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Impact Secures $75 Million in Funding Led By Providence Strategic Growth

Financing to Accelerate Growth for the Leading Partnership Automation SaaS Provider

Impact, the global leader in PARTNERSHIP AUTOMATION, announced a $75 million investment led by Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), the growth equity affiliate of Providence Equity Partners. The new funding will accelerate platform development, further go-to-market and regional expansion, and fuel both organic and inorganic growth. Existing investor Silversmith Capital Partners also participated in this investment.

Analysts, technology and enterprise leaders recognize that partnerships are a significant source of incremental growth and new revenue streams. While sales and marketing have long been viewed as the primary sources of growth, they are no longer enough to sustain it. Partnerships have emerged as the next and third major growth driver for business.

“We have seen brands double-down on direct sales and marketing investments such as CRM and marketing automation over the past 20 years. With over 75 percent of world trade flowing indirectly, Forrester believes the third stage of enterprise growth will revolve around paving the last mile to the customer through partners and alliances,” said Jay McBain, Forrester, Principal Analyst Global Channels.

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Just as automation software has transformed sales and marketing organizations and their processes, Partnership Automation is doing the same. Automating partnership discovery, recruitment, onboarding, engagement and optimization is possible through Impact’s Partnership Cloud. Impact’s most mature clients leverage the Partnership Cloud to transform their organizations and partnership initiatives to expand across all types of partnerships, from traditional affiliates to influencers to strategic B2B partnerships and more, to become the fastest-growing revenue channel for their organization.

“Impact’s platform allows us to create and scale direct partnerships to drive new revenue more efficiently than in the past,” said Dan Armstrong, Ticketmaster, SVP & GM, Distributed Commerce. “We’ve enabled discovery and purchase of the largest ticket inventory in the world through unique partnerships with social media platforms, music streaming services and major publishers on a global scale. Impact helps us understand the value we create through these partners, allowing us to focus more of our time on innovation.”

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“There’s been an explosion of innovation around new types of partnerships being forged to grow enterprise revenue,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO, Impact. “Beyond Ticketmaster building native software integration partnerships with social media platforms, Impact enables a marketplace of hospitality services to establish partnerships with airlines. A fashion-forward sportswear brand to partner with YouTube influencers. A major direct-to-consumer mattress brand to establish partnerships with chiropractors. Barkbox, another fast growing direct-to-consumer business, to establish partnerships with animal shelters, veterinary clinics, dog walkers and pet hotels for their pet care subscription boxes. The types of emerging partnerships supported by Impact’s Partnership Cloud are virtually limitless.”

“What was once seen as an offshoot or hybrid of sales and marketing, partnerships are now representing as much as 25 percent of total enterprise revenue and growing 50 percent or more as a new category for some businesses,” said Yovanno. “And enterprises are demanding software automation to help them scale in this new category of revenue, similar to the automation they’ve used in other categories such as sales and marketing. With support from PSG, a premier global investor, Impact will be able to further evolve its integrated platform to empower businesses to effectively and efficiently grow their revenue in this new era of the PARTNERSHIP ECONOMY. We’re delighted to have PSG on board.”

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“Impact has provided the industry and its customers with a powerful, integrated platform that we believe has now become the premier Partnership Automation software available,” said Marco Ferrari, Managing Director, PSG. “We’re excited to invest in and partner with Impact as they grow and develop new technologies to automate, scale and optimize partnership programs for enterprises worldwide.”

“This announcement follows a landmark year for Impact, in which they completed the acquisition of Mediarails, the leading CRM for influencer discovery, recruitment and optimization; continued their global expansion by opening local offices in Singapore and the Nordics; and expanded their leadership team,” said Jim Quagliaroli, Managing Partner of Silversmith Capital Partners. “We’re excited to add to our existing investment and to have PSG join us in this next stage of Impact’s growth.”

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RingCentral Expands Open Platform Capabilities with RingCentral Embeddable and Extended API Library

Enables developers to embed communications into their enterprise applications within minutes

RingCentral, Inc., a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, collaboration, and contact center solutions, announced the expansion of its open platform with RingCentral Embeddable, enabling developers to easily and quickly embed communications into their enterprise applications. RingCentral also announced extensions to its API library with new e-Discovery and message retention APIs. These new solutions will be showcased at the RingCentral booth #1806 at Enterprise Connect, March 18–21, in Orlando.

The RingCentral open platform is seeing strong momentum and has more than 20,000 developers and over 2,000 integrations. With RingCentral Embeddable, developers will now have the ability to integrate communications and collaboration capabilities into their enterprise application workflows within minutes. In addition, the new APIs will give developers direct access to communication information related to voice, SMS, fax, account configuration, and communications data for RingCentral customers.

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“Today’s global, mobile, and distributed enterprise workforce is inundated with multiple applications that cause unwarranted distractions by having to toggle between applications,” said Kira Makagon, executive vice president, Innovation at RingCentral. “With the new RingCentral Embeddable and open APIs announced today, enterprise customers can embed communications into their business-critical applications and enable their workforce to be more productive.”

RingCentral Embeddable:

RingCentral Embeddable offers developers the capability to embed voice and SMS messaging into RingCentral customer’s business applications.

  • Gives developers the ability to easily integrate communications into enterprise applications in under 15 minutes by leveraging the technology of professional User Experience (UX) and Quality Assurance (QA) used in RingCentral’s own applications
  • Capabilities include account record screen pop with inbound call, click-to-dial, click-to-SMS, access to softphone settings, messages and call history
  • Delivers a more seamless experience by eliminating the need for employees to toggle between various business and communications applications to get their work done

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New APIs:

  • E-Discovery: With the new e-Discovery API, administrators can now generate a report of all messages including data, such as SMS, chat, MMS, voicemail, and fax, and track them by user for additional enterprise legal and compliance guidelines.
  • Message retention: The new message retention API enables administrators to extract messages that can be used for additional compliance and data retention requirements.

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Zeevo Group Assists Aircraft Lessors in Adopting Smarter Analytics to Gain Competitive Advantage

Business Intelligence, Data and Analytics Solutions Have the Power to Deliver Meaningful, Measurable, and Sustainable Operations Improvements

Zeevo Group LLC, a business, finance and information technology consulting services firm showcased its expertise in delivering specialized, real-world knowledge about data management and convergence with modern Business Intelligence (“BI”) platforms to aviation clients on the sidelines of ISTAT Americas, the continent’s leading gathering for airlines, and aviation finance and aircraft leasing organizations.

“Adopting smarter data analytics and mining business intelligence to improve business outcomes is among the hottest trends in technology,” explained Zeevo Principal Karen Curtis. “Today’s aircraft lessors are challenged with understanding and aligning their strategies to their BI, Big Data, and analytics objectives in order to enhance their operations and mitigate business and technology risks.”

Zeevo has delivered a number of successful BI-oriented projects that enable lessors to future-proof their business intelligence environments, while empowering their commercial teams with access to the critical information and analytics in real-time, placing greater emphasis on unlocking the power of lessors’ data and streamlining their core operations.

Curtis elaborated that “the BI reporting and modeling solutions are fast becoming an integral tool for any aviation organization, including lessors, that desire to stay apace with the latest data mining and analytics methodologies in a highly competitive market.”

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Through ongoing engagements with globally recognized aircraft lessors, Zeevo has demonstrated that the right BI and analytics strategies have the power to significantly affect the efficacy of all facets of a leasing platform’s operations.

“Having critical data and meaningful reports at our fingertips from anywhere in the world is a must for our leasing executives in order to make informed decisions and execute strategic deals,” commented a senior executive of a Europe-based lessor, who collaborated with Zeevo on aggregating the lessor’s data across disparate sources and presenting it through digestible dashboards.

Zeevo also assisted the lessor’s commercial team in implementing reconciliation analytics to better align data and create one “golden source” of information. As a result, the commercial team gained access to a streamlined, one-stop shop to view and analyze the pertinent information, reducing inefficiencies in sourcing information across multiple locations and engaging in time-consuming data analysis.

Curtis added: “Our team has an extensive track record in exploring and leveraging the BI framework’s advanced capabilities to deliver sophisticated modeling solutions that enable lessors to extract data from their existing systems; add supplemental inputs to drive advanced analysis; and model the analysis to support key operational decisions, such as: event/cost and maintenance forecasting, workload planning, and contracts and procurement processing.”

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Zeevo utilized BI modeling techniques to establish a weighted scoring system for contracts and procurement departments based on internal knowledge to assist department heads with workload allocations. Rather than looking at raw transaction counts, the models added a new dimension to visualize how each transaction affects a team member’s workload in terms of hours per day. With this type of tool, department heads now can better identify overtaxed or underutilized employees.

“Workload planning for my team used to be manual and time-consuming,” explained a senior executive on a U.S.-based lessor’s Commercial Contracts team. “Zeevo developed a fully automated workload planning model that enables us to allocate incoming work with immediate visibility of the impact on my team’s future workload and make effective resource planning decisions.”

Modeling tools can also provide ‘what-if’ scenarios to allow department heads to modify assignments and determine the impact on workload before reaching a final determination.

The applications for modeling tools don’t end there. Zeevo has also utilized modeling tools to support data reconciliation and maintenance forecasting.

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“Zeevo took our operations to the next level by creating immeasurable efficiencies,” added a senior executive on an Asia-based lessor’s Technical team. “Our Technical team worked hand-in-hand with Zeevo experts to automate our manual processes, while creating the flexibility our business needed to analyze, manage, and report on our fleet, as well as support internal and external initiatives and stakeholders.”

This just scratches the surface of the untapped potential for leveraging BI for modeling. Wherever lessors find data limitations in their current systems and processes, BI modeling can support data aggregation and complex analysis – all coupled with reporting and dashboard solutions for easy consumption for the C-suite and all teams across the company.

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With deep expertise in delivering BI and analytics solutions, Zeevo has become a ‘go-to’ technology partner for leading companies in the aircraft leasing sector and beyond. The Zeevo team remains committed to innovation, continually growing its vast array of technology and finance solutions that address the evolving needs of lessors, and sharing insights into what lessors can do to become more Intelligent Enterprises.

“BI is poised to rapidly disrupt and transform the aircraft leasing sector in the same way digital transformation has changed our world,” concluded Curtis. “We look forward to continuing to develop and implement best-in-class, strategic solutions to drive lessors’ growth and transform their businesses.”

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RichRelevance Winter ’19 Delivers on Hyper-Personalization to Individualize Shopping Experiences at Scale

New NLP for Recommend extracts textual insights to help promote new and long tail products immediately, and learns from in-session signals to increase relevance in real-time

RichRelevance, the leader in Experience Personalization, announced innovations that allow digital leaders to apply Deep Learning (DL) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to create the industry’s most memorable, relevant shopping experiences at scale. These latest enhancements to the Personalization Cloud, Hyper-Personalization, advance the industry beyond basic segment-based personalization to engage every customer as an individual with inspiring content, offers and promotions in real-time and at scale. The result is that digital marketing leaders understand each shopper’s unique goals throughout the customer lifecycle, and can deliver consistent, branded experiences across all channels to drive digital growth.

“The industry-first functionality that we unveiled today is resolving the biggest challenge our customers face: delivering a truly personal experience that engages and inspires the shopper,” said Carl Theobald, President and CEO of RichRelevance.“Vague, rules-based segmentation results in irrelevant shopping experiences that drive shoppers away. To succeed, digital marketers need to enable the programmatic execution of experiences that happen in real-time, ensuring that the signature moments of the brand are memorable for all the right reasons.”

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Individuals vs. Segments

The RichRelevance Personalization Cloud helps brands and retailers develop stronger and more personal relationships with their customers. Traditional personalization focuses on basic segments where groups of shoppers receive content and offers based on static, pre-determined rules. This doesn’t speak to individuals or their unique and changing shopping goals, resulting in irrelevant and impersonal shopping experiences. Today’s enhancements to the RichRelevance Personalization Cloud uniquely make use of behavioral data in conjunction with product graphs generated using advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Learning Neural Nets to create truly Hyper-Personalized profiles that:

  • Recognize the customer as an individual
  • Understand the reasons behind consumer choices in real-time
  • Inspire customers with personally tailored products and content

Tailoring to individual interests

The powerful Xen AI™ Deep Learning engine which underpins this latest release provides insight based on massive, previously unlinked data points. New Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology uses a Deep Learning Neural Net to identify and extract insights from unstructured text, product descriptions, user reviews, partner data, user-generated content, shopper activity and behavioral data, resulting in a more accurate picture of the purchase intent and interests of any given customer. With a sophisticated multi-dimensional product graph at their fingertips, digital marketers can re-rank the most relevant products in real-time, in-session for higher engagement and conversion. Such apt, compelling experiences help make brands memorable in shoppers’ moments of need.

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Listen to what SwimOutlet.com, the largest online specialty retailer for swimming, fashion, beach and surf products in the US has to say:

“Shopping for bathing suits online is tricky because people are looking for very specific attributes, such as whether a suit is slimming in the waist or if it’s appropriate for athletic use,” said Alexander Sienkiewicz, CMO of SwimOutlet.com. “These are very important to shoppers when selecting merchandise, but are not captured by today’s commerce systems. RichRelevance is helping us solve this problem with NLP technology that captures these complex nuances and surfaces products that are much more relevant to shoppers. This is a game changer in digital commerce, and RichRelevance is a key partner in helping us advance the online customer experience.”

Understand the consumer’s intent

In a departure from traditional customer analysis used to drive personalization that relied on demographic and psychographic models, the newly updated RichRelevance Xen AI™ platform can now auto-discover meaningful customer behavioral trends and patterns. This not only surfaces new customer audiences for campaigns, but helps marketers understand what customers are buying, and why, so they can better leverage data to inform the creative side of marketing.

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Now, marketers can waste less effort on generating segments and focus instead on creating actionable insights that lead to shoppable moments. Using real-time engagement data, RichRelevance optimization algorithms deliver more relevant and personalized content and offers to individuals, driving higher conversion rates and revenue.

Inspire customers with a curated experience

The latest innovations from RichRelevance introduces Experience Designer, which builds upon the Experience Browser, which debuted last summer. The Experience Browser gives brands and retailers transparency and insight into how AI is impacting their business and why specific decisions are being made by the engine. The newly released Experience Designer builds on the AI transparency insights from Experience Browser and makes it actionable for the brand and retailer. Experience Designer enables marketers to quickly introduce new dynamic experiences into the customer journey by leveraging Xen AI™ to take all creative variants and test and optimize what gets show to whom, at scale, without having to wait for IT or setup expensive A/B tests.

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New Research Dispels Myths and Defines Best Practices for Advertisers in “The New TV” Landscape

More content and greater access are transforming viewers’ TV experience and rewriting the rules for TV advertising strategies

Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of Comcast Cable, today released a research whitepaper entitled, “The New TV: Redefining Video for Viewers and Advertisers.” The paper explores how fundamental shifts in the TV viewing experience have opened new opportunities for advertisers. New distribution points and technological advancements have enabled TV advertisers to reach consumers throughout the full marketing funnel. The New TV comes with new rules, however, and demands refined advertising strategies to achieve the most effective results.

“Contrary to the accepted industry narrative, TV today is thriving, with time spent viewing video reaching new highs, and it remains the most powerful way to reach consumers. It’s just a new TV, one that has evolved with more content and more consumer access,” said Hank Oster, chief operating officer and senior vice president, Comcast Spotlight. “It’s important we help advertisers understand the way the medium has evolved and how to harness the abundant time spent and its reach to grow their businesses.”

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“Our clients are asking us for new ways to use TV that drive greater addressability and more accountability. But change is hard,” said Justin Evans, vice president of data strategy, Comcast Spotlight. “Big data has arrived in TV. It has expanded the way advertisers can use the medium, not just for awareness, but as a full funnel solution, to drive consideration and conversion as well.”

Consumers: Richer Content, Unfettered Access

According to the paper, programming has been on a 20-year journey, moving from mainstream fare to increasingly more sophisticated storytelling. Quality content and access to that content has never been stronger, pushing viewers’ time spent with video to new highs. Proof points include the following:

  • Creators are spending $65 billion per year on new content creation (MoffettNathanson Research 2018 Forecast for Production/Program Spending).
  • 495 original scripted series were produced in 2018, up from 216 in 2010 (FX Networks, 2018).
  • New access has led to binge watching and the resurgence of evergreen content, pushing total TV/video consumption up to over 5 hours a day (5:24)—65% more time than adults spend with non-video digital (Nielsen Total Audience Report, Q2 2018, adults daily time spent with TV/video).
  • Households spend 43 minutes more with TV daily than in 1983; time is simply spread across more content and accessed in new ways (Nielsen, HH viewing, broadcast year 1982-83 compared to 2017-2018).

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Marketers: New Data, Smarter Advertising

More advanced data is another key factor shaping The New TV, creating a new value proposition for the medium.

“While new viewing options have made TV advertising more complex, data helps to solve some of these complexities by making TV smarter,” said Evans.

More robust data comes from a variety of sources, such as advertisers, TV manufacturers and MVPDs, including Comcast set-top box (STB) data. With the data insights now available, marketers can focus on specific customer segments beyond broad age and gender criteria, similar to targeting in digital media.

Campaign goals can shift from driving broad awareness to driving lower funnel metrics, including consideration, intent and sales. It shifts the focus from exclusively using content to reach audiences and requires broadening the scope of networks, dayparts and programs.

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Best Practices: Driving Advertising Results

In order to optimize a campaign in The New TV landscape, advertisers must let go of long-held assumptions and understand the new viewing realities. For instance, according to insights gained from Comcast STB data:

  • Reach is not limited to top networks: the average household watches an average of 17 different cable networks per month.
  • Primetime is not the only valuable daypart: two-thirds of all viewing occurs outside of primetime.
  • Live viewing is not limited to sports and news: the vast majority of viewing, 87%, is still live.

Comcast Spotlight has been working with advertisers on deploying data-driven campaigns, reflective of The New TV marketplace, in more than 25 markets. The learnings, as shared in the paper, reinforce the benefits of employing The New TV tactics.

For instance, Comcast Spotlight’s analysis of traditional TV campaigns in comparison to campaigns employing the rules of The New TV uncovered the following best practices, according to insights gained from Comcast STB data:

  • Run Broad and Deep: Among 85 campaigns analyzed, the five highest-reaching campaigns achieved 81% reach and ran on 37 networks; the five lowest-reaching campaigns achieved 30% reach and ran on only 16 networks.
  • Run Long: Reach continues to build after week one; in week 10, on average, campaigns delivered 184% increase over week one, and in week 15 they delivered a 227% increase.
  • Add Different Formats: Linear TV campaigns that add video on demand can deliver as much as 17% of their unique reach in the non-linear format.

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To support TV’s evolution as a full-funnel solution, Comcast Spotlight is also working to help advertisers prove attribution by measuring the success of a TV campaign in driving visitors to an advertiser’s website. Again, research showed that in one case study employing The New TV tactics—including a balance of audience and content-focused targeting—website visits showed a 13% lift during the course of the campaign, compared to a 5% lift using a content-focused strategy alone.

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Podcasting and Audiobooks Both Attain 50% Reach; Facebook Usage Continues to Drop

Edison Research and Triton Digital Reveal Results of The Infinite Dial 2019

Podcasting shows explosive year-over-year growth as gains in spoken-word audio mark the 2019 Infinite Dial Study by Edison Research and Triton Digital. Among the U.S. population ages 12 and older, as the total number of people who have ever listened to a podcast passes 50% for the first time.

“This is a watershed moment for podcasting–a true milestone. With over half of Americans 12+ saying that they have ever listened to a podcast, the medium has firmly crossed into the mainstream,” noted Tom Webster, Senior Vice President at Edison Research.

One-third of the population reported having listened to a podcast in the last month, representing 90 million monthly listeners. The spoken-word audio sector also saw increases with audiobooks, as the portion of the U.S. population that has ever listened to an audiobook surpasses one-half for the first time.

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“It’s a pleasure to once again partner with Edison Research for another insightful presentation of media usage and consumption in the U.S.,” said John Rosso, President of Market Development at Triton Digital.

The latest study also finds that the number of current users of Facebook continues to drop. The study shows an estimated 15 million fewer users of Facebook than in the 2017 report. The declines are heavily concentrated among younger people.

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Other findings include:

  • More than half the U.S. population now reports having used YouTube specifically for music in last week. This number is now 70% among 12-34-year-olds.
  • The percentage of Americans who listen to online audio (defined as listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to streamed audio content available only on the internet) has doubled since 2012, growing from one-third of the population to two-thirds.
  • Time spent listening to online audio has reached a record high this year, with weekly online audio listeners reporting and average of nearly 17 hours of listening in the last week.

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The 2019 Infinite Dial is the latest report in a series dating back to 1998 that covers consumer usage of media and technology, has tracked many new mediums as they develop. The Infinite Dial currently provides the latest research in U.S. digital audio, mobile, smart speakers, podcast consumption, and social media. The Infinite Dial study uses the “gold standard” of nationally representative survey research—a random probability telephone sample, comprising both mobile phones and landlines, of all Americans ages 12 and older. The study has become the report card on digital audio and other digital media and is widely used and quoted by broadcasters, Internet radio, ad agencies, and the financial community.

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ironSource Launches A/B Testing Tool for Ad Monetization

Leading mobile monetization and marketing company ironSource announced the launch of its A/B testing tool for ad monetization. ironSource is the first and only mediation platform to enable app developers to instantly and effortlessly test multiple monetization strategies directly through their dashboard, and then make strategic decisions based on true comparative data.

Currently, there are two predominant methods by which app developers test new monetization theories – from day-to-day tests such as waterfall amends to larger tests like interstitial frequency and implementing a new ad-unit – both of which have their challenges. The most common method is to release a change to all users in one go. However the inability to first test the change against a control group means that the results are speculative and unreliable, as well as risky should the outcome differ from what was expected. In the rare case when a developer does have the necessary tools to run a legitimate test, it is generally done through two different builds which demands a large amount of engineering resources which are costly and time consuming. 

This new tool by ironSource solves these issues by allowing app developers to run tests and improve their ARPU, ARPDAU and retention rates directly through their own dashboard on the ironSource mediation platform. After setting up a control group versus a test group, the developers allocate their desired traffic distribution to each one. According to the results, they can adjust the settings according to each group, allowing the developers to experiment with different criteria without exposing the whole of their audience to the change. ironSource’s reporting system tracks the performance of each group against their main KPIs and using the in-depth test overview, the developers can then choose to end the test and apply the settings from the winning group.

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“Good ad monetization implementation is always a balance between revenue and user experience, so constant iteration, customizability and optimization are a key component to success,” said Andrew Stone, President of Random Logic Games. “With ironSource’s A/B testing tool – all of that becomes infinitely easier to optimize and improve so that we’re able to quickly and easily make smart decisions that directly impact our business, and automate our operations for greater efficiency.”

The A/B testing tool also lays the foundations for a smooth transition to in-app bidding, where networks bid in real time for an impression. Moving over to in-app bidding may have high implications on revenue, so any changes must be done in a controlled testing environment, before the switch is made to a full-scale bidding solution.

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“Our goal at ironSource is to become the growth platform for publishers and our recent product releases have all focused on improving the transparency and automation of a publisher’s operations,” said Nimrod Zuta, VP Product ironSource. “This tool will transform the way developers make decisions about their monetization strategy, allowing them to run a one-off test, or continuously test multiple aspects of their ads, without the risk and resources involved in uploading new versions to the store.”

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MadHive Launches New Technology Suite to Address Fraud, Usher in New Era of Accountability in Advertising

TEGNA’s Premion Leveraging MadHive’s Cryptography, AI and Blockchain Advertising Innovations to Sharpen Audience Targeting

MadHive, the technology company best known for innovations in cryptography and advertising, launched a suite of technologies designed to address the biggest threats to the advertising industry  the issues of trust, transparency, fraud and brand safety.

The cross-platform advertising technology stack announced today leverages proprietary tools to cryptographically validate and link data across the supply chain to help grow the advertisers’ audiences, enable more precise targeting and verify ad delivery.

The new MadHive suite of solutions addresses the multi-billion dollar challenge that fraud poses for advertisers. Recent reports estimate fraud will cost the advertising industry more than $19 billion in 2019  and is expected to reach a staggering $44 billion by 2022.

“Publishers, brands and agencies alike have been living in the Advertising 1.0 ecosystem  what we call the ‘Guess Economy’ dealing with issues around brand safety, transparency and fraud,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO at MadHive. “But that doesn’t have to be the case. Our technology is ushering in a new era  paving the way for Advertising 2.0 and the ‘Evidence Economy,’ where results are trusted because they are mathematically and scientifically proven.”

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OTT advertising leader Premion, which leverages MadHive’s market-leading campaign management and reporting tools, is now utilizing the full stack solution to generate better targeting for advertisers and cryptographic proof for buy-side transactions.

“Advertisers expect the highest level of accountability and verifiable transparency is a prerequisite for doing business today,” said Jim Wilson, President of Premion at TEGNA. “The MadHive solution ensures advertisers are getting what they pay for, while providing greater trust and accuracy in all phases of audience targeting, media buying, campaign management and reporting.”

“This product integration is a huge step for how cryptography and blockchain can be leveraged to its fullest potential in the digital advertising industry,” said Christiana Cacciapuoti, Executive Director at AdLedger, the non-profit research and development consortium building and implementing the blockchain standards for digital advertising. “We are proud to have members like MadHive and TEGNA on the front lines, building and leveraging the tools that will make real progress in the fight against fraud.”

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MadHive’s product suite includes tools for media planning and buying, data management and matching, campaign and yield optimization and reporting. The suite validates data and inventory, delivering transparency while reducing fraud, waste, and abuse, cutting intermediary costs from high double-digit percentages of every ad dollar, delivering more value for the publisher and advertiser. These cutting-edge solutions paired with premium inventory acquisition from partners like Freewheel, result in unprecedented campaign efficiencies and performance.

Key elements of the MadHive suite:

  • Audience Device Graph: The MadHive Device Graph connects advertisers and publishers to audiences across all devices, ensuring each interaction is driven by relevant audience-specific data.
  • Precision Targeting: The MadHive tech stack leverages audience-specific data to power dynamic creative optimization and message targeting strategies to generate personalized creative units based on real-time information.
  • Audience Verification: MadHive employs cutting-edge technologies like cryptography and blockchain to guarantee audiences and video impressions across desktop, mobile, ConnectedTV, and OTT.
  • Cross-Device Attribution: MadHive’s proprietary AI (“Roger”) improves cross-device analytics by matching impressions, engagements and conversions to consumers.

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Trustpilot Closes $55 Million Series E Funding Round Led by Sunley House Capital Management

Funds will support Trustpilot’s strategy to be the leader in trust and transparency

Trustpilot, the leading independent platform for companies to build trust with consumers, announced it has raised $55 million in a Series E equity investment round. The round was led by Sunley House Capital Management, an affiliate of global private equity firm Advent International, with strong participation from existing shareholders Vitruvian Partners, Draper Esprit, Index Ventures, Northzone and Seed Capital.

Founded in 2007, Trustpilot has grown rapidly since inception via its freemium SaaS business model. The Series E funds will help Trustpilot strengthen its market leading position through investment in marketing, its technology platform and people and accelerate its drive to set new standards for transparency in the review space.

The investment follows another milestone year for Trustpilot. The company now has more than 58 million reviews of over 265,000 company domains from 150+ countries. Today, Trustpilot is one of the top 1% most visited websites worldwide and a leader in the UK, other European markets and North America. Its brand is seen more than 3.5 billion times online each month.

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Feedback shared through the Trustpilot platform empowers consumers to get closer to the companies they buy from, make better buying decisions and influence others. For companies, openly collecting consumer reviews on Trustpilot not only helps them grow and show brand trust but also delivers tangible, measurable business results such as actionable customer insights, helping more consumers discover their brand online (including through the strongest SEO power of any comparable platform) and turning significantly more browsers into buyers.

“There has never been a greater need for trust online and in the world which is why we keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the review space,” said Trustpilot founder and CEO, Peter Mühlmann. “Our open and transparent approach is crucial. It empowers consumers and companies to collaborate, innovate and improve together and that’s what builds lasting brand trust.”

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Commenting on the investment, Mohammed Anjarwala, a Managing Director at Sunley House Capital Management, said, “Trustpilot offers a powerful value proposition to businesses, enabling them to improve their digital marketing efficiency and enhance customer engagement. We believe that the company has significant opportunities for continued growth, both in its core UK market and internationally, and look forward to supporting Peter and the Trustpilot team.” Mr. Anjarwala will join the Board of Directors at Trustpilot.

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LeadMD Closes 2018 Strong; Wins Top Agency Honors & Named Marketo Platinum Partner

Agency looks ahead to continued growth and innovation in 2019

LeadMD, a leading modern marketing firm, announces it is wrapping up another high-growth year by being named a Marketo, an Adobe company platinum service partner. The company also celebrates a handpicked hire for its leadership team. Kate Stephensen Rogers was recently chosen to serve as LeadMD’s VP of people, a crucial role, tailored perfectly for her, based on her prior experience nurturing talent and leading teams.

On the heels of the recent Marketo acquisition by Adobe last year, Marketo has confirmed that LeadMD once again has earned its Platinum partner level, their highest partner designation. As a Marketo Platinum partner, LeadMD continues its trajectory of sustained growth, finishing 2018 with revenues up 30 percent year over year. In just this past year alone, the firm exceeded the milestone of 3,500 client engagements and welcomed well-known enterprise brands to its client roster, including Chevron, Uber, and Barracuda Networks to name a few.

“One of our core values at LeadMD is that ‘we are better than yesterday,’ and I’ve seen our team embrace that idea,” says Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD. “Not only are we constantly delivering industry-defining returns together with our clients, but we also have a religious devotion to innovation and growth. This mindset of perpetual improvement bonds us as a group and translates into revenue performance, client satisfaction, and engaged employees with high morale. Coupling the hiring of Kate with the success of the year and Adobe partnership is one hell of a way to go into 2019. I’m excited to see what our tribe accomplishes together this year.”

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In 2018, LeadMD solidified its role as a trailblazer in the marketing industry on many fronts, including:

  • Grew the company’s top-line revenues by over 134 percent; stimulated by both enterprise marketing strategy engagements as well as growth within the firm’s newly formed ‘Packaged Services’ division which implements technology on behalf of top software providers, such as Marketo, Showpad, Uberflip, and Engagio.
  • Launching Marketemy, a 12-week experience accelerator for digital marketers, in February. The paid program enables senior-level students and recent college graduates in Arizona to gain access to marketing curriculum, first-hand marketing experience, and cutting-edge technology from within LeadMD. Individuals are selected from a highly curated pool of candidates, and students receive a full-time job offer from LeadMD (or partner) at the end of the program.
  • Debuting in August, its revenue acceleration framework (RAF) for marketing which helps align clients’ revenue goals with the right people, process, and technology to achieve desired growth. The RAF has been reviewed and promoted by some of the top industry analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and TOPO.
  • Being selected by Drift, the leading conversational marketing and sales platform, as its first enterprise partner. Through this relationship, LeadMD customers can now experience the benefits of increased buyer conversion and shortened time to sales, while Drift customers can enjoy enhanced time to value and deeper utilization of the Drift platform.
  • Becoming one of Marketo’s top Platinum service partners.

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This year was clearly one of big moves and even bigger revenue strides for LeadMD, and 2019 promises to take this growth and keep building upon it.

“We are excited to once again recognize LeadMD as one of our top Platinum partners as they continue to drive success within our customer base, from both a strategic and technical standpoint, ensuring organizations drive tangible ROI with our powerful solution,” said Lisa Hudson, Director of Global Partner Services at Adobe. “Together, we’re going to do some great work for our customers and continue to move them forward on the marketing maturity curve.”

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