Company uses AI to connect customer signals to product releases so fast-moving software product teams can proactively manage quality.

PlayerZero, the company that enables product teams to build faster and with higher quality, today announced its platform is generally available. PlayerZero is the first end-to-end platform that correlates customer performance signals to releases, creating a self-improving feedback loop from customers back into the way the product is built.

Delivering product quality requires quickly detecting the problems affecting customers and tactically learning from those moments to ensure they never happen again. Unfortunately, due to the unique combination of technical experience, real-time customer-driven feedback, and data-fluency necessary to operationalize this feedback loop, most teams are not able to incorporate it into their development process. Instead, they fall back to traditional testing as their best attempt at managing product quality and development. PlayerZero automates this process, making it accessible to all product teams. They have created a platform that connects product and engineering data behind a natural language interface, so teams can easily identify and root-cause the most impactful quality issues and make sure they never happen again.

"We want to be the de-facto platform for how product teams actionably achieve quality without sacrificing velocity. It's a significant milestone to achieve general availability of the PlayerZero platform and I couldn't be more excited to release it into the market," said Animesh Koratana, CEO and Founder at PlayerZero. "We're laser-focused on the quality of product development; doing it well will require streamlining people, process, and prioritization towards the business outcome. We're looking forward to watching our customers use the Platform and deliver better experiences for their users for years to come."

The PlayerZero platform is ready for enterprise implementation and is already SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant. Features of the platform include:

• Pre-release quality checklist based on code changes. PlayerZero creates a prioritized checklist for engineering teams to test & verify for an upcoming release, based on issues and customer signals of the past. This helps teams proactively identify and manage risk & opportunities to build a higher quality product.
• Release health tracking & issue impact metrics. PlayerZero automatically detects new releases and identifies changes in customer behavior and customer feedback to help product teams identify and triage the important opportunities.
• Triaging Notebooks. PlayerZero notebooks are where teams root cause changes in release health by asking questions of analytics, ticketing, engineering and customer data in simple human language.

• The inaugural summit will be held in person at the Miami Beach Convention Center from April 16-18, 2024.

• Attendees can expect new features, innovations, and strategic partnerships from commercetools to be unveiled.

commercetools today announced its inaugural global conference, Elevate - The Global Commerce Summit, bringing together the digital leaders, innovation architects and drivers, developers, operational teams, and commerce experts who are defining and shaping the future of commerce.

Regarded as the composable commerce market leader powering the evolution of commerce innovation, commercetools aims to ignite and inspire disruption to the status quo. The summit will feature hosted keynotes, panel discussions, developer training, networking and entertainment, roundtable conversations, and breakthrough product innovations, announcements and partnerships.

The much-anticipated two day event will be hosted in Miami, Florida at the Miami Beach Convention Center from April 16-18, 2024. Miami Beach, along with its vibrant and diverse community, is increasingly becoming a hub for tech innovation.

"We're excited to launch our first global conference and bring the leaders, decision-makers, and everyday innovators of the digital commerce community together to elevate their businesses, their skills, and how they think about the future of commerce," said Dirk Hoerig, Co-founder and CEO of commercetools. "Elevate - The Global Commerce Summit will be an immersive experience where every attendee will either leave equipped to be the next digital commerce avant-garde, discover how to chart incremental innovation for their brand, or gain insight into leveraging the technologies advancing the customer experiences of tomorrow."

Leaders across the digital commerce landscape are saying:

• "commercetools events always deliver, and I'm sure Elevate will be no different! Our team is looking forward to the opportunity to be among commerce futurists across industries and business models who all are committed to keeping the innovation momentum going," said Carrie Tharp, VP of Strategic Industries at Google Cloud.
• "With the energy around Elevate already so incredibly high, EPAM is excited to be commercetools' key sponsor and remain at the forefront of an ecosystem driving real business outcomes with MACH technology and composable commerce," said Shareen Campbell, Global Head of Alliances at EPAM.
• "commercetools events always have such incredible concentrated expertise, bringing together commerce and technical geniuses from every corner of the Earth," said Rick Watson, CEO and Founder of RMW Commerce Consulting, and the host of The Watson Weekly podcast. "Every business is looking to be more efficient, more agile, and more ready for their next digital transformation and commercetools events give you just that! See you at Elevate 2024!"

commercetools CMO, Jen Jones shared, "Elevate is an extension of purpose –– to reimagine digital commerce for the world's leading companies. We already do this with our composable commerce platform, now it's time to share our learnings and enable the digital commerce ecosystem to experiment more and grow faster. I'm looking forward to seeing the greatest minds debate, listening to the next big ideas from both brands and the companies that serve them, and having fun in one of the most diverse cities in the U.S."

With over two-thirds of marketing budgets reduced in the second half of 2023, marketers under pressure to build trust and prove ROI look to email marketing as a primary marketing channel

New research from Exclaimer, the leading email signature management software, reveals that 68% of marketers have experienced a reduction in their budgets by at least 5% for the second half of 2023.

To understand how marketing leaders are utilizing their budgets to connect with their audiences, and what consumer audiences are looking for from brands, Exclaimer partnered with Censuswide to survey over 100 senior and mid-level marketers and 1,000 consumers across the United States.

Trust is in the email

Heading into 2024, marketers are most interested in exploring organic social media (75%), influencer marketing (74%), and email signatures (59%) to reach their target audiences. However, the research shows that consumers prefer to communicate with brands via email over social media, with 52% preferring emails followed by 15% preferring text messaging. It is crucial marketers take this into account when developing their strategies to connect with consumers, as the results show the more popular social option may not actually be the most effective in engaging with consumers.

While marketers may be prioritizing exploring social and influencer strategies over email, when it comes to where their investment dollars are going, email marketing is the priority channel (78%), followed by social media (66%) and SEO / content marketing (56%). Marketers are also aware of how important all of the content within the email is — including the sign off at the end. In fact, 89% of marketers have considered utilizing email signatures as a marketing tool and 68% already actively use them. This is much to consumers' delight, as more than half (58%) say a professional, branded email signature makes them trust an email from a business or brand.

Measuring success

With so many marketers experiencing cuts in their budgets, it’s more important than ever to demonstrate ROI on the activity marketers decide to progress with. Positively, over half (62%) of marketing leaders surveyed hope to generate at least 16% of revenue through email signatures alone, and 91% expect to generate leads from it for the rest of the year.

It seems that brands are aware of the fact that email signatures are good for business too, with 94% of marketers stating that consistent branded signatures have a positive impact on email engagement rates and 40% hoping to generate 20% or more of revenue from email signatures.

Whether marketers choose to use email signatures within their email marketing, social media, influencer relations or anything else, according to Exclaimer’s research the metrics that marketers bosses value the most are conversion rates and click-through rates.

How brands can successfully connect with consumers

Though the data shows marketers are aware of the impact email signatures have on brand engagement, there are still 32% of marketers who have not yet begun utilizing them as a marketing tool. However, with over two-thirds of surveyed marketers having experienced recent budget cuts, it is imperative to identify the most effective ways to use the budgets still available and work smarter to maximize the impact of existing channels. For those who have not yet explored leveraging email signatures to connect with consumers and drive growth, here are some tips to find success and avoid getting lost in crowded inboxes:

• The information displayed in your email signature matters: Use professional branded email signatures that include contact information, promotional information, and social media links.
• Contact information is key: 70% of consumers feel frustrated when a business or brand’s contact information is not included in their email signature and this can lead to disinterest from the consumer.
• No need for subscription links: When looking at what consumers care most about being included in a brand’s email signature, subscription links were at the bottom of the list with only 25% of consumer respondents requesting that be included.
• Take the age gap into consideration: Younger consumers feel differently than older consumers do about email communication. Older respondents share that branded signatures don’t make them feel a particular way while younger respondents feel more confident that the brand is legitimate if they have a professional or branded signature. Additionally, younger respondents aged 18-34 care more about social media / website links (61%) being included than respondents 55 and older do (19%).

“As we start thinking about plans for 2024, it’s crucial that marketers review what is working and not working with marketing spend in the second half of the year. There is another quarter to go and with so many experiencing budget cuts, it’s imperative we understand what our audience is looking for and ensure our tactics are meeting their needs,” said Exclaimer’s Chief Marketing Officer, Carol Howley. “Our research shows that email signatures are a powerful channel that consumers really relate to. By implementing email signatures into an email marketing strategy, marketers can boost their audience engagement, making the most of the channel they connect with. After all, it’s about working smarter, not harder.”

A new in-depth study from Juniper Research, the foremost experts in independent technology research and forecasting, found that 22% ($84 billion) of all online ad spend is lost due to ad fraud in 2023 and it is projected to reach over $170 billion in 5 years.

Juniper Research's latest 18-page research report provides comprehensive analysis and a 5-year forecast across online, social, video, mobile and in-app advertising fraud. It was generated from a dataset comprising over 78,700 datapoints which analyzed digital advertising activity in 45 select countries across 8 key regions between 2019 and 2028.

Key findings in the report:

• 22% of all online ad spend is lost due to ad fraud in 2023
• 30% of mobile ad spend is lost to ad fraud in 2023
• $172 Billion of ad spend is projected to be lost due to ad fraud by 2028
• $23 Billion per year can be recovered by using fraud mitigation platforms

"Data provided by popular ad platforms, such as Facebook and Google, provide an incomplete picture of the success of advertising campaigns," said Senior Research Analyst from Juniper Research, Elisha Sudlow-Poole. "That is, these platforms give an optimistic view of campaign efficiency, failing to distinguish between how many clicks or views originated from legitimate users compared to click farms or fraudulent bots."

Flywheel, a global leader in retail media managed service, today announced that it has completed its global reporting API integration with CitrusAd. The integration of CitrusAd’s reporting API allows data to connect to Flywheel’s application and provides unprecedented versatility for client reporting. Additionally, the integration makes new features, ongoing data improvements with better shopper history and advanced reporting metrics readily available to support clients with speed and agility for proactive recommendations.

The CitrusAd API enhances the level of detail with greater support and better customer experiences through hyper-intelligent advertising – all of which will establish greater trust and advocate for further investment. Flywheel has a 250+ client services team that provides high touch managed services to drive strategy, planning, next-level execution, and reporting.

“Flywheel works with many of the world's largest, most sophisticated brands, and who in turn are critical customers for our retail clients. Their skilled client services team now has access to advanced metrics to better support clients,” said Jaclyn Nix, EVP, Media Sales and Operations at CitrusAd.

According to data released in “The state of retail media in 2023” from CitrusAd and its parent company, Epsilon, 75% of brands want transparency on up-to-date campaign performance reports. The global survey of retailers and brands also identified total sales (47%) and return on ad spend (47%) as brands’ top metrics for measuring retail media campaigns.

“This integration allows us to drive better results for our clients and their retail partners through reliable data and ad technology,” said Sandy Welsch, VP, Omnichannel Platforms at Flywheel.

The leading email security platform is now available on AWS Marketplace enabling simplified procurement and fast deployment through one of the world’s leading cloud providers

IRONSCALES, the leading enterprise cloud email security platform protecting more than 10,000 global organizations, today announced its availability on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, an online store that makes it easy for customers to find, compare, and immediately start using the software and services that run on AWS. Customers can enjoy the simplified procurement and quick deployment that AWS Marketplace offers and immediately secure their cloud email environments.

The announcement comes at a time when the rates of business email compromise (BEC) and other advanced generative-AI-enabled phishing attacks are climbing exponentially as they expose vulnerabilities in traditional email security solutions. A recent report from Osterman Research revealed that large organizations are expecting a 43% increase in BEC attacks in the next 12 months.

“Our customers enjoy the convenience of procurement through AWS Marketplace,” said Steve Stumpfl, Executive Vice President of Sales at Tevora Business Solutions. “As an IRONSCALES partner, we’re excited to sell the powerful protection IRONSCALES email security offers with the convenience of the world’s leading cloud marketplace.”

"We are witnessing a tremendous uptick in customers seeking AI-powered email security to counter the intensifying threats posed by sophisticated socially engineered attacks such as business email compromise (BEC)," said Mark Fitzmaurice, SVP of Channel Sales at IRONSCALES. "Through AWS Marketplace and the rest of our robust partner network, customers can tap into channel partner private offers (CPPO), competitive pricing, and procurement, allowing them to scale faster through one of the world’s leading cloud providers and protect their organizations from these growing phishing threats.”

IRONSCALES was recently named to the Inc. 5000 list for the third consecutive year as one of the Fastest Growing Private Companies, ranking in the top 26% for security companies and was named a leader in the 2023 Software Reviews Data Quadrant for Cloud Email Security report. What's more, on the G2 2023 list of the Best Cloud Email Security, IRONSCALES ranks number one for best implementation and ease of use. Additionally, IRONSCALES received a 5-Star rating for its Partner Program from The Channel Company CRN Partner Program Guide this year.

LTK, the platform that powers Creator Commerce™, is strengthening its proven creator-powered e-Commerce marketplace with the launch of Buy Now with LTK Cart. In the last 12 months, consumers have purchased more than $4B in products from creators on the LTK shopping platform, and with this launch, LTK is deepening its e-Commerce integration with merchants for creators to deliver a seamless shopping experience for their community. The in-app cart and checkout experience delivers a faster discovery-to-purchase flow for shoppers, reducing friction and helping drive higher conversion rates for creators and brand, retail and manufacturer partners.

Additionally, the LTK custom-built Buy Now with LTK Cart technology is now available for all brands on Shopify on the Shopify App Store. As part of this offering, brands on Shopify can fast track integration into the LTK platform and quickly scale their distribution through the booming, creator-guided shopping experience. Various brands have already integrated Buy Now on LTK - including Lucchese Bootmaker, Misa Los Angeles, Buffbunny, Peixoto and Roe Wellness.

Modern shoppers expect personalized, efficient and safe shopping with authentic products and LTK is designed to deliver on those expectations. The launch of Buy Now with LTK Cart means consumers have the ability to directly and securely purchase multiple products from brands and retailers, recommended by the creators they follow and trust - all without ever leaving the LTK shopping app.

The LTK Creators’ experience remains the same - they don’t have to hold any inventory or ship products to consumers, but can now deliver a more efficient shopping experience to their community right on their own LTK Shops. Having an LTK Shop enables creators to build and future-proof their businesses with a digital storefront that connects with thousands of retailers. It’s creators’ one-stop destination for their community to shop their personalized and shoppable content - from across all major social media platforms.

“LTK’s Creator Commerce platform provides the e-commerce software for creators, like myself, to build modern retail empires- helping us collect, retain, nurture and grow our communities on a purpose-built, creator-first platform,” said Amber Venz Box, Co-founder and President of LTK and content creator. “Growing shopping capabilities on the LTK platform will be key to boosting creators’ digital sales over the coming years.”

According to a national shopper study conducted by LTK, an impressive 73% of Gen Z, 69% of Millennials, and 57% of the general population are already making purchases from creators. LTK’s launch of Buy Now with LTK Cart is streamlining the purchasing process, to further fuel adoption.

• 75 per cent of surveyed Canadian internet users* are TV streamers, the majority of which are now watching ad-supported TV (59 per cent), up from 42 per cent in 2022
• “Cord cutters” are on the rise with a quarter of Canadian TV streamers that have cable (24 per cent) planning to cancel or downgrade their cable or satellite package in the next 12 months

Today, Roku revealed the results of its annual Video on Demand (VOD) Evolution study, examining Canadian TV streaming behaviours and trends. TV streaming is now the most popular TV source (75 per cent of Canadian internet users are watching), with ad-supported TV streamers increasing exponentially in the last year alone (59 per cent watching in the last year compared to 42 per cent in the previous year). Another 63 per cent also plan to watch ad-supported TV streaming in the year ahead.

Rising inflation and cost of living, which top the list of worries for Canadian TV streamers in the next few years (54 per cent), compel many (24 per cent) to cancel or downgrade their cable/satellite package in the next 12 months (up six per cent from 2022).

“For Canadian TV streamers, ad-supported TV offers the benefits of a lighter ad load compared to broadcast TV, with the added benefit of being cost-effective, which is what makes it so appealing – especially in today’s economic climate,” says Christina Summers, Head of Advertising in Canada, Roku. “For advertisers and publishers alike, the uptick in interest in ad-supported TV streaming, along with TV streaming generally, enables greater reach beyond traditional TV broadcasting, stronger targeting, measurement, interactivity, and flexibility with creative.”

The growth of ad-supported TV streaming: A deeper dive into the trends

• Time spent on AVOD and BVOD is up 32 per cent YoY, with TV streamers who watch ad-supported programming watching.
• When it comes to the effectiveness of ads on streaming platforms, TV streamers are significantly more responsive to ads than non-streamers (70 per cent vs. 54 per cent).
• TV streamers are taking measurable actions after viewing an ad, with the top three responses being: visiting a brand’s website, online store, or app after seeing an ad (38 per cent); searching online for more information about the product/brand while continuing to watch TV (36 per cent); and placing items in online/app shopping basket to buy later (25 per cent).

“The engagement that ads on TV streaming versus those on more traditional platforms get is unmatched,” says Summers. “Not only is the audience group larger, but the ad formats available to appease these actions, such as interactive ads with direct website call-to-actions, is diverse and continues to expand every day. Tapping into the TV streaming audience is a great opportunity for many brands to reach consumers who have made the move to streaming exclusively and to win new customers who may not have discovered them before.”

When it comes to Canadians’ preferences for TV advertising, there are some notable polarities, as no one size fits all trends:

• Canadians are split on personalization, with 50 per cent wanting ads to cater to their personal interests/preferences, and the other 50 per cent wanting impersonal ads.
• 54 per cent of TV streamers like ads that are unrelated to the show/movie they are watching, while 46 per cent prefer them to be related.
• 51 per cent prefer a single ad that takes up the whole ad break, while 49 per cent prefer lots of short ads that fill the ad break.
• The majority of Canadians (77 per cent) are in broad agreement that they prefer every ad to be different.

TV streamers on the move: The “FlexiVOD” era

The emergence of the “FlexiVOD” (a TV streamer who makes changes to their streaming services, including switching to watch their favourite show, cancelling subscriptions, among others), which surfaced in the 2023 VOD study, continues to remain prevalent in the 2024 edition, as 48 per cent of Canadian TV streamers either have made changes to their streaming services in the past 12 months or plan to make changes in the year ahead. Similar to last year’s findings, this persisting trend is likely influenced by the fact that 58 per cent of TV streamers feel they have less disposable income than before, consistent with last year’s results.

Canadian TV streamers’ content-watching trends

• On average, TV streamers are watching just under 22 hours a week of TV content.
• Canadian TV streamers love dramas (95 per cent) ranking it as their top TV genre choice.
• On the flipside, while comedy is the least popular, 87 per cent are streaming that genre. When it comes to live news, 48 per cent of Canadian TV streamers tune in, followed by general family entertainment (e.g., “How I Met Your Mother,” “Friends”) at 50 per cent and live sports and events at 45 per cent.

When it comes to discovering content to watch, TV streamers use a variety of methods. The top three within TV streaming platforms include the “just released” section (42 per cent); the “top trending” or most popular titles sections (34 per cent); and “free to watch” shows and movies (31 per cent).

Outside of the TV streaming service, the top three methods include: word of mouth/personal recommendations (50 per cent); “coming soon” notifications (36 per cent); and ads they’ve seen on TV promoting shows or movies (31 per cent).

Additional study insights

• On average, Canadian TV streamers have used/subscribed to 3.5 paid or free streaming services in their household in 2023, which is anticipated to increase to 3.8 by 2024.
• Here’s how Canadian TV streamers spend their time watching TV in an average week:
  • 26 per cent of time on live TV
  • 20 per cent on new releases available for the first time
  • 19 per cent on new-to-them releases available
  • 18 per cent on repeat watching
  • 17 per cent on other online video through the TV