CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 25 October 2018

Qualtrics expands XM solutions capabilities 

Qualtrics has announced the expansion of XM Solutions to help customers close experience gaps and harness the power of its Experience Management (XM) Platform.

There are now over 45 solutions spanning automated projects, guided programs and full-service research, designed by industry and research experts aiming to accelerate customer experience, employee experience, and market research. Solutions include both guided programs - designed to accelerate customer experience and employee experience programs with pre-configured surveys, expert-validated methods, and dashboards tailored to business - as well as automated projects for quick-turn research projects. 

"XM Solutions will improve the speed and accuracy with which organisations can launch their experience management programs," said Ryan Smith, co-founder and CEO of Qualtrics.

"Our team of experts have designed packaged solutions that leverage the learnings from thousands of customer experience, employee engagement and research programs running on the Qualtrics platform." 

TVSquared ADeffect aims to unlock TV’s longer-term impact  

TVSquared's ADvantage platform will now include ADeffect, which models the longer-term effect of TV, measuring its impact in the weeks and months following ad airings. 

By incorporating ADeffect’s longer-term analytics, advertisers aim to get a more complete view of TV’s value, helping them measure the impact of strategy changes, justify future investments and analyse performance across markets and marketing channels. 

“Traditionally, advertisers had to build and maintain time-intensive, expensive models to understand the true ROI of TV. We designed ADeffect to eliminate this reliance altogether. Taking into account Adstock and seasonality, ADeffect models the indirect, extended impact of advertising. Marketers now have an easy, fast way to get the results they need, when they need them – not months after the fact,” Calum Smeaton, CEO and co-founder of TVSquared said. 

Twilio launches Twilio Autopilot 

Twilio launched Twilio Autopilot, a programmable, conversational AI platform for building custom bots, IVRs, and home assistant apps. 

Autopilot uses conversational patterns to automate the initial, information-gathering conversation with customers. If a conversation with an agent is required, Autopilot can hand off the conversation to a contact centre agent, sharing the context of that initial interaction so customers never have to repeat themselves.

Autopilot is designed so that developers can write their applications once and deploy to any support channel, including IVRs, SMS, chat, Alexa, Slack and Google Assistant, without additional code. 

Adobe announces next generation of Creative Cloud 

Adobe announced updates to Creative Cloud applications including Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Premiere Pro CC and Adobe XD. 

Adobe also introduced Adobe Premiere Rush CC, a video editing app for social media creators, simplifying video creation and sharing on platforms including YouTube and Instagram. 

Adobe previewed new iPad versions of Adobe Photoshop CC and Project Gemini, a drawing app, also. 

Updates to its desktop applications include a new Content-Aware Fill workspace in Photoshop CC; performance and workflow improvements across Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic; the ability to design with photorealistic, Freeform gradients in Illustrator CC; a powerful Content-Aware Fit in InDesign CC; the power to instantly create and animate stylised puppets using a webcam and reference artwork with Character Animator’s new Characteriser; a new rendering engine for improved render preview performance in Dimension CC; and new Sensei powered search features and exclusive content in Adobe Stock, including a new library of clips from GoPro.  

Adobe announced it is addressing the needs of the video animation industry with new workflows and integrations across apps including Animate to After Effects, Animate to Character Animator and Adobe XD to After Effects. 

Autopilot launches Annotate and Collaborate 

Autopilot, a marketing automation software company, announced the launch of Annotate and Collaborate, which aim to enable marketing teams to collaborate just as they would in Google Docs to design multi-channel customer journeys. 

Annotate and Collaborate provide additional functionality to Autopilot’s visual canvas. Teams across organisations can now work on customer journeys in real time and give context and feedback on each journey by using annotations, text, stickers, images and emoji. 

Annotate and Collaborate provide a solution by delivering Google Docs-like collaboration to a visual canvas where marketers can work together, from anywhere in the world, to design, ship, and contextualise the customer journey in minutes. 

Annotate and Collaborate allows users to: collaborate with their team members in real-time, visualise ideas and bring context to journeys, and share their best work with their organisation or the marketing community. 

Turing Analytics comes to Australia 

AI innovator, Turing Analytics is launching in Australia. 

Turing will provide a range of visual search (VS) technology. 

A workable VS platform addresses the growing problem of “decision dilemma” by quickly directing consumers to product areas they are most interested in via fast, accurate visual identification. 

The customer clicks on an image of the product they like – the image can

be more or less from anywhere online - and Turing Analytics’ proprietary VS

technology, using machine learning and data analysis, will select other products in the range which match the one clicked on. 

Turing Analytics distinguishes its technology via three central differentials, accuracy, scalability, and solution customisation. 

InMobi acquires Pinsight Media 

InMobi announced the acquisition of Pinsight Media, the mobile data and advertising company formerly wholly owned by Sprint. 

This all-stock deal is part of a broader strategic partnership between InMobi and Sprint across devices, data, media and marketing. 

Pinsight Media is a mobile data and brand intelligence company that works with U.S. telcos and advertisers across verticals including consumer goods, retail, entertainment and finance. It offers a suite of advertising products and services to help businesses uncover new audiences, discover new market opportunities and define effective customer engagement strategies. 

The acquisition of Pinsight builds on InMobi’s enterprise platforms and aims to help CMOs to deliver on consumer expectations through improved customer understanding for superior targeting, engagement and retention.

Thunder Experience Cloud closes funding round

Thunder Experience Cloud announced the closing of a US$6 million funding round, with investments from a consortium of open ad tech companies, as well as the expansion of its executive leadership team. 

Thunder’s platform aims to help advertisers create, personalise, optimise and measure ad experiences across channels. 

In addition, Thunder has appointed two executives, Marco Matos as head of product and Jack Hallahan as VP of strategic partnerships, as it continues to enhance its platform and grow its partner network.

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