Interview with Bastiaan Janmaat, CEO and Co-Founder, DataFox

-

August 12, 2017

Obama White House — Setting Pace with Influencer Marketing, the Fastest-Growing Online Customer Acquisition Strategy

Influencer Marketing is the Fastest-Growing Online Customer Acquisition Strategy

Google Trends shows how Influencer marketing has steadily climbed the charts to displace print advertising. Sneaking close to video advertising, influencer marketing industry is on a trailblazer mode, bringing together the various cogs of the social media and branded content within the ‘sales’ flywheel.

Influencers are ruling the roost for brands across online channels. Dwarfing the company’s owned social media campaigns, influencer marketing has moved at a phenomenal pace in garnering more engagements than the branded content. According to an eMarketer report published in 2015, 84% of global marketers were working on at least one influencer campaign and nearly 81% of them acknowledged influencer engagements were effective. In 2017, the content promotion activities have edged past content creation for most brands, demonstrating how influencer marketing help in maximized engagements. In their latest infographic report, Influencer Marketing Hub, the leading influencer marketing resource for marketers and agencies, says that over 230 new platforms and influencer marketing-focused agencies have arrived in the market since 2015.

Finding the Right Influencer with Personalized Vetting Process

With brands leveraging User Generated Content (UGC) for their marketing and advertising, marketers find identifying the right influencers as their biggest pain-point.

To identify, marketers zero onto an influencer’s social profiles and data to determine if the engagement would work. SEO ranking, Alexa ranking and verified traffic data remain the critical metric for selecting any influencer.

GroupHigh offers a range of influencer marketing solutions that include identification of new influencers based on their social presence, total reach and location. From vetting influencers based on content categories to delivering a report on earned media from influencer marketing, GroupHigh enables marketers to track, foster and expand influencer network with tailored communication.

Cision is another reliable platform to identify social media influencers that are making the most buzz. Last month, the company unveiled exclusive Influencer Identification, Monitoring and Measurement Capabilities and other enhancements to its Cision Communications Cloud™.

Leveraging Earned Media: The Power of Middle Influencers

Two years ago, influencer marketing was blamed for being too mono-directional and too narrow for brands to maximize their ROI. In 2017, the doubts have vanished, largely due to the rise of the “Power Middle Influencers”. According to a study by Collective Bias, the apt spot for reach and engagement is between 35k and 65k followers. However, influencer marketing automation solution provider – TapInfluence, identifies Power Middle Influencers with an audience size of 10K-35K.

Influencer-generated content is found to perform better than UGC, and leveraging power middle influencers make content an appreciable asset and deliver direct ROI in a shorter time.

It’s Still a Number’s Game: Influencer versus Print versus Video

In a highly customer-centric world, there is a tectonic shift in how consumers rely on word-of-mouth marketing and advertising. Purchasing decisions are largely driven by what the customer sees, hears and researches online.

According to McKinsey’s study, word of mouth is the most disruptive factor and therefore, resonance factor of influencer content is the key to achieve incremental ROI from such campaigns. The influencer marketing is the potent answer to the rising use of ad blockers by consumers.

Influencer marketing platforms like Blogmint provide visual reporting on how influencers and their content created brand awareness among the audience. Reporting metrics on blog performance, Blog Score, is the simplest way to determine if influencer strategy would make the cut against the global benchmarking.

Validate your Strategies using Influencer Relationship Management (IRM)

Influencers get influenced too. And, it is imperative to score their influencing factors to move beyond the status quo of merely relying on traffic analytics. IRM platforms like Traackr help marketers to cast an “influential net” and expand influencer network based on an intelligent scoring algorithm that individually and cumulatively measures results of content, events, and campaigns. Self-service influencer marketing platforms such as IZEA bring inventiveness to generating traffic using pre-existing and ongoing content campaigns. To make data-driven decisions, Influencity provides real-time multi-channel analytic and compares influencer performance of every member of the community.

Other influencer marketing platforms that caught my eyes are InfluencerDB, InsightsAtlas, Influmeter, and Ubermetrics.

The Special Mention

Influencer marketing and social media analytics run parallel to each other. For an industry that is pegged to grow by $1.7 billion in 2018, a lot depends on how accurately influencer marketing platforms gauge content analytics. Talkwalker, the social media analytics and monitoring platform, is slated to become the data intelligence hub for influencer campaigns. With automated report building and monitoring on your fingertips, Talkwalker adds intelligence to every piece of content that runs from the influencer factory.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have their own set of influencer ‘superstars’. With increased brand awareness about influencer marketing, tightened by advertising transparency and data privacy policies, the industry is set to see unprecedented growth by 2020. Adding to it the magic of AI and “auto-vetting”, B2B brands would finally see their social selling efforts matching B2C and e-commerce influencers at scale.

Snapchat’s New Update Creates Huge Possibilities for Local SEO

By

Collin Holmes

-

August 11, 2017

2

Snapchat’s New Update Creates Huge Possibilities for Local SEO

In the State of Search Marketing survey, 74% of companies and 82% of agencies said that social media is either somewhat or highly integrated into their SEO strategies. In the past, this has meant the number of Facebook posts and Tweets but now, Snapchat could become a main platform for promoting your business locally.

Snapchat has created its own responsive map called Snap Map which enables users to share what they are doing with their friends and people near them. You can easily access the map by pinching your fingers together on the camera screen within the app. From there, you can see your friends and localized heat spots, or areas with a lot of Snapchat activity, around currently popular areas. Snap Map’s current release is in the beginning stages that said, it is designed to attract users to popular areas, concerts and sporting events. Because Snap Map is moving towards the discovery of places and events, local SEO looks like it could make a perfect integration within the app. With 166 million people logging into the app on a daily basis, this could soon be one of the primary ways for your business to gain an advantage in attracting new customers.

How does Snapchat stack up against local SEO competitors?

Snapchat has several key competitors now that it has entered into the Local SEO market. Its biggest rivals will obviously be platforms such as Google Local and Facebook Places. The reason these sites have become so popular is the transparency they provide with customer reviews. It’s all about trust. Consumers no longer trust businesses, advertising, and marketing messages, they trust each other. In a recent survey from Chatmeter, trust is established when you have at least 10 reviews. Even though these companies are the biggest right now for local SEO, they don’t offer real time experiences.

The only services that appear to rival Snapchat’s Map are ride sharing services. Companies such as Lyft and Uber are starting to catch onto this same map trend by adding local marketing opportunities for customers in transit. Soon ridesharing customers will be able to look at local recommendations within the map while they are driving. Snapchat is hoping to create an edge over these companies with their Snap Map because it will show users popular things to do that are currently happening. This is far different than any current local SEO strategy because Snapchat is providing real time local and geotagged information to its users.

How Businesses Can Optimize for Snap Map

Even though Snap Map has yet to bring a Local SEO function to the app, the best way you can start optimizing is by making a company Snapchat account. In order to attract the greatest amount of attention to your business, it is important that you let your customers know about your Snapchat through all other forms of social media. Snapchat has made it easy for you to get the word out by integrating searchable QR codes that can be downloaded and customized with your company’s branding and website information within your account. This is a great way to gain followers and add traffic to your website. You should also keep an eye out for news about the Snap Map to make sure you stay ahead of the game.

What This Means for Local Search

The best way Snapchat could incorporate Local SEO would be through paid “hotspots” and Snap Ads on Snap Map. Snapchat users now have the capabilities to create snaps and add them to public stories that any other Snapchat user could watch. This means you could eventually pay to be a popular spot on a local Snap Map, much like you would do with Google Ads, and become visible to local users searching for your business. This could transform the app to allow many users find new things they didn’t know existed. If Snapchat does this right, you could soon be able to connect with many new customers that are looking for something to do in your area.

Right now, the best thing you can do is to make sure you have appealing geofilter(s) at your location for all big events and special occasions. You can also try to encourage attractive content through promotions or prizes for the best photos. Remember, the more customers you have interacting with business, the hotter it will become on Snap Map.

Because Snap Map is in the beginning stages, as it grows, the possibility for SEO optimization will grow with it. Right now, it’s just important to get ahead of the game quickly before your competitors do.

Genesis Media Expands Programmatic Technology by Merging with Altitude Digital

By

Abhi Yadav

-

August 11, 2017

Genesis Media Expands Programmatic Technology by Merging with Altitude Digital

Company to Launch First Publisher Video Platform Connecting User Behavior Data, Content Analytics, and Programmatic Advertising

Genesis Media, a leading publisher analytics, and data science company, has announced that it has merged with Denver-based, Altitude Digital, a programmatic video technology company. The company will operate as Genesis Media.

The combination of these two companies creates a unique advertising platform for premium publishers that:

– Brings together publisher content analytics (Genesis Attention Platform™) and a Supply Side Platform (Altitude ARENA^®) into a single system
– Increases the amount of quality video supply—pre-roll and out-stream, that publishers can create and deliver to direct and programmatic buyers
– Expands the company’s team and engineering resources to better serve direct publishers by removing complexities and inefficiencies
– Allows programmatic buyers to bid on impressions with new data that measure the quality of individual pieces of publisher content and how the user interacts with that content

Mark Yackanich, CEO of Genesis Media says, “This merger further supports our mission to reward publishers for producing quality content with highly engaged audiences. It’s in those environments that brands can most effectively reach their customers with video advertising. Publishers need to maximize video revenue without ignoring the impact advertising has on its users—that’s where we come in.”

“Brands leverage programmatic to target consumers at scale but adding a new metric to help evaluate content quality offers interesting possibilities,” said Tim Libby, SVP Group Director at Starcom. “An enhanced approach to programmatic that allows brands to target highly engaged consumers while leveraging unique data to measure the quality of content makes a lot of sense.”

Joe Grover President and CMO at Genesis Media LLC — *Joe Grover, President and CMO at Genesis Media LLC*

Investments in data products and an expanded engineering team better position the company to address the complexities in the video media supply chain. Joe Grover, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Genesis Media and former CEO of Altitude Digital added, “This business combination is anchored around a deep commitment to quality in online advertising. From employing the most trusted verification tools, to understanding the quality of publisher content, to delivering better advertising experiences for the user. It’s a new approach to programmatic advertising.”

The company will have six operating offices in major US cities including Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco with New York headquarters.

About Genesis Media

Genesis Media is the first company to connect user behavior, content analytics, and programmatic advertising. Genesis’ real-time platform analyzes how individual pieces of web content are consumed by people, leveraging this data to create viewable video ad experiences that are best suited for each page and each device. With its programmatic technology, high-quality inventory is packaged into private marketplaces and direct deals. Premium publishers, leading national advertising agencies, and programmatic buyers rely on Genesis Media’s technology to accurately quantify the true value of publisher content and reduce waste for brand advertisers.

OpenNMT Developed by SYSTRAN and Harvard, Recognized by ACL 2017

By

-

August 11, 2017

OpenNMT, the Neural Translation System, Developed by SYSTRAN and Harvard, Distinguished by ACL 2017, the World Conference of Experts in Computer Linguistics

SYSTRAN, a software publisher specialized in machine translation and natural language processing has announced that the joint research and development between SYSTRAN and Harvard NLP on neural translation has been distinguished by the ACL, the 55th World Conference of Experts in Computer Linguistics. The article summarizing this research was awarded “Best Demonstration Runner-up” (finalist in the category of operational systems). This rewards a commitment of more than six months by the SYSTRAN R&D teams and recognizes the excellence of their research.

The ACL is the world’s leading meeting on research on automatic language processing. This year, the ACL was held in Vancouver from July 30 to August 4, 2017, and highlights the latest advances in artificial intelligence applied to language processing: neural translation, semantic analysis, automatic content generation. This year, ACL has decided to reward, among others, research projects that are distinguished by their excellence and their innovative character.

Open Neural Machine Translation, developed by SYSTRAN and Harvard, distinguished by ACL

In the “Operational Systems” category, the OpenNMT system developed by SYSTRAN and Harvard is one of the two finalist projects, ahead of dozens of other innovative projects representing the elite of international research. OpenNMT is an open source neural translation system, launched in December 2016, with several hundred users and contributors from the academic and industrial world. About twenty researchers, linguists, and engineers from SYSTRAN’s R&D, are working on the development of this platform and enlivening the user community.

Marketing Technology News: Hero Digital and Bulldog Solutions Join Forces to Reimagine B2B Customer Experiences

An important step for SYSTRAN

The mastery of neuronal technology by SYSTRAN and the positive reception by the market augurs very important development prospects. With GAFAM*, embarking on the development of similar solutions, SYSTRAN, always a forerunner, has already obtained the recognition of the scientific community and is moving on to the next stage. The company now wants to capitalize on these developments to open up new possibilities, beyond automatic translation, in other areas such as semantic analysis, multimedia document processing, or language learning. To feed these ambitious projects, SYSTRAN is currently recruiting experts to expand its R & D department, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Jean Senellart, Global CTO (Technical Director & Global Innovation) of the SYSTRAN Group comments on this distinction: “OpenNMT is at the crossroads of academic research and industrial requirements in an Open source context. This recognition enhances the work done by researchers, engineers and all of the user-contributors federated through this project. In an Open source project, a constant and long-term commitment is essential to gain the support of the community. It is this day-to-day commitment by the SYSTRAN R&D teams that are now rewarded. Nevertheless, the best is still ahead of us: in the months and years to come, our customers will be able to benefit from the incredible potential offered by these latest innovations. ”

Marketing Technology News: V-Click Technology Officially Launched

About SYSTRAN

SYSTRAN machine translation solutions enable companies to improve their multilingual communication and productivity in many areas such as in-house collaboration, Big Data management, monitoring, e-discovery, content management, customer support, E-commerce and localization projects. With more than 140 language pairs available, SYSTRAN solutions, which are secure and customized in every customer context, are used daily by many global companies, organizations in the defense and security sector, and translation agencies.

Since its creation, SYSTRAN has always been a pioneer in automatic language processing and today offers the market a new generation of engines by exploiting the latest advances offered by artificial neural networks and Deep Learning.

(Editor’s note: *G.A.F.A.M. is Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft)

Marketing Technology News: Asia-Pacific Managed Security Service Providers Need to Offer Advanced Analytics to Drive Growth Opportunities in the region, finds Frost & Sullivan

Openprise Launches ‘Openprise Data Marketplace’ to Normalize Data Ingestion and Unification

By

-

August 11, 2017

Openprise, the leader in data orchestration solutions for marketing and sales, has announced the availability of Openprise Data Marketplace, a new solution that simplifies the process of ingesting and normalizing data from multiple third-party data providers.

Openprise Data Marketplace Would Remove Exponential Complexities

Openprise Data Marketplace is an integral part of the Openprise Data Orchestration Platform, a SaaS application that solves the “garbage-in/garbage-out” problem by automating how companies onboard, clean, enrich, and unify their marketing and sales data across different systems.

Recommended Read: Interview with Ed King, Founder & CEO of Openprise

Until now, getting all of the third-party data that marketers needed, into solutions like Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot was often a complex, resource-consuming process. Trying to mash together data from multiple providers, each with their own standard field values, added to the complexity.

With Openprise Data Marketplace, marketing and sales teams gain instant access to the leading B2B and B2C data providers, with all the business processes to ingest and manage that data from multiple providers built right in. Companies save time and money and eliminate complexity in accessing and integrating the data they need for successful campaigns and account-based marketing programs.

ZoomInfo Adds Accuracy to Openprise Data Marketplace

Ed King, Founder & CEO of Openprise, said, “Earlier this year, we surveyed 175 marketing professionals to identify data marketplace trends and published our findings in the B2B Data Market Industry Report. We found that companies that worked with multiple data providers were much more likely to be satisfied with their third-party data, but those same companies expressed how much they struggled with pulling multiple providers’ data into their marketing and sales system of record while maintaining a consistent set of standards. Openprise Data Marketplaces solves this problem.”

According to Kevin Hsieh, Director of Online Marketing & Marketing Operations at AMAG Pharmaceuticals, “Since we work with many different data providers to get what we need, we’re excited that we could easily tap into all the providers we wanted in a matter of minutes, and normalize all of that data and tailor it to our specific requirements. Nobody else offers that capability.”

Phil Garlick, VP Corporate Development at ZoomInfo, said, “We’re excited to make ZoomInfo’s 210 million businesspeople and 11 million businesses available on the Openprise Data Marketplace. Openprise’s data cleansing and unification capabilities, combined with ZoomInfo’s data accuracy, provides marketing and sales teams with an unparalleled solution to run more effective campaigns.”

Premier data providers on the Openprise Data Marketplace include leading companies, including ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet, DiscoverOrg, InsideView, Orb Intelligence, SYNTHio, Google Search, Bing Search, GetEmail.io, Google Translate, and Google Maps, with others currently undergoing final certification and testing.

TechBytes with David Yaffe, GM, Publishers and Platforms, LiveRamp

By

-

August 11, 2017

TechBytes with David Yaffe, GM, Publishers and Platforms at LiveRamp

Over 450 publishers are now using LiveRamp’s IdentityLink, including Time, Inc., Hearst, and The Weather Company. IdentityLink unifies LiveRamp’s identity resolution suite of capabilities with those acquired in the 2016 acquisitions of Arbor and Circulate. We spoke to David Yaffe, GM, Publishers and Platforms, LiveRamp to understand the changing landscape of people-based marketing strategies after the new announcement.

MTS: Tell us about your role at LiveRamp and how you got here.

David Yaffe: I am the GM for LiveRamp’s publisher and platform businesses. Prior to LiveRamp, I cofounded Arbor to help publishers monetize their data, and we were acquired by LiveRamp late last year. With Arbor and now with LiveRamp’s IdentityLink, I’ve been working to help publishers and platforms participate in this movement towards omnichannel people-based marketing, whether that’s by monetizing data or offering people-based advertising solutions.

MTS: Could you provide us a sneak preview into the IdentityLink for Publishers’ Identity Graph?

David Yaffe: One of the foundational assets behind IdentityLink for Publishers is LiveRamp’s Identity Graph, which is the largest addressable deterministic graph available to the advertising ecosystem. The graph enables us to address a key challenge for publishers, which is increasing the addressability of their advertisers’ audiences. Through IdentityLink, publishers can combine LiveRamp’s Identity Graph with their first-party data — that allows them to recognize and target more advertiser audiences across their properties, regardless of the device or browser they use to access the publisher’s content.

But IdentityLink for publishers is more than the Identity Graph – it’s the set of services for publishers that connects identity across advertisers, technology platforms, and data providers. For example, IdentityLink enables publishers to access data for new insights about their audiences. Many publishers that work with us today focus on data monetization, either by distributing their data to advertisers and platforms for targeting or directly monetizing their authenticated web and mobile traffic. So while LiveRamp’s Identity Graph is a key element behind what we do for publishers, it’s really only the beginning of the story.

MTS: What are the new people-based marketing strategies that LiveRamp is targeting with its latest announcement?

David Yaffe: Our marketer clients, and the platforms that buy on their behalf, want more omnichannel targeting and measurement, period. They want to resolve everything they know about their customers, then reach customers and prospects in a targeted way across all their channels, then be able to understand how those customers responded – especially when those responses occur in other channels, such as in the store after a digital ad exposure. Publishers, with their unique ability to deliver custom brand experiences and context, have been underrepresented in people-based marketing because most lack the robust identity infrastructure to participate. With IdentityLink for publishers, we expect to see more of the larger content publishers offering people-based ad solutions and data. That gives brands more premium media destinations where they can deliver targeted, engaging brand experiences.

MTS: How do you see omnichannel marketing attribution and analytics market evolving with the changing dynamic of marketing intelligence technologies?

David Yaffe: Identity has triggered another wave of evolution for omnichannel attribution and analytics platforms. With more brands taking a people-based approach to targeting and measurement, they are looking for their measurement platforms to evolve along with them. That means incorporating identity, and often AI, to gain insight into consumer journeys at the individual level. With IdentityLink, we’re working with many of these platforms to resolve omnichannel consumer touches using identity, and we expect great progress to be made on this front over the next year.

MTS: How is IdentityLink for Publishers different from the one offered for Brands and Data Owners?

David Yaffe: Publishers have unique needs separate from brands and data owners, and our IdentityLink for publishers solution reflects those differences. While publishers may have subscriber acquisition/audience development needs similar to brands, and data monetization opportunities similar to data owners, publishers uniquely need to develop people-based ad solutions to attract media spend and deliver great results. IdentityLink for publishers addresses all of these needs.

MTS: How does LiveRamp Identity leverage Acxiom AbiliTec® to map and resolve online identifiers?

David Yaffe: LiveRamp is privileged to have the leading solution for offline identity, Acxiom AbiliTec, as the foundation for IdentityLink. AbiliTec gives LiveRamp the ability to resolve online identifiers to offline individuals – giving us deterministic scale and accuracy that are real differentiators for IdentityLink.

Thanks for chatting with us, David.

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

Acxiom Expands International Footprint with Launch of AbiliTec Identity Resolution and InfoBase Consumer Insights in Mexico

By

-

August 11, 2017

Last month, Acxiom expanded their global footprint with the launch of AbiliTec Identity Resolution and InfoBase Consumer Insights in Mexico. The new launch would enable Acxiom clients and partners to improve reach and engagement among the rapidly growing LATAM audiences. The expansion involved collaboration with 4INFO to meet the increased global demands for safe and ethical people-based marketing solutions. Acxiom will tap 4INFO’s proprietary, patented device matching technology to deterministically map people to their devices and data for audience activation in Mexico.

By understanding and marketing to real people, not devices or channels, marketers can meet this bar and win the battle for consumer attention and loyalty. – Marc Fanelli, Acxiom

InfoBase^® Consumer Database

InfoBase congregates a variety of local market data sources to create the richest third-party data asset available, offering unparalleled demographic information, geo-statistical data and digital behavioral segments.

AbiliTEc^® Identity Resolution

AbiliTEc^® Identity Resolution is a solution to accurately identify people across the region using an identity graph that brings together multiple local market sources to create the most comprehensive consumer recognition asset available.

Acxiom Covers ~65 percent of the World’s Online Population for People-Based Marketing

At the time of this announcement, we spoke to Marc Fanelli, Group Vice President, Audience Solutions at Acxiom to understand how the standards of people-based marketing solutions are evolving with modern DMP capabilities.

“Acxiom’s Capability to Curate and Distribute Data at Scale is Unique”

Marc said, “Acxiom’s Global Data and Analytics business is responsible for the vetting, sourcing, curation, and distribution of marketing into the digital ecosystem across the world. I joined Acxiom after eight years at Merkle (now part of Dentsu) where I ran the data practice.”

Marc mentioned how at the time of joining Acxiom, the company would curate and distribute data at scale – a truly unique capability in the industry. He said, “When I joined, we curated and distributed data in just eight countries. However, the big data infrastructure necessary for curation at scale, and the ethical standards were second to none in data use, as well as the world’s largest digital distribution network were key ingredients that I believed would allow us to expand our footprint significantly. Today, we cover 62 countries (and are still expanding), representing inventory on over 2.5 billion consumers – or about 65 percent of the world’s online population – a truly unique position in terms of offering people-based marketing solutions to the world’s best marketers.”

Standards of People-Based Marketing Strategies Evolving With DMPs

Marc acknowledged that the digital and data explosion has continued with new data created every day across multiple channels. He further added how data continues to be fragmented with disconnected, known and anonymous data spread across the MarTech and AdTech platforms and borders.

Marc said, “DMPs have continued to evolve enabling organizations to learn a tremendous amount about its customers – what they like, the things they do, the behaviors they exhibit and what’s important to them. And, the bar has never been higher for companies to take all the information and use it for creating better customer experiences. Identity resolution is vital in recognizing your customers, anticipating their needs and creating real value for them.”

Adhere to Highest Compliance to Data Privacy Standards and Still Deliver Seamless Customer Experience and Viewability

With data governance policies getting stricter and tighter, we wanted to know how Acxiom intends to solve the problem for marketers in delivering seamless customer experiences without compromising on data privacy guidelines.

“There should be a careful balance of customer experience with risk management using operational data governance.

Marketers should work closely with their company’s chief privacy officer to ensure a balance between risk and customer. The two parts of the equation must work together in close partnership,” Marc said.

Marc said, “Privacy programs should be designed to ensure brand credibility and trustworthiness while enabling innovation, acceleration and marketplace for the company and its customers.”

He explained why and how marketers need to be aware of data privacy standards, especially in a global marketplace.

Marc said, “Marketers and their chief privacy officers can create objectives that lower the risk profile of data activations, data use and data-driven solutions – for example, risks of data incidents, breaches, litigation, and attrition due to reputational damage – and to optimize privacy enhancements while minimizing adverse effects on commercial viability.”

It is important to note that these objectives are achieved by remaining highly informed and actively engaged in all data related functions from ideation through development and production.

Acxiom to Deliver Most Comprehensive Consumer Recognition Asset for Mexican market

By expanding to Mexico, Acxiom would enable companies to reach 78 million unique individuals, covering 84 per cent of all adults.

Acxiom clients and partners can now access rich third-party, ethically sourced and regionally compliant consumer insights across Mexico’s online and offline ecosystems to better market their products and services and to manage customer engagement strategies across today’s vast and borderless digital landscape.

When brands better understand consumers’ needs and preferences, consumers are able to engage in more meaningful ways with the brands they love.

Leverage Identity Resolution to create Single Customer View (SCV)

We further probed with Marc on how Acxiom helps marketers to create SCV using Identity Resolution.

“People change jobs, homes, and names, resulting in millions of changes in consumer information each year. These dynamic customer data changes mean that at least 2 percent of an organization’s customer records become irrelevant each month, resulting in nearly 25 percent of the records, they rely on to recognize customers, changing each year. The complexity of managing this change and the fragmented interactions with a consumer can be daunting for marketers,” said Marc.

Explaining how consumers reach out to brands in an increasing number of ways, Marc said, “Whether it’s visiting a brick and mortar, shopping online or using a mobile app, consumers expect a personalized experience. Bad data leads to a bad experience across touch points which can frustrate and alienate loyal customers.”

Identity Resolution is Key to Omnichannel Marketing

Marc told, “Omnichannel marketing is only achieved if a consumer is accurately recognized, regardless of channel. Identity resolution brings together disparate representations of consumer data, enabling a single, current and accurate view of each consumer across all channels. It allows marketers to instantly recognize customers, which improves customer service at the point of contact and reduces the possibility of error through improved identity verification.

He showed us how marketers should use identity resolution for the following applications.

– Create a single view of the consumer

– Customer retention, cross-selling and up-selling

– Point-of-sale marketing campaigns

– Recognizing consumers across online and offline channels

– People-based omnichannel marketing

– Enterprise data warehouse, customer relationship management, and master data management

AbiliTec Allows Marketers to Create Better CX

Acxiom’s AbiliTec for Mexico provides clients a new solution that helps accurately identify people across the region using an identity graph that brings together multiple local market sources to create the richest, most comprehensive consumer recognition asset available, providing insights that allow marketers to create better customer experiences.

The Mexican Market is Another Step in Access to the Global Audience

With data ethically obtained and compliant with local and national laws, Acxiom’s broad identity and consumer insight capabilities offer the ability to cleanse, correct, identify and complete customer data, making it ready for activation across channels. Identity is foundational to omnichannel engagement with people, and this enhanced offering provides concrete benefits for any company doing business in Mexico and is the first step to better connecting with their global audience.

Partnership with 4INFO Allows Acxiom to Accurately Match Target Audience

Rick Erwin, president of Acxiom’s Audience Solutions Division, said, “With ad spend in Mexico projected to grow to $6.17 billion by 2020, the AbiliTec and InfoBase Mexico launch and the expanded partnership with 4INFO provide global marketers unmatched access to this rapidly expanding market. As the digital ecosystem crosses borders, more of Acxiom’s clients and partners need data and identity solutions to drive their global people-based marketing strategies, and this launch and collaboration is a strong example of Acxiom’s commitment to making that so much easier.”

Tim Jenkins, CEO of 4INFO, said, “By collaborating with Acxiom, we can bring our unique technology into the international market and deterministically map people to their devices and households for a wider audience reach. The expansion of our partnership into Mexico will help global marketers execute even more successful campaigns. In digitally mapping consumers to their mobile and other digital devices for the first time in this lucrative, mobile-savvy region, we combine online and offline data and utilize privacy-compliant linking.”

Acxiom’s Clients get A True Borderless Experience

Acxiom’s best-in-class ethical data use methodology is designed to ensure adherence to data protection rules as well as cross-border requirements while delivering a true borderless experience to clients.

By providing partners with important background on data privacy laws and regulations as well as cultural acceptance of targeted marketing, Acxiom helps clients navigate the depth and breadth of data that can be used in Mexico. It also provides an easy, centralized approach for curation, identity management and activation of data.

The Keli Network Exceeds One Billion Monthly Video Views

By

-

August 11, 2017

1

The Keli Network, a video-first social channel creator distributing vertically-focused content through its owned brands – including Gamology, Genius Club, Beauty Studio and OhMyGoal – announced that June was a record-breaking month with the company surpassing 1 billion monthly video views across its channels.

Each of Keli’s brands topped its respective category in views for the month, with Gamology leading “Gaming,” Genius Club leading “Science & Tech,” Beauty Studio leading “Beauty,” and OhMyGoal leading all soccer channels and accounting for the third most views in the general “Sports” category. Keli’s current scale – reaching nearly 80 million engaged viewers – has been achieved in less than a year, which is faster and with less capital than many of its competitors.

By catering content to specific vertical audiences, Keli has had success increasing video engagement among consumers. The company maximizes content views and frequency within individuals’ social feeds by utilizing a proprietary suite of technology to scale and optimize content creation and social distribution.

“This milestone reflects our continued growth and supports the efficacy of the our vertically-focused strategy, as well as the tools we utilize to break down the science of virality. “We’ll be applying our strategy to new, additional brand channels to be launched in upcoming months.” says Michael Philippe, Keli’s CEO and co-founder.” Tubular Labs, the worldwide leader in online video intelligence, confirmed Keli’s channels exceeded 1 billion views.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/p/4/000/168/193/0d92e7e.jpg — Allison Stern

“Keli Network’s extreme growth has been exciting to watch. They have doubled their network views per month since the start of the year, ranking in Tubular’s top 30 global media property leaderboards. Data informed content strategy is the key to success in today’s crowded media landscape. Keli has cracked the code in using data to understand audiences, create super engaging content, and reach millennials globally.” said Allison Stern, co-founder and CMO of Tubular Labs.

5 Ways Facebook is Moving to Compete in the Local Search Industry

By

Collin Holmes

-

August 11, 2017

1

Facebook is the powerhouse in the social media industry. For years, they have been the top social media site in the world and just last week they became the first social site to reach over 2 billion users! However, the social media giant isn’t stopping there. Now, they are setting their sights on the local search industry as well.

This isn’t the first time we have heard of Facebook’s attempts to break into the area of local search, but for the most part they have been pretty much off the radar in comparison to sites like Google and Yelp…until now that is!

Currently, Google holds over 63% of the market share for web searches and as much as 95% of the market for the rapidly growing mobile searches. However, Facebook has been steadily improving their local search capabilities and features to the point where they are now an undeniable threat to Google’s controlling interest over the local search industry.

Here are 5 ways Facebook is moving to compete in the local search industry:

Facebook’s size, audience and resources:

Facebook’s qualifications for joining the battle for market share in the local search industry include over 2 billion active users, millions of business pages and the financial/labor resources to build out its own proprietary local search engine.

With Facebook’s enormous user base comes all their demographic information and behavioral data. This volume and accuracy of personal data is something even Google can’t compete with and gives Facebook a leg up when it comes to connecting users with the most relevant businesses.

Additionally, as a social network, Facebook’s massive audience revolves around interaction and social engagement. After Google officially discontinued their G+ pages for businesses, this is another area of search where Facebook has the upper hand. Users searching the millions of business pages on Facebook have the ability to view relevant posts, engage directly with the business and see which of their friends have liked or visited certain businesses.

Greater emphasis on location:

Local search is all about location. 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within 5 miles. People using local search aren’t looking for a business that is a 30-minute drive from their location, they want something that can satisfy their needs right then and there.

This desire for more location specific results is why Facebook has put a greater emphasis on maps and locations for their Places and Business pages. Facebook is now providing maps and location data in their search results as well as making this information more prevalent on the actual business pages.

Places are given priority when relevant:

When Facebook first began including all public posts and pages in their search results, places and business pages were some of the last items to be included in the results. Even if you tried searching for something like “Best Restaurants” you would be hard pressed to find an actual restaurant in your search results. If you were fortunate enough to have a restaurant near the top of your search results, it would almost never be in the same city as you.

Facebook has since greatly improved its understanding of user intent. That means the search results are more intuitive and attempt to predict what users want. This has helped Facebook to provide searchers with more functional and relevant search results. They have even started predicting what you will search for and have begun providing suggested local search topics.

Crowdsourcing information:

Providing users with accurate and consistent business information is one of the most important aspects when it comes to building a successful tool for local search. If users can’t trust the information you are providing, they will go elsewhere to find the correct information.

With 2 billion active users, why not leverage that resource to help improve the experience for everyone? Facebook is using its users to help weed out incorrect business information and add details that will assist future searchers. When users check in to different places on Facebook, they are being prompted to answer questions such as “Are these the correct hours for this location?” and “How expensive is this place?”.

City Guides:

One of the final, and most interesting features of Facebook’s new local search improvements is the “City Guides” feature. City Guides is where the social aspect of local search really comes into play and highlights how Facebook can leverage its social database to provide something Google can’t.

With City Guides, users can visit a specific city’s page and see actual places where their Facebook friends have already been within that city. This is a powerful form of social proof that really hits home with users. It’s not just showing them what places are popular in the city but it is showing users where people they know personally have actually been. By connecting users with businesses based off where their friends have already been and recommended it greatly reduces the risk customers feel when debating to try a new business for the first time.

In addition to seeing where your friends have been, users can also choose to “Explore” the city or browse through “Places the Locals Go”. These options connect users with the most popular and highest rated businesses in the city. City Guides is a great way for users to discover new businesses that have proven to be trustworthy and provide a great experience.

As Facebook continues to gain market share in the local search industry, it becomes more and more important to manage your reputation and ensure listing accuracy across multiple channels. Schedule a FREE demo with Chatmeter to learn how we help businesses boost their page one rankings across all of the local search sites helping them increase their online to offline conversions.

Zyme Acquires CCI to Expand Smart Application Portfolio

By

-

August 10, 2017

Zyme, the #1 Channel Data Management (CDM) company is excited to announce that it has completed the acquisition of CCI, a leading channel incentives management firm that offers highly configurable MDF and Coop solutions to increase channel sales of global technology manufacturing companies such as Google, Hitachi, Sony and many others, by optimizing their partner performance.

Founded in 2004, in Redwood Shores, California, Zyme is the go-to solution provider for global technology manufacturing companies like Microsoft, Dell, Acer, and GE to manage their channel sales and inventory data. Zyme’s industry-leading CDM platform – zyme cloud platform 3.0 – provides critical channel intelligence for companies to get the maximum ROI out of their channel investment. As part of the platform, Zyme offers highly scalable solutions to manage rebates and deal-registration programs, driven by 99.9% accurate, payment grade, channel data.

CCI, founded in 1983 and based out of San Francisco Bay Area, is a leading channel management company that provides channel technology, expertise, and program support services to create and manage global channel programs that engage partners, simplify channel management, and significantly increase operational efficiency. CCI helps many of the most successful companies in the world turn their channel programs into a key competitive advantage.

With CCI now a part of Zyme, customers will not only have continued access to the respective incentives solutions they trust and love, but also gain from the synergistic capabilities to fundamentally transform their channel business, and thereby sell more with less investment.

Supported by 99.9% clean and accurate channel data processed by Zyme’s CDM platform, the combined and complementary capabilities of Zyme and CCI offer the most comprehensive, data-driven incentives management solution in the industry. Customers can now seamlessly manage a wide range of incentives programs, including:

Rebate
MDF
Co-op
Ship & Debit
Trade-in, SPIFs, referrals, and others

LiveRamp Partners with Goodway Group, Activating People-Based Marketing

By

-

August 10, 2017

1

Goodway Group, the programmatic partner agencies trust to drive campaign performance and media efficiency, partnered with LiveRamp™, an Acxiom® company and leading provider of omnichannel identity resolution. The partnership enables Goodway Group to activate people-based digital marketing initiatives for its agency and brand clients. Consumers now have elevated expectations for brand engagement, and this partnership offers marketers insights to help optimize and unify experiences throughout a customer’s journey.

Goodway Group works closely with advertising agencies across the US, helping them to plan and execute digital marketing campaigns for brand clients. Goodway Group’s partnership with LiveRamp provides access to LiveRamp’s IdentityLink™ solution, which allows marketers to create an omnichannel view of the consumer, resolving first-, second-, and third-party data to a privacy-compliant identifier that can then be activated by Goodway Group as part of people-based marketing initiatives.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAk0AAAAJDY2MzVmNTY3LThmZGQtNDNiYy1iMmY2LWI1N2JhNmEyMTdkZg.jpg — Ashton Gary

Ashton Gary, director enterprise partnerships, Goodway Group, said, “We are excited to be partnering with LiveRamp and incorporating IdentityLink into our digital marketing campaigns. The advanced identity resolution capabilities provided by LiveRamp enable us to more precisely target the right audience with a level of accuracy that was simply not possible before. We’re able to target down to a much more granular level, and send relevant messages that resonate with consumers.”

By segmenting audiences into specific niche groups, marketers have the ability to create special offers for those groups. For example, a retailer can tap into its app’s loyalty and purchase data to create a custom segment targeting users who typically buy a certain product, and serve them an ad featuring the latest version of that product when it launches.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/p/8/005/097/347/11f7209.jpg — Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith, LiveRamp’s Chief Marketing officer, said, “In today’s world, creating a relevant and seamless consumer experience across channels is critical. We’re delighted to be powering Goodway’s efforts on this front, allowing them to bring people-based marketing to their agency clients.”

Interview with Jared Feldman, Founder and CEO, Canvs

By

-

August 10, 2017

Interview with Jared Feldman, Founder and CEO, Canvs

[mnky_team name=”Jared Feldman” position=” Founder and CEO, Canvs”][/mnky_team]

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

[mnky_testimonial_slider][mnky_testimonial name=”” author_dec=”” position=”Designer”]“Emotions drive behavior and advertisers must aim to strike an emotional chord with audiences, and form an ongoing connection and narrative that consumers can relate to”[/mnky_testimonial][/mnky_testimonial_slider]

On Marketing Technology

MTS: Tell us about your role at Canvs and how you got here? (What inspired you to be a part of a technology innovation company?)
I am CEO and founder of Canvs, an emotion analytics company, and I spend most of the time thinking about how we create empathy for the client and solve their problems. Canvs started out as Mashwork, which I co-founded with Dr. Sam Hui at NYU, where we provided insights to the television and entertainment industry. Later, we formed Canvs where we created technology which understands human emotional reactions to social media at scale. Our mission is to further the understanding of human behavior, and presently Canvs is the industry standard in emotion measurement and is used by TV Networks, Publishers, MCNs, and agencies.

I am driven by the why – why do people do what they do? Why do they click? Why do they react to content?

MTS: Given the changing dynamic of ad engagement with customers, how do you see the AdTech market evolving in the coming years?
Traditional engagement metrics are evolving, and it’s not enough to just spark a simple click or “like.” Emotions drive behavior and advertisers must aim to strike an emotional chord with audiences, and form an ongoing connection and narrative that consumers (and fans) can relate to and believe in. With the advent of ad-blocking technologies, advertisers will create more personalized experiences and serve more relevant ads.

In regards to digital advertising formats, expect traditional banner ads and interstitials to be traded in for more innovative, interactive formats. Adtech vendors must start improving the piping to widely distribute mobile rich media at a massive scale, because new dynamic formats like interscroller, mosaic, chatbot, etc. have resulted in increased engagement and better user experience.

MTS: What do you see audience attention and conversion analytics influencing their omnichannel experience, especially over social platforms?
Content must be carefully curated for each individual social platform because what works on Twitter does not work on YouTube. This is in part due to conditioning, as well as the idiosyncrasies and differences of each platform. For example, we have seen here at Canvs in our Instagram product, users posts include emoji’s up to 50% of the time, much higher than we see on other networks. Audience attention and conversions can be optimized through emotional analysis while adjusting the actual creative for each individual platform.

MTS: What’s the biggest challenge that CMOs need to tackle to make their media decisions work?
Differentiation.
Year after year Cannes highlights the best, most creative marketing campaigns. And with the festival recently coming to a close, let’s make a conscious effort to incorporate the findings into our repertoire. Take chances with creative, and don’t do the predictable. Instead, create memorable assets that can be adapted across platforms, and make a meaningful impression on anyone that crosses paths.

MTS: What startups are you watching/keen on right now?
Since we are in the emotion measurement space we pay close attention to see what leaders in the neuroscience area are doing.

MTS: What tools does your marketing stack consist of in 2017?
We are always looking ways to better connect with prospective customers and current customers. Currently, we utilize Intercom, Qwilr, Whatfix, Hubspot, and MailChimp.

MTS: Could you tell us about a standout digital campaign? (Who was your target audience and how did you measure success)
Recently, Canvs partnered with NBCU to do creative testing for ads on Facebook leading up to the premiere of fan favorite This Is Us. As NBCU rolled out new series announcements, the network saw that passion levels for This Is Us were well above average and were able to pinpoint which characters, plot points and trailer versions resonated the best to capitalize on fan emotion.

MTS: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a marketing leader?
As MarTech expands, and timing constraints become tighter, the need for AI and machine learning technology becomes increasingly important in order to add efficiencies to a marketing organization.

A common misconception is that this will eliminate jobs for humans, but the two can actually work in tandem to create a collaborative Augmented Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence solutions can dig through vast silos of data and provide actionable recommendations much quicker than humans can. But humans are essential in the workflow since they provide feedback on outputs and algorithms, and help blend some art with the science.

This Is How I Work

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

MTS: What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
For business I use boomerang, fitness I use Myfitnesspal, and I check Coinbase way too often.

MTS: What’s your smartest work related shortcut or productivity hack?
Boomerang plugin in Chrome.

MTS: What are you currently reading? (What do you read, and how do you consume information?)
Presently I am reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Most of my information is consumed through podcasts. A couple on my playlist right now are Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale, and The Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing.

MTS: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
To seek out uncomfortable situations

MTS: Something you do better than others – the secret of your success?
Obstacles are to be treated like teachers. And I am curious, very curious. Figure out what you can learn from obstacles quickly and adapt often.

MTS: Tag the one person in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read: Dan Beltramo, SaaS or Data as a Service CEO, Nielsen—He is an advisor and a friend to the company.

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

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Jared ” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae2fe6c-7a17″]

Founded the company as Mashwork in 2009 and launched as Canvs in 2014. Canvs, which counts entertainment marketers such as Sony Entertainment, NBC Universal, Viacom and HBO, as well as media agencies such as Starcom Mediavest and IPG as clients, offers software that tracks the mentions of and emotions around TV and entertainment content on social media.Total funding from sources such as Gary Vaynerchuck and Ludlow Ventures is $5.6 million

[/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”About Canvs” tab_id=”1501785390320-2d44fa50-740cfe6c-7a17″]

Canvs

Canvs is an industry-leading technology platform created to measure and interpret emotions. Canvs is becoming an industry standard for qualitative social media analysis, informing social media strategy for television networks, brands, and advertisers. Built using social media listening research from MSI Young Marketing Scholar, Professor Sam Hui, Ph.D, as well as real-world analyst experience,Canvs has been featured in a number of leading publications including The Wall Street Journal, Variety, The Atlantic, The LA Times, CNBC.com, Mashable and Ad Week’s Lost Remote. For more information, visit www.canvs.tv.

[/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_tabs]

[mnky_heading title=”About the MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fstaging.loutish-lamp.flywheelsites.com%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.

The New C-Suite: The Rise of the CCO

By

Tom Goodmanson

-

August 10, 2017

Ten years ago, with the advance of marketing technology, the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) fundamentally changed. As marketing shifted from a cost center to a revenue generator, the C-suite increasingly turned to the CMO for detailed data about marketing’s impact on the bottom line.

Now, a new C-suite imperative has emerged, and the focus is squarely on the customer.

One of the primary impacts of modern marketing is a heightened expectation of a personal and relevant customer experience. More often, today’s brands are having to compete on the delivery of an exceptional experience for the customer rather than traditional metrics such as product and price. To navigate this new landscape, there’s a new seat at the C-suite table, and it belongs to the Chief Customer Officer (CCO). The CCO has become the liaison between a brand and its customers.

Creating a new role in the C-suite isn’t always seamless. As roles and responsibilities shift, newcomers are often met with resistance. Despite the CCO’s critical role, a new survey, Success in the Customer Experience Era: Connecting Customer and C-suite exposes key hurdles to the successful integration of the CCO position. To overcome these challenges, CCOs must have clear plans to establish solid footing within the C-suite.

Establish Clear Roles

As with any new position, ownership roles can be fuzzy. A large percentage of CEOs stake a claim on the customer experience, and the hiring of a CCO can leave many CMOs wondering if their own roles will be replaced. Ownership claims and changes in C-suite dynamics can leave incoming CCOs feeling confused and hesitant to take control.

However, when executed correctly, the CCO can quell the confusion and form great relationships with both the CEO and CMO. Nearly a quarter of survey respondents noted that the CCO can complement the CEO simply by showing a greater customer focus. CMO budgets are increasing and will be on par with CIO budgets in the coming year, giving CCOs the opportunity to position themselves as advocates for the CMO. CCOs can not only free up valuable time for the CMO to focus more attention on new customer acquisition and design more effective campaigns, they can take the lead on technology decision-making and, in doing so, capture some of the CMO budget. When CCOs establish clear ownership over the customer experience, they can immediately illustrate how their ownership will benefit everyone in the C-suite.

Become the Tech Expert

In a complex and growing tech landscape, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for CMOs to stay abreast of technology needs. Between time constraints and infinite solutions, many CMOs are challenged to implement the right technology to truly give customers the experiences they want. Incoming CCOs can capitalize on the opportunity to offer marketing the extra support and technology expertise they need. By performing an internal audit of the tech stack and mapping it to the customer journey, CCOs can not only establish credibility, but they can also make informed recommendations on the right technology implementations to deliver the integrated, personalized experiences that customers want.

Use the Right Customer Data

Analyzing data is critical to understanding the needs and wants of customers, but many brands aren’t looking at the right data to get the insights they need. Often, a CCO is brought in to help gain a better understanding of real-time customer data, but only 29 percent of CCOs actually claim ownership of customer insights. For those who do claim this responsibility, many know what to measure, but do not always have quality sources of customer data. In fact, half of CCOs admit to not using data insights from contact centers, which are key sources of customer information. The reality is that many are still using surveys as the primary way to gauge customer satisfaction. When you ignore the contact center, you are putting your customer experience at risk of being misaligned with your brand. With an ever-increasing amount of channels being used to work with your customer, each one is an opportunity to thrive through matching your brand promise to your customer experience.

In our multichannel, digital world, antiquated methods are causing CCOs to miss critical insights that are coming directly from their customers. By analyzing contact center data from across multiple channels, CCOs can gain access to authentic, voice-of-the-customer insights that will allow them to create a better customer experience.

A CCO can be an invaluable asset to an organization that wants to increase growth or customer retention. By establishing clear roles and responsibilities, becoming the resident marketing technology expert and using the right customer data, the CCO can come alongside the CEO and CMO to not only alleviate burdens but also to champion the customer-first approach in an increasingly competitive market. A great customer experience is now standard practice, and the rise of the CCO indicates that this approach is here to stay.

The Influencer Economy is Booming

By

Kamiu Lee

-

August 10, 2017

We hear from Venture Capital investors, Jessica Nilsson and Wendy Xiao Schadeck of Northzone Investments, on why they are betting big on Influencers. Northzone has invested in over 120 companies, injecting some 200 years of collective operational and investment experience into businesses that truly make a difference. Notable investments include Spotify, Trustpilot, Avito, Lastminute, Pricerunner, Nextgentel, and Stepstone — and full disclosure, also an investor in Bloglovin’!

Why did you just decide to read this blog post? What other pieces of content were vying for your attention at the same time? The scarce resource in today’s staggering media abundance is… (drumroll, please) — attention!

Publishers have had to significantly change their UIs accordingly. The old way excelled at providing more information to users (think any homepage circa early 2000’s) but today’s successful players win based on simplicity and authenticity (think Snapchat).

Social media decentralized content production and enabled broadcasting and self-expression for the masses. From this emerged interesting content, because people are inherently interesting. Some influencers (or bloggers, as we used to call them) became very skilled at personal brand building and storytelling, which further amplified their following. Because influencer content is more personal, instant, and authentic compared to traditional media, their audiences are more trusting and engaged. Now, influencers have become valuable decentralized media properties and brand assets.

If you think about media as having different dimensions of “relevance” — geographic, socioeconomic, demographic, interest or behaviour-based — i.e the traditional way advertisers have set their targeting criteria, social media can uniquely scale personal relevance. Previously this was only accessible to celebrities and public personas who got enough media time for the public to be able to broadly relate to them. Now, influencers can build one-to-many, highly relevant relationships with their followers. In addition to appealing to your interests, aesthetics, and values, content emerging from these people is inherently interesting because it comes from them. It finds the sweet spot in the spectrum of personal relevance between what makes your niece’s dance recital a “must attend”, and that which makes Taylor Swift’s latest fling click-worthy. Social media has established a new basis of competition in the media landscape, and influencers are clearly winning.

Meanwhile, the value exchange equation between traditional publishers and consumers is broken. The market for global digital advertising was ~$170 billion in 2016, of which >60% was taken by Google and Facebook. As audiences flocked to social from traditional channels, publishers focused too strongly on attempting to maintain revenues in a changing environment, resulting in heavy-handed advertising. As each unit of attention became more precious, audiences quickly became disgruntled with ads that were irrelevant and disruptive and, unaware of the implicit value exchange between publishers and consumers, began to block it out. 50% of publishers are already seeing ad blocking rates of between 10%-30% across both mobile and desktop. Estimated loss of global revenue due to blocked ads in 2015 was $21.8 billion, growing to $27 billion by 2020.

So far, most of the value from social media influencers has been captured by Facebook et al (that enabled social) via the same old implicit value exchange model, but built in walled gardens where ad-blockers can’t operate. However, influencers are also starting to monetize via influencer marketing platform such as Activate by Bloglovin’. This is potentially a huge opportunity. If you would take all the ~20m influencers across all the major social platforms and assume they each monetize a commercial message only once a week to their followers (assuming a very conservative 10K) at standard ad rates, you end up with a >$50 billion market. This market is also growing as influence gets further decentralized and as the exceptional advertiser return on ad investment is widely understood.

This is why we at Northzone are spending a lot of time thinking about the influencer economy. We started investing in this space at the very beginning of the era with Bloglovin’, and followed the industry’s transition into marketing with Bloglovin’s acquisition of Sverve. We’ve seen our portfolio companies across various industries become leaders in leveraging influencer marketing for growth and brand building — Qapital works with Instagram influencers to create emotional and personal connections with financial wellbeing; Space Apecreated game characters around top YouTubers and allowed them to partake in the game proceeds.

We have already made an investment from our new EUR350M fund in a new influencer business model, NA-KD. This is where we think the most interesting developments are, where many seeds are being sown. Companies are building businesses models where influencers are at the core.

Toluna Launches Transformative DIY Community Product QuickCommunities

By

-

August 10, 2017

Toluna, industry pioneer and leading provider of on-demand, real-time digital consumer insights, launched QuickCommunities, a do-it-yourself (DIY) product enables users to build, create and recruit your target consumers into a custom community experience for real-time discussions, events and focus groups.

QuickCommunities is the latest addition to Toluna’s real-time digital insights platform, QuickSurveys. This unique combination of quantitative and qualitative tools allows users to build upon survey feedback and obtain deeper insights, in real time, allowing them to make better business decisions faster. The platform integrates with Toluna.com, the world’s largest social voting community. It’s this integrated digital approach that delivers true real-time consumer insight.

Toluna is a longstanding provider of community-based research approaches, and powers more than 200 custom TolunaCommunities globally. Now in addition to this long-term community offering, Toluna provides customers with the ability to quickly engage with hyper-targeted consumer audiences via real-time surveys or leverage QuickCommunities to engage in surveys in addition to on-site discussions.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAjRAAAAJDY1Y2VjYWVjLWEyY2QtNDExMi1hMzJjLTY2NDk5ZDE5YWVkZA.jpg — Frédéric-Charles Petit, CEO, Toluna

Frédéric-Charles Petit, CEO, Toluna, said, “Toluna is transforming how insights are generated by making it easy for any company to garner actionable insights on demand about consumers – anywhere in the world – most important to their business. We have designed our real-time, DIY research platform to provide a full suite of tools that made market and customer intelligence more accessible, accurate and affordable. With Toluna, businesses can confidently engage with precisely targeted consumers as they wish, and obtain actionable information that informs important and ever-more real-time brand decisions.”

Toluna leads in technology innovation that reduces cost while increasing speed, easily scaling to global, qualified audiences with insights delivered in just hours. With Toluna, companies can power agile research programs to deepen consumer knowledge to improve business decisions.

QuickCommunities capabilities are:

– Build. A web-based community portal is created using Toluna’s intuitive wizard that provides an array of customization options to ensure compliance with a company’s brand guidelines.

– Target and Launch. Businesses precisely target community members directly from Toluna’s global consumer panel of 13.4+ of active members in 68 countries, selecting from more than 200 demographic and behavioral profiles – and then launch the community and invite members with a single click.

– Engage. Businesses connect directly with community members in real time with discussion topics, integrated surveys and managed incentive programs to garner the insights they need.

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAtiAAAAJDkxOTQzOTM5LTkxYzUtNDljNC1hYzMwLTZlYWQ1NzEzOTRiNA.jpg — Phil Ahad

Phil Ahad, SVP, Digital Products, Toluna said, “Toluna QuickCommunities creates an instant brand advisory board for businesses to gain a deeper understanding into customers and prospects. It eliminates budget and time-to-launch barriers that companies often face in adding the richness of qualitative insights to research programs. QuickCommunities helps them to go beyond the transaction and learn the ‘why’ behind consumer sentiment and action.”

Also Read: Four Tips to Design an Analytics Product that Democratizes Data

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

By

-

August 9, 2017

Popular music discovery app Shazam saw a 752% ROI within two months with Einstein Analytics

Salesforce is driving Shazam to a new height. According to the global leader in CRM, Shazam—one of the world’s most popular apps—has successfully deployed Salesforce Einstein Analytics to dramatically increase productivity for the company’s executives and sales leadership. With Einstein Analytics, Shazam has improved the quality of data from its massive user base, targeted more granular customer segments and reduced requests for reports from its core analytics team.

Shazam Achieved Increased Productivity with Salesforce Einstein Analytics

The Shazam app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times and is used more than 20 million times each day, across 190 countries. In just six weeks, Shazam has experienced 752% return on investment (ROI) since deploying Einstein Analytics, according to a study by Nucleus Research. Shazam also deployed Einstein Analytics without employing external consultants. The deployment provides an average annual benefit of $246,896 due to increased productivity and time saved.

Previously, Shazam relied on spreadsheets for internal reporting and managing advertising sales. This meant the organization lacked a single source of truth, with siloed data from various geographies scattered across multiple spreadsheets. Additionally, its analytics team faced a continuous backlog of time-consuming requests for reports from executives and sales teams.

Salesforce Einstein Analytics empowers Shazam’s sales team to run reports on their own to quickly find the insights on thepipeline, customer segmentation, and price optimization.

Additionally, Shazam’s Chief Revenue Officer is able to get a daily update on where the company stands, what opportunities are available and where teams should focus their efforts.

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

Furthermore, analysts now have 15% of their time back, time that was previously spent cleaning data which can now be spent on tasks better suited to their advanced skills.

Beyond productivity, Einstein Analytics helps Shazam identify more granular patterns, allowing sales teams to more accurately target their customer base.

Shazam’s Leadership Rely on Einstein’s Dynamic, Self-Serve Dashboards

Pete Miles, Vice President of Advertising Operations at Shazam, said, “With Einstein Analytics, we’ve replaced manual, weekly reports that were sent out to leadership teams with dynamic, self-serve dashboards that are available whenever and wherever our employees are working around the world. No other product out there brings as much value to Shazam’s analysts, VPs and even our CRO, who opens the Einstein Analytics app every morning to understand how teams are functioning.”

Ketan Karkhanis, GM of Salesforce Analytics, said, “Einstein Analytics offers out of the box capabilities that empower sales users to get up and running quickly with advanced analytics. Shazam has made analytics a front office imperative and not a back office function. When every employee in your company is empowered with actionable insights, they become trailblazers — they do their jobs better, provide more personalized customer experiences and in turn, take the company to new heights.”

Nucleus Research Awarded Shazam for Effective IT Deployment

Nucleus Research has awarded Shazam the prestigious 2017 ROI Award for its implementation of Einstein Analytics. This award recognizes the top 10 companies whose deployment of IT solutions has produced a positive, financial ROI.

Barbara Peck, Principal Analyst at Nucleus Research, said, “Shazam needed a solution that would help increase efficiency and reduce requests for reports from the core analytics team. Nucleus found that Salesforce Einstein Analytics helped increase productivity for the chief revenue officer (CRO), the sales VPs, and the analytics team. In addition, the deployment helped Shazam maintain clean data for improved customer segmentation and more effective sales efforts.

Salesforce Einstein Analytics apps for sales, service, marketing and more are pre-configured with role-specific KPIs built in Salesforce, providing users with an intuitive, self-service way to drill into the most up-to-date data, uncover insights, collaborate and take instant action from any device. And now, their analytics journey can continue with Einstein Discovery, using AI to automatically surface CRM insights and recommend actions to accelerate sales, improve customer service and optimize marketing campaigns.

Really Simple Systems Announces a Major New CRM Release Targeting the SMB Market

By

-

August 9, 2017

Really Simple Systems has unveiled the CRM Version 5 featuring ‘drag and drop’ customization, a global search bar, easy data move and merge options

Really Simple Systems, the award-winning CRM vendor, has launched a new release of its popular cloud-based CRM. The new ‘Version 5’ is a total re-write of the CRM, delivering a dramatic step forward in usability, targeting the SMB market.

Responding to customer feedback, Really Simple Systems has developed this new release to build upon their reputation for ease of use and customer support. The CRM Version 5 includes new intuitive features such as ‘drag and drop’ customisation, a global search bar, easy data move and merge options, and pull-out support drawers on each page.

Marketing Technology News: NICE Named Leader in Real Time Authentication and Fraud Prevention by Top Analyst Firm

Really Simple Systems Addressing the Immediate Needs of SMBs

The new CRM Version 5 from Really Simple Systems is a complete rewrite from the ground up that moves the system away from Microsoft to open source technology. With a clean, user-friendly interface, the new version reinforces the company’s philosophy of ‘taking complex applications and making them simple to use, and affordable’.

The Really Simple Systems CRM Version 5 is now available to new and current customers.

John Paterson, Really Simple Systems CEO, said, “Unlike some CRM vendors, we haven’t created a cut down version of something more complex. Really Simple Systems is directly addressing the needs of small businesses with a CRM that’s quick and easy to use, yet has all the sales and marketing functionality needed.”

Really Simple Systems CRM Version 5_Welcome Dashboard

Paterson added, “Our CRM Version 5 offers features and functionality you might expect from a much larger vendor at a price you would not.”

Marketing Technology News: Asia-Pacific Managed Security Service Providers Need to Offer Advanced Analytics to Drive Growth Opportunities in the region, finds Frost & Sullivan

Helen Armour, Marketing Manager at Really Simple Systems, said, “Despite the new development, Really Simple Systems is keen to stress that its differential is still in its customer service. We have also put a lot of effort into developing our support tools alongside the CRM. We have new self-help tools within the product with links directly to our Customer Support Hub. Importantly, the information has been written by our Sales and Marketing team so it’s easy to follow and understand.”

Really Simple Systems CRM Version 5 Analytics Reporting

Snaplytics Publishes Activities’ Comparison for Instagram Stories versus Snapchat

By

-

August 9, 2017

Instagram Stories versus Snapchat: Snaplytics Finds Influencer Activities Running Neck-to-Neck for Completion Rate and ROI

More brand mentions on Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat among influencers according to the Snaplytics Quarterly Report

Snaplytics is a marketing platform for new social channels including Snapchat and Instagram stories. This month, they are expected to launch their Brand Listening service to analyze brands share of voice among influencers and which influencers are most active on the story based platforms. According to the company, influencers are more active endorsing beauty brands through Instagram Stories than on Snapchat, but smaller beauty brands still thrive very well on Snapchat staying under the radar while engaging their audience.

Thomas Cilius, CEO & Co-Founder of Snaplytics

Thomas Cilius, CEO & Co-Founder of Snaplytics, said, “There is a lot of debate about Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories. I do believe the data shows there is room for both, and each has something unique to offer to their users – Instagram for scale, Snapchat for intimacy – both with excellent ROI.”

Snapchat has Lost Ground in Q2, While Instagram Stories Gain Larger Brands

The Snaplytics Quarterly Report for Q2 2017 also revealed that brands are getting smarter about gaining followers on Snapchat. Previously “added by username” was the predominant way for users to find brands on Snapchat, but in the second quarter, more than half of the new followers added through Deeplink and only 26% through Username.

Snaplytics analyzed over 800 influencers in depth over the last quarter, to identify how many updates contained brand mentions, which brands were being mentioned and who mentioned them on what platform. Instagram Stories is gaining more and more traction, especially among larger brands.

More brand mentions on Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat among influencers

Smaller Brands Still Rely on Snapchat

There are a large group of smaller brands utilizing influencers on both platforms, but the share of small brands on Snapchat is almost 8% larger than on Instagram indicating many smaller brands enjoy navigating under the radar engaging their target audience, whereas larger brands utilize Instagram Stories to a larger extent.

A reason for larger brands preference for Instagram Stories could be easier reporting on the results of the campaigns.

Once added on the platform, previous research has shown 54.8% of followers will open the brands stories and 91% of those opening the stories will watch in full. On average, brands post 9 snaps in a row, of 90 seconds, 3.25 times a week. Over the last 4 quarters the completion rate has increased while the consensus of the optimal length is moving towards 9 snaps in a row for a story.
Read Also: Cision Releases Exclusive Influencer Identification, Monitoring and Measurement Capabilities for Communications and PR Professionals

Average completion rate

Currently, Snaplytics focuses on providing Snapchat and Instagram Stories analytics for brands, agencies and influencers. Snaplytics analyzes usage statistics, including views, average number of screenshot per story, and average story duration, and provide industry benchmarks to help marketers determine if they are creating compelling campaigns and reaching their target audiences.

Ci&T Expands Strategy And Design Capabilities With Acquisition Of Comrade

By

-

August 9, 2017