Criteo, the commerce media company, has announced the launch of Commerce Grid, a first-of-its-kind supply-side platform (SSP) purpose-built for agencies and publishers looking to efficiently connect media and commerce with programmatic. Commerce Grid differentiates itself from other SSPs by bringing Criteo’s proprietary Commerce Audiences to both buyers and sellers on the supply side for the first time. When packaged with premium inventory, ad buyers can target these audiences—built from Criteo’s leading AI technology that analyzes billions of real-time commerce signals—through their preferred demand-side platform (DSP) to engage with potential customers across all channels, devices, and stages of their shopping journey. Publishers also gain access to other Criteo assets, including shoppable formats and commerce insights.
AMA (A Million Ads), a specialist in dynamic creative and personalization for digital audio advertising, has announced the launch of its innovative AI-powered product features, Studio.AI, designed to further enhance the speed and precision of the AMA dynamic decisioning engine. The new solution intelligently syncs audio files with script lines and selects relevant data triggers for highly-personalized ad experiences and is available for use across leading audio platforms, including Spotify, Pandora, Acast and iHeart.
Seismic, a specialist in enablement, has announced its Spring 2023 Release which builds on Seismic’s leadership in AI-guided selling with new capabilities powered by Aura, Seismic’s AI engine. Launched in 2021, Seismic Aura deepens buyer engagement by capturing AI-driven content insights, streamlining the selling process, and helping sales leaders coach and improve their teams. New capabilities available to Seismic customers that power better customer experiences include: Seismic for Microsoft Viva Sales: starting this month, Seismic is launching the first set AI-powered capabilities for Microsoft Viva Sales. Directly within Microsoft Teams meeting summaries, users can receive content and training recommendations powered by Seismic. Additionally Seismic for Google Slides is now available: streamline presentation creation and customer personalization efforts by making the Seismic content library of approved materials available for sellers within Google Slides – all without leaving the browser window.
Antavo, the Enterprise Loyalty Cloud, and CarltonOne Engagement, the purpose-powered engagement platform with a global rewards fulfilment engine, has announced a partnership to help brands drive lasting customer loyalty by boosting their reward experience. By integrating the Antavo Enterprise Loyalty Cloud and CarltonOne’s vast reward catalogue, brands can now offer customers a wider range of customer loyalty rewards including: merchandise; flight, hotel and leisure experiences; gift cards; mobile top-ups and charitable donations. The partnership allows Antavo and CarltonOne to deliver full-circle rewards programmes, covering transactional and non-transactional loyalty schemes so that brands can reward their members in a way that is most appropriate to them. The partnership makes CarltonOne the first integrated reward fulfilment partner of Antavo.
Fiverr International Ltd., a company that is revolutionizing how the world works together, has announced its second Anywhere Worker Study, releasing insights looking into the current trends of Anywhere Workers. With data from across the world, 2000 Anywhere Workers (i.e. people who work remotely while traveling from at least two locations, domestic or international, throughout the year), reveal that they are choosing to travel more and for longer periods of time. Of the 1000+ UK Anywhere Workers surveyed, over a third (37%) have been identified as Anywhere Workers for 2 years already, and over 1 in 5 (22%) plan to continue living the Anywhere Worker lifestyle for more than 2 years, up to 3 years. As flexibility through remote work continues to gain momentum, the global workforce is becoming more dispersed with people incorporating both work and travel into their lifestyle seamlessly. The nomadic lifestyle also continues to gain traction as macro-economic pressures have accelerated peoples’ decision to ditch the traditional ‘9-5’ work routine.
Mia-FinTech, the technology provider for banks and financial institutions based on Mia-Platform technologies, has announced the launch of the Mia-FinTech Identification Manager. This new solution simplifies banks’ onboarding processes and connects multiple identity providers. According to research, 68% of consumers abandon applications for new bank accounts or loans due to the complexity of the onboarding process. Furthermore, 75% of millennials indicated they are willing to change their banking institution for a better mobile experience. The adoption and use of digital identity technology has risen sharply in recent years. As a result, Mia-FinTech believes there is an increasing need for an integrated digital identity infrastructure to serve as a catalyst for financial inclusion and incorporates universal access to ID data for all financial institutions.
Tech Mahindra, a provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business re-engineering services and solutions, has announced a partnership with Espressive, a pioneer in automating digital workplace assistance. The partnership will offer both their customers autonomous and cost-effective work environment assistance through Espressive Barista, an AI-based virtual support agent (VSA). Together, Tech Mahindra and Espressive will enable organizations that are looking to outsource and automate service desk requests to drive productivity and enhance the employee experience. Espressive will combine its no-code platform with TechMahindra’s innovative technology stack to support near-instant automation and resolution of employee requests, such as resetting passwords, accessing DocuSign, connecting to virtual private networks, and more. The platform’s advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and machine learning capabilities will ensure responses are highly personalized to reassure employees that their requests have been fully understood and resolved in real time.
Hawk, a European player in digital omnichannel communication, has launched Diskuss, a new interactive ad format developed to strengthen the engagement between brands and their target audiences. The advanced creative allows advertisers to determine an individual’s preferences and recommend a specific product that is best suited to that person and their needs. Diskuss delivers an ad to users, targeted using Hawk’s location and audience targeting capabilities and extensive audience data. This creative asks a series of brief questions to better understand the viewer’s preferences. At the end of the interaction the user is guided to the information or action that is most relevant based on the responses they have provided, such as being given a specific product recommendation, booking an appointment or demo, or receiving more specific details about particular offerings. Following the campaign, a full report provides details on the responses for each question, and a breakdown on the items that were most popular, based on respondents’ answers. This insight helps to build audience profiles for different brands, products and services.
Jugo, a specialist in immersive virtual experiences, released survey data that unpacks British workers’ current virtual habits, including the worst behaviours during digital meetings, as well as the public’s thoughts on the do’s and don’ts of virtual etiquette. The findings come as we approach the 53rd anniversary of the world’s first commercial video call on July 1, 1970, which paved the way for Jugo and other virtual meeting platforms’ video technologies. The survey found that one third (33%) of Brits have lied about their location in a meeting, with 48% employing a virtual background to hide the evidence. Shockingly, over one in 10 Brits (14%) have taken a nap during a virtual meeting, while 8% have had sex. Based on the survey’s findings, Jugo has created a free etiquette guide to help remote and hybrid workers avoid virtual meeting faux pas. Jugo Virtual Meeting Etiquette 101 is the golden standard for organisation leaders and HR executives as they align on company-wide protocols regarding virtual workplace etiquette.
Pixel Artworks, the immersive experience studio, who collaborate with LEGO, Netflix and Tiffany & Co., has launched ‘The Lighthouse’, a mixed-reality space in London. The space will help brands access and understand first-hand how embedded technology can solve their business challenges and act as a guiding light for how to use immersive creative technology including AR, MR and holographic technologies. The Lighthouse consists of bespoke spaces including – ‘The Portal’, ‘Originals Theatre’ and ‘Reflections’. ‘The Portal’ provides brands with the answers to what’s next and what’s possible in Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). The ‘Originals Theatre’ allows the opportunity to discover ways to be involved in art, culture and purpose-driven immersive experiences and the ‘Reflections’ wall demonstrates the potential of interactivity. The Lighthouse empowers brands to familiarise themselves with solutions that effectively bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds and removes the barriers that many experience when using technology to connect with their audience. It showcases first-hand the possibilities for creating hyper-personalised brand experiences and allows for true collaboration at every stage of the creative process.
BMC, a specialist in software solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, announced a strategic relationship with the University of Oxford Saïd Business School that includes membership in the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative (FOMI) and a three-year innovation research project. The research will investigate the unique challenges and trade-offs faced by large multinational organisations in highly regulated industries while identifying best practices for unlocking the business value of data by leveraging AI.
The measurement and analytics suite Adjust has released “A Mobile Marketer’s Playbook for View-Through Attribution”, detailing best practices for implementing this trending attribution method. View-Through Attribution (VTA), commonly known as impression tracking, helps marketers better analyze and optimize campaign performance, increase ROI and ultimately drive more revenue. Adjust analyzed apps globally with VTA settings enabled to better understand the relationship between clicks, impressions and installs over time, and found that fluctuations don’t always go hand-in-hand. A spike in impressions can also pull the number of clicks up with it, and, conversely, a decrease in clicks does not always lead to a decrease in installs. For example, February 2022 saw a click decrease of 16% globally compared to the previous month, which correlated to a drop in installs (21%). Still, throughout the following months, clicks recovered by a few percentage points, while installs increased by 10%. By May 2022, installs attributed to impressions were 19% up on the February dip, despite clicks having only bounced back 11%.
Commvault® has announced new security capabilities across its entire portfolio. Signaling the next phase in its evolution, Commvault is helping businesses secure, defend, and recover their data to meet increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats head on. As part of these capabilities, Commvault has expanded its security ecosystem to include product integrations with Microsoft and CyberArk. Commvault has redefined data protection to include early warning technologies that help to secure against threats before they happen, defend enterprise data if the environment is breached, and ensure recoverability so customers and their data remain resilient in the face of evolving cyber threats. The only data protection vendor with early warning, in-depth threat monitoring, and cyber deception for production and backup environments, Commvault can detect threats in as little as five minutes versus the industry average of 24 hours. Through early detection of zero-day and insider threats, Commvault technology helps protect data against breaches and cyber-attacks.
MKM building supplies has been honoured with a 2023 MACH Impact Award from the MACH Alliance for their work with Brave Bison Commerce, Vue Storefront, BigCommerce and Bloomreach, on its new, first of its kind website, built with headless technology. The MACH Impact Awards recognise the most innovative and impactful technology projects globally that utilise a MACH (microservices-based, API-first, Cloud native SaaS, Headless) strategy. The award-winning project involved re-platforming the former MKM website to BigCommerce. Brave Bison, a media, marketing, and technology company, led the integration of the overall solution. They enlisted the front-end solution Vue Storefront to implement the headless architecture and collaborated with commerce experience provider Bloomreach to drive seamless personalisation across the site.
Newcastle digital product agency, Tangent, has won international recognition in the 2023 Umbraco awards for its development of a low-carbon, cloud-native website for its client, UK Power Networks. More than a million websites worldwide have been built on Umbraco’s open-source content management system (CMS). Each year, web developers from around the world gather at Umbraco’s Codegarden event in Denmark to learn about the latest software, network with their peers, and share best practice. The conference concludes with a celebration of the year’s premier projects, selected by a panel of international judges, with the overall winner being awarded Jury’s Choice. Tangent scooped the Jury’s Choice Award for its development of an agile, low-carbon website for UK Power Networks, which employs Umbraco’s headless CMS, Heartcore. During the course of the project, Tangent migrated UK Power Networks from a monolithic web application that did not perform well under heavy load, to an agile, composable, cloud-native platform that can support 40,000 concurrent users. The new site benefits from an Incident Centre which provides timely updates in the event of a major storm, and a pin drop application allowing customers to share their location from their mobile device if they’ve suffered a power cut. The judges also praised Tangent’s carbon-conscious design, which encourages clients to bundle assets, optimise images and use a content delivery network (CDN) to make sites run more efficiently and minimise energy use. Tangent’s Jamstack approach halved the page load times, made the UK Power Networks site more energy-efficient and reduced operational costs by 66%.
Optimizely, the digital experience platform (DXP) provider, has introduced Content Graph: an all-new service that developers can use to search and deliver content anywhere. This update enhances Optimizely Content Management System (CMS), making it possible to easily repurpose content, provide highly customised search experiences, and create compelling content blocks – ultimately enabling more dynamic content experiences. Content Graph is powered by GraphQL, a query language for APIs known for its powerful yet simple form of data fetching. It serves as an on-demand content library that provides a more streamlined way to access content, enabling the seamless delivery of content across multiple platforms, channels, and devices. Content Graph extends GraphQL to offer powerful search and full text indexing, blazing fast speeds served from the CDNs, and a universal API that will layer into all Optimizely products beyond just the CMS.
Delivering results for customers since 2019, Amazon Ad Server, formerly known as Sizmek Ad Suite, has unveiled a new identity. Brands and agencies worldwide will find expanded capabilities and feature offerings that help make cross-channel campaign execution easier and more effective, along with refreshed visuals across the interface. In the face of future challenges with respect to ad addressability as a result of modern browser restrictions, Amazon Ad Server remains focused on bringing trusted creative tech solutions that help further brands’ connections to their customers as an interoperable solution for ad serving, creative authoring and measurement. Today, Amazon Ad Server is the only ad server that can be used to run video and display dynamic creatives tailored to Amazon audiences. Built on Amazon Web Services, it is also the only ad server integrated with Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), which allows brands to combine their cross-media measurement with Amazon first-party signals to analyse unique insights. Able to serve across publishers and demand-side platforms (DSPs) globally, Amazon Ad Server also enjoys added automation with Amazon DSP, making it a unified place to build, distribute and analyse creatives.
The Evening Standard’s SME XPO has attracted over 4,100 visitors to the ExCel London for its landmark annual exhibition, a 74% increase from 2022’s inaugural event. Hosted in partnership with Google ChromeOS, this year’s audience brought together entrepreneurs, thought leaders, suppliers and influential decision makers for two days of exhibiting, workshops and networking. Headline sponsors and exhibitors included Dell, AXA, Lloyds, HSBC, and Barclays. This year’s SME XPO also marked the first event from the Evening Standard’s recently-launched exhibition arm. The new venture sees The Evening Standard partner with global brand partners to shape dynamic and bespoke experiences for London’s diverse audiences to share, learn and collaborate. The exhibitions team has developed an agenda of new and returning events for 2023, including The Watercooler, an employee wellbeing and workplace culture exhibition which was held alongside SME XPO at the ExCel London.
The measurement and analytics suite Adjust has released “A Mobile Marketer’s Playbook for View-Through Attribution”, detailingbest practices for implementing this trending attribution method. View-Through Attribution (VTA), commonly known as impression tracking, helps marketers better analyze and optimize campaign performance, increase ROI and ultimately drive more revenue. Adjust analyzed apps globally with VTA settings enabled to better understand the relationship between clicks, impressions and installs over time, and found that fluctuations don’t always go hand-in-hand. A spike in impressions can also pull the number of clicks up with it, and, conversely, a decrease in clicks does not always lead to a decrease in installs. For example, February 2022 saw a click decrease of 16% globally compared to the previous month, which correlated to a drop in installs (21%). Still, throughout the following months, clicks recovered by a few percentage points, while installs increased by 10%. By May 2022, installs attributed to impressions were 19% up on the February dip, despite clicks having only bounced back 11%.
Factorial, the digital workforce solutions provider, has launched an integration with Apple Pay, enabling users to simplify employee expenses and streamline payment processes. The introduction of Apple Pay to Factorial’s offering will enable users to use the Factorial Card directly from an iPhone or Apple watch, creating a seamless employee-payment experience. Factorial’s integration with Apple Pay brings enhanced convenience to users, helping them save time with every transaction and enabling users to benefit from hassle-free and secure payments. The personal information of users is also being protected, as Apple Pay requires Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode to authorise purchases, ensuring transactions are secure and information remains private. The Factorial Card, an all-in-one expenses company credit card, can be used in all venues that accept Apple Pay. For online purchases, customers can use their digital wallet and pay securely using Touch Face ID. The integration also expands the range of options available to users, who now have full visibility over their payments, with the freedom to pay on the go and leverage the benefits of Apple Pay technology.
Mirakl, the SaaS solution to power scalable, profitable eCommerce growth, has announced the launch of its first Large Language Model (LLM) feature built on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to enrich the data quality of product catalogs on Mirakl-Powered platforms. The new technology will help retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers improve conversion rates on their ecommerce website, enhance the customer experience and ultimately increase sales as well as complying with forthcoming EU regulation Digital Services Act. The technology leverages AI and LLM to enrich and increase completeness of product datasheets by extracting product attributes from titles and descriptions, standardize product data across different geographies and languages by converting units and translating text content and optimize product content to increase conversion by rewriting titles and descriptions for products across first-party, marketplace and dropship assortment.
