Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

New Business Bulletin: GlobalData, Shuttershock, Inc., ShowHeroes Group and more

According to estimates by GlobalData , £4 in every £10 spent online is on Amazon. Now a new retail app, Stored, is set to offer retailers a lifeline by revolutionising how consumers discover and shop via an entirely new retail experience. Consumers using Stored can benefit from an innovative phygital experience where they can curate shopping baskets containing online and offline items from any retailer in one place on their mobile and share them via social media and messaging platforms. The app will also track product prices and promotions and shortcut the path to purchase. Stored is the first step in creating a true omni-commerce experience for retailers where physical and digital experiences and commerce are seamlessly connected and in one place. Retailers will also remain in complete control of their brand when connecting physical and digital assets in the platform. In the future Stored expects to add a closed loop payments ecosystem for phygital retail enabling retailers to harness the power of scale thanks to aggregated consumer adoption instead of standalone apps which can’t compete on scale and require considerable investment in both time and expense.

Building on its promise to enable its users to produce their best work with incredible content and innovative tools, Shutterstock, Inc., has announced its long-term partnership to advance AI-powered technology with LG AI Research. By combining Shutterstock’s metadata and world-class content with LG AI Research’s R&D capabilities, the companies will bring EXAONE, LG’s AI image generation model, EXAONE Atelier, a creative AI toolkitand AI-based image captioning to the global market. This is Shutterstock’s latest initiative to provide its partners, customers and contributors with ethically driven AI technology across all stages of the creative workflow, as it continues to collaborate with industry leaders to responsibly shape the future of generative AI.

ShowHeroes Group, a global leader in digital video content, tech, and advertising solutions, has announced a game-changing partnership with Scope3, the source of truth for digital supply chain emissions data, aimed at helping to decarbonize the digital ad ecosystem. Scope3 emissions measurement data will power ShowHeroes Green Media. The launch of ShowHeroes Green Media allows advertisers to easily measure the carbon footprint of their video campaigns using data from Scope3, the only company to analyze end-to-end emissions from across the media and advertising supply chain. Media buyers and sellers alike can then compensate for the impact of this footprint by investing in Scope3’s portfolio of specially curated and scientifically vetted carbon removal projects. Carbon management organization Carbon Direct is an early portfolio partner. Their portfolio includes nature-based initiatives, such as reforestation, and hybrid underground carbon storage projects, like biochar.

ClickUp, the productivity platform that brings work together in one place, and HubSpot, the customer relationship management (CRM) platform for scaling companies, has announced the launch of a highly-requested partnership to help customers create more efficient workflows and better collaborate across teams. By bringing together ClickUp’s and HubSpot’s powerful capabilities, stakeholders throughout the customer lifecycle benefit from increased productivity and are better equipped with the knowledge they need to foster and grow customer relationships. The two-way sync between ClickUp and HubSpot automates hours of tedious manual work, accelerating the customer success workflow and providing visibility to all relevant team members on the latest status and next steps. 

DoubleVerify, a software platform for digital media measurement, data, and analytics, has announced the launch of DV Authentic Brand Suitability and DV Custom Contextual solutions on the LinkedIn Audience Network. These two products empower advertisers to ensure their campaign impressions are delivered on inventory that aligns with their brand safety, suitability and contextual needs. DV Authentic Brand Suitability goes beyond standard categories and keyword blocklist – offering customized protection that helps advertisers avoid unsafe and unsuitable content before placing a bid. DV Custom Contextual provides advertisers a scalable solution to reach the right audiences, at the right time – driving outcomes for brands.

Taboola has announced an expanded partnership with Reach plc, the largest commercial national and regional news publisher, to boost engagement, future growth and innovation. Taboola will be Reach’s exclusive partner for outstream video in the UK and US, delivering its Mid-Article Video product across Reach’s 80+ sites, including the Mirror, the Express and OK magazine. Outstream placements run video units that complement editorial content, offering a non-intrusive and highly engaging way for brands to reach readers. The partnership expansion will offer advertisers additional inventory on which to promote brand videos at scale, to audiences across Reach’s network. These new mid-article video placements offer advertisers a unique brand-safe environment, surrounded by high-quality editorial content.

Bloomberg Media, the global business and financial information and news leader, has announced its partnership with UK artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, Papercup, to localize hundreds of hours of video content through AI dubbing on YouTube for Spanish-speaking audiences in Latin America and the US. The partnership will feature AI used to translate and dub Bloomberg’s global news coverage, financial market analysis and documentaries. The localized content is anticipated to reach millions of viewers in the next year, allowing Bloomberg’s high quality content library to reach previously untapped audiences.

Toluna, the consumer insights provider and parent company of Harris Interactive, KuRunData, and now GutCheck, has announced the acquisition of Further’s industry-leading qualitative research technology platform, and the subsequent integration into Toluna Start. By integrating the qualitative capabilities of Further’s platform into Toluna Start, the industry’s first and only end-to-end consumer intelligence platform, Toluna will provide customers with the most advanced end-to-end, quantitative-to-qualitative insights platform on the market. Blending technology with integrated best-in-class research methodologies, global respondent access, and world-class multimarket research capabilities, Toluna Start already delivers powerful, high-value insights in real-time. With the acquisition of Further’s technology and launch of Toluna Start Qual, Toluna customers now have access to best-in-class qualitative tools and research services that engage consumers in conversation and activities via a highly intuitive user interface, leading to rich insight extracted using some of the most powerful qualitative analysis tools available.

Samsung Ads, the advertising & media division of Samsung Electronics, has unveiled a new partnership with Experian which allows advertisers to leverage Experian’s detailed consumer data and audience insights across millions of Samsung Smart TVs in the UK. Samsung Ads’ proprietary ACR (automatic content recognition) data helps advertisers understand viewership behaviours on opted-in Samsung Smart TVs in Europe. Complementing these existing datasets, the new Experian partnership will unlock further targeting capabilities for advertisers by providing demographic data, geographical location, attitudinal insights and vertical insights. Advertisers can now understand Samsung TV households based on both what they watch and who they are, at scale, and in a privacy-safe and GDPR- compliant way. The additional layer of insights provided by Experian enables enhanced targeting and segmentation, optimising campaign efficiency. It also means TV and digital buyers alike can access audiences with more uniformity across formats.

People under 25 are more likely than older age groups in the UK to take advantage of Black Friday sales promotions this year; they are also more likely to spend over £500.  And while online is the preferred shopping channel for all ages (with 35-44 year-olds the biggest users), the in-store shopping experience is still valued by all generations. These are some of the key findings of a new UK study undertaken by Hawk Platform using its Hawk Surveys tool and illustrated in the infographic below.

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