Fullpath, automotive's leading Customer Data & Experience Platform (CDXP), is excited to announce its participation in Subaru's Certified Search Advertising Program, enhancing the digital experience for Subaru dealership networks. Subaru dealerships can now receive SAF funds when enrolling with Fullpath. The Certified Search Program enables Fullpath to coordinate with Subaru and T1 Strategies and Keywords. Additionally, Fullpath offers a Digital Advertising solution leveraging connected, first-party dealership data to turbocharge search, social, and display advertising campaigns with hundreds of targeted ads at scale.

Subaru's Certified Search and Digital Program is designed to empower dealerships with cutting-edge digital tools and technologies that streamline operations, improve customer engagement, and drive sales growth. Fullpath's inclusion in this program highlights its commitment to revolutionizing the automotive industry by providing state-of-the-art digital solutions.

Key highlights of Fullpath's Search and Digital Advertising solutions for Subaru dealerships include:

1. Search Strategy coordination with Tier 1 Subaru: Allowing Subaru retailers to hone in on targeted messages and Optimizes Tier 3 search advertising preventing any keyword overlaps with Subaru Tier 1.
2. Multi-platform targeting: Fullpath generates and publishes ads across Google search and display, and social networks targeting in-market shoppers and conquesting new traffic with highly relevant ads.
3. Real time optimization: Fullpath optimizes ad campaigns around the clock, reallocating budgets and optimizing A/B tests in real-time for best lead generating performance.
4. Data integration: Fullpath leverages dealership's data sources including website analytics, CRM, and DMS to create hyper-relevant audiences for each ad campaign.
5. Invoca advertising integration: If your dealership uses Invoca for call tracking, Fullpath will use the call transcription data for advertising targeting and optimization, an industry first capability.

Fullpath's CEO, Aharon Horwitz, expressed his enthusiasm in securing this new partnership, saying "We're thrilled to be partnering with Subaru to continue to bring the future of data management and automotive marketing to tier 3 dealerships. At Fullpath, we are committed to constant innovation on part of our retailer clients, and this partnership brings us even closer to our goal of enabling retailers to operate on the level of retail giants with the most effective AI-powered marketing technologies on the market."

This collaboration is a significant step forward for both Fullpath and Subaru as they work together to shape the future of automotive retailing. By embracing digital transformation, Subaru dealerships will be better equipped to meet the evolving needs of today's tech-savvy consumers. 

Latest innovation leverages AI to uncover low-quality sites at scale and minimize wasted ad spend

Integral Ad Science, a leading global media measurement and optimization platform, today announced a new Made for Advertising (MFA) AI-driven site detection and avoidance product. The company's MFA site technology aims to improve transparency into advertiser campaign quality, identify where spend is being allocated, and inform optimizations to minimize waste on MFA sites.

MFA sites are web pages featuring low quality content (e.g. spam sites, or ad farms) created solely to serve ads, and are optimized to perform well against traditional verification metrics, such as viewability. However, advertising spend on these sites does not drive meaningful outcomes, such as conversions or brand lift.

IAS's new product leverages AI to uncover MFA sites at scale, allowing advertisers to take back control of their media quality and cut down on wasted spend. During Alpha testing, IAS delivered comprehensive campaign analysis demonstrating superior MFA site identification for some of the world's largest advertisers and agencies.

IAS's product supports the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) recent definition of MFA sites and incorporates characteristics such as ad-to-content ratio, ad refresh rate, and the source of the traffic coming to the site to classify a site as MFA. According to the ANA's Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, 21% of all advertisement impressions measured were served on MFA sites.

"Our MFA product was built to deliver unprecedented transparency to advertisers and provide them with the ability to both detect and avoid MFA sites in order to redirect their ad spend to publishers that drive a return," said Yannis Dosios, Chief Commercial Officer, Integral Ad Science. "The industry faces a significant challenge in combating MFA sites. By leveraging AI, we have developed a scalable way to identify these low quality sources of inventory and improve overall campaign performance."

Advertisers and their agencies need confidence that the industry is converging on agreement about the specific websites that compose the MFA category. By training its model against Jounce Media's widely adopted list of MFA domains and incorporating signals from Sincera, IAS has developed the industry's first pressure tested solution for detecting and blocking MFA at scale.

"Advertisers should recognize that MFA websites can account for a significant portion of their overall campaign and should determine, independently, if MFA sites fit with their brand suitability standards for content and user experience. We applaud IAS for taking action after we released the findings from our programmatic transparency report and for supporting our definition of MFA," said Bill Duggan, ANA group executive vice president. "We have found that awareness of MFA sites among the ANA community of media professionals to be limited – which is surprising. We look forward to further developments from IAS around MFA site identification and ad spend optimization to help better educate and inform buyers."

89% of IT leaders expect passwords will represent less than a quarter of their organization's logins within five years or less

The FIDO Alliance and LastPass released the 2023 Workforce Authentication Report today, which gauges IT decision makers’ attitudes and plans for removing passwords in favor of easier and more secure passwordless authentication. The verdict? Businesses are actively moving to eradicate passwords from employees’ lives, with 89% of surveyed IT leaders expecting passwords to represent less than a quarter of their organization’s logins within five years or less.

Top findings from the 2023 Workforce Authentication Report:

• Businesses are ready to embrace a passwordless future, with 92% having a plan to move to passwordless technology and 95% currently using a passwordless experience at their organization.
• Businesses believe passkeys will help make them more secure: 92% believe passkeys will benefit their overall security posture, and 93% agree that passkeys will eventually help reduce the volume of unofficial (i.e., “Shadow IT”) applications.
• However, many recognize that work still needs to be done: A majority of businesses surveyed are still using phishable authentication methods, such as passwords (76%) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) (43%) when it comes to authenticating users within their organization.
• The majority recognize that this transition will take time and education: 55% of IT leaders surveyed feel they need more education on how passwordless technology works and/or how to deploy it, and 28% cited concerns that users may be resistant to change or using a new technology.
• When making this transition, businesses made it clear they want to choose where they store passkeys, with 69% of IT leaders anticipating storing them in a third-party password manager.

“The move towards passwordless authentication has gained steam over the past few years as an increasing number of organizations have moved to eliminate the risk and liability of passwords as they are the source of the vast majority of data breaches,” said Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. “Today’s report backs up this trend by illustrating that global IT leaders are rapidly aiming to reduce their reliance on legacy forms of authentication in favor of passkeys for user-friendly, phishing-resistant sign-ins.”

“These survey results demonstrate that businesses are excited about the prospect of a passwordless future, and all the benefits that future will bring. And the clear majority also recognize that a password manager plays an important role in that future,” said Mike Kosak, Senior Principal Intelligence Analyst at LastPass. “While the adoption of passwordless authentication will take some time and coaching, LastPass is proud to support forward-thinking leaders like these on that journey – ushering their organizations toward security that is stronger and more effortless than ever.”

This new partnership gives buyers more control over the CTV ad inventory buying process and publishers more revenue and transparency

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, today announced a new integration partnership with FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry.

Through this enhanced integration, PubMatic’s Activate will now have direct access – through FreeWheel – to premium publisher connected television ad inventory.

This new partnership will bring about two key benefits and new capabilities for the TV ad ecosystem:

• Ad buyers working with PubMatic will now have an enhanced and streamlined ability to transact across a larger and more diversified pool of premium CTV ad inventory.
• FreeWheel publishers will have access to unique campaign budgets only available through Activate.

In doing so, the two companies aim to provide increased interoperability, efficiency and transparency for buyers and sellers of premium CTV ad inventory at scale.

“Since launching this year, Activate has gained traction worldwide as the end-to-end supply path optimization solution of choice for agencies and advertisers. FreeWheel has been an important PubMatic partner for many years, and we look forward to deepening our relationship through this integration, giving buyers more control over their CTV investments,” said Nicole Scaglione, VP, CTV/OTT and Video, PubMatic.

“In integrating with PubMatic’s Activate, our goal is to drive incremental demand for publishers while giving advertisers more control and choice into how publisher inventory can be purchased. We hope that by doing so, we can drive more growth, momentum and innovation in today’s TV ad ecosystem,” said Jon Mansell, VP, U.S. Head of Demand, FreeWheel.

“At dentsu, we’re constantly innovating to provide new, technology-enabled media solutions to fuel growth and drive the best possible outcomes for our clients. This partnership between FreeWheel and PubMatic allows our teams to have more insights into where our clients’ advertisements are appearing, giving us the opportunity to improve performance, and is meaningful progress in simplifying the supply-chain,” said Anthony McDonagh, Chief Trading Officer, dentsu.

Increased desire for biometrics and awareness of passkeys increases imperative on service providers to enable stronger, more user-friendly sign-ins

Summary of key findings:

• Password usage without two-factor authentication (2FA) is still dominant across use cases – consumers enter a password manually nearly 4 times a day, or 1,280 times a year

• But when given the option, users want other authentication methods – biometrics is both the preferred method for consumers to log-in and what they believe is most secure, while awareness of passkeys continues to grow

• Online scams are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated, likely fuelled by AI – over half (54%) have seen an increase in suspicious messages and scams, while 52% believe they have become more sophisticated

• The impact of legacy sign-in methods is getting worse – the majority of people are abandoning purchases and giving up accessing services online - this is 15% more likely than last year at nearly four times per month per person

The FIDO Alliance today publishes its third annual Online Authentication Barometer, which gathers insights into the state of online authentication in ten countries across the globe. New to the Barometer this year, FIDO Alliance has also begun tracking consumer perception of threats and scams online in a bid to understand anticipated threat levels globally.

Key findings 

The 2023 Online Authentication Barometer found that despite widespread usage of passwords lingering on, consumers want to use stronger, more user-friendly alternatives. Entering a password manually without any form of additional authentication was the most commonly used authentication method across the use cases tracked – including accessing work computers and accounts (37%), streaming services (25%), social media (26%), and smart home devices (17%). Consumers enter a password manually nearly four times a day on average, or around 1,280 times a year. The only exceptional scenario to this trend was financial services, where biometrics (33%) narrowly beat passwords (31%)* as the most used sign-in method.

This is especially interesting considering biometrics' rising popularity as an authentication method. When asked what authentication method people consider most secure and the method they most prefer using, biometrics ranked as favourite in both categories, rising around 5% in popularity since last year. This suggests that consumers want to use biometrics more but don't currently have the opportunity. 

"This year's Barometer data showed promising signs of shifting consumer attitudes and desire to use stronger authentication methods, with biometrics especially proving popular. That said, high password usage without 2FA worryingly reflects how little consumers are still being offered alternatives like biometrics, resulting in lingering usage," commented Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. 

Scams are getting more frequent and more sophisticated – likely fuelled by AI 

This year's Barometer also unearthed consumer perception of threats and scams online. 54% of people have noticed an increase in suspicious messages and scams online, while 52% believe these have become more sophisticated.

Threats are seen to be active across several channels, but primarily email, SMS messages, social media, and fake phone or voicemails. The increased accessibility of generative AI tools is a likely driver of this rise in scams and phishing threats. Tools like FraudGPT and WormGPT, which have been created and shared on the dark web explicitly for use in cybercrime, have made crafting compelling social engineering attacks far simpler, more sophisticated, and easier to do at scale. Deepfake voice and video are also being used to bolster social engineering attacks, tricking people into thinking they are talking to a known trusted person. 

Shikiar added: "Phishing is still by far the most used and effective cyberattack technique, which means passwords are vulnerable regardless of their complexity. With highly accessible generative AI tools now offering bad actors the means to make more convincing and scalable attacks, it's imperative consumers and service providers listen to consumers and start to look at non-phishable and frictionless solutions like passkeys and on-device biometrics more readily available, rather than iterating on ultimately flawed legacy authentication like passwords and OTPs." 

Passkeys, which provide secure and convenient passwordless sign-ins to online services, have grown in consumer awareness despite still being live just over a year, rising from 39% in 2022 to 52% awareness today. The non-phishable authentication method has been publicly backed by many big players in the industry - Google recently announced that passkeys are now available for all its users to move away from passwords and two-step verification, as has Apple, with other brands like PayPal also making these available to consumers in the last twelve months. 

The impact of legacy sign-ins worsens for businesses and consumers 

The negative impact caused by legacy user authentication was also revealed to be getting worse. 59% of people have given up accessing an online service and 43% have abandoned a purchase in the last 60 days, with the frequency of these instances rising year on year to nearly four times per month, per person, up by around 15% on last year. Poor online experiences are ultimately hitting businesses' bottom lines and causing frustration among consumers.

70% of people have had to reset and recover passwords in the last two months because they'd forgotten them, further highlighting how inconvenient passwords are and their role as a primary barrier to a seamless online user experience.

Notes to editors:

• Research for the FIDO Alliance's Online Authentication Barometer was conducted by Sapio Research among 10,010 consumers across the UK, France, Germany, US, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, India and China.
• *The answer option "Logging in via social sign-in" has been disregarded for the question specific to social media accounts, due to the answer option being included through an error

Nashville's AI startup, Writerly, a pioneering force in AI-driven productivity software and e-commerce SEO, is making headlines. The platform has not only amassed over 750,000 users but is also on track to break the 1 million user mark by the end of its inaugural year. With a daily influx of more than 2,500 new users, Writerly is setting a new standard in the industry.

Jon Ricketts, CEO and Co-Founder of Writerly, articulates the company's meteoric rise: "The user growth we have experienced the past 9 months is a result of the global market getting more comfortable with generative AI applications as a means to achieve more productivity. It is also a testament to the efforts of our product and engineering teams who have delivered a platform that our users see a lot of value from. We are constantly listening to our users in order to better meet their needs and will continue to do so as we scale."

The platform has clocked in over 443 million tokens of usage in 2023 alone. These aren't just numbers; they're a reflection of how Writerly is becoming an indispensable tool for content creators and marketers alike.

Understanding the evolving needs of its user base, Writerly introduced EKOM this past August. This specialized tool for e-commerce SEO is a game-changer. EKOM automates the intricate process of creating brand-specific, SEO-optimized product assets, all while offering dynamic updates to keep businesses at the forefront of the ever-changing online search landscape. EKOM is where data science meets retail search. 

The Road Ahead

The team at Writerly isn't just celebrating their rapid ascent; they're focused on what comes next. Committed to user-centric innovation and scalable solutions, Writerly is not just a platform but a partner for all things e-commerce, marketing, SEO and content creation.

Real-time viewership linked directly to consumer purchase data unlocks unparalleled advertising performance

Samba TV, the leading provider of TV technology for audience data and omniscreen measurement, today announced the integration of Affinity Solutions’ Purchase Media Metrics (PMM™) data to exclusively empower brands and advertisers with cross-platform measurement of return on ad spend (ROAS) and actionable targeting solutions.

The partnership will leverage Samba TV’s first-party data from tens of millions of opted-in televisions, across more than 20 TV brands sold in over 100 countries, to provide advertisers and media companies a unified view of the entire consumer journey, from TV to digital to commerce - online or offline. By combining Samba TV’s robust viewership data with Affinity Solutions’ PMM™ data set, derived from comprehensive deterministic purchase data capturing over 140 million credit and debit cards, the joint solution bridges the gap between TV viewership and actual buying habits.

This unique partnership enables advertisers to target with unmatched precision, engaging not just with TV audiences exposed to specific ads or programs, but validated buyers to maximize campaign ROAS.

“Historically, advertisers had limited visibility into their ad investments' true value,” said Samba TV Chief Commercial Officer Aden Zaman. “Combining Samba TV data with Affinity Solutions data is game-changing. By aligning media strategies with actual purchase and viewing behaviors, we're ensuring every ad dollar creates impact and drives measurable results.”

This exclusive integration leverages Samba TV’s Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, giving advertisers access to real-time viewership data to aid brands and agencies with a seamless dataset to segment audiences by a unique combination of viewership and purchase behavior. The collaboration signifies a transformative shift in advertising, underscoring the power of business-based outcomes like purchase-informed targeting to elevate TV campaign impact.

“The ever-evolving landscape of consumer behavior, compounded by the surge in cross-screen viewership, necessitates an evolution beyond traditional demographics," said Affinity Solutions Chief Business and Marketing Officer Damian Garbaccio. "Today’s advertisers need insight into comprehensive audience viewing patterns, spending tendencies, and passions across diverse channels. By integrating what people watch with what they buy, Affinity and Samba are answering this call, redefining how advertisers connect and captivate audiences, guaranteeing unmatched returns and reach."

Through the partnership with Affinity Solutions, Samba TV’s advertising partners are now able to plan and optimize omniscreen media across all leading programmatic platforms with precision linked directly to tangible business outcomes. Brands and advertisers will next be able to leverage Samba TV conversion and lift measurement alongside Affinity Solutions’ purchase data to assess the performance of linear, streaming, and digital media investments in driving actual purchases.

"In today's fast-paced retail environment, it's imperative for brands to rely on precise and actionable data. Affinity Solutions' purchase data offers an unprecedented understanding of consumer behavior,” said National Retail Federation (NRF) Executive Director of Research Mark Matthews. “This collaboration with Samba TV sets a new industry standard, providing retailers with a robust, integrated view that translates directly into enhanced advertising efficacy and value."

Spike, the trailblazing team chat and email service, is thrilled to unveil Magic AI, a groundbreaking AI-driven communications assistant that is redefining business messaging. By merging human creativity and artificial intelligence, Magic AI by Spike promises to help people work more efficiently and complete daily workflows faster while saving valuable time.

Dvir Ben Aroya, CEO of Spike, shares his enthusiasm about the launch: "Magic AI is more than just a step forward; it's a giant leap toward realizing our vision of streamlining communication and productivity. This technology seamlessly blends human creativity with AI, empowering everyone to communicate and get more done with remarkable efficiency."

New capabilities available in Spike's Magic AI

Magic Compose: Allow Magic AI to be your wordsmith. Create impeccable emails and messages in any tone, length, and format. All you need is a short prompt and Magic Compose will do the rest.

Magic Reply: We've all been there: staring at our screen, crafting and recrafting a response to ensure it's just right. Magic Reply seeks to simplify this process, ensuring that every reply is on-point and contextually attuned.

Magic Summaries: See complete summaries without downloading, opening, or reading the file. Save valuable time and extract content from PDF files. Whether it's long documents, research papers, reports, or meeting notes, Magic AI can quickly analyze the content and provide you with concise and relevant summaries.

Magic AI Bot: Spike's AI bot is your versatile all-in-one AI assistant, providing quick answers, assisting in diverse research tasks, crafting comprehensive articles, offering code solutions, and efficiently organizing data into tables. Spike's AI bot was created to let teams work smarter - not harder.

AI Notes: Elevate your work process with AI Notes, a game-changing tool that revolutionizes writing, note taking, project planning, and management. Whether starting a fresh project or fine-tuning an existing one, AI Notes is your indispensable ally. Harness its capabilities to generate captivating blog topic ideas, effortlessly condense or enrich your notes, and even craft comprehensive articles with remarkable ease. It's like having an experienced writing partner by your side.

Translations: With Magic AI's you can converse seamlessly by instantly translating your messages while preserving cultural nuances. This not only fosters better understanding but also strengthens global collaboration.

Spike is available on iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and web browsers. It has been featured as Apple's App of the Day. Francesco D'Alessio, host and creator of KeepProductive, also called Spike "epic" for its cutting-edge technology that simplifies communication processes.