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Typeset (formerly Dropdeck) today announced the public launch of its generative platform for visual communication that turns written text into fully designed content. Typeset is already used by 1,000s of customers to quickly create presentations, documents, brochures, ebooks, ad imagery and more. Compared with existing graphic design tools, the new platform dramatically reduces the time, cost and effort spent creating everyday visual content.

Inspired by their background in design and machine learning, 3x founders Dr. Bjarki Holm and Stefan Olafsson built Typeset to make creating slide decks and visual documents less daunting. Whether for a small team meeting or a large presentation, they envisioned a solution that changed the way people create rich content.

Typeset does just that by enabling brands and businesses to create premium content in minutes, for sales, marketing, business development, ad creation and other needs – without creative or design expertise.

"Most of us can relate to hours spent trying to use stock templates. Typeset takes aim at the traditional design-led solutions and effectively turns that model on its head," said Stefan Olafsson, co-Founder of Typeset. "Instead, in the blink of an eye, Typeset automatically designs for thousands of combinations, based on exactly what you've written or added. Incorporating hand-picked imagery and harmonious palettes, Typeset's generative technology creates content that simply goes together and accomplishes what you're trying to achieve."

With a focus on speed, creation, and brand consistency, Typeset ensures that businesses can maintain a cohesive visual identity across all collateral. Unlike traditional design software, Typeset's intuitive interface and generative technology democratize design by eliminating the requirement for a 'designer's eye'. This approach aligns with the modern work landscape where the demand for visual content is skyrocketing, often overwhelming available design resources.

"Typeset seamlessly produces the content we need to attract clients and customers alike," said Jake Lane, the Director of Performance Marketing for Captain Experiences. "Our team cut the time we spend producing marketing materials like brochures, e-books, and even internal decks to a fraction of our week with a major boost in quality. This frees up time for other work – which is how our high growth startup will succeed."

In Spring 2023, Typeset, formerly Dropdeck and since renamed, was acquired by SamCart. Under SamCart's stewardship, Typeset has experienced exponential growth, highlighted by 100% month-over-month growth in its paying subscriber base and over 10,000 pieces of content created to-date. The digital seller audience SamCart already serves is seeing massive success building sellable content through the platform. Typeset's comparative affordability caters to a diverse clientele from small startups to established corporations.

Paessler PRTG and BackBox now integrate seamlessly to provide a complete NOC stack

BackBox, the world's most trusted network automation company, today announced a strategic partnership with Paessler AG, the monitoring experts for IT infrastructures and networks. In addition, BackBox and Paessler PRTG now work together seamlessly to support enterprise and MSP network operations teams. This integration will reduce the overall mean time to resolution when network issues are discovered.

"We're very excited to have the opportunity to offer current and future BackBox customers this valuable integration, whether their solution is on-prem or in the cloud," said Josh Stephens, CTO of BackBox. "Paessler PRTG is a highly scalable, robust, and feature-rich product that is also one of the most widely distributed network monitoring platforms for both enterprises and Managed Services Providers alike."

According to Gartner, 25% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities by 2025, an increase from less than 8% in early 2022. This is driving the need for NetOps teams to adopt automation as part of the Network Operations Center (NOC) stack. With this integration, NOCs and Network Operations teams can now access device configuration data from within the PRTG monitoring dashboard and quickly automate the resolution of identified issues, reducing MTTR and improving network availability and performance.

BackBox replaces vendor-specific device managers with one multivendor network automation platform, providing network operations teams with an aggregated view of their network. It also empowers NetOps teams to diagnose and remediate network issues that span multiple device types, which are common in today's modern, multi-cloud networks.

The combination of PRTG and BackBox provides channel partners the opportunity to offer a best-in-breed solution to network operations teams that combines world-class network monitoring capabilities with the most reliable and secure network automation platform. The companies already have joint customers using both products, strong overlap in device support and coverage, and are also highly scalable.

"BackBox provides a quick and easy way for administrators to collect, validate and store the configs of all their networking equipment, and rapidly restore them, should things go wrong," said Simon Bell, Paessler AG Alliances Technology Consultant. "Like PRTG, BackBox supports both physical and virtual equipment. It's also inherently designed to be multitenant, making it an ideal tool for MSPs, with all the security and segmentation controls required by such teams."

"This partnership and integration with the Germany-based Paessler AG is another way that BackBox is committed to supporting enterprises and managed service providers in EMEA and across the world," said Andrew Kahl, CEO of BackBox. "We have many highly developed channel relationships in the region including a recent partnership with CMS Distribution in the UK and Ireland. While BackBox has been doing business in EMEA since 2009, we are looking forward to hosting our first EMEA Customer Advisory Group at the end of this year."

Amagi, a global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV (CTV), today announced the launch of Amagi DYNAMIC at IBC2023, a ground-breaking platform that empowers rights owners and holders to effortlessly deploy cloud-based live production and playout systems for single live events. By eliminating the need for costly upfront hardware investments, Amagi DYNAMIC allows users to spin up cloud infrastructure only for the duration of the event. It enables them to efficiently manage infrastructure resources, run multiple live events in parallel, expand distribution, engage viewers, and increase ad revenues, all while providing immediate and demonstrable ROI.

"For far too long, broadcasters, rights owners, and rights holders have grappled with the limitations of hardware-driven infrastructure, resulting in underutilized content libraries and underexplored distribution networks," said Baskar Subramanian, CEO & Co-founder at Amagi. "Amagi DYNAMIC empowers users to maximize their content investments, optimize distribution, and create new avenues for viewer access. This transformative solution will have a profound impact on the way the industry approaches single live events and opens up new monetization opportunities."

With Amagi DYNAMIC, broadcasters can swiftly provision cloud infrastructure for the duration of an event and deactivate it once the event concludes, effectively creating pop-up channels. This innovation is particularly beneficial for rights owners and holders of live sports, music, news, or special events, enabling the simultaneous broadcast of multiple events and expanding distribution to D2C apps, thereby widening viewership and boosting ad revenues.

Additional benefits of Amagi DYNAMIC include:

Improved Cost Savings: With features such as multi-source, multi-protocol ingest, Amagi DYNAMIC streamlines content integration by allowing resources to be consumed only when required. Additionally, achieving a low latency of just two seconds ensures that resources are used optimally during live events, minimizing unnecessary resource consumption and associated costs.

Flexible Remote Control: With group control of live source inputs and distribution outputs, Amagi DYNAMIC enables users to control multiple events remotely from a single instance, regardless of the location. This remote management capability not only saves time but also enhances operational adaptability.

Increased Viewer Engagement and Retention: Features such as frame-accurate live controls enable dynamic adjustments to breaks, graphics, and other elements, creating an engaging live event experience for viewers. The quick edits feature, with its two-second turnaround time, ensures that live event coverage remains up-to-date and captivating.

Integrated Amagi LIVE Functionality: Building upon the success of Amagi LIVE, Amagi DYNAMIC offers an intuitive platform for managing live segments for both linear TV and OTT channels. This integration ensures a seamless transition to Amagi DYNAMIC and a consistent, high-quality broadcasting experience.

Enhanced Operational Flexibility: Thanks to its multi-tenant system, Amagi DYNAMIC supports deployments in multiple regions for redundancy and operational flexibility. This feature provides the necessary infrastructure and scalability to manage multiple events seamlessly, adapting to various scenarios and changing demands.

Amagi provides a complete suite of solutions for channel creation, distribution, and monetization. Amagi's global clients include ABS-CBN, AccuWeather, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, Cinedigm, Cox Media Group, Crackle Plus, Fremantle, Gannett, Gusto TV, NBCUniversal, PAC-12, Tastemade, and The Roku Channel, among others.

Intel is celebrating AI accessibility innovation by next-generation technologists with its AI Global Impact Festival

Today, Intel announced the global grand-prize winners at its third-annual AI Global Impact Festival. The festival brings together future developers, and educators who are working to solve real-world problems using artificial intelligence (AI), with the support of policymakers and academic leaders. Students from 26 countries participated in the competition at this year’s festival, “Enriching Lives with AI Innovation.” Intel’s event program focused on building digital readiness for all students and celebrating AI innovations that drive inclusion, accessibility and responsible impact.

“I am constantly amazed by the innovative young technologists who understand the potential of AI to be a force for good. I am excited to celebrate this year's innovative winners. The success of the technology of tomorrow relies on them, as they embody the Intel purpose to improve the life of every person on the planet.”

–Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO

Why It Matters: Artificial intelligence has the potential to unlock powerful new possibilities and improve the life of every person on the planet. It can also be integral in helping people with disabilities live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life. This year, centered on Intel’s goal of making technology fully inclusive, Intel introduced a new award for projects focused on AI innovation for accessibility. Accessibility was a key pillar of the festival platform, which includes closed captioning, screen readers for those with visual disabilities and translation to more than 120 languages.

Although AI technology has the power to create positive change, there are also potential ethical risks associated with its development. Intel is committed to responsibly advancing AI technology. The company follows a comprehensive responsible AI approach to guard against the misuse of AI.

Students were judged on how well their projects relate to and address potential risks, and the winners’ projects went through an ethics audit by Intel’s Responsible AI team, inspired by the protocol followed for every company AI project. This year’s festival platform also featured a new, self-paced lesson on Responsible AI skills, in which all participants earn a certificate.

Who was Awarded: During the global competition, participants competed for more than $500,000 in cash prizes, certificates, Intel laptops and mentorship opportunities. The following students were named Global Award winners for AI Impact Creator:

For the 13- to 17-year-old age group:

1. Eye tracking for communicating for patients with ALS (Brazil), Laura Jeronimo, Pedro Costa, Raissa Daloia: A low-cost communication system that identifies eye movements to select characters displayed on a screen, enabling patients with low motor capacity to communicate.
2. AI-powered platform to empower women in STEM (India), Yash Yadav: An AI-powered learning platform that aims to empower female students to overcome the gender gap in STEM and develop a passion for these fields.
3. Melody of Fingers (China), Shiyu Chu, Tianyi Liu, Jingyan Li: An app for sign language learners that captures users’ motion, tests their degree of mastery and offers real-time feedback.

For the 18-year-old+ age group:

1. StraightenUp-Posture Assistant (Poland), Maciej Jalocha: A browser extension that helps users maintain a healthy posture while being in front of a computer by gently blurring the viewport when it detects the user has slouched.
2. Utilizing AI to Help Native Bees (Costa Rica), Nicolle Daniela Gamboa Mena, Melanie Espinoza Hernández, Mariana Acuna Cordero: A set of algorithms and hardware that relies on computer vision techniques to easily detect unknown species or those that are at risk from an altered ecosystem.
3. Rescue AI-Smart City Disaster Digital Twin (Malaysia), Joo Kiat, Cajun Ka Joon Tai, Rohit Thomas: A virtual replica in which operators can gain a comprehensive overview of a city’s disaster management system, from data collection to response, to save countless lives, minimize societal losses and reduce plastic waste.

For the accessibility award:

1. AI-Powered Robotic Service Animal (U.S.), Kevin Vo, Larry Le, Ryan Huynh: A robotic service dog that uses AI to help visually impaired users navigate through different environments, providing an alternative to those who can’t afford a service dog.
2. Way Back Home (Singapore), Meiyu Huang: A solution that incorporates innovative technologies, such as augmented reality, indoor positioning systems and voice-activated assistants to empower individuals with dementia to navigate their surroundings more confidently and independently.
3. BRINL – Braille Interactive Learning (Thailand), Teerapat Sardsud, Roryon Wannapraserd, Phachara Phuansup: A solution that utilizes AI to improve Braille learning for visually impaired individuals, promoting Braille literacy and empowering users with the ability to access information.

About Intel’s Role: Intel is committed to bringing AI skills everywhere, regardless of a person's ethnicity, age, gender or background. The AI Global Impact Festival provides opportunities and platforms for future innovators to learn, showcase and celebrate the impact of AI innovations.

Intel has committed to expand digital readiness to reach 30 million people in 30,000 institutions in 30 countries. Currently, Intel has expanded Intel® Digital Readiness Programs globally by collaborating with 27 national governments, enabling 23,000 institutions and training more than 5.6 million people worldwide. The festival is part of Intel’s 2030 RISE Goals and the company’s dedication to using tech as a force for good, underscoring its aim to make technology fully inclusive and to expand digital readiness worldwide.

81% of those advertisers said the medium was important to these negotiations.

Go Addressable, an industry initiative to advance addressable TV advertising, announced the results of a new study with Advertiser Perceptions that demonstrates how the medium’s role in the upfronts is evolving, signaling a trend of increased usage across the industry.

The research found that 47% of advertisers said that addressable TV played a role in their 2023-2024 upfront negotiations. Further, over 80% of those advertisers also said that it was an important aspect of the negotiations, with nearly half rating it as “extremely important” to their planning.

Earlier this year, Go Addressable also found that nearly three in four marketers are currently including addressable TV advertising in their media plans, a 16% increase versus a year ago, highlighting the industry’s growing adoption of the medium.

“Go Addressable’s main goal is to educate buyers on the benefits of addressable TV and make it easier to implement into the media planning process,” said Larry Allen, VP & GM, Data & Addressable Enablement, Comcast Advertising. “These findings on the role addressable TV played in the recent upfronts demonstrate that the medium is becoming mainstream, largely as a result of the work Go Addressable has done to showcase how it can be used to achieve optimal results for TV advertising. We are committed to continuing our work to further its adoption.”

Founded in June 2021, Go Addressable is an industry inclusive initiative focused on accelerating the growth of addressable TV advertising. Through education and research, the group helps address the challenges facing the addressable TV ecosystem and recommends actionable solutions to maximize the scale, impact and value of TV using aggregated data with a commitment to protecting personal information. Participants include Altice USA’s a4 Advertising, Charter Communications’ Spectrum Reach, Comcast Advertising, Cox Media, DIRECTV Advertising and DISH Media.

“Addressable advertising has become an increasingly important part of the TV mix,” said Michael Piner, EVP, Advanced Advertising, Mediahub Worldwide. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Using data and addressable tech to serve TV ads to qualified U.S. households – regardless of their content choices – is a valuable strategy for increasing the effectiveness of TV plans.”

A deeper dive into this recent data, along with additional insights, will be presented at the Go Addressable Summit on November 29, 2023. This third annual event will bring together industry leaders to provide a deep dive into how buyers perceive addressable TV and how agencies and advertisers can integrate it into their strategies.

Rivery enables joint customers to build end-to-end data solutions turning Snowflake's Data Cloud into the most powerful marketing engine

Rivery, the complete SaaS ELT platform, today announced that it has been recognized as a Integration & Modeling "one to watch" in the Modern Marketing Data Stack 2023: How Data-Forward Marketers Are Redefining Strategies To Unify, Analyze, and Activate Data to Boost Revenue executed and launched by Snowflake, the Data Cloud company.

"Snowflake's Data Cloud has enabled marketing professionals to model and enrich their data directly in the Data Cloud without the need to move or copy that data elsewhere," said Denise Persson, Chief Marketing Officer at Snowflake. "Rivery's strong performance and innovative approach within Snowflake qualified them as one to watch in the Integration & Modeling category due to their demonstrated customer success. We look forward to observing their continued momentum in empowering our joint customers."

Rivery was identified in Snowflake's report as "one to watch" in the Integration & Modeling category. Over 100 customers, like Bayer, SodaStream, and Citizen Watch, use Rivery and Snowflake to power their marketing analytics.

"We're honored that Snowflake has identified Rivery as a company to watch in Snowflake's 2023 Modern Marketing Data Stack report. This is a testament to the dedication Rivery demonstrates for our joint customers," said Itamar Ben Hemo, CEO at Rivery. "We invested a lot of unique capabilities to accelerate marketing data integration within Snowflake and look forward to continuing to partner with Snowflake to create a best-of-breed marketing data stack."

Snowflake's data-backed report identifies the best-of-breed solutions used by Snowflake customers to show how marketers can leverage the Snowflake Data Cloud with accompanying partner solutions to best identify, serve, and convert valuable prospects into loyal customers. By analyzing usage patterns from a pool of approximately 8,100 customers as of April 2023, Snowflake identified ten technology categories that organizations consider when building their marketing data stacks. The extensive research reflects how customers are adopting solutions from a rapidly changing ecosystem and highlights the convergence of adtech and martech, the increased importance of privacy-enhancing technologies, and the heightened focus marketers have on measurement to maximize campaign ROI.      

The ten categories include:

• Analytics & Data Capture
• Enrichment
• Identity & Activation
  - Identity & Onboarders
  - Customer Data Activation
  - Advertising Platforms
• Measurement & Attribution
• Integration & Modeling
• Business Intelligence
• AI & Machine Learning
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Focusing on those companies that are active members of the Snowflake Partner Network (or ones with a comparable agreement in place with Snowflake), as well as Snowflake Marketplace providers, the report explores each of these categories that comprise the Modern Marketing Data Stack, highlighting technology partners and their solutions within each category. The report also details how current Snowflake customers leverage a number of these partner technologies to enable data-driven marketing strategies and informed business decisions. Snowflake's report provides a concrete overview of the partner solution providers and data providers marketers choose to create their data stacks.

New Contextual AI Platform enables custom model manipulation and advanced analytics for global enterprises

Lilt, the leading AI solution for enterprise translation, today at its third ever AI Day announced the company's latest innovations, including third-party large language model integration in the Contextual AI Engine, self-serve model building and training, and advanced program analytics. As leading enterprises rush to implement a global AI and LLM strategy, Lilt's Contextual AI Platform offers a quick and scalable path to achieving extraordinary ROI from AI.      

"As the speed of AI innovation accelerates, global enterprises are eager to look beyond the hype and build AI programs that they can implement in production with best-in-class technology," said Lilt CEO Spence Green. "We're thrilled that we can now offer our customers the ability to orchestrate and manipulate company-specific LLMs that they can quickly operationalize at scale."

During the 90 minute live virtual event, Lilt announced several new features across multiple layers of the Contextual AI Platform, including:

LILT-V3 Models

Following the release of LILT-V2 in Spring 2023, Lilt today released LILT-V3, its newest-generation LLMs that offer improved output accuracy. LILT-V3 leverages cutting-edge methods for fine-tuning and prompting, with in-context learning and a training data system that optimizes for high-relevance domain-specific data sets and context. The model's larger neural networks synthesize and generalize this information and interpret those high-relevance examples in real-time for optimal model outputs. With these models in production, Lilt customers can now advance their AI strategy for global customer reach and achieve incredible quality at scale.

Third-party LLM Support & Model Builder

Lilt's newest foundation model integration enables customers to harness Amazon Translate, DeepL, and Google Translate models right within the Lilt Platform. With this new offering, businesses can now seamlessly choose their large language models of choice, unlocking the best models for their unique enterprise use case. As leading enterprises develop bespoke LLM strategies, the Lilt Contextual AI Platform enables comprehensive execution of that strategy across workflows and business systems.

This third-party LLM support pairs enterprise LLM preferences with Lilt's proven production processes, linguists, and Translate tool - providing the highest quality Instant Translation for their use case.

Model Builder

Lilt additionally announced its Model Builder, a new management feature within the platform's orchestration layer. Lilt Model Builder enables fine-tuning of third-party enterprise LLMs to be used in the Lilt Contextual AI Engine. The Lilt Platform has historically enabled model fine-tuning for Lilt's proprietary LLMs, with a continuous training cycle that feeds training data to models in real time as human translators and verifiers perform work in the platform. With Model Builder, Lilt customers can now apply that same quality-verified training data to fine-tuning of third-party LLMs. Model Builder empowers Lilt customers to create purpose-built LLMs that generate customized, high quality, and brand aligned outputs for a range of business applications. Users can fine-tune their models in just a click with Lilt's model building and training interface, optimizing model quality on the cadence of days or weeks instead of months or years.

Advanced Analytics

Lilt additionally announced new and improved premium program insights via a suite of advanced analytics tools that empower customers with in-depth insights into their Contextual AI program and operations, all within the Lilt Platform. This user-friendly tool offers customizable visualizations of vital metrics and program-level insights to support strategic decisions and optimization of  the AI strategy, quality, and business impact.

These new features are available to Lilt customers and are in production starting today,  powering enterprise use cases across a range of industries and business units.

IAB Releases Retail Media Measurement Guidelines in Conjunction with MRC to Help the Industry Maximize Growth Potential

Retail Media was one of the fastest growing U.S. advertising channels in 2022, according to a new report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) titled "Retail Media 2023: Operational Strategies to Meet the Growth Potential."

"It's a sea change in how the biggest advertisers are planning to reach customers," said Jeffrey Bustos, VP, Measurement, Addressability, Data Center, IAB. "Retailers have a treasure trove of first-party data that enables advertisers to reach high intent audiences and provide closed loop-measurement, and budgets are shifting accordingly."

The study, released today at the IAB Connected Commerce Summit: Retail Reimagined, was created in partnership with BWG Strategy, and surveyed 200 RMN ad buyers at brands and agencies, as well as conducted over 30 interviews with senior decision-makers at retailers, brands, agencies, and intermediaries, including demand side platforms (DSPs), supply side platforms (SSPs), and data providers.

"At IAB we have a unique perspective given our experience over the past three decades of digital development, and the ecosystem-wide impact that RMNs are having," said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. "In some ways, we are reliving the formative years of the ad-supported internet and developing solutions for brands, buyers, ad tech and retailers to grow their businesses responsibly. We can, and are, helping RMNs realize their full potential which is very gratifying."

Key Findings: Greater Growth Ahead

RMN ad buyers are projected to increase spend by 11% year-over-year in 2023. These are defined as buyers at brands and agencies spending at least $5M on RMNs annually.

Among those increasing spending on RMNs, investments are expected to rise by nearly 20%.
 

Top reasons to buy: reach incremental audiences (55%); leverage retailer first-party data (52%); drive performance (48%); and leverage customer data (45%).
 

The Endemic Brand "Spend Tax" Grievance is a myth. Only 28% of buyers cite the requirement to spend as a top reason for buying.
 

To fund increased RMN investment, more than half (52%) are reallocating funds from across digital platforms, including social, search, and digital video/CTV while more than one-third (36%) are reallocating funds from linear TV, print and out-of-home.
 

Cross-RMN measurement standards and transparency around attribution windows, incrementality, and viewability, for consistent RMN comparisons will significantly help propel ad spend.

Key Findings: Areas of Opportunity

Retail media can grow even faster, but must first address key ecosystem-wide issues.

Improving measurement and data collection is the #1 opportunity area identified by buyers.
 

Over two-thirds of RMN ad buyers (69%) cited the need to resolve complexity in the buying process. While many RMNs operate in silos and lack automated buying and cross-RMN performance capabilities, some have begun to provide self-service and managed-service activation platforms. Private marketplaces (PMPs) have also begun to emerge.
 

Nearly 2-in-3 buyers (62%) cited the lack of measurement standards as a top challenge to continued growth, followed by nearly 60% wanting greater transparency.
 

60% of ad buyers want better collaboration and communication with RMNs. Tellingly, only one in ten (12%) ad buyers are "very satisfied" with their RMN partner relationships and communication.

"Everyone notes a lack of alignment of stakeholders across shopper marketing, performance marketing, brand marketing and beyond," said Jeffrey Bustos, VP, Measurement, Addressability, Data Center, IAB. "There's a big opportunity for brands to leap ahead of their competition if they do the work to align everyone's interests and provide a unified point of view and clarity around goals."

Click here to download "Retail Media 2023: Operational Strategies to Meet the Growth Potential" study.

IAB and MRC Release Retail Media Measurement Guidelines for Public Comment

As found in the IAB Retail Media Network study, there is a lack of consistent measurement across different RMNs that has emerged as a significant challenge.

The wide array of retailer offerings and metrics has led to difficulties in evaluating campaign performance across platforms. The industry is actively addressing this issue, with IAB and Media Rating Council (MRC) working together to establish measurement guidelines through cross-industry collaboration. The working group's guidelines will be presented for public comment at the IAB Connected Commerce Summit: Retail Reimagined on September 13, 2023 and will be open for 30 days until October 13, 2023.

"Everything we've learned in this study points to the fact that the continued growth and success of retail media hinge on achieving measurement standardization," said Bustos. "That's why IAB and MRC are working together to identify existing standards, define common metrics, and create guidelines to ensure consistent measurement across platforms, promoting transparency and confidence in retail media investment."

IAB and MRC developed retail media measurement guidelines, covering numerous aspects including audience measurement, in-store digital placed-based measurements, ad delivery, viewability, incrementality, reporting, and transparency. This methodical approach ensures all key areas are addressed to achieve comprehensive standardization.