Meltwater, a leading global provider of social, media and consumer intelligence, today announces its Winter Release with new product enhancements that will help Meltwater customers be more efficient and effective through greater PR impact, better analytics and faster time to value.

The use of AI-powered solutions continues to have significant benefits for PR & Marketing teams looking to make an impact with content and campaigns that drive results. Meltwater’s soon-to-be-released State of Social Survey 2024 found that 58% of marketers are planning to increase their use of AI tools in 2024. The biggest gains reported as a result of using AI are saving time writing and editing, and improving content creation. At the same time, marketers are facing limited time, bandwidth and resources, making the opportunities for AI-powered solutions all the more relevant.

Meltwater has been listening to customers and discovering new ways to make their solutions more powerful and more intuitive, investing in product development based on these needs. The company doubled down on investment in its AI engine with a wide range of benefits that will save users time and effort across its suite of solutions including media intelligence, media relations, social listening & analytics, consumer intelligence, social media management, influencer marketing and more. With these updates, Meltwater continues to solidify its position as an enterprise-grade suite of solutions and an AI leader poised to define the future of media, social and consumer intelligence.

The Winter Release is full of new enhancements that provide more value than ever before for Meltwater customers, enabling:

• Greater PR Impact: PR pros can surface strategic insights, deliver engaging briefs to key stakeholders, land more media coverage and report on results and ROI with Meltwater’s relaunched Media Relations solution.
• Better Analytics: Users now have more innovative tools to turn data into insight, measure social media ROI and streamline end-of-year reporting, with enhanced dashboards and measurement tools.
• Faster Time to Value: Customers can unlock the full benefits of Meltwater faster than ever, with new and improved features to streamline and strengthen workflows including new integrations, AI powered summarizations and more.

The Winter Release introduces new innovations that will make Meltwater users’ lives easier, across teams and departments:

• New PR Insight Reports help teams easily illustrate the tangible value of their work with automated reports with insights on key coverage, shifts and brand perception.
• Redesigned Dashboards allow users to easily create robust reports and dashboards that can tell the full story of activity and results across campaigns, including a 360° view of performance across teams and regions for Meltwater’s enterprise customers.
• Discovery Explainer analyzes trends and shifts that users need to know about and leverages the power of generative AI to generate a human-like text explanation to provide context in seconds.
• Salesforce integration provides measurable community management across social channels from Salesforce, bringing CRM context to customers’ social care efforts through the syncing of contacts, cases and leads between Meltwater Engage and Salesforce.
• Enterprise APIs deliver richer analytics and context through improved data capabilities. Customers can go beyond exporting data, to future proof their performance metrics with data and insights that integrate into live dashboards, data science and AI projects, business intelligence and internal apps.

CTO Aditya Jami reinforces Meltwater’s ongoing commitment to continuous innovation and customer-centricity: “At Meltwater our mission is to help our customers by providing the tools, data and insights they need to drive business decisions and deliver on their PR, Comms and Marketing goals. With each product enhancement we deliver, we look to make our customers’ lives easier with better, more robust analytics and faster time to value, all in an intuitive, unified suite of solutions. We know that teams are looking to AI for efficiencies, and we’re committed to leveraging innovations in our technology to ensure they gain the time and resource savings they need to drive results.”

Solution leverages the power of AI and Ipsos' industry leading expertise as a single source of truth for brand and reputation management and reporting.

Ipsos, one of the largest market research companies in the world, today announced the launch of Ipsos RISE: a ground-breaking platform for modern brand, risk and reputation management.

Powered by AI and perfected by Ipsos' world-class Corporate Reputation and Public Affairs experts, Ipsos RISE (Reputation Intelligence for Strategic Evaluation) is designed to guide organizations with confidence as they navigate today's complex and fast-moving corporate risk landscape.  

"With brands and businesses expected to solve societal wrongs, positively impact their communities, and lead on ESG issues all while delivering value to shareholders and stakeholders –reputation management has never been more critical or more challenging," said Lorenzo Larini, CEO of Ipsos North America.

"Combining the speed and efficiency of digital data solutions with the analytical rigor of survey-based research, Ipsos RISE delivers a unique and focused solution for the evolving needs of brand and communications leaders, risk managers, and public affairs teams."

From a single, easy-to-navigate interface, Ipsos RISE synthesizes traditionally disparate sets of data including news, social media, survey and regulatory data, and more into a single source of truth, equally useful for high-level insights and granular analysis.

Ipsos RISE offers organizations a flexible, efficient, and agile alternative to the increasing cost and complexity of competing options without sacrificing depth or methodological rigor. As a solution set designed with the needs of modern communications and corporate affairs teams in mind, RISE insights are available through an optional 24/7 on-demand platform, or in the form of focused reports, offering a quick turnaround on issues reporting, emerging risk sensing, competitive and campaign monitoring, regulatory risk exploration, and more.

"With more data, strategic use of AI, and the backing of Ipsos' best-in-class expertise, Ipsos RISE delivers streamlined insights business leaders need to act swiftly and with confidence," said Jason McGrath, head of Ipsos' U.S. Corporate Reputation team. "The solution positions teams to spot and manage risk upstream. Instead of firefighting in a crisis, Ipsos RISE offers a path to proactive issues and risk management."

Today, Pictory, a leader in generative AI technology for content marketers, has announced a new collaboration with ElevenLabs, a state-of-the-art AI voice provider, that will enable users to access and incorporate hyper-realistic voiceovers into their videos, thereby optimizing engagement and viewing experience.

Now, Pictory Premium and Teams subscribers will be able to apply voices that make their video content more authentic and engaging.

Abid Ali, Chief Product Officer at Pictory, stated, “Access to a wider range of more realistic AI voices is one of our most popular requests from subscribers. Partnering with ElevenLabs will enable us to offer industry-leading synthetic and generative voice AI technology to our customers. Now, they can make videos with truly human-sounding voiceovers suitable for a wide range of business applications such as marketing, training, and internal communications.”

The alliance targets business content creators, including marketers, bloggers, and social media managers, with a focus on enhancing video content.

The partnership injects a new level of realism into content applications such as converting scripts and blog posts into videos.

Mati Staniszewski, CEO of ElevenLabs, commented, “Our alliance with Pictory isn't just about merging technologies. It's about reimagining how we create and consume content. Together, we're setting new standards for video content, and I couldn't be more excited about what's on the horizon.”

Rewardable, the highly anticipated rewards platform, is thrilled to announce its official launch. Designed to connect brands with verified audiences seamlessly, Rewardable aims to eliminate fraud and streamline airdrops, giveaways, and engagement-based marketing campaigns. With this launch, the platform is poised to transform how users experience loyalty and engagement campaigns.

Since its debut this month, Rewardable has attracted considerable attention, hosting six distinct reward campaigns from brands such as Sports Illustrated Tickets, Superworld, and Revuto. With over 1,000 active users in only a few days, the platform's user-centric approach ensures genuine engagement, offering brands a trusted avenue to enhance their reach and impact.

Key Highlights of the Rewardable Platform

• Digital Reward Campaigns: From exclusive rewards and NFTs to discounts and more, Rewardable offers an eclectic mix of campaigns tailored to diverse user preferences.
• Verified User Base: Through a stringent verification process, the platform promises genuine user engagement, eliminating the concerns of bots and fake interactions.
• Campaign Insights: Access detailed campaign insights, capturing participant profiles, demographics, and locations.
• Partner Program: Rewardable's newly launched partner program aims to foster collaboration, opening doors to co-creation and mutual growth.

Josef Holm, Co-Founder and CEO at Rewardable, remarked, "Our launch is more than just the introduction of a new platform; it's the manifestation of our vision to create a rewarding ecosystem for both users and brands. The incredible response so far is testimony to our team's vision and mission and the market's readiness for such a platform."

Rewardable's commitment to delivering unmatched value is evident in its strategic partnerships, with several more brand campaigns already in the pipeline. As the platform continues to grow, users can anticipate a myriad of new brands and offerings to engage with.

Rewardable was conceived with a singular vision: to bring genuine value to brands and users," remarks Alex Garcia, COO and Co-Founder of Rewardable. "In today's saturated market, building trust with brands and ensuring authentic engagement are paramount. We are building a platform at the intersection of innovation and integrity, wanting every interaction to count".

AI-powered solution identifies emerging brands and their growth potential

Social Standards, the leader in transforming complex social data into actionable consumer insights, has launched an innovative new solution called Brand Maps. Developed in tandem with industry professionals from the consumer goods, private equity, and investment banking sectors, Brand Maps offers companies a unique value proposition for finding and evaluating consumer brands.

"The battle for retail sales begins on social platforms before it reaches the store or shelf," said Jordan Breslauer, head of Product for Social Standards. "Traditional data sources can't always capture the rapid emergence of brands, much less shed light on the audiences and trends that are fueling their growth. Brand Maps bridges this gap, providing timely insights into brand trajectory and consumer interest based on authentic consumer conversations at scale."

Powered by billions of consumer conversations across social platforms, Brand Maps surfaces fast-growing brands and provides comprehensive profiles of their audiences. With accurate and timely measures of consumer interest and market momentum, marketers can more readily identify market share threats and investment professionals can inform deal sourcing and due diligence. Brand Maps sets a new, data-driven standard for the evaluation, funding, and acquisition processes of consumer brands.

Brand Maps has already been adopted by leaders in consumer marketing and investing based on its unique features and capabilities:

• Global Brand Profiles: syndicated SaaS tool that covers more than 25,000 brands across eight market sectors. It adeptly translates complex social data into actionable metrics, akin to UPC codes and purchase panels.
   
• Data Structuring & Analysis: advanced AI and linguistic expertise ensure social data is structured, accurate and meaningful. The tool provides pivotal size and growth rate metrics, giving marketers a clear picture of consumer interest.
   
• Growth Potential Matrix: proprietary framework categorizing brands into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Sideliners, and Decliners. Updated monthly, it offers dynamic insights into brand trajectories and sector movements.
   
• Integrated Audience Insights: includes demographic, geographic, and behavioral insights which prove invaluable when combined with strategic consultation.

"Social Standards delivers unparalleled insights about brands, products, trends, and influencers," said Alicia Sontag, Partner, Prelude Growth Partners. "At Prelude Growth, we consider our partnership with Social Standards to be invaluable as we evaluate the market. We believe that they are a true competitive advantage for the brands they work with."

New survey reveals nearly 70% of respondents are worried that global data regulations will make it difficult to gather and utilize data, but AI will help

Heap, the leading digital insights platform, today announced its 2023 “Data Decoded: The Heap Digital Insights Report” survey results. The survey reveals the two largest obstacles teams have with their data stacks – difficulty in consolidating and organizing data and needing too much time to extract meaningful insights from the data. However, 58% believe that AI can be useful in collecting the right data.

The report combined three data sources: a market survey of product teams, a survey of Heap customers, and aggregated, anonymized user data from the Heap platform.

The survey additionally revealed that nearly 70% of respondents worry that global data regulations will make it difficult to gather and utilize needed data. 86% of teams find themselves surrounded by data silos. Teams say their silos are created through cross-functional collaboration, the inability of tools to share data, and no culture or mandate for sharing data.

Additional findings from the survey include:

• 94% of respondents think teams could make more data-informed decisions.
• Last year 40% of teams added solutions and tools to their data stack.
• Over 60% of teams report having difficulty consolidating and organizing data across different tools.
• 37% share that it takes too much time to extract meaningful insights from data collected.
• 67% of respondents say it’s easier to understand what users are doing on their website compared to their mobile app or mobile web.

“The survey results show that successful organizations prioritize a data-driven culture to better understand their user’s cross-platform experience. It further reveals that teams want to make more data-informed decisions, and that many try to do a better job by adding various solutions to their data stack,” says Rachel Obstler, CPO at Heap. “However, despite the best intentions, they are now struggling to extract meaningful insights across various platforms and datasets. Looking ahead, 75% of respondents believe their daily work will be impacted by AI, and 31% think it will ‘somewhat’ change the way they analyze customer journeys.”

The obstacles and concerns outlined in the survey can be addressed with the proper data analytics platform. Heap provides users with real-time, accurate, and insightful digital insights to support improvements in digital experiences. Heap’s platform streamlines and organizes diverse datasets - including quantitative and qualitative data - into easily understandable and accessible insights with a holistic overview of users, journeys, experiences, and behaviors.

TikTok marketers can scale their TikTok ad campaigns on 800,000+ outdoor and indoor video-enabled digital screens in the real world

Adomni, the leading global platform to plan and buy programmatic digital out-of-home advertising, announced a new advertising sales partnership with TikTok, leveraging the platform’s newly announced ‘Out of Phone’ offering. This strategic collaboration enables brands on TikTok to amplify their content on unique real-world screen types, including large format LED screens, digital urban panels, shopping mall and gym screens, as well as dozens of other formats.

This collaboration provides a range of advantages for brands on TikTok, making it easier than ever to share their unique stories on larger-than-life canvases, extend their video ads to various touchpoints along the consumer journey, and achieve greater reach and impact for their target audience. The esteemed brand CeraVe is one of the first to embrace the new offering, with more brands launching campaigns in the coming months.

This partnership also unlocks new distribution opportunities for creator content. Now, through brand advertising initiatives, creator campaigns can be showcased on hundreds of thousands of real-world screens beyond the TikTok mobile platform.

“TikTok has established itself as a key part of our daily life and it’s been remarkable to watch as the platform’s capabilities continue to grow for both consumers and advertisers. We are excited to establish this new advertising partnership to bring TikToks to more digital screens and more touch points in the real world”, said Jonathan Gudai, CEO of Adomni. “TikTok advertisers have an exciting new opportunity to enhance the reach and impact of their TikTok on-platform ad campaigns by extending the reach to Adomni’s network of connected, video-enabled screens. When you bring together real-world screens with TikTok’s authentic, highly engaging video content, we see a win-win outcome for advertisers, digital out-of-home media owners, and especially, on-the-go consumers.”

“TikTok drives off-platform results for businesses because of its reach, relevance, and diverse content & audiences,” said Dan Page, Global Head of Distribution, New Screens at TikTok. “This partnership with Adomni allows advertisers to supercharge that effectiveness, amplifying their ad campaigns across Adomni’s vast network of high-visibility screens.”

CeraVe from L'Oreal’s Dermatological Beauty Division was one of the first-to-market brands to extend its TikTok ads campaign to real-world screens through this partnership. The #CleanseLikeADerm campaign this summer illuminated the full-motion MiFi dual-screen display in the heart of Times Square, featuring the brand’s TikToks and creator content on the 10,500-square-foot digital canvas. CeraVe engaged both existing TikTok users and new audiences, effectively bridging the physical and online worlds.

“We thought the #CleanseLikeADerm campaign was the perfect opportunity to showcase our creators on the massive MiFi Times Square spectacular,” said Adam Kornblum, SVP, Global Head of Digital at CeraVe. “The fusion of digital and physical realms amplified our message of the importance of healthy cleansing habits, creating a true omnichannel experience for CeraVe’s existing and new audiences.”

Based on millions of data points from real software buyer behavior and feedback on G2, the inaugural report explores key trends across the B2B software landscape

G2 today released The State of Software, Q4 2023, a new report series which examines trends from its B2B software and services marketplace, based on proprietary data across 2 million+ trusted reviews, 150,000+ products and services, 2,000+ categories, and 80 million annual visitors.

According to the inaugural report, B2B software is growing at an average rate of 7%, based on the number of software listings on the G2 marketplace over the past five years. In exploring the trends within this growth, G2 observed the five fastest-growing software markets over the past year as:

• 1) Artificial Intelligence (39% year-over-year growth)
• 2) Design (17% year-over-year growth)
• 3) HR (14% year-over-year growth)
• 4) Marketing (14% year-over-year growth)
• 5) Security (14% year-over-year growth)

“The B2B software landscape is constantly evolving. As the world’s largest software marketplace, we have a direct lens into what’s happening in real-time – from real user reviews, website traffic, product and category insights, and more,” said Chris Voce, VP of Market Research at G2. “Based on our Market Research analysts’ expertise of G2 marketplace data and taxonomy, we’re proud to introduce the inaugural State of Software report and share these insights with vendors, investors, and buyers as a window into where innovation is happening and where key software markets are headed.”

Beyond identifying the fastest-growing software markets, The State of Software explores what’s driving that growth – outlining the fastest-growing categories and top visited new products within each of those markets. Key takeaways from these insights reveal:

• AI-powered features and capabilities are fueling growth across the B2B software landscape as more and more vendors add true AI capabilities to their products.
• The growing demand for high-quality and engaging content has increased the need for AI-enabled design tools.
• The dynamics of the human resources industry have shifted towards quality-driven job growth, which is enabled by AI-facilitated platforms for talent marketplace and intelligence.
• The marketing landscape has evolved, with a trend towards ‘one-stop shop’ solutions that allow marketers to efficiently focus on multiple segments and channels.
• Indiscriminately cutting security technology budgets carries risk, so businesses should look to optimize their resources and apply market insights to channel their resources effectively.

“The software industry has witnessed exponential growth in the past five years due to elevated digital reliance, wider adoption of cloud computing and SaaS, and significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning,” Voce added. “While AI ranked as the fastest-growing software market over the past year, it’s disrupting the entire software landscape as AI functionality and features drive innovation and growth in other categories like Design and Sales software. It’s clear that AI is powering the rapid growth of software, with new categories and products emerging to meet buyers’ needs to remain competitive while driving efficiency and innovation.”