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weR and RGIS Expand Strategic Collaboration to Accelerate AI-Powered Retail Shelf Intelligence Across Europe and the United States

RGIS | Stocktaking Services I Inventory Audits

Following successful validation with leading global retailers and enterprise partners across Europe and the United States, weR and RGIS are expanding their collaboration to help retailers modernize shelf operations through artificial intelligence-powered mobile technology.

The collaboration brings together RGIS’s large-scale retail execution capabilities with weR’s proprietary Shelf Engine platform, an artificial intelligence- and augmented reality-based system designed to digitize shelf conditions, identify execution gaps in real time, and guide corrective actions directly from standard mobile phones.

Traditional shelf audits, inventory checks and planogram validations often require significant manual labor and operational overhead from store teams. Through this joint deployment, retailers can reduce the amount of time traditionally spent on shelf auditing and operational shelf checks, while improving execution consistency, product visibility, and real-time store intelligence.

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Unlike fixed camera systems, robotics infrastructure or manual reporting workflows, the platform runs directly on mobile devices using specialized on-device AI models trained to recognize thousands of products and shelf conditions in real retail environments.

The technology has already been validated across hundreds of stores globally and is designed to scale rapidly through RGIS’s retail execution network across Europe and the United States.

“This is part of a much larger industry transition where AI is beginning to understand the physical world,” said Amit Chachek, Founder and CEO of weR AR Cloud LTD. “Retail shelves are becoming one of the first large-scale environments where AI can bridge physical operations with real-time intelligence, execution, and decision-making.”

This collaboration marks an important step toward a broader shift in retail: spatial AI systems operating through mobile devices, AI wearables, and future smart glasses capable of understanding products, environments, and operational workflows in real time.

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“RGIS Count Assurance demonstrates how augmented reality can transform inventory counting. By overlaying digital intelligence onto the physical inventory environment, we can provide instant verification, improve count accuracy, and give customers greater confidence in their inventory data. This is more than an enhancement to the stocktaking process, it is a glimpse into the future of inventory management,” said Asaf Cohen, CEO of RGIS.

As AI moves beyond screens and internet-based interactions into physical spaces, technologies combining computer vision, spatial understanding and wearable computing are positioned to become a foundational layer for the future of retail and frontline operations.

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Athos Commerce Unveils Intelligent Discovery Platform to Help Brands Win in the Era of Agentic Commerce

Athos Commerce | Shoptalk Spring

New all-in-one platform combines AI-driven search, personalization, merchandising, product feed management, and AI assistants to help brands connect the right shoppers to the right products across every channel

Athos Commerce announced the launch of the new Athos Commerce Intelligent Discovery Platform, an all-in-one AI-powered platform designed to help ecommerce brands connect the right shoppers to the right products across every shopping channel. Built for the emerging era of agentic commerce, the platform combines intelligent search, personalization, merchandising, product feed management, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) into a single platform that helps brands improve discoverability, drive conversion, and deliver seamless shopping experiences across both traditional and generative channels.

Today’s shopping journeys are increasingly fragmented and AI-driven, with consumers discovering products through conversational AI tools, social platforms, comparison shopping engines and marketplaces often without ever visiting a retailer’s website directly. According to Athos Commerce’s Connected Consumer 2026 report, 60% of consumers now use AI tools during their shopping journey, while 39% are comfortable completing purchases through AI platforms, increasing pressure on brands to improve product discovery, personalization, and conversion across every digital touchpoint.

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“The rules of product discovery are being rewritten in real time. Consumers no longer move through a predictable funnel from search to site to purchase,” said Chuck Haling, CEO of Athos Commerce. “Discovery now happens everywhere, across AI platforms, social platforms, marketplaces, and mobile experiences. That shift is creating new opportunities for brands to drive conversion and stronger business outcomes across the ecommerce journey. We’ve invested heavily in AI innovation to help our customers adapt faster, deliver more personalized experiences, and stay ahead of where commerce is headed.”

As part of the platform, Athos Commerce introduced three new AI agents designed to help brands adapt to increasingly conversational and fragmented shopping journeys. The agents are built to support both shoppers and ecommerce teams as product discovery increasingly shifts beyond traditional search and retailer websites to AI platforms, social platforms, marketplaces, and generative search experiences.

  • Conversational Assistant acts as an AI shopping expert for consumers, enabling shoppers to search conversationally using both text and images, ask follow-up questions, and receive intelligent product recommendations through a more natural and responsive discovery experience.
  • GEO Assistant – short for Generative Engine Optimization – helps brands optimize and enrich product data for visibility across AI answer engines and conversational commerce platforms, including ChatGPT and Google Gemini, as AI increasingly becomes a starting point for product discovery.
  • Channel Assistant helps ecommerce teams automate and optimize product feed management across Google Shopping, Meta, TikTok, marketplaces, retail media networks, and emerging AI commerce channels by auditing feeds, surfacing optimization opportunities, improving product data quality, and reducing manual effort for merchandising and marketing teams.

Together, the assistants are powered by the Athos Commerce Intelligent Discovery Platform, which unifies AI-driven search, personalization, merchandising, analytics, and product feed management into a single platform designed to help brands improve discoverability, increase conversion, and drive stronger business outcomes across the modern commerce journey.

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In addition to the new AI agents, Athos Commerce also introduced new AI-powered capabilities across its core platform to help brands automate merchandising, improve product discovery, enrich product data, and deliver more personalized shopping experiences at scale, including:

  • Enhanced AI Search: Delivers more intelligent and conversational product discovery experiences across onsite and offsite channels
  • AI Product Recommendations: Surfaces more relevant and personalized product suggestions based on shopper behavior and intent
  • AI Data Enrichment: Automatically enhances and optimizes product data to improve discoverability and conversion
  • AI Product Bundling: Uses AI to intelligently group complementary products and increase basket size
  • AI Merchandising: Automates merchandising workflows and product ranking decisions to improve performance
  • AI Product Data Management: Streamlines product feed management and optimization across channels and marketplaces

“AI is rapidly reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate products online, making seamless and relevant shopping experiences more important than ever,” said Jack Turner, Head of Digital & E-commerce at Kick Game. “Athos Commerce has helped us deliver more relevant product discovery experiences through personalized product ranking, intelligent merchandising, and greater flexibility in how we curate products across our site. The ability to combine automated recommendations with curated merchandising is particularly valuable in fashion retail, helping us connect customers with the right products while maintaining the brand experience we want to deliver. The new AI-powered capabilities offer us new possibilities to reach shoppers in innovative ways and allow our team to work even faster and smarter.”

“AI is rapidly reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate products online, and brands need more intelligent, connected commerce experiences to keep pace,” said Tim Mawson, Partner Manager at Visualsoft. “Athos Commerce is helping retailers adapt to this shift by bringing together discovery, personalization, merchandising, and product data optimization into a unified platform designed for the future of commerce.”

Athos Commerce supports more than 2,700 brands across 50+ countries, powering product discovery experiences for retailers including adidas, Yamaha, Clarins, Samsung, Rip Curl, Rakuten, and Pets at Home.

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Maxio Elevates Jon Cochrane to CFO and Names Robert Williams Head of Customer Success

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Leadership appointments accelerate Maxio’s AI-Native finance vision and customer success investment as the company scales

Maxio, the leading platform for billing automation and revenue management for B2B SaaS and AI companies, announced two executive appointments: Jon Cochrane as chief financial officer and Robert Williams as head of customer success.

“I’ve watched this team scale and I know what our customers need from us. Now I get to bring that operator’s lens to finance, leading an agentic Office of the CFO,” said Jon Cochrane, CFO of Maxio.

Cochrane joins the CFO role from inside Maxio, where as general manager of partnerships and payments he more than doubled payments revenue year-over-year and partnered with the C-suite and board on strategy, pricing and M&A. Earlier roles span FP&A leadership at high-growth SaaS companies and public accounting at Ernst & Young. As CFO, he is leading the next-gen Office of the CFO, demonstrating to the market how finance operates with AI at its center and aligning Maxio’s financial strategy.

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“I am thrilled to be stepping into the CFO seat at Maxio,” Cochrane said. “I’ve watched this team scale and I know what our customers need from us. Now I get to bring that operator’s lens to finance, leading an agentic Office of the CFO and showing our customers and the market what that looks like in practice.”

Maxio is making a parallel leadership investment in customer success, naming Robert Williams to lead the function.

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Williams previously spent more than a decade at Oracle NetSuite, building and scaling the teams responsible for onboarding and growing software customers from pre-revenue startups to enterprises exceeding $1 billion in revenue. As head of customer success at Maxio, he leads onboarding and implementation, professional and managed services, customer support, and education. His focus is on providing high-touch experiences where it matters while building agentic processes, so customers realize value sooner, stay longer, and grow with the platform.

“What drew me to Maxio is the rare combination of a durable business and a real customer success ceiling,” Williams said. “Maxio is AI-forward and embedded in how our customers run revenue, a position that compounds as AI keeps reshaping how companies operate. I’m energized to turn that into customer outcomes with this team.”

“Jon and Robert bring exactly the AI-forward thinking and operating depth Maxio needs at this stage,” said Maxio CEO Branden Jenkins. “Jon comes to the CFO role from inside the business, having scaled our payments and partnerships function and integrated AI into how the team works every day. Robert has built and scaled customer success at every stage of company maturity, including at Oracle NetSuite. Together, these appointments reflect the leadership and infrastructure powering Maxio’s next phase of growth.”

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Cojoy RevGen Launches Free B2B Revenue Benchmark Tool for an Honest Read on Growth

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Fractional CRO and CMO firm releases free benchmarking tool so B2B tech leaders can see exactly where their growth stands against the market.

Cojoy RevGen, a fractional CRO and CMO firm serving Series B+, PE-backed, and VC-backed B2B technology companies, today announced the launch of the B2B Revenue Benchmark Tool, a free, ungated interactive resource that lets revenue leaders benchmark their core growth metrics against current market data in under three minutes. The tool is available at cojoyrevgen.com/revenue-benchmark.

Most leaders know their growth rate. What they don’t know is whether it’s actually good. This tool answers that question in three minutes.”

— Andreea Cojocariu, Cojoy RevGen

Most B2B tech leaders at the Series B+ stage know their growth rate. What they cannot always tell you is whether that number is actually good, not in the motivational sense, but relative to what the market is producing and what a board, investor, or acquirer will eventually benchmark them against. That gap between knowing a number and understanding what it means is where board meetings get uncomfortable and planning cycles start from the wrong place.

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The Cojoy Revenue Benchmark Tool closes that gap. Leaders input six metrics: annual recurring revenue, year-over-year growth rate, net revenue retention, sales win rate, marketing spend as a percentage of ARR, and pipeline coverage. They receive an immediate position relative to current market benchmarks, a metric-by-metric breakdown, and simple to understand insights into what the gaps typically signal at the operational level. The tool covers B2B SaaS, UCaaS and VoIP, and general B2B technology companies, with benchmarks calibrated by ARR stage.

Andreea Cojocariu is the Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Cojoy RevGen. She brings nearly two decades of global B2B revenue leadership across SaaS, UCaaS, VoIP, telecom, and ISP, having led commercial functions spanning both marketing and sales across four continents. That combination, integrated ownership of marketing and sales rather than one or the other, is what distinguishes Cojoy from a standard fractional CRO or CMO engagement.

Most fractional executives own one function. A fractional CMO owns marketing. A fractional CRO owns sales. Cojocariu operates across both, embedding into the full commercial layer to build the operational structure that connects marketing, sales, and strategy into a single revenue system. The firm’s work is grounded in a straightforward thesi. Growth at the Series B+ stage rarely fails because of a product problem or a headcount problem. It fails because the architecture between departments was never built to produce consistent, predictable growth.

The results from that approach are specific. A construction technology company saw 5x full-funnel growth through integrated digital marketing and cross-functional revenue alignment. A B2B SaaS organization saw MQL-to-Opportunity conversion jump from 13% to 89% while cutting cost per lead by 86%. A new line of business launched into an established market drove $3M in net-new revenue in the first year.

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“Every engagement I start the same way,” said Cojocariu. “We look at the numbers honestly before we touch anything. Most leaders at this stage are working from instinct about where the gaps are. This tool replaces that instinct with data. If you are running a funded B2B company and you have never benchmarked your metrics against what the market is actually producing, this is where to start. And if you recognize a gap in the results, that is exactly the conversation I am built for.”

The tool reflects a deliberate choice to put real value into the market without a gate. There is no email capture, no form, and no follow-up sequence attached to using it. Cojocariu’s view is that the right buyer at the right stage will recognize what the results mean, and that the conversation that follows will be more productive for it.

The tool draws on data from leading B2B technology research organizations, covering private SaaS companies, UCaaS and VoIP providers, and general B2B technology organizations. Benchmarks are segmented by ARR stage and company type and are reviewed and updated annually each spring.
The B2B Revenue Benchmark Tool is live now at cojoyrevgen.com/revenue-benchmark and is free to use without registration.

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CORRECTION – Darwinium Appoints Sean McDermott as Vice President of Sales, North America

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McDermont tapped for his expertise at the intersection of security and fraud prevention

In a release issued under the same headline on June 2, 2026 by Darwinium, please note that in the third paragraph, the information about Sean McDermott’s previous achievements had been condensed. The corrected release follows:

Darwinium, an AI Fraud Prevention Company, today announced the appointment of Sean McDermott as Vice President of Sales, North America. McDermott joins Darwinium as the company accelerates its North American expansion and helps enterprises prepare for a new era of digital risk. One where AI agents, humans and malicious automation increasingly interact across the same customer journeys.

“North America is a strategic priority for Darwinium and Sean is the kind of leader who helps a company meet the moment,” said Alisdair Faulkner, CEO and Co-founder of Darwinium. “The market is moving beyond the old reflex of blocking automation by default. Enterprises need to make more nuanced decisions about what to allow, what to challenge and what to stop. Sean understands that shift instinctively, and he brings the cross-sector experience that will help Darwinium as it enters its next phase of growth.”

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McDermott brings more than a decade of go-to-market experience in cybersecurity and fraud prevention to his new role. Most recently, he led sales at Kasada, where he closed several marquee enterprise customers. Earlier in his career, McDermott held sales leadership roles at DataVisor and Signifyd, helping advance the use of machine learning and data science to detect fraud at scale.

“AI agents are transforming the fraud game. Darwinium is bringing something fundamentally different to a market that is ready for change,” said McDermott. “The conversation is no longer just about stopping fraud at a single moment or cutting off all bot traffic. It’s about helping businesses understand intent, risk and trust across the entire digital journey. That requires technology, but it also requires education, market-building and close partnership with customers. Darwinium has built an awesome team and I’m excited to spearhead those efforts in the U.S. and beyond.”

At Darwinium, McDermott will lead North American sales, working closely with digital businesses and enterprises across banking, fintech, and eCommerce. His focus will be on expanding Darwinium’s customer base by strengthening relationships with fraud and security buyers, and helping organizations adopt a more connected model for protecting revenue and customer experiences.

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“AI has made threat actors more efficient and wide-reaching than ever, and enterprises are looking for ways to bring fraud and security teams closer together to keep pace,” said Michael Rodriguez, Global Head of GTM at Darwinium. “Above all else, they want to protect revenue without adding friction for trusted customers. Sean’s experience building high-performing teams and scaling disruptive technologies gives us added firepower to convert that market momentum into lasting customer growth in the U.S. and beyond.”

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Podean Expands AI and Marketplace Technology Leadership with Appointment of Sarang Fegde as CTO and Board Member

Mountaingate Capital Partners with Podean and Commerce Canal to Form the  Largest Independent Global Marketplace Focused Agency - Private Equity Firm  in Denver | Mountaingate Capital

Strengthening the Core: Two New Platforms, a Unified Technology Team, and a CTO Built for What Comes Next

Podean, the world’s largest independent marketplace focused growth partner, today announced the appointment of serial tech entrepreneur and former Amazon executive, Sarang Fegde, as Chief Technology Officer and member of the Board of Directors.

The announcement accompanies Podean’s acquisition of Sarang’s technology ventures, Optimizeads.ai and HypeLinks, the fifth in nine months, further accelerating Podean’s investment in AI, retail media innovation, and marketplace technology infrastructure. As part of the acquisition, Sarang’s engineering and development team will join Podean’s global technology organization.

Strengthening the Core
This is not a hire made to fill a seat. Sarang joins Podean with two platforms in hand, each solving a distinct and stubborn problem in marketplace commerce. Together with Podean’s existing technology ecosystem, they form the foundation of something significantly more powerful.

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Podean’s technology ecosystem now includes:
– Purvey.ai: The foundational system merging Commerce Canal and Podean’s legacy tools that include deep retail and profit analytics, advertising reporting, content reporting, forecasting, and scenario planning
– Streamline: The advanced performance suite from Ad Advance that includes Sponsored Ads, DSP management, and Avatar audience profiling
– Amerge View and Amerge Engine: The sophisticated analytics and bidding technology from Amerge
– Optimizeads.ai: Marketplace intelligence platform with AI native retail media measurement and automation
– HypeLinks: Social-to-commerce solution designed to bridge the gap between social media engagement and direct marketplace conversion

Together, these systems form the foundation of Podean’s next-generation marketplace optimization platform, designed to support full-funnel retail media management, operational efficiency, and advanced social commerce measurement.

APEX: The Team Behind the Platform
The newly unified technology organization will operate as APEX (AI, Product and Engineering Excellence Team), representing the peak of innovation across engineering, product, and AI. With 26 expert team members now united under APEX, Podean is building the industry’s leading platform for driving brand growth.

A Proven Technology and Commerce Leader
Sarang Fegde is a serial tech entrepreneur who brings a unique blend of expertise across technology, retail media measurement, ecommerce, and CPG. At Amazon, he led initiatives across Amazon Local, Amazon Retail, Prime Video, and Amazon Advertising, working in data analytics, marketplace management, consumer insights, marketing measurement, and strategic partnerships.

After Amazon, Sarang founded DemandHelm, a retail media automation and measurement platform, which was acquired by a fast-growing, venture-backed CPG company, where he subsequently served as CTO, leading technology and retail media initiatives. Most recently, he founded Optimizeads.ai and HypeLinks, focused on AI workflows for marketplace optimization and social commerce innovation.

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Executive Commentary
“I admire Podean’s rapid growth and their unwavering commitment to driving brand success and business performance,” said Sarang Fegde. “The opportunity to combine AI, deep marketplace data, and powerful retail media tools into a unified platform is incredibly exciting. I am thrilled to join Podean and help shape the future of marketplace growth.”

“Our strategy has always been rooted in having the strongest team members in the industry, enabled by cutting-edge technology and AI,” said Travis Johnson, CEO of Podean. “Sarang brings world-class marketplace expertise, entrepreneurial energy, and a strong vision for the future of AI-enabled commerce technology. We’re excited to welcome him to Podean’s leadership team and board.”

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LTM Introduces BlueVerse™ Currency to Enable Outcome-Based Pricing in the Agentic AI Era

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LTM, the Business Creativity partner to the world’s largest enterprises, introduced BlueVerse™ Currency, an AI-linked commercial model that prices enterprise work by outcomes rather than effort consumed as enterprises scale agentic AI across core processes.

BlueVerse Currency brings together the full BlueVerse stack—People (expertise on demand), Accelerators (reusable assets that speed delivery), Agents (autonomous AI workforce), Platforms (orchestration layer to scale delivery), and Tokens (compute and model usage)—into a single commercial construct.

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It introduces outcome-linked pricing tied to measurable business results, enabling shared productivity gains so clients can capture AI-driven efficiency value. The model also supports fungible resourcing, enabling reallocation mid-contract to evolving priorities, and faster reinvestment, with savings redirected into innovation.

It is underpinned by a hybrid structure with fixed and variable pricing components, supported by use-case–linked pricing constructs. It also includes subscription, managed-service, and factory setup currency models, and applies across Agentic Engineering Factory, Business AI Transformation, and Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) engagements.

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“Enterprises are increasingly looking to align technology investments more closely with measurable business outcomes. BlueVerse Currency brings together talent, platforms, and intelligent agents into a unified commercial model—enabling clients to move from input-based constructs to outcome-led value creation, while scaling AI adoption with greater flexibility and transparency,” said Venu Lambu, CEO and Managing Director, LTM.

BlueVerse Currency is powered by the BlueVerse ecosystem, LTM’s gateway to the agentic enterprise. It enables LTM to price and deliver outcomes across core business processes, with Responsible AI, security, and governance built in.

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DEUTZ Selects Zilliant as a Partner to Achieve Its Service Revenue Targets

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SAP-connected pricing and opportunity management to help DEUTZ deliver more consistent pricing, customer-centric service recommendations and stronger commercial execution

DEUTZ AG has selected Zilliant, the leader in pricing lifecycle management, to modernize pricing and opportunity management across its Service business. Zilliant will help DEUTZ teams provide fair, market-relevant pricing at the point of decision. It will also help teams identify the next best service action earlier, from parts needs to customer re-engagement.

The project supports DEUTZ’s public 2030 targets: €4 billion revenue, 10% adjusted EBIT margin and €1 billion Service revenue. As industrial markets remain demanding, the initiative gives DEUTZ a more disciplined way to protect value and improve market adequate pricing.

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Following a thorough market comparison, DEUTZ selected Zilliant for its proven SAP integration, deep B2B aftermarket pricing expertise, and ability to connect price management with seller guidance in one operating model. Zilliant also stood out for its ability to challenge pricing and sales assumptions with data, not simply automate existing processes.

“DEUTZ customers need uptime, speed and clarity,” said Andreas Schmidt, CEO of the Service Division at DEUTZ. “This partnership gives our teams better guidance to price consistently and recommend the right part or service to the right customer at the right time.”

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“The B2B leaders we serve want fewer pricing debates and more confident action at the point of sale,” said Pascal Yammine, CEO of Zilliant. “DEUTZ is setting that standard in aftermarket service. Zilliant brings the SAP-connected pricing intelligence, seller guidance and business acumen needed to turn complex data into measurable impact.”

The first phase will focus on SAP-connected price guidance, customer opportunity signals, regional adoption and value tracking across DEUTZ Service.

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IQRush Joins IAB Working Group Focused on AI Visibility Measurement

IQRush Joins IAB and Co-Founder & CEO Todd Paris will also participate in a main-stage session at the 2026 IAB Measurement Leadership Summit

IQRush.ai, an AI visibility measurement and verification company, today announced that it has joined the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and will participate in IAB’s AI Visibility Measurement Standards working group.

A visibility score moving even several points does not automatically mean a brand has gained or lost ground. It may mean the answer engine produced more variable responses…”

— Todd Paris

IQRush joins the IAB conversation as brands, agencies, publishers, platforms, and measurement providers work to define how AI-driven discovery should be measured. As generative AI answer engines become a larger part of how consumers research products, compare brands, and make decisions, marketers need clearer standards for interpreting visibility, citations, brand mentions, answer-engine rankings, and the reliability of the scores appearing on vendor dashboards.

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In addition, IQRush founder and CEO Todd Paris will participate in a main-stage editorial session at the 2026 IAB Measurement Leadership Summit, taking place July 14–15, 2026, at The Mansion at Glen Cove in Glen Cove, New York.

The IAB Measurement Leadership Summit brings together senior data, analytics, and measurement leaders for a strategic forum focused on the future of measurement and attribution in digital advertising.

“AI visibility measurement is becoming one of the most important measurement questions in advertising,” said Todd Paris, founder and CEO of IQRush.ai. “Brands are already making decisions based on citation share, brand mentions, answer-engine rankings, and AI visibility scores. But those numbers are presented without reliability ranges, noise floors, or a clear explanation of when movement is meaningful versus random variation. When marketers act on unstable scores, they unnecessary spend budget on production cycles including changing content all based recommendations that are based on measurement noise. As AI agents automate workflows, those same unreliable signals, compound wasted content costs.”

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IQRush is focused specifically on the measurement layer of the AI visibility market. While many companies are building application-layer dashboards, monitoring tools, and workflow systems, IQRush is built to measure and verify whether the underlying metrics are reliable enough to support business decisions. The company measures answer stability, separates noise from signal, and evaluates whether observed changes in citations, mentions, competitive rankings, answer behavior, and optimization recommendations are meaningful or simply normal variation across answer-engine outputs.

That distinction is becoming more important as brands, agencies, and publishers move from observing AI visibility to acting on it. Without reliable measurement, marketers risk optimizing against unstable scores and scaling agentic workflows based on false positives. Reliable measurement is the unlock that allows marketers to safely accelerate investment in AI search and answer-engine optimization while keeping pace with consumer adoption.

“A visibility score moving even several points does not automatically mean a brand has gained or lost ground,” Paris added. “It may mean the answer engine produced more variable responses, or that the measurement sample was not constructed to support the conclusion. The industry does not need more dashboards that imply precision without proving reliability. It needs a shared way to understand what is being measured, how stable the measurement is, and when a marketer can trust the result enough to act.”

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ClientTether Announces Strategic Partnership with SOCi to Help Franchise Brands Turn Local Visibility Into Faster Growth

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ClientTether’s franchise CRM partners with SOCi’s AI marketing to help multi-location brands boost visibility, engagement, and conversions.

ClientTether, the top-rated FranDev and service franchise CRM, today announced a new partnership with SOCi, the leader in AI-powered marketing solutions for multi-location businesses. Through their leading franchise software, ClientTether and SOCi will help franchise brands connect local visibility, automated marketing execution, and lead engagement to create a more efficient growth path across franchise owner customer acquisition.

The partnership brings together two critical growth engines for franchise and multi-location brands: SOCi’s Genius AI™ and Genius Agents™, which automate and optimize local marketing tasks across locations, and ClientTether’s franchise CRM software, which helps teams automate follow-up, increase speed-to-lead, and streamline communication across text, call, AI integrations, and email.

This partnership gives franchise organizations a stronger connection between local marketing performance and real business growth.”

— Dave Hansen, CEO of ClientTether

Turning Local Visibility Into Measurable Franchise Momentum
For franchise brands, visibility is no longer limited to traditional search rankings. Prospects and customers are discovering local businesses across AI search, local listings, social channels, reviews, maps, and location pages. SOCi helps brands manage that complexity through an AI-powered digital workforce designed to improve discoverability, strengthen reputation, and support localized engagement across every market.

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ClientTether extends that value by helping franchise teams act quickly once interest is created. Whether a prospect is evaluating franchise ownership or a customer is requesting service from a local franchise owner, ClientTether helps brands automate the next step, reduce manual work, and keep opportunities moving.

“Franchise system growth depends on creating demand and then responding with speed and consistency through the right channels,” said Dave Hansen, CEO of ClientTether. “SOCi is helping multi-location brands become more visible and trusted in every local market, while ClientTether helps those same brands engage prospects faster and convert more opportunities. This partnership gives franchise organizations a stronger connection between local marketing performance and real business growth.”

Bringing AI-Powered Local Marketing and CRM Automation Together
SOCi’s Genius Agents are built to work across local search, social, and reputation, helping brands analyze local signals, optimize listings, publish content, respond to reviews, and surface customer insights. For franchise systems, that means brand consistency can be maintained while local execution becomes faster and more scalable.

ClientTether complements SOCi’s local marketing intelligence with franchise sales CRM capabilities that improve lead response, candidate nurturing, B2C customer journeys, sales activity tracking, and automated communication workflows. Together, the platforms support the full journey from discovery to engagement to conversion.

“The best partnerships pair strengths rather than overlap them, and that’s what drew us to ClientTether. Their franchise CRM turns customer interactions into lasting relationships; our agentic AI ensures every location stays visible and in demand in its local market”, said Kelly Benish, VP of Strategic Partnerships at SOCi. “Bringing the two together means brands get a system where marketing and customer engagement reinforce each other at every location.”

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Helping Multi-Location Brands Scale With Greater Speed and Consistency
As franchise executives continue to evaluate franchise software, franchise marketing software, and CRMs for franchises, the need for integrated systems has become more urgent. Brands want to reduce operational drag, improve local performance, and give teams the tools to act faster without sacrificing brand control.

The partnership between ClientTether and SOCi supports that shift by helping franchisors and multi-location operators create a more connected operating model. SOCi helps locations become more discoverable and trusted, while ClientTether helps teams convert that interest into scheduled conversations, qualified opportunities, and revenue-generating relationships.

For franchise development teams, the combined value supports stronger candidate engagement and better follow-up discipline. For service franchise brands, it supports faster customer response, improved communication, and more consistent execution across locations.

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