All the latest marketing technology and ad technology news from Oracle, Adobe, MediaMath, xAd, Adyoulike, Nielsen, Ipsos, Eyeota, Lattice Engines, Flamingo and Facebook
Oracle enhances B2B marketing play
Oracle has introduced new marketing automation and content marketing capabilities within the Eloqua part of its Marketing Cloud aimed at helping B2B organisations deliver cross-channel customer experiences more effectively.
The vendor has introduced a new content portal, which allows marketing and sales teams to find and utilise content based on search criteria such as sales stage, buyer persona, content type and customer fields. Automated notifications then allow individual users subscribed to content to be informed of new assets.
Program canvas, meanwhile, helps marketers set up data transformation and data normalisation workflows, while a new listener framework uses lead scoring models, forms and new contact creation events to inform actions against prospect behaviours. Oracle will also offer a responsive content editor within the Marketing Cloud from the New Year, for streamlining content creation.
“With the latest additions to Oracle Eloqua and Oracle Content Marketing, Oracle is empowering marketers to quickly create and share compelling content across their organisation and reduce the number of steps required to identify and pursue new leads,” Oracle Marketing Cloud senior director of product management, Stephen Streich, said. “This will drive efficiency across the marketing and sales process and ultimately help marketers improve the customer experience and lead generation.”
Industry weighs in on Adobe’s US$540m acquisition of TubeMogul
Several industry analysts are predicting more consolidation between martech and media technology vendors after Adobe acquired video programmatic technology vendor, TubeMogul, in a deal worth US$540 million.
Adobe said the addition of TubeMogul will enable customers to maximise video advertising investments across desktop, mobile, streaming devices and TV, by giving customers access to first-party data and measurement capabilities from Adobe’s data management offering, Audience Manager, and its Adobe Analytics platform.
Industry commentators had plenty to say on the news. Scott Brinker, for example, saw the acquisition as a sign of growing convergence between the owned, paid and earned technology stacks. Pund-It analyst, Charles King, said the deal highlighted both the importance of video, as well as helped Adobe build strength in the video advertising space against the likes of Google, Verizon and Yahoo!
MediaMath goes adaptive
Programmatic platform provider, MediaMath, is stepping up its game around audience data management with Adaptive Segments, a new product that allows agencies and marketers to create, reach and understand defined audiences in real time.
The new offering is integrated with its DSP capabilities and allows users to define granular audiences on the fly, understand how they perform through testing and reporting, optimise them and active across their digital channels. The vendor said clients can also push audiences outside of its platform.
Adaptive Segments is already been used by luxury fashion brand, Luisa Via Roma, which claimed campaigns leveraging the more granular audience segmentation drove up to 11.7 times higher ROI.
“One of the biggest issues facing the more advanced programmatic marketers today is the inherent latency that arises from trying to stitch together an ad tech stack with multiple parties,” said MediaMath managing director for Asia-Pacific, Rahul Vasudev. “There is a meaningful amount of data lost in transit. At the same time, marketers are losing their most important customers, the ones who have just put a product in their shopping cart in the past hour or so. Adaptive Segments heralds the beginning of a new era of data management technology.”
Nielsen launches Shopper Essentials Suite
Nielsen has taken the wrappers off Shopper Essentials, a Web-based data visualisation and analysis suite aimed at providing an interactive view of shoppers across retail channels and categories.
The offering consists of three complementary solutions chronicling the shopper’s path to purchase. The first is Store Choice Drivers, which analyses why shoppers choose one store over another and looks at how they engage in-store as well as online. Category Shopping Fundamentals then equips users with information about category purchase decision making, and includes benchmarks established across more than 100 CPG categories. There’s also Digital Shopping Fundamentals, which focuses on the online environment and key touchpoints contributing to the digital path to purchase.
Both Store Choice Drivers and Category Shopping Fundamentals had been available as separate solutions.
“With our comprehensive shopper insights, we’re providing clients with the confidence to take swift, decisive action to cultivate business both online and offline,” said Nielsen US vice-president of consumer and shopper analytic, Hin-Lo Lau. “For manufacturers, this means you are equipped with the confidence to build stronger relationships with your retailer partners, and win over shoppers.
“If you’re a retailer, it’s about growing your customer base through category activation in-store and digitally. Whether you are focused against Millennials or other shopper cohorts, you’ll be able to seize opportunities to grow your business."
The three solutions will be delivered through Nielsen’s real-time, self-service data visualisation tool, Insight Studio.
xAd raises US$42.5m and buys WeatherBug
Location-based ad network player, xAd, has secured US$42.5 million in its latest funding round and announced that it is buying weather app, WeatherBug.
The latest Series E raising round was led by Eminence Capital and joined by W Capital, IVP and Emergence Capital, bringing its total funding to $116.5m since 2008. The deal also sees Serge Matta appointed as president of global sales and marketing at xAd.
The money will help fund xAd’s acquisition of WeatherBug, also announced this week. WeatherBug operates a live weather website and app and has more than 20 million unique users across the US. The company said the purchase will unite xAd’s global, real-world intelligence and contextual database with WeatherBug’s daily user reach and engagement, as well as its data infrastructure and Internet of Things networks. This will see xAd’s mobile user visibility to 50 million users.
The vendor also plans to build deeper data sets to predict patterns and trends for more useful insights that marketers can use to better target consumers. The deal is a close reflection of IBM’s acquisition of The Weather Company in January, which Big Blue has subsequently used to bring more targeted marketing into its Marketing Cloud based on weather attributes and data.
“We are driving the future of artificial intelligence by combining data sets that can not only capture the most accurate consumer behaviour, but also predict where they will go next,” said xAd CEO, Dipanshu Sharma. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Adyoulike claims world-first with semantic native ads
Adyoulike is claiming a world-first with its semantic targeting artificial intelligence for native advertising that will not only provide the ‘what’ around editorial content, but also the ‘why’.
The company is tapping into IBM Watson’s AI software to create better semantic targeting through its in-feed native advertising technology. To do this, it’s using Watson to scan all publisher pages in the Adyoulike global network of premium publishers, then analysing them for contextual links around topic, sentiment and semantics, rather than just keywords.
According to the company, Watson is looking at where, why and how existing editorial content on each site is talking about subjects, and ensures advertisers dynamically deliver the best native content to fit. The data is currently available through Adyoulike’s DMP and will be usable by programmatic buyers in Q1, 2017.
Adyoulike CEO, Julien Verdier, called the new offering a game-changer for the native ad industry and labelled it ‘deep native advertising’. The company claims to reach more than 100 million unique visitors across premium editorial sites globally per month.
“We are now able, in real time, to associate any kind of advertising content to the best matching editorial content, whatever the level of semantic targeting expected by advertisers and publishers,” he said. “We truly think that deep semantic contextual targeting is the only way to make the most of the native opportunity.”
Adyoulike is now operating across 18 countries across the US, Latin America, Europe and Middle East with a customer list including Barclays, Samsung, Microsoft, OMD and Dior.
Flamingo lists on the ASX
Financial customer experience management solution provider, Flamingo, has listed on the ASX today and is gearing up for expansion in the US as well as Australia.
The company uses Web chat, Web forms and machine learning to help guide customers the decision-making process around financial quotes and payments.
Flamingo was acquired by ASX-listed Cre8tek in June, and raised $3 million in capital, led by Otsana Capital, in order to list. The company has a market capitalisation of $23 million and is the first startup out of fintech hub, Stone & Chalk.
Founder and CEO, Catriona Wallace, said the company has a substantial sales pipeline in the US, and will shortly go live with a significant implementation for existing Fortune 100 client, Nationwide Insurance. It’s also signed a proof of technology contract with another US-based global insurance group.
“Significant efforts are being made to prioritise and convert our current opportunities, with the US market a key focus for the business, particularly with insurance companies, and it’s fantastic to see interest in Australia increasing as this market becomes more open to innovation,” she said.
Lattice Engines launches predictive campaigns on Oracle Marketplace
Predictive analytics vendor, Lattice Engines, has launched a predictive campaigns application on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace aimed at assisting marketers execute more personalised campaigns against their highest value accounts.
Joining the list of vendors providing solutions for account-based marketing (ABM), Lattice said the new predictive campaigns uses predictive analytics and its data cloud of 30,000 data attributes on 250 million companies worldwide to help marketers operationalise ABM at scale.
Key features include the ability to score inbound and existing leads and accounts using Lattice predictive Enrichment and Scoring from within the Oracle Marketing Cloud, as well as tools to create targeted segments to execute hyper-personalised multi-channel campaigns for lead gen and ABM programs.
Ipsos and Eyeota team up on new audience segments
Australian research company, Ipsos, which provides the emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) audience survey, and Eyeota, a targetable audience data vendor, have partnered on new retail related audience segments for peak demand retail season.
The segments are designed to offer rich consumer behaviour and intention to purchase for more precise targeting of audiences. They’re derived from emma audience segments and include shopping at the main grocery and mass retail brands as well as purchase intention for specific retail categories and product segments. These cover the types of products consumers intend to purchase, from camping products to fashion, furniture, homewares, toys, sporting equipment and jewellery.
The emma-based audience segments can be purchased via the Eyeota Data Marketplace from major media agency online trading desks.
“The new retail audience segment data gives digital media buyers the range and depth of targeting that was previously only available on traditional media platforms,” emma executive director, Brian Hogan, said. “The emma consumer behavioural and purchase intention segments allow advertisers to target richer, more contemporary consumer portraits.
“This retail data becomes even more critical in the lead up to the biggest retail sales event of the year when consumers spend upwards of $47 billion over the Christmas season.”
Facebook extends analytics to Messenger Bots
Facebook has unveiled a new analytics offering for measuring the impact of its Messenger Bots.
The social networking giant is extending its Facebook Analytics for Apps to businesses building bots on the Messenger Platform, providing reporting capability around messages sent and received, and insight into people blocking or unblocking the app. It’ll also deliver aggregated and anonymised demographic reports including age, gender, education, interests, country and language to help businesses better understand who’s using the bots.
Facebook said businesses on the Messenger Platform can also use the App Events API to log customer events for Analytics for Apps, further improving their ability to see how consumers engage with bots. For example, a travel retailer can see how often people are transferred to a human agent, or an ecommerce business can build cross-platform funnels to see what percentage of people interact with its bot also make a purchase via the website or app.
Facebook said 33,000 businesses are now using bots to engage consumers, ranging from payment facilities to news and content distribution and reservation confirmation.
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