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Route Mobile Partners with Oracle Marketing Cloud to Deliver Powerful Customer Experiences
 Marketing Clouds

Route Mobile Partners with Oracle Marketing Cloud to Deliver Powerful Customer Experiences

Already a Part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Route’s Collaboration with ‘Oracle Marketing Cloud Capabilities’ Gives the Company an Added Edge to Deliver Better Experiences to Its Customers

More companies are moving to host their platforms on the Cloud — the concept of a physical server is getting outdated. Now, we have another brand, Route Mobile, following this trend and enlarging the Cloud-first approach in its efforts to upgrade its platform. Route Mobile has developed a communication platform for its customers, which is purely based out of the Cloud. Now, by partnering with the Oracle Marketing Cloud, they are ensuring that the platform is best in class.

“Being a technology-driven cloud communications platform provider means staying ahead of the innovation curve with innovative products and strategic partnerships. We intend to continue to ensure seamless delivery of SMS messages to companies so that they can have deeper mobile customer engagement with two-way SMS communication, which makes the interaction more engaging and generates an excellent customer experience,” said Rajdipkumar Gupta, MD and Group CEO, Route Mobile.

Also Read: Gartner Indicates Seven Future CMO Spending Trends in Their Latest Survey

“We are excited about this collaboration. We believe that Oracle Responsys’ customers will benefit from our quality A2P SMS routes across the globe, proprietary cloud communications platforms, and domain expertise. We will aim to ensure every enterprise is armed with a cloud or on-premise solution. We plan to leverage this platform to tap, offer our innovative products, and support customers around the world by utilizing the Oracle Responsys platform at a global scale,” he said.

Also Read: Interview with Jenn Steele, CMO, Madison Logic

Sharad Kumar, CEO – Route Mobile LLC, added, “We believe that Route Mobile’s collaboration with Oracle Marketing Cloud eases the process for enterprise clients to choose the right SMS aggregator for their business whether it be for cost-benefit, local business and regulation understanding or SMS delivery rate. We also believe this engagement could bring exponential business growth in the Middle East and Africa, due to tremendous growth in mobile handset penetration.”

Route Mobile has a global presence with 800 mobile networks and another 230 network operators that the company works with. Their main product is the provision of high-quality A2P SMS routes. With the collaboration, Route Mobile hopes to reduce IT complexity for its clients and increase the return on marketing investment.

Recommended Read: Gartner Predicts Digital Optimization Will Disrupt CRM Sales Technology

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Grey Group Agrees to Acquire Majority Stake in Autumn Worldwide
 Social Media Advertising

Grey Group Agrees to Acquire Majority Stake in Autumn Worldwide

Grey Group, a WPP company, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Autumn Worldwide, a leading independent social media and digital marketing agency, based in India.

Autumn Worldwide was founded in 2005 by Anusha Shetty and Abhay Rajankar as a brand consulting and advertising company. CEO Shetty soon saw the opportunity and proceeded to expand Autumn into a 360° social media and digital agency which provides a multitude of services, including digital & social media campaigns, influencer & blogger marketing, online reputation management, content marketing, marketing big data & insights and Command Center Management Services (CCMS).

Michael Houston, Worldwide CEO of Grey Group, said, “We are delighted to welcome Autumn Worldwide to Grey.  This acquisition represents another step forward in building our borderless creativity and providing seamless solutions for our clients across platforms.”

Also Read: Data443 Advances Data Privacy & GDPR Response with Newest ClassiDocs Release

Autumn CEO Shetty is a 20-year veteran of the communications industry. After completing her education with an MBA from TA Pai Management Institute, Shetty began her marketing career with Lowe Lintas in 1994. After five years, she joined Euro RSCG to work with the Intel brand. Two years later, she moved to Silicon Valley in the US as the Marketing-Communications Lead for a start-up venture, Euclid. In 2003, she returned to India and joined Honeywell Technology, where she was named the Corporate Communications Head for APAC before she co-founded Autumn Worldwide in 2005.

Shetty will continue to head the Autumn operations while working closely with Nirvik Singh, Chairman & CEO for Grey Group Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, to set the overall strategic digital growth plan for the region.

“Grey has a strategic plan to increase its digital footprint in the region. Having Autumn as our partner ensures we have a digital and social media agency with expertise across the digital landscape. They are a forward-thinking company who share our common vision of a world-class digital eco-system that will deliver only the very best to our clients. Combining creative, digital, data and technology will strengthen our presence not only in India, but also throughout the region,” said Singh.

With Autumn’s headquarters in Bangalore and offices in Mumbai and (Gurgaon) Delhi, they have over 165 employees across their offices. Their client roster includes blue-chip and local clients such as PepsiCo (all 26 brands such as Mountain Dew, Quaker Oats and others), Reckitt Benckiser Group (Mortein, Durex, Dettol, Moov and more), Samsonite, PVR Cinemas, Exide Life Insurance, Tata Salt, Raymond, Luminous and Freecharge, to name just a few.

Also Read: Privacy Protection Platform WireWheel Closes $10 Million in Financing

“The convergence of consumers and mediums has already happened, and agencies need to not just reflect this thinking, but be a part of that journey. Grey’s famously effective 100-year history in creative thinking combined with Autumn’s 13-year ‘young’ fervour to constantly unlearn and learn across data, creativity, and mediums creates a potent agency of the future,” said Anusha Shetty, CEO of Autumn Worldwide.

The acquisition will bring additional benefits to clients of Autumn, including access to Grey Group’s extensive international network as well as to offerings such as RC&M, one of India’s largest rural communications & experiential marketing service providers. They provide services such as brand launches, sales channel development, product seeding & sampling, and new market development, amongst others.

Similarly, Grey Group’s clients from across the globe will benefit from the social media and digital marketing expertise provided by Autumn.

Recommended Read: SHAREit Partners with Google Play to Help Keep Users Safe When Peer-To-Peer Sharing

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 Marketing Clouds

Oracle NetSuite Helps Organizations Across Industries Grow with Powerful New Innovations

New Commerce, Global Tax Management and Analytics Capabilities Help Organizations Adapt to Change and Successfully Grow and Scale

Today, Oracle NetSuite has announced a series of new innovations to help organizations across industries grow revenues, expand internationally and empower business users. The new commerce, financial management, and analytics capabilities help organizations take advantage of the NetSuite platform to exceed customer expectations, enable international expansion and respond quickly to vital business needs.

Recommended: Interview with Shashi Seth, SVP, Oracle Marketing Cloud

At the time of this announcement, Evan Goldberg, executive vice president of development, Oracle NetSuite, said, “For many entrepreneurs and business owners it can often feel as though the only constant is change but there are many things that have stayed the same including the mandate for growth.”

Evan added, “We work with thousands of organizations from different industries to help them stay focused on successfully growing and scaling their business amidst all of the change. This gives us a unique understanding of businesses across all sectors and we use those insights to continually enhance the NetSuite platform.”

NetSuite helps organizations across industries grow with powerful new innovations

Today’s business environment is more challenging than ever. Competitors on all sides are closing in with new products and services, new business models and innovative customer experiences. Commerce has become mobile, social and always-on, like shopping, spending, and sharing happen 24×7. Rules and regulations governing data privacy and taxes are constantly changing. Customer expectations have never been higher. Size and scale are no longer an automatic advantage. New technologies continue to change the rules. And the pace of change is accelerating on all fronts. The latest innovations from NetSuite help organizations adapt to these changes and successfully grow and scale.

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The latest NetSuite updates include–

  • Commerce: The latest innovations within SuiteCommerceinclude new customer engagement, SEO and marketing optimization capabilities as well as a series of visual and interactive extensions that help marketers deliver a personalized and continuous shopping experience.
    • New themes to support B2B and B2C ecommerce sites for specific industries: Themes are optimized for performance, engagement, and conversion and are fully responsive to provide a consistent experience no matter how shoppers browse the store.
    • New extensions: Allow customers to quickly and easily expand their stores with new capabilities such as blogs, gift wrap, and message feature, size chart and testimonials.
    • General availability of merchandise hierarchy: Allows retailers to organize and display merchandise and provides a reporting structure of how sales and inventory of product are tracked and managed. This enables merchants to gain deeper insights into category sales and improve inventory planning.
    • Google tag manager editor: SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced sites can use SuiteCommerce Google Tag Manager Editor to connect their SuiteCommerce site to Google Tag Manager and to help manage third-party tags, like Google Ads and Facebook Pixel, without having to edit site source code.
    • Advanced email templates: Ready to use email templates can be branded for ecommerce emails, such as order notifications, digital delivery notifications and other notifications including password recovery.
    • New SuiteSuccess edition of SuiteCommerce: Enables rapid adoption and return on investment by removing the complexities and costs that surround successful commerce implementations.
  • Global Tax Management: To help organizations expand internationally, SuiteTax can simplify global tax calculations through support for nearly any tax rule, anywhere in the world. With SuiteTax, customers are able to calculate sales taxes in 140 different countries, including complex tax regimes such as China, India, and Brazil. Tax rates can be automatically updated and users will be able to leverage out-of-the-box reporting capabilities to quickly and easily drill down into every tax component so they know exactly how the tax on each transaction was calculated.
  • Analytics: To help end-users quickly and easily get the answers they need to be successful, SuiteAnalyticsembeds powerful analytics within existing business processes and provides an intuitive graphical toolset that makes it easy to explore and visualize data. By eliminating the need for developers and IT to deal with the complexities of separate reporting tools, business intelligence systems or data warehouses, SuiteAnalytics enables end users to quickly and easily get real-time business insights from across every area of the enterprise.

The latest additions to the NetSuite platform extend NetSuite’s commitment to helping organizations across the world grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite recently announced new industry innovations to help European businesses accelerate growth as well as new localized product capabilities and expanded in-country teams for France and Germany.

For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 15,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.

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 B2B Commerce

Cognism Secures Innovative AI Patent to Enable B2B Organisations to Rapidly Identify New Revenue Opportunities

Cognism’s Revenue AI Engine Empowers B2B Organisations to Better Manage and Maintain Real-Time, Consistent and High-Quality Data

Cognism, the smart all-in-one B2B marketing and sales acceleration solution, has successfully secured a patent for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine to address the data challenges faced by sales and marketing teams in B2B organisations. The patent, referred to as the ‘System and method for computational disambiguation and prediction of dynamic datasets’, accelerates Cognism to the forefront of the B2B data industry.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a well-established approach to managing a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. However, traditional CRM platforms are also complicated software products, making it difficult to maintain information with any degree of accuracy. Data starts to go out of date the minute it hits the system, creating issues in identifying decision-makers and/or the appropriate profile to do business with – particularly within international sales environments. In the best case, this leads to lost sales opportunities; in the worst case, companies waste huge resources targeting the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong message. Improvements to the sales process must be supported by a completely different approach to data sourcing: static CRM is no longer good enough, B2B sales organisations need access to fresh, accurate, contextual and critically GDPR compliant data.

Also Read: TiVo Releases New Churn Analysis From Its Personalized Content Discovery Platform

Cognism has developed a Revenue AI engine that addresses these issues by tackling three distinct database flaws:

  • Removing ambiguity from – for example, job titles – by mapping common fields and creating a common language to allow businesses to more accurately identify desired user and business profiles
  • Enabling and enhancing the identification of international users and business profiles
  • Identifying and predicting frequently changing fields of user profiles to help ensure businesses are dealing with current and accurate CRM data

James Hodson, Chief Science Officer, Cognism, explains why such a system is essential for B2B organisations to adopt, “Not only does static CRM data rapidly lose its relevance, we know that in most cases it is contextually flawed at the outset, which means that organisations are missing out on both identifying and targeting their most valuable prospects. Through the Revenue AI engine, not only can companies identify the most relevant, timely revenue opportunities on an international scale, but a deep and accurate customer data resource can transform the accuracy of sales and marketing activity. Companies are not only prioritising outreach activity at the right time, but each prospect interaction is more focused and relevant to each persona.”

Also Read: SpringCM, a DocuSign Company, Named a Contract Lifecycle Management Leader in 2019 Report

It is evident that B2B organisations need a far better approach to identifying their key targets, approaching the best contacts and creating messages that resonate. As James Isilay, CEO, Cognism adds, that model has to be underpinned by real-time insight that encompasses both accurate, standard contact information as well as the key events, from funding rounds to staff hiring, that indicate a prospect’s readiness to buy, “With a constant feedback loop provided by our Revenue AI engine, our B2B clients are achieving real bottom line growth. This comes from using Revenue AI to better understand their core market, from purchase triggers to decision making personas. In today’s ever more discerning market, being able to deliver a personalised B2B sales message in the same way that people have become used to in a consumer environment will soon become a key to competitive advantage and profitable business growth.”

Recommended Read: Prediction Series 2019: Interview with Randy Frisch, CMO, Uberflip

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Essextec Joins Google Cloud Services Partner Program
 Marketing Clouds

Essextec Joins Google Cloud Services Partner Program

Company Enhances Its Ability to Deliver Secure Cognitive Applications in the Hybrid Cloud

Essex Technology Group, Inc, a member of the Converge Technology Solutions family of companies, announced that it has joined the Google Cloud Services Partner Program as a Reselling and Consulting Partner, giving Google Cloud customers the ability to team with Essextec’s experts in Cloud, Cognitive, and Cybersecurity solutions to build and manage cloud applications and environments with some of the most advanced technologies available.

As a Google Cloud partner, Essextec offers consulting, application development, and managed services for cloud, as well as hybrid computing environments. Key capabilities include:

  • Cloud Journey Assessments which address true business challenges and are mapped to cloud-based technology solutions, including hybrid and private cloud
  • Experience in incorporating AI, machine learning, and cognitive computing into customized cloud-based solutions
  • Long term vision as a trusted adviser and Managed Services Provider
  • Consulting and implementation services for DevSecOps with continuous integration and continuous delivery

Also Read: People.ai Becomes ISO Certified for Its Information Security Management System

Additionally, Essextec’s Cognitive Innovations business unit will focus on building solutions utilizing unique Big Data, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning capabilities on the Google Cloud Platform. These technologies include: BigQuery, Cloud AutoML, Cloud Composer, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Datalab, Cloud Dataprep, Cloud Dataproc, Cloud Inference API, Cloud Machine Learning Engine, Cloud Natural Language, Cloud Speech-to-Text, Cloud Text-to-Speech, Cloud TPU, Cloud Translation, Cloud Video Intelligence, Cloud Vision, Dialogflow Enterprise Edition, Google Analytics 360 Suite, and Google Data Studio.

“With its AI-first strategy, Google Cloud is a natural partner for the Essextec cognitive computing and artificial intelligence team,” states Evan Herbst, Senior Vice President, Essextec. “Google Cloud’s commitment to open standards, priority on cybersecurity, and significant investments in hybrid cloud integration technologies, give Essextec an exceptional and trusted platform to use as we solve real business problems for our clients.”

Also Read: EZ Texting Confirmed as the Number One Mobile Marketing Software by G2 Crowd

Essextec client, C4Coin, has recently been working with Essextec and Google Cloud Platform to strategically accelerate its business. Tigran Avakyan, C4Coin CTO, observes, “Google Cloud’s next generation software-defined networking provides a better working experience than its competitors. The improved process is paired with Google Cloud’s commitment to powering its servers with renewable energy – a crucial factor for an environmentally-focused company.”

The Essextec team has achieved multiple Cloud Architect and Data Engineer certifications on the Google Cloud Platform. The firm works with both established enterprises and emerging businesses to deliver GCP-based transformative solutions.

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Decoding Conversant's Mesobase, MarTech's First Customer and Prospect Relationship Management (CPRM) Platform
 B2B Data, News, Staff Writers

Decoding Conversant’s Mesobase, MarTech’s First Customer and Prospect Relationship Management (CPRM) Platform

All CMOs are driven to achieve the 3Es of marketing — Efficiency, Efficacy, and Engagement. Marketing Technology landscape has swelled to over 6000+ to actually allow CMOs get closer to their goals and increase marketing efficiency in a measurable manner. Today, marketing and sales teams have an unprecedented access to their customers and prospects, including their anonymous activity with you and across the web.

Recently, Conversant announced a powerful Marketing & Analytics Platform, Mesobase, to further empower marketing teams to deliver highly relevant campaigns to single anonymous identity. We spoke to Ric Elert, President, Conversant about the creation of Mesobase.

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Tell us about your role at Conversant and the team/technology you handle.

As President, I manage Conversant’s business operations, not including our sales team, and guide our corporate and product strategies. I simultaneously lead the engineering team at Epsilon. The goal in assuming these dual roles was to complete the interoperability and interaction of all Epsilon and Conversant technologies. Customers don’t differentiate between messages received through online and offline channels, meaning our clients need an all-encompassing connection or communication path with cross-device continuity. My position helps ensure we have that.

Recommended: What a Growth-Focused MarTech Acquisition Looks Like?

What’s Mesobase and how does it help businesses build customer relations?

Mesobase is the industry’s first self-service Customer and Prospect Relationship Management (CPRM) platform.

We see brands that execute campaigns across different channels but have difficulty determining what’s driving revenue. Clients often have fragmented data on their customers, so they are unable to look at customers in a holistic way. And clients’ prospect data, if they have it, is often outdated demographic data. That’s where Mesobase comes in.

Must Read: Adobe Audience Manager Adds Data Explorer to Build Powerful …

Mesobase provides clients direct access and visibility into their customer and prospect data, with the ability to analyze, build audiences, activate and measure attribution.

Clients can create their own models to gather person-level insights and performance metrics that are more robust than those available in a marketing cloud, DMP or CDP. They can then take those models and run campaigns with us or another third-party partner. It takes the busy work out of marketing by reducing the time needed to shuffle through data and instead lets clients spend that time focusing on the performance end of marketing.

Recommended: Dun & Bradstreet Named A Leader Among B2B Marketing Data …

Why did you choose to build a marketing and analytics platform in a tech-heavy ecosystem? How does Mesobase link to your other technologies for various channels and format?

We developed Mesobase because our clients requested it. Clients are frustrated with the lack of transparency from their digital marketing partners, especially the walled gardens. They want to understand how systems work and be able to see their real-time data.

In our case, they want to know how our system is so efficient in communicating with their customers and prospects. They wanted to see what we could see, so we built Mesobase on top of our CORE Platform to offer a client-specific view of customers and prospects in a live environment.

At the same time, we want clients to go in and use it without locking them into something rigid so we pre-built connectors to ensure Mesobase integrates with all Epsilon and Conversant technologies as well as hundreds of other offline and online marketing partners. This connection allows clients to activate the audiences they created in Mesobase with us or with their preferred marketing partner.

Mesobase is an open book that delivers a level of transparency and control clients can’t get anywhere else.

Could you elaborate further on how segment-based communications are moving to journey-based and trigger-moment-inspired outreach?

The biggest problem with segmentation is that people are incorrectly included or excluded from segments. There is a great degree of inefficiency in working with segments. When you don’t know who you need to speak to, you can easily end up with wasted media spend. Over time, the focus on segmentation shifted to personalization. The first goal of personalization is to look at your data in a person-centric view across channels and devices. It’s what we give clients in Mesobase.

How does Conversant deliver cross-industry benefits to modern businesses? Which sectors in the industry are best-placed to leverage Mesobase and why?

All companies need to develop stronger, more personal relationships with their customers, especially in today’s ultra-competitive environment.

Mesobase helps clients understand their customers and prospects at a deeper level. We’ve found that companies with deep, ongoing relationships with their customers and an established ability to measure outcomes (transactions) are most interested in Mesobase, regardless of vertical.

Once clients understand their customers and prospects, we pride ourselves on our ability to accurately reach individuals at scale and help clients test their theories. Even companies that build a decent database and can analyze customers are still plagued by the ability to recognize and reach their customers and see the impact of those interactions. Mesobase provides all that.

What does your product/ marketing roadmap for Mesobase look for 2018-2022? Are you planning to add any technology partners to increase adoption rate?

The key to increasing the adoption rate of Mesobase isn’t about adding technology partners but instead adding data sources that help further describe an individual in real time. Our analysis and experience indicate that brands need to communicate with customers when they show intent to take an action.

Read More: New Research Links Email Engagement to Customer-Experience …

Mesobase provides access to intent data and empowers clients to quickly react to those intentions on any channel, regardless of what platform they’re using to deliver media. Our roadmap also includes providing more attribution and marketing mix planning. In doing so, Mesobase would allow clients to do these analyses by an individual for the first time.

What are your thoughts on AI/ML and the scope of IoT in completely revolutionizing Digital Reinventions for omnichannel businesses?

Machine learning enables us to understand and learn from the ongoing interactions people have with brands and then fine tune those reactions in real time. It’s like two people having a conversation.

Whether a brand is trying to sell a high-dollar item occasionally or a low-price item regularly, machine learning can adjust the conversation based on past experience. Ultimately, machine learning allows for efficient communication with a higher rate of return.

You still see a lot of marketing initiatives that follow a similar pattern: Run a program. Stop. Run a program. Stop. These programs are not only disjointed for customers but fail to provide any value to marketers.

Thank You, Ric, for chatting with us about Mesobase! 

Recommended: Dreamforce Interview with Julie Bregen, Head of Global Sales …

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OpenX Announces First of Its Kind Five Year Collaboration with Google Cloud That Will Form The Foundation of New Product and Technology Strategy
 Marketing Clouds

OpenX Announces First of Its Kind Five Year Collaboration with Google Cloud That Will Form The Foundation of New Product and Technology Strategy

Global Integration Will Deliver Greater Publisher Monetization and Improved Advertiser ROAS Through Superior Speed, Scalability and Reach Across OpenX Exchange

OpenX announced a first of its kind collaboration that will bring the entire OpenX exchange into the cloud with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Through this deployment, OpenX will become the first ever major exchange to move all on-premises workloads fully into the cloud and become truly serverless. Work on integrating the five year technology collaboration began in 2018 with the companies expecting to complete the full transition to the cloud by the end of Q2, 2019.

This collaboration represents an evolutionary leap forward in how advertising exchanges operate today.  Every other scaled exchange utilizes physical server locations around the world to power their businesses.  These legacy systems hinder scalability as they must be close to the markets they power, hamper speed and inhibit rapid innovation due to the incredible maintenance costs and capital expenditures that must be diverted to sustain their lifecycle.  By joining DBM in utilizing GCP to power its global exchange, OpenX will deliver faster innovations into the market and far greater efficiency for both buyers and sellers. Specific benefits include:

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  • Speed: The move into GCP will increase the speed that bids come into the OpenX exchange allowing publishers to see greater demand for their audiences before an auction closes driving increased revenue potential.
  • Scalability: Powered by GCP, the OpenX exchange will be infinitely scalable, allowing the company to support publishers as they experience traffic spikes without sacrificing monetization opportunities or latency.
  • Global Reach: OpenX’s complete cloud-based exchange will eliminate the dependency for on premises servers utilized by nearly every programmatic exchange today, allowing the company to enter new global markets almost instantaneously and scale specific locations based on their unique demands.
    • Future-proofing: Google Cloud runs on the latest generation of computing power and technology. While on premise servers get outdated quickly, OpenX will leverage the latest technology through GCP.
  • People Based Marketing: As OpenX focuses its product innovations and evolves its exchange to bring people-based marketing to the open web for the first time, the collaboration with GCP allows the company to build on its significant existing data asset, and eliminate any barriers or caps on the number of data points or unique identities utilized.

Also Read: LinkedIn Introduces Interest Targeting

“Marketing has evolved significantly over recent years, and the old way of operating is no longer sustainable,” said Tim Cadogan, CEO of OpenX.  “As we look at the programmatic market today, we see a sector that has experienced massive growth and adoption, but at the same time has stalled in its ability to deliver real innovation for marketers and publishers.  We believe it is time to take a completely fresh look at the market and place a major bet on building the infrastructure necessary to drive the next wave of innovation. This investment and our work with Google will provide OpenX the flexibility to surge into new markets, adapt our business and billing models, expand our product suite to address the opportunity of people based marketing and provide our partners the exceptional quality and support they have come to expect.”

“Both OpenX and Google Cloud are dedicated to helping customers achieve their goals with cutting-edge technology,” says Chris Klayko, Managing Director, Americas, Google Cloud. “This collaboration will allow for continued innovation leveraging both OpenX’s Exchange Platform and Google Cloud’s commitment to performance, collaboration, and big data optimization at scale.”

Prior to 2019, almost one quarter of the OpenX tech workforce was dedicated to maintaining legacy infrastructure. The transition to Google Cloud Platform will free resources to focus on new growth areas for the company, such as people based marketing, video and CTV. These fast growth areas have seen strong early results, with video now making up more than 1 in 10 dollars on the OpenX exchange.

Recommended Read: Men Twice as Willing to Share Their Location With Strangers Than Women

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Comcast Collaborates with Industry Partners on Blockgraph Software to Jumpstart the Use of Secure Data Sharing for Advanced TV Advertising
 B2B Data, Data Management Platforms, News

Comcast Collaborates with Industry Partners on Blockgraph Software to Jumpstart the Use of Secure Data Sharing for Advanced TV Advertising

Newly Launched, Peer-To-Peer Platform Allows Participants to Protect and Control Their Data, While Benefitting from the Shared Insights of Entire User Network

Comcast Cable Advertising, a division of Comcast Corporation, launched the next phase of Blockgraph, an industry initiative designed to create a secure way to use data and share information. Comcast is now working with other industry partners on this initiative, including Viacom and Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales division of Charter Communications, Inc., in a collaborative effort that will facilitate the secure exchange of privacy-compliant audience insights for addressable advertising. Additional media companies and MVPDs participating will be named shortly.

“It’s imperative that the use of data prioritizes the privacy of consumers’ personal information”

Blockgraph is designed to become the “identity layer” for the TV industry, providing a platform on which media companies and publishers can offer marketers best-in-class data capabilities without disclosing identifiable user data to third parties – adding additional protections to user privacy.

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At the core of the initiative is the Blockgraph platform, a blockchain-enabled software, incubated to date within Comcast’s FreeWheel group, which allows TV and media companies to control, connect, and safely activate their data at-scale. Comcast developed this software with the end goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of data-driven TV marketing and advertising, resulting in better planning, targeting, execution and measurement across screens.

Blockgraph helps solve data activation challenges for all parties within the global TV advertising ecosystem, including sellers of media, buyers of media and, importantly, consumers of media. An inherent characteristic of the platform is consumer privacy, since each Blockgraph participant’s data stays in its own systems and the participant continues to protect the data and manage the privacy of its users, including respecting any user choices regarding the use of the data.

“Data is a valuable and sensitive asset for media companies and consumers so understandably, it must be protected,” said Jason Manningham, General Manager, Blockgraph. “At the same time, data is now the fuel powering media and advertising. The TV community needs to ensure that we can compete with the data capabilities of digital-first companies. We understand that providing a safe way to protect data while benefitting from collective insights is the path forward. And we believe Blockgraph offers that path.”

Today, stitching together data attributes between two parties, such as an advertiser and a media company, generally requires sending data to a centralized third-party provider. This provider does a bi-lateral blind match between the two parties, then sends back non-identifiable data segments that can be used for targeting or measurement. In contrast, Blockgraph is a peer-to-peer platform that allows all participants to perform blind matches directly with one another, secured through encryption technologies, non-identifiable data and blockchain protocols. In addition to greater security and control, Blockgraph allows participants to benefit from shared learnings of the network as additional attributes are matched against encrypted Blockgraph Identifiers.

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Comcast is currently working with NBCUniversal to test Blockgraph’s capabilities with plans of incorporating it into its addressable offering in early 2019.

Comcast is also in talks with several other potential Blockgraph participants for future rollouts to escalate the initiative’s scale and backing. Key among these is Viacom, whose early involvement as a leading partner in providing feedback to help shape the product roadmap and structure of the Blockgraph initiative has been integral in elevating its impact and adoption.

“Viacom has long been committed to advancements in television advertising and industry collaboration to deliver better ads for clients and enhance the consumer experience,” said Kern Schireson, Executive Vice President, Chief Data Officer, Viacom. “We’re happy to partner with Comcast on Blockgraph’s technology and platform to facilitate the valuable exchange of data insights as a necessary catalyst to scale our collective capabilities.”

Spectrum Reach is another leading collaborator with early involvement helping to shape the initiative.

“It’s imperative that the use of data prioritizes the privacy of consumers’ personal information,” said David Kline, Executive Vice President, and President of Spectrum Reach. “Blockgraph’s technology offers enhanced security and privacy protections by allowing all players within the TV ecosystem to directly share insights derived from anonymized and aggregated information. We support this initiative believing it will help set the standard for secure information sharing in the years to come.”

Also Read: New Anti-Counterfeiting Platform Secures Up To 99% of All Sorts of Fraud for Consumer Brands

“Blockgraph is another example of the industry coming together to adopt new standards and technologies that will allow us to compete more effectively as a medium, while simultaneously delivering more value to our advertising clients,” said Paola Colombo, General Manager Adtech & Business Development at Pubitalia, the advertising unit of Mediaset, Italy’s leading commercial broadcaster. “Since Blockgraph is a peer-to-peer network, the greater the adoption by the TV industry, the greater the potential depth and scale of its data insights. We look forward to working together with our partners on this collaborative effort.”

“Comcast has invested in building the Blockgraph technology, but we do not want this to remain solely a Comcast-led initiative. We are inviting the entire TV industry to participate in Blockgraph so that it becomes a true industry undertaking,” said Marcien Jenckes, President, Comcast Cable Advertising. “When scaled, non-personably identifiable data becomes available to all, the focus shifts to what a provider is able to do with that data and how it can be used to drive outcomes. We believe that when advanced data capabilities are paired with TV and premium video’s awareness and engagement advantages, results will be difficult to beat.”

Recommended Read: Micro-Influencers, Journalism’s Comeback and Live Video Top Trends for Public Relations in 2019

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