.”

Thank you, Dascha for speaking to us.

Small Video Players like Mobile is on the Rise.

In addition to the above data highlighting an industry wide improvement in video ad impact, Extreme Reach’s benchmarks report also found evidence that:

– Changes in Click-through rate (CTR) demonstrate changing screen preferences. Media aggregators, which most commonly run the bulk of their impressions on the desktop, experienced a 54% increase in CTR. Premium publishers, which are running more impressions on mobile/tablet and Connected TV, saw a 37% decrease in CTR over the past year.

– Vendors are being held more accountable for bad inventory. General Invalid Traffic (GIVT) is down by 33% since Q2 2016.

– Mobile is on the rise. Small Video Players, which are defined as less than 400×300 in pixels, saw a jump in usage. These players are most popular for mobile impressions.

– In-banner video ads are on the decline. There was a 17% drop in video in-banner ads over the last year.

Read More: AppNexus, LiveRamp, and MediaMath Launch Technology Consortium to Enable Privacy-First People-Based Programmatic Advertising

Dascha Bright, added, “Through our most recent Quarterly Benchmarks Report, we’ve noticed trends that attest to the ever-changing face of video advertising. As the Ad Cloud and workflow platform of choice for thousands of brand advertisers and agencies across the country, we have a birds-eye view into video ad placements and consumer response, which are shaping the way ads are deployed.”

Read Also: Collaboration is Key in Conquering Brand Safety

This is the inaugural public release of Extreme Reach’s Quarterly Benchmark Report based on the company’s third-party video ad serving data, which is MRC accredited for Viewability. It is conducted with the goal of providing visibility into changes in video advertising usage and metrics. Extreme Reach is the creator of the premiere workflow management system for the advertising industry, which streamlines every stage of a video ad’s lifecycle. From its Ad Cloud, video assets are easily served to every screen and device, ensuring complete Talent & Rights compliance and giving brands and their agencies full control and over where those assets play.

Currently, Extreme Reach offers the only enterprise technology designed distinctly to bring together the TV and Video ad workflow and all aspects of Talent & Rights management in a single, easy-to-use cloud platform. The singular platform and one process make brand advertising easier and analytics more insightful, with the assurance of rights compliance wherever ads play.

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