Marketing and ad technology news from SDL, Impact Radius, eBay, VE Interactive, Marketshare, Tableau, Leadspace, Kentico, Qlik, Netsertive, AppNexus and Boomtrain
SDL Web 8 released
SDL has released the new version of its digital experience management platform. The SDL Web 8 offering is built off the back of the vendor’s Web content management technology, Tridion, and now includes experience optimisation, digital media management, targeting and optimisation and localisation capabilities.
Other key enhancements are the ability to launch new websites, product sections or campaigns without IT involvement, unified authoring and translation processes, and adaptive ‘BluePrinting’ for centralised control of digital website management. The vendor said enhanced context brokering technology should also help marketers adapt and personalise the customer’s experience based on behavioural and transactional data.
Blackboard is one of SDL’s customers. Its director of Web strategy and design, Jon Gold, said the platform has enabled the learning software provider to quickly manage Web content to better engage with customers on their channel of preference. “With SDL Web, we’ve increased our conversion rate by 14 per cent year-over-year and decreased our bounce rate by about 20 per cent,” he said.
Related: SDL CEO: Innovation and adaptability vital to addressing changeable consumer
eBay sells off two more pieces of its marketing solutions pie
eBay has confirmed two more buyers as it sells off the many pieces of its eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions business.
Digital marketing platform vendor, Impact Radius, has acquired the Clearsaleing marketing attribution business to expand its media tracking and analytics offering. Specifically, Clearsaleing’s data visualisation and artificial intelligence capabilities will be incorporated into the algorithmic technology used in Impact Radius’ Media Manager product. This allows marketers to analyse, track and optimise advertising campaigns.
Impact Radius offers media attribution, performance marketing, tag management and mobile analytics.
“Adding Clearsaleing’s innovative attribution and purchase path technology to our Media Manager platform gives customers the ability to turn data into actionable insights with immediate bottom-line impact,” said Impact Radius chairman and CEO, Per Pettersen.
Fellow ad tech vendor, VE Interactive, which offers an integrated digital advertising and onsite conversion platform, has also acquired eBay Enterprise’s display retargeting business. The company said the acquisition marked a major milestone in Ve’s expansion as a global ecommerce technology company, increasing its client base to more than 10,000 online businesses.
Under the deal, all employees from the eBay Enterprise display retargeting business will be retained, bringing Ve’s total staff to over 850 across 34 offices worldwide. Ve will now offer these Display Retargeting clients the VePlatform to acquire, engage and convert customers at every stage of the eCommerce journey.
“What sets eBay Enterprise display retargeting apart from other ad tech agencies is the incredible skillset and expertise of its world-class digital advertising experts,” said Ve Interactive North America COO, Stephen Polinsky. “This transaction, led by Ve North America, will help accelerate Ve’s growth to combine targeted high-performing advertising solutions with uplifts from website performance software.”
Marketshare embraces TV measurement
Marketing performance and attribution vendor, MarketShare, has launched a new application for TV ad measurement aimed at helping marketers understand the business impact of ads run by synchronising this back to wider marketing efforts.
According to the vendor, MarketShare TV can be used to identify consumer actions, such as website visits and inbound calls, following commercials aired on TV in order to assess how these ads impact consumer buying. It looks at key elements including network, daypart, creative, and how they contribute to responses, as well as evaluates the wider business context plus incremental long- and short-term impacts to revenue.
Insights and reporting are delivered via a Web dashboard, along with recommendations on next course of action and tools for analysing competitor ratings and spending. The vendor said insights are refreshed typically on a weekly basis and can therefore help marketers pivot TV programs quickly. MarketShare TV sits alongside MarketShare’s resource allocation and cross-channel attribution applications.
Leadspace launches first open API for B2B predictive analytics
Predictive analytics vendor, Leadspace, has offered up its first open API. The company is focused on helping B2B organisations better manage demand generation via machine learning and predictive scoring.
The decision to launch an open API was prompted by the need to integrate what have traditionally been point-based predictive analytics solutions with the wider B2B marketing stack including marketing automation and CRM, the vendor said. The API has already been in use by Leadspace customers and is also behind a new partnership with Engagio’s account-based marketing platform to enable lead-to-account matching.
Leadspace currently integrates with Salesforce, Marketo and Eloqua and is in beta with an integration solution for HubSpot. Pardot and Microsoft Dynamics connectivity is expected in the first quarter of 2016.
In July, Leadspace raised US$18 million in new funding to expand its global footprint. It counts Oracle, Autodesk and Microsoft among its clients.
Kentico unveils new online marketing platform
Kentico 9, the latest version of the vendor’s combined content management, ecommerce and online marketing platform, has hit the streets.
According to the vendor, the latest version allows for faster development and deployment of websites, simplified production of personalised content for content editors, and the ability to capture more intelligence and insights from campaigns.
Key new features and capabilities include continuous integration for publishing new changes without development costs, integrated campaign management through a new unified control panel, a new reporting engine, plus several back-end changes including ASP.Net model view controller support, improved Web farm support and modularisation.
Kentico’s customers include Bacardi, GAP, Gibson, Mazda, Sony, Starbucks, Twinings and Vodafone.
Tableau dials up data with version 9.2
Data preparation improvements, customisation for maps, enhanced security and a new native iPhone app are among the features of Tableau’s latest data visualisation release.
Tableau 9.2 is now available and includes improvements to Tableau Server and Tableau Online, the vendor’s cloud solution, allowing users to set more granular permissions as well as lock project permissions for better security. There are also improvements to the REST APIs allowing administrators to set, view and remove default permissions for a project programmatically through custom applications and scripts.
In addition, Tableau promises toolbar improvements and redesigned menus for more seamless content access, plus support for OpenID Connect and SAML identity providers for authentication.
Tableau said new data preparation features in 9.2 should see people spending less time preparing and searching for data and more time analysing it. These include automatically detecting Excel sub-tables and converting these so they can be analysed in Tableau. Data grid improvements, meanwhile, are aimed at making it easier to craft the ideal data source and quickly move on to analysis, while enhancements to the Data pane help people take fewer steps to find and update metadata.
Related: CMO interview: Tableau's Elissa Fink on mixing data-driven marketing with human intuition
Boomtrain launches identity graph as-a-service on Oracle Marketing Cloud
Boomtrain has brought its personalisation platform based on machine learning to the Oracle Marketing AppCloud.
The US-based startup offers a predictive personalisation technology aimed at helping marketers with one-to-one digital marketing strategies. It does this by helping to build an understanding of consumers based on how they interact with websites and email campaigns, then applying this first-party data to Boomtrain’s predictive algorithms in order to recommend content or products most likely to entice them.
The news comes just months after the company raised US$12 million in funding. In an article with Direct Marketing, Boomtrain CEO, Nick Edwards, said the key to the technology is building an identity graph similar to those done at Facebook and LinkedIn.
The app can be installed via the Oracle Cloud Marketplace and integrates with the Responsys campaign management component of Oracle’s marketing technology stack.
Data indexing comes to Qlik
Qlik has taken the wrappers off version 12 of its visual analytics platform, QlikView. The latest release sees QlikView ported onto the same QIX Associative Data Indexing Engine powering Qlik Sense, offering greater compatibility between the products as well as performance improvements and better data sharing capability.
Other enhancements include stronger encryption and improved encryption handling, accessibility to the platform via touch-based as well as hybrid devices, and better scalability to support high numbers of users in multi-node environments.
There’s also a RESTful API connector to improve compatibility with social media sites, CMS systems such as Alfresco, Documentum and Adobe, and other online services. Users also now have the ability, through Qlik DataMarket, to access a library of external data directly within the platform to augment and cross-reference against internal data sets.
Netsertive raises US$24m for local marketing platform
Netsertive, a US-based vendor that provides a digital marketing platform for local and channel marketing management, has scooped up an additional US$9 million in Series C financing, bringing its total to $24m.
The funding will be used to accelerate investments in the platform as well as expand the vendor’s reach in the brand-to-local market, estimated at more than $36 billion for co-op marketing spending.
Netsertive was recently recognised in the Deloitte Fast 500 as one of North America’s fastest-growing companies, with 668 per cent growth over the past three years.
“We are increasingly seeing clients go from early testing to true investments where the return on their co-op marketing spend really matters,” said Brendan Morrissey, CEO and co-founder of Netsertive. “Putting this level of capital into our company helps solidify Netsertive as the strong choice for brands who want the best technology and the best long-term partner that can grow with them.”
The company’s two complementary solutions, MarketWise for Brands and StreetWise for Local Businesses, enable cooperative marketing and resource sharing between brands and their business partners. Both are powered by Netsertive’s proprietary learning engine, which combines industry experience with the collective intelligence of the vendor’s extensive network of automotive, IT technology, major appliance, furniture, consumer electronics, dental and eye care clients.
Customers already on-board include FCA Chrysler, Kia, Xerox and Epson.
AppNexus expands global deal with Microsoft
Programmatic vendor, AppNexus, has expanded its exclusive global technology partnership with Microsoft. The deal will see AppNexus deploy its full-stack publisher suite enabling Microsoft inventory to be bought programmatically in 39 additional markets across Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe by 1 February 2016.
In addition, AppNexus remains the exclusive technology platform in 10 European markets and powers Microsoft’s programmatic advertising in nine markets where AOL manages the sales function. In total, AppNexus is Microsoft’s advertising technology partner in 58 markets.
Capabilities under the arrangement include reserved, deals and real-time bidding offerings across app-based ad inventory on MSN, Outlook and Skype, as well as third-party apps inventory Windows and Windows phone, through existing local sales houses, who will remain the exclusive resellers of Microsoft premium brand safe inventory.
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