Session Will Discuss Consumer Trends and Next-Gen Solutions to Help Retailers Appeal to the Modern Shopper and Ensure Success in a Volatile eCommerce Market

GroupBy, a SaaS-based eCommerce product discovery and search leader, announces its upcoming panel discussion, “6 Key eCommerce Strategies To Help You Bridge The Gap Between Consumer and Merchant.” The session, hosted by GroupBy, will take place on Thursday, October 12, at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.

During this panel session, guest speaker Brendan Witcher, VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester, will join GroupBy’s Director of Product, Arv Natarajan. They will discuss the AI-forward strategies and initiatives eCommerce retailers should be prioritizing to set themselves apart from their competition and ensure future success.

Topics covered during the session will include:

• Striking a balance between AI and manual intervention
• How to use AI technology to operationalize your business to create better customer experiences
• Why eCommerce retailers must blend their omnichannel experiences with personalization to deliver true value to their customers
• Why modern retailers are switching from rule-based to revenue-generating merchandising
• Ways to secure a predictable revenue stream to future proof your business

“Though retail sales are projected to increase this year, inflation and economic uncertainty are putting pressure on retailers, exacerbating challenges with attracting and retaining customers,” says Natarajan. “That’s why it’s critical to provide great customer experiences, and in 2023, retailers have more tools than ever at their disposal to create them. I’m excited to join Brendan to address some of these challenges retailers face going into the busy shopping season and share some of these cutting-edge, future-focused solutions that can help them face those challenges head-on.”

GroupBy’s mission is to create the world's most relevant and highly converting websites, all while requiring less effort and cost to build and run. By leveraging Google’s Cloud Discovery AI, which was specifically designed for eCommerce use cases, GroupBy’s AI-first eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform delivers relevant, buyable, personalized search results that are optimized for revenue.

By enabling AI-led optimization, while still ensuring merchandisers have the business controls they require, GroupBy’s platform simultaneously frees up merchandising teams to work on higher-value business initiatives, while optimizing search for revenue and boosting key sitewide metrics like AOV, conversion rate and revenue per search.

Reply launches a proprietary framework for generative AI-based software development, KICODE Reply. By integrating generative AI models, the Reply framework introduces a completely new approach, capable of supporting all phases of the software development lifecycle: from creating user stories, to collecting requirements, and designing, coding, testing, and deployment. The new framework has been developed by Ki Reply, a company within the Reply Group specializing in AI-supported software development, enhances software efficiency and overall quality by automating repetitive tasks.

KICODE Reply, with a Task-Driven Autonomous Agent System architecture, understands natural language commands and breaks them down into secondary operations that are distributed to various agents, much like n intelligent automation systems. These agents act as product owners, front-end or back-end developers, or DevOps engineers, autonomously performing tasks based on user or external agent-provided goals and information. Users can control the KICODE Reply framework through an interface, and assign new development tasks, or alternatively, they can interact with the framework through integration into common software development platforms like GitHub or GitLab via webhooks.

KICODE Reply offers users flexibility, modularity, and scalability, enabling software development in a matter of minutes. With KICODE Reply, developers can be assisted with simple and repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex activities and unleash their creativity. For example, KICODE Reply does not require a precise description of requirements, but generates a user story based on a simple project goal description and autonomously achieves it step by step.

Several companies are already experimenting with the KICODE Reply framework to enhance their software development process, including a leading automotive company collaborating with Ki Reply. They are currently working on a Proof of Concept (PoC) to determine the suitability of different agents for managing integration requests and test generation.

Advertising is transformed for non-DTC & DTC products with headless checkout, allowing platforms and marketplaces to leverage first-party data, optimizing campaign performance

Shoppable®, today, released its Shoppable® Checkout API™ to the general public in a full production launch. This turn-key solution is meant to reduce the difficulty, expense, labor, and time commitment for companies transitioning from third-party to first-party data.

Shoppable's ecommerce APIs utilize the proven 3x patented technology of Universal Checkout, a multi-retailer, multi-product, seamless interface shown to increase conversion, decrease cart abandonment, and grow new sales. Over 400 million SKUs are available through Shoppable's API including products from Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. Through the consented collection of consumer demographics and shopping behavior via commerce, more effective targeting and personalization can be obtained, while protecting privacy.

Founder & CEO of personal fashion innovator Aesthetic, LJ Northington, was an early adopter, "Shoppable's Universal Checkout is in alignment with Aesthetic's goals to increase conversion for brands, improve the customer journey, and revolutionize the way that consumers purchase products online."

Heather Udo, the founder and CEO of Shoppable®, states, "With Shoppable® Checkout API™, marketers and advertising technology platforms replace cookies with the more accurate 1st party data gathered from their own customers. Marketers can track closed-loop campaign data, easily recognize the most profitable segments, and even build lookalike audiences for future marketing campaigns. It's a competitive advantage."

CEO of ResponsiveAds, the ad tech leader known for its beautiful display formats, Matthew Snyder, adds, "We have been extremely successful with click-to-site shoppable dynamic ads. Using the new Shoppable® Checkout API™, our clients can extend their offerings to enable consumers to buy-in-ad and close-the-loop within a single ad session. Along with our universal Fully-Fluid™ format across display, apps, CTV, and DOOH, the Shoppable® Checkout API™ will enable a full attribution process. The API will extend our unique analytics to, holistically, include all stages from an impression, click, add-to-cart, and checkout event. This, in addition to creating an optimized retail media experience for consumers."

The multi-retailer/multi-product innovation of Shoppable's API has been shown to have a 25% conversion rate improvement (compared to traditional ecommerce) and up to a 700% improvement over affiliate link-off solutions, resulting in a significant increase in sales.

63.2% of surveyed companies noted a year-on-year boost in their mobile app performance marketing budgets

Moloco and Ipsos partnered together to gauge perspectives from mobile app marketers in nine countries

37% of respondents selected Advanced ML/AI as the key business factor when vetting mobile app performance marketing vendors above all other considerations.

Moloco, a leader in operational machine learning (ML) and performance advertising, together with leading independent research company Ipsos, today announced the findings of the inaugural Mobile App Performance Marketing Global Report. More than 1,600 mobile app marketers were surveyed across nine countries, including US, UK, Korea, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam.

“The global shift in marketing from reach to results continues to gain momentum across different countries and various industries,” said Daisuke Yokokawa, Vice President, Global Marketing, Moloco. “Many mobile app marketers are aware that the secret of big tech's success in advertising is advanced ML technology and the performance marketing solutions that they provide. This global trend is due to the clear and resounding power that mobile app performance marketing has to drive revenue, user acquisition, and profit, especially during times of economic uncertainty.”

The study revealed that:

• Performance mobile app marketing continues to grow consistently across all industries. In 2023, 64.7% of surveyed companies increased their mobile ads marketing budget compared to the previous year. On average, surveyed companies increased their mobile ads marketing budget by approximately 25.7%. In addition, 63.2% of surveyed companies reported that they would be increasing the performance marketing portion of their overall mobile ads budget from 2022. Performance marketing claimed 45.7% of the mobile ads budget in 2023, surpassing brand marketing at 41.4%. Performance marketing is consistently recognized as an important investment for boosting sales and profits.
• The virtuous cycle of performance-driven marketing drives user acquisition and improves Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Companies adept in performance-driven mobile marketing programs have demonstrated high satisfaction, scoring 4.4 out of 5, crediting performance marketing with successfully acquiring new users, acquiring high-quality users, and improving ROAS. 58.2% of marketers saw performance marketing as more effective for driving revenue growth than traditional brand marketing. And 55.5% of marketers view performance marketing as the key to profitability during times of economic uncertainty.
• Advanced machine learning scores highest as the #1 factor when selecting a mobile app performance marketing solution. ML is the key success factor for global marketers, with 37% of them selecting “advanced ML/AI technology” as the most important from a list of 10 possible factors. Other important factors are global reach (23.1%) and high-quality user acquisition (18.1%), which ranked second and third respectively. The role of machine learning is credited with providing real-time, accurate data for decision-making and goal monitoring.

“Performance marketing is on trend, regardless of the country,” said Jennifer Ha, Partner of Ipsos Strategy3, Project Leader. “Marketers are typically loath to share their best kept secrets, but thanks to this anonymized research study, we now have detailed insights about their strategic marketing decisions and investments. Ultimately, having consistent results such as measurable and impactful ROAS underpins the success of many global performance marketing budgets.”

Methodology

Moloco partnered with Ipsos to conduct an online survey targeting mobile app marketers in nine countries between April 3-May 1, 2023. The survey consisted of multiple-choice questions designed to gather detailed insights. Care was taken in question design to minimize bias and ambiguity, and all responses were anonymized to encourage honesty.

The survey was defined as:

• A sample of 1,675 marketers working at companies owning mobile apps and app marketers at marketing agencies from the US (300), the UK (225), Germany (190), France (207), Korea (146), Japan (100), Singapore (184), Vietnam (169), and Indonesia (154) across various industries
• Among the respondent criteria are marketers directly involved and responsible for mobile app marketing budget execution

Cabiri, a boutique systems integrator renowned for its expertise in composable commerce, proudly introduces Launch. This groundbreaking solution is purpose-built to address the unique challenges faced by rapidly growing enterprises in the modern digital commerce landscape.

Key Features of Launch:

Speed and Efficiency: Deploy a robust composable commerce platform in just 8 weeks. Launch offers enterprises a fast, efficient and notably lower-risk pathway to modern digital transformation.

Future-Proof Design: Launch doesn't just cater to the present. It's built to scale, ensuring technology evolves hand-in-hand with business growth.

Power of Leading SaaS Products: By harnessing the capabilities of enterprise-grade SaaS products such as Commerce Layer, Sanity, Vercel, and Algolia, Launch ensures businesses receive an all-in-one, interconnected package.

Seamless Integration: Designed to effortlessly meld with existing systems, Launch minimises technological disruption, ensuring unparalleled speed to market.

Global Operations Support: Whether you're serving a local audience or operating on a global scale, Launch stands ready to back every enterprise's expansive ambitions.

“We recognised a gap in the market for a solution that not only addresses today's commerce needs but also scales for tomorrow. Launch embodies that vision, delivering an agile, powerful, and scalable solution.” - Dan Kain, the CTO at Cabiri.

“Cabiri's new Launch Accelerator is a powerful innovation that integrates best-in-class components to form an enterprise-grade digital experience platform. We are eager to work closely with Cabiri to help brands transition to composable commerce and take their business to the next level. Cabiri's Launch accelerator is now available for any enterprise interested in going-to-market with a capital efficient solution in as quick as 8 weeks. Cabiri and its partners hope to scale this solution to support the addressable market of high growth enterprises in Europe, North America, and beyond.” - Fillipo, Commerce Layer.

Today, global affiliate marketing platform Awin announces the launch of its upgraded features, creating a new digital marketing ecosystem that addresses the challenges faced by brands and online publishers worldwide. In an ad landscape dominated by a handful of large tech firms, and with brands demanding more transparency, these upgrades introduce game-changing solutions that empower brands to regain control over their ad spend, create lasting marketing partnerships and generate more revenue.

The Challenge: Big Tech’s Dominance of Digital Ad Spend

Almost three-quarters of global digital ad spend is currently invested into three main technology platforms, whose market dominance and auction-based models have left businesses struggling with skyrocketing costs and little control over where to invest their money.

Similarly, the US Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) recent study revealed that 23% of brand spend in programmatic is going to waste, highlighting the transparency issues within that space. This wasted spend amounts to at least $20bn, a third more than is set to be invested globally in the affiliate industry by brands this year.

The Solution: Choice, Control, Customisation, and ROI

Awin recognises the need for an alternative as companies increasingly prioritise their own bottom line and look for media investments they can trust. Its upgraded platform is a direct response to the demand from ecommerce brands for an advertising solution that is both adaptable and transparent, empowering them to achieve their marketing goals in an increasingly competitive environment.

The Awin partner ecosystem allows brands to confidently break free from these costly models, offering:

• Choice: Brands can quickly discover and choose from over 1 million affiliate partners that align with their marketing objectives via Awin’s AI-powered Partner Discovery tool.
• Control: Brands can easily measure the value and impact of their investments using new in-depth funnel and journey path reports to understand how their customers find them online. And powerful sector benchmarking shows how they stack up against competitors.
• Customisation: Brands can use new datapoints and flexible compensation models to create custom incentives that focus only on the most valuable marketing actions, ensuring cost efficiency.
• ROI: With their affiliate programmes built to drive highly-targeted marketing value, brands can enjoy a 14:1 return on their ad investment when working with Awin.

"Choice, control, and customisation are critical to creating mutually beneficial and lasting relationships in any business, particularly within digital marketing," said Adam Ross, CEO of Awin. "Awin’s partner ecosystem helps ecommerce brands eliminate industry silos, complex integrations and wasteful spending to create their own advertising ecosystems that easily scale based on individual needs. We’re excited to help customers take back control of their marketing, giving them the freedom to grow their own way.

Customers share first-hand accounts of pipeline impact and marketing ROI of multi-channel ABM strategy

Madison Logic, the leading global digital Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platform, today announced the official launch of its new ABM Success Series. The collection of customer-led webinars, testimonials, and events showcase how B2B marketers from leading enterprise software organizations leverage research and insights to implement effective ABM strategies that yield higher conversion across the sales cycle.

"Today's most successful B2B marketers understand the need to leverage data to prioritize and engage the right accounts across multiple channels," said Tom O'Regan, CEO of Madison Logic. "The ABM Success Series gives our customers a forum to share how they've accelerated the customer journey and shortened sales cycles to positively impact ROI. By acting as a strategic partner at every stage of the ABM process, we enable them to drive incredible results."

The ABM Success Series provides B2B marketers with a set of resources that highlight what is working today to convert their best accounts faster, starting with a data-driven approach to prioritize the accounts most likely to purchase. Research from its recent State of the Buyer Report: Future of Work Edition found that marketing teams achieve a 17% increase in pipeline volume, 33% greater pipeline value, and 28% accelerated pipeline velocity when leveraging the combined ML Insights dataset to prioritize the accounts with the highest propensity to purchase and engage the buying committee across the buying journey through a multi-channel ABM strategy.

As the industry-leading voice for data-driven multi-channel ABM, Madison Logic's ABM Success Series aims to inspire and connect B2B marketers with insights and advice from leaders executing global multi-channel ABM strategies that deliver superior results. Program highlights include:

Multi-Channel ABM Innovators Roundtable with top marketing leaders from Cisco and Oracle discussing how to modernize an account-based go-to-market strategy to drive account engagement across the sales cycle and improve ROI.

The State of Multi-Channel ABM Webinar featuring speakers from Forrester and Citrix Systems discussing the latest research on the state of data-driven multi-channel ABM and how these findings impact future B2B marketing strategies.

Client Video Testimonials from sophisticated marketing leaders at Salesforce, Wolters Kluwer, Vonage, and Panasonic share their biggest marketing challenges and how they've excelled by adopting a data-led approach to identifying accounts and engaging them across a multi-channel activation strategy.

As buying committees continue to evolve and B2B marketing becomes increasingly more complex, it's more critical than ever for successful marketers to share first-hand accounts of the strategies and tactics implemented to meet their goals. By leveraging enhanced data to execute global multi-channel ABM strategies that meet rapidly growing customer expectations, the marketing leaders featured in the ABM Success Series share strategies that work in today's market. Key B2B marketing concepts, challenges, and wins covered in the Client Video Series include:

Accelerating the Buyer's Journey: "Currently it's about 15% we're able to close deals on within the first month or two. So it's been phenomenal in moving that needle of lead generation to lead acceleration and revenue," said Kris Patterson, Sr. Integrated Marketing at Wolters Kluwer.

Multi-Channel Engagement: "Anytime you can surround buying committees on multiple channels, in multiple stages of the funnel you're always going to have a better quality of output of the leads you are getting in the pipeline," said Thomas Matthew, Senior Marketing Manager at Vonage.

Validating Account Engagement & Pipeline Impact: "Now we're saying we targeted 50 of your top accounts. 42 of them have been on the website 25% more frequently. They're consuming this type of content and there's this much revenue at stake in keeping that conversation going. From a sales perspective, it's a very different conversation," said Susan Campbell, Group Marketing Manager at Panasonic.

Strategic Commercial Partnership to Boost Locafy’s Publishing Network by 34% Locafy and TransUnion Collaborate to Automate SEO Products Based on Listing Content

Locafy Limited, a globally recognized software-as-a-service technology company specializing in local search engine marketing, today announced a strategic commercial partnership with TransUnion to publish over 17 million business listings in Hotfrog.com, a top-20 free online directory which Locafy acquired in 2016. Through its TruContact™ Digital Search Business Listings, powered by Neustar® solution, the collaboration will assist in increasing Locafy’s existing publishing network by 34% to approximately 66 million pages. TransUnion will also work closely with Locafy to help ensure that data is up-to-date on the Hotfrog network via API connectivity and is exploring opportunities to collaborate on new product releases with the Company.

“We’re delighted to forge this path ahead with TransUnion as our partner,” said Locafy CEO Gavin Burnett. “We believe that this collaboration further ensures that the information we present on Hotfrog is up-to-date so consumers are better able to connect with local businesses. Early trial results with other partners undertaking proof of concepts have been very encouraging. Especially with the influence of automated content generation services, we’re confident that this expanded Hotfrog footprint will assist in driving strong organic traffic momentum through the Hotfrog platform and help promote Locafy’s entity-based SEO products.”

"Our partnership with Locafy exemplifies our commitment to data excellence,” added TransUnion Senior Product Manager, Joe Lazure. “We are eager to publish our business profiles on Hotfrog to ensure that users have access to the highest quality information. Looking ahead, we’re also confident in the potential for new product releases at scale, and believe that our quality business data will boost Hotfrog’s platform moving forward.”