The company has named the former Databrick VP to lead its expansion to North America, focusing on nurturing the already strong partnerships with big names in the US.

AI21 Labs, a leader in generative AI and Large Language Models, announced today the appointment of Pankaj Dugar as the Senior Vice President GTM and General Manager North America. In his role, Dugar will lead the company's continued expansion into the enterprise market for generative AI technology, with a focus on building new relationships for AI21 Labs with US-based Fortune 500 companies. He brings over a decade of experience in executive corporate strategy and leadership at top technology companies, including previous roles at Databricks, Google, and Hewlett-Packard.

Large enterprises in the US have shown increasing interest in AI21 Labs' easily-integratable LLM-based solutions, which include both developer tools for constructing NLP applications and end-user tools for reading and writing via Wordtune. Combined with its already strong existing US partnerships and the large total addressable market for generative AI, the company is prepared to move forward and expand in the US.

Dugar has a stellar track record of success. At Databricks, he built the product and data provider partnerships organization from the ground up delivering over 100 successful partnerships contributing significantly to Databricks revenue and was deeply involved in several product launches including Partner Connect and GCP launch. At Google, Dugar was responsible for the largest, most strategic technology partnerships including with SAP and Salesforce. He received his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

"I have witnessed the generative AI boom and seen many companies looking to embrace the new technology. AI21 Labs products have been consistently impressive and ahead of the curve. With AI21 Labs customers have a true partner in AI," said Dugar. "I am excited to be tasked with building out AI21 Labs' US presence, including its direct sales, partnerships, and marketing efforts. I am looking forward to helping our customers and partners harness the power of generative AI using state-of-the-art large language models."

"In a time where many people are concerned about AI accuracy when it comes to products and LLMs, we have recently released a variety of new enterprise and professional products that have proven their reliability time and time again," said Ori Goshen, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of AI21 Labs. "As we continue to innovate and provide the best in industry generative AI solutions, we are excited to welcome Pankaj to our team, where he will lead our US expansion and strategic partnerships, allowing us to continue better serving businesses."

Only DISQO's ad measurement has direct relationships with 2M+ people sharing post-ad exposure brand sentiment and behavioral outcomes

CX platform DISQO is now a verified partner for brand lift measurement of Amazon Ads. DISQO's Brand Lift and Outcomes Lift products offer unique cross-channel, post-ad exposure measurement of brand metrics and digital purchase journey outcomes via a single source.

"Brands, agencies, and media platforms turn to DISQO for complete and objective ad effectiveness measurement," said Armen Adjemian, CEO & Co-Founder, DISQO. "Our platform is fueled by more than 2 million consumers who've opted in to share their brand experiences, including their exposure to advertising. This enables us to provide privacy-compliant, individual-level measurement to Amazon's DSP customers."

The Amazon DSP enables advertisers to programmatically buy and display ads on Amazon-owned sites and apps, as well as third-party sites and apps, through real-time bidding. Clients target specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors, and choose specific placements across Amazon's network including product pages, apps, and websites.

Working with verified partners, Amazon Brand Lift studies are an insightful and privacy-safe way for advertisers to quantify the impact of upper- and mid-funnel campaign metrics. All Amazon DSP advertising campaigns may now be measured using DISQO's Brand Lift, including display, streaming TV, gaming (Twitch), and audio. DISQO's Customer Success team will consult clients on feasibility, best practices, and campaign measurement set-up.

In light of the ever-evolving demands of the market, today CleverTap, the all-in-one engagement platform, marked a strategic redirection towards focusing on helping businesses maximize customer lifetime value (CLV). As businesses start focusing on sustainable growth and long-term profitability, understanding the potential of CLV is critical.

To maximize customer lifetime value, it is critical to enhance the customer experience and foster long-term customer relationships. This requires brands to stand out in saturated markets. Despite marketers increasing focus on customer-facing digital experiences, most customers believe that it doesn’t impact what they end up buying. Overcoming this requires brands to create lasting impressions by understanding their customers through insights across touchpoints. To actualize this, CleverTap offers key capabilities designed to meet diverse needs across business models— E-commerce, Subscriptions (OTT), Financial Services, Gaming, and more with the following capabilities:

• Understanding customers for life with limitless data
• Personalizing every experience to build brand love, loyalty, and advocacy
• Creating customers for life with in-moment experiences, designed and optimized for scale, in real-time
• Transcending boundaries through omni-channel experiences
• AI-driven empathetic insights for smarter, faster decisions
• Curating purpose-built solutions for different business models

Anand Jain, Co-Founder, and Chief Product Officer, CleverTap, said, "10 years ago when we started building CleverTap, our aim was to ensure the foundation of the platform is future proof and agile enough to adapt. Over the last few years consumer behavior and needs have evolved faster than the rate at which marketers can keep up with. The customer attention is divided today due to distractions by noisy marketing competing for marketing share. Our all-in-one solution allows brands to focus on building deep relationships with their users by leveraging the power of hyper-personalization, which helps maximize CLV.”

Combining AI's generative capabilities with blockchain's transparency, the relationship offers a path to onboarding the masses to web3

Aptos Labs today announced it is partnering with Microsoft to accelerate global web3 adoption using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. 

Onboarding new users to web3 can be time-consuming and complex, which may deter people from exploring the ecosystem. There's a common perception gap between the utility of blockchain and user skepticism around how simple it is to use. Some challenges new web3 users face once they've started engaging with the ecosystem include understanding how blockchain and decentralization benefit users personally, creating wallets to onboard into web3 and converting fiat currency to cryptocurrency.

To launch this partnership and overcome these hurdles to adoption, Aptos Labs will introduce Aptos Assistant which will operate as a responsible, user-friendly and secure assistant bridging web2 to web3 for the everyday internet user and organization. Aptos Assistant will enable users to seamlessly onboard into web3 by asking any kind of question regarding the Aptos blockchain ecosystem using natural language. It will also be available to guide developers as they build smart contracts and decentralized apps—and direct them toward relevant, accessible resources.

"Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technologies are quickly converging for one important reason: they are both generational breakthroughs that profoundly impact the evolution of the internet and shape society," said Mo Shaikh, CEO of Aptos Labs. "Together with Microsoft, our shared vision is to ensure that this technology is accessible to more people and organizations than ever before."

"The intersection of AI and blockchain is one of the most interesting combinations of emerging technologies and can generate transformational use cases," said Rashmi Misra, General Manager, AI & Emerging Technologies, Microsoft. "By fusing Aptos Labs' technology with the Microsoft Azure Open AI Service capabilities, we aim to democratize the use of blockchain enabling users to seamlessly onboard to Web3 and innovators to develop new exciting decentralized applications using AI."

Another important pillar of the partnership is that Aptos and Microsoft have also agreed to explore innovative solutions, such as asset tokenization, payments and Central Bank Digital Currencies, that will further advance the adoption of Web3 from financial services enterprises. Additionally, Aptos will run validator nodes on Azure, enhancing the reliability and security of the Aptos blockchain.

The world-class engineers behind Aptos Labs have solved some of the hardest problems in blockchain at an immense scale with security. By combining talent and technology, this partnership underscores Microsoft's and Aptos' shared commitment to decentralization.

Report Highlights Thriving OTT Ad Market and Recommendations for Advertisers

Samba TV, the leading provider of omniscreen data and measurement, today released its latest State of Viewership report, analyzing approximately 45 billion hours of linear and streaming during the first half of 2023. Samba TV’s targeted insights illustrate a viewership landscape marked by new and innovative opportunities for audiences to consume over-the-top (OTT) content, consisting of newly-rolled out advertising-based video-on-demand (AVOD) options from streaming leaders Disney+ and Netflix as well as the growth of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) options. Advertisers should look to fully embrace these platforms, which present a better way to reach younger and more diverse audiences, over half of which do not watch traditional cable television.

“Ad-supported video presents a major growth opportunity. The data clearly shows that consumers are embracing lower-cost, ad-supported streaming options that leverage advanced targeting to deliver maximum value for advertisers,” said Samba TV CEO and co-founder Ashwin Navin. “As audiences shift to streaming, smart advertisers are optimizing frequency and measuring impact to reach the right consumers efficiently.”

Samba TV’s State of Viewership Report provides a comprehensive overview of linear television, movie, and Connected TV (CTV) viewership. Samba TV’s report sheds further light on television viewership changes, which include:

Traditional linear television reach remains steady year-over-year, but streaming viewership continues to rise.

• The average daily reach of linear television increased slightly during the first half of 2023, with about 57 million U.S. households tuning in each day. Despite fluctuations year-over-year, this pace isn’t expected to hold as more and more live sporting events and news programming shifts to streaming, where the majority of younger Americans spend their time.
• Meanwhile, during this same time period, 96 million U.S. households watched OTT content, with over three quarters (77%) of U.S. adults streaming.
• OTT and linear consumption each peaked in January followed by February declines. Linear was boosted by one of its main drivers, live sports. Seven out of the top 10 most watched programs of the half were NFL Playoffs games that occurred in January.

Six months after streaming leaders unveiled ad-supported tiers, data shows a strong link between binge-watching and audience retention.

• Almost three quarters (72%) of U.S. adults identify as binge-watchers, and those viewers turned out for the 2023 slate of bingeable shows, with an average of 47% of households watching the whole season of the top bulk-release shows within the first five days.
• While Netflix and Disney+ were the top two platforms in audience stickiness, the majority of streamers increased their retention of audiences in spite of declining reach in the first half of the year. Netflix posted the largest gains in households watching multiple programs across the streamer with a 19% increase from the last half, followed by Paramount+ at 14%.
• Streaming platforms like Netflix are offering a glimpse into how live entertainment content will fare streamed. 6 in 10 Netflix and Disney+ subscribers would watch live events if those services offered more of them.
• Despite drama making up just 8% of programming spend for global streamers, the genre made up more than 50% of the top 50 streaming shows of the first half of the year. Rounding out the top three with over a quarter of the most-watched shows each were thrillers and comedies, typically accounting for drawing the first and third largest portions of original content spend respectively. Crime and docu-style programming, however, came in fourth and fifth, meaning that while these mainstays for original content are still yielding strong viewership, investing in dramas may yield larger audiences.

Growing AVOD and FAST services present unique and innovative opportunities for advertisers.

• More AVOD offerings by the likes of Netflix and Disney+ are contributing to consumers opting to watch three or four services as opposed to one or two.
• 1 in 4 premium streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) subscriptions were ad-supported in 2023.
• Throughout the first half of the year, about half of households watched two or less streaming services, while the majority watched three or less. Despite limitless options of content to watch across platforms, people remain unlikely to watch more than a few services over the course of a six-month period.
• With 90% of streamers watching AVOD, and more FAST and AVOD offerings coming to market, this number is likely to continue to grow over the coming months.
• Harder to reach younger audiences are embracing these new options. 65% of millennials would consider subscribing to a discounted streaming service if it meant watching ads, while 32% of millennials subscribe to FAST services.
• With consumers looking to cut costs and limit the number of paid services they subscribe to, FAST becomes more and more appealing to Americans, with 1 in 3 U.S. streamers subscribe to FAST services.

While linear television over-saturates audiences with redundant ads, advertisers should deploy an omniscreen approach to their strategy that embraces new creative like QR codes to connect with multitasking audiences.

• Half of TV viewers who consume the most linear TV are seeing the vast majority of ads (92%), while the other half of TV viewers are seeing just 8% of ad impressions. This means half of Americans were underreached or not reached at all, while the other half were bombarded by over 150 TV ads daily, driving ad fatigue among the overexposed.
• Overexposing audiences poses risks to audiences, with 62% of people saying it takes only 2-5 repeated viewings of the same ad in a month-long period to worsen their perception of the brand.
• Almost all Americans (8 in 10) are plugged into another device while also sitting in front of the biggest screen in the home. One in 5 U.S. adults have made purchases through QR codes shown on a TV ad.

“Streaming leaders have responded to consumer demand for greater choice and flexibility. Customizable, ad-supported tiers allow viewers to access desirable content on their own terms. Our insights reveal a strong correlation between binge-watching and subscriber retention. Live sports streaming will further accelerate industry growth. The future lies in using data to give consumers affordable options while delivering shareholder value.”

Compliance Process Validates Privacera's Commitment to Safeguarding Customer Data and Boosting Data Privacy Measures

Privacera, the cloud data governance and security leader founded by the creators of Apache Ranger™, continues to invest the time, effort, and money needed to do the right thing for its customers. Privacera most recently achieved recertification for SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance, which means Privacera complies with System and Organization Controls as defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

This validates Privacera's commitment to internal controls over information systems. These control criteria are used by practitioners and examiners in attestation or evaluating and reporting on controls of information systems. This is supported by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) Internal Control, NIST SP 800 - 53 criteria, and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Articles. This achievement demonstrates Privacera's capability to protect sensitive information while maintaining the highest standards of data security.

"Earning the SOC 2 Type 2 recertification is a testament to our unwavering commitment to the security and privacy of our customers' data," says Balaji Ganesan, CEO and co-founder at Privacera. "Privacera understands the critical importance of protecting and governing sensitive information in today's data-driven landscape. This recertification underscores our dedication to providing the most robust and trustworthy data security and governance solutions to our clients."

Privacera's rigorous SOC 2 Type 2 Certification audit process was conducted by Armanino LLP, one of the largest and most respected independent accounting and business consulting firms in the US. The audit evaluated the effectiveness of Privacera's controls over the period of one year. The examination encompassed five categories called Trust Service Criteria: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy.

The greater evaluation of Privacera's technology included assessments for:

• The implementation and operational effectiveness of controls that safeguard data against unauthorized access
• The ability to maintain system availability
• A guarantee of accurate data processing
• The protection of confidential information
• Adherence to data privacy best practices

Privacera's SOC2 recertification highlights the company's ongoing dedication to providing best-in-class data security solutions. The recertification means for customers increased trust, compliance with industry standards, and assurance for continuing to keep customer data safe and well-governed. As Privacera continues to evolve and innovate, the company remains steadfast in its mission to empower businesses with cutting-edge data privacy and governance solutions, enabling them to navigate the complexities of a rapidly evolving digital landscape with confidence and peace of mind.

Nina Hargus will build on her success driving growth at Dell Technologies, EMC and VCE as a chief marketing officer to guide WSO2’s go-to-market, brand and marketing strategies

WSO2, the leader in digital transformation technology, today announced that Nina Hargus has joined the WSO2 board of directors. Nina brings more than three decades of experience in growing and transforming companies. Most recently, she served as CMO and head of strategy at Virtustream, a Dell company, following CMO roles at EMC and VCE.

Thousands of organizations, including hundreds of the world’s largest corporations, top universities, and governments, rely on WSO2’s cloud native software as a service (SaaS) offerings and open-source software to drive their digital transformation—executing 60 trillion transactions and managing over 1 billion identities annually. Using WSO2 for application development, API management, integration, and identity and access management (IAM), these organizations are harnessing the full power of their APIs to securely deliver their business capabilities as digital experiences.

Nina will play a key role on WSO2’s board of directors, focused on the company’s business growth through go-to-market and marketing strategies as WSO2 continues to expand its global presence. In particular, she will counsel and collaborate with the executive team on WSO2’s brand management to shape brand positioning and messaging, build reputation and perception, and cultivate the customer engagement and satisfaction that contribute to long-term growth and brand loyalty.

“As enterprises accelerate their initiatives to become digitally driven businesses, we’re delivering a new generation of cloud native solutions that empower them to rapidly innovate fresh digital experiences,” said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, WSO2 founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to team with Nina, a widely recognized expert in marketing strategies that support company transformation and growth. As a board member, she will be instrumental in helping to evolve WSO2’s branding and ensure that marketing initiatives align with our broader business objectives.”

Nina Hargus: Marketing that Drives Transformation
Nina Hargus brings 30-plus years of experience in driving company transformation and growth through marketing. As Virtustream’s CMO and head of strategy, she was chartered with the rapid business transformation of Dell’s $300 million mission-critical cloud services company. Before Virtustream, Nina architected and operated Dell Technologies’ 1200-person global field and partner marketing organization, contributing to 47% revenue growth and global expansion over a three-year period. Prior to Dell, she held several marketing leadership positions at EMC Corp., ultimately serving as CMO, a role in which she led EMC’s integration with Dell. Nina also served as CMO of VCE, where she worked to take the company from a narrow joint venture of Cisco and EMC with investment from VMware and Intel to one of the fastest growth companies in the industry and a true cloud infrastructure company.

“My passion is standing at the intersection of strategy, marketing, and go-to-market to drive company differentiation and growth, and I’m honored to join the board of WSO2, a company with a long history of technology innovation and invention,” Nina said. “I look forward to working with the talented team to build a strong global brand and market demand for using WSO2’s game-changing solutions to create and deliver new digital experiences.”

71% expect transformational benefits from automating data security

Cyera, the data security company, today introduced new research based on a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting that reveals security leaders' current concerns and how they are prioritizing their data security investment decisions. Among the most pressing issues for the majority (70%) of security leaders is how to enable their business to use data securely to unleash significant organizational growth opportunities while improving their zero trust security posture, a top priority for 85% of those surveyed.

Among the 253 respondents who are director-level and above, 71% said their legacy technology and manual data security processes inhibit their business success. These respondents (71%) expect transformational benefits from automating data security. Among the reasons for investing in automation were: improving their zero trust maturity, avoiding regulatory fines, improving operational efficiency, increasing their resilience to ransomware threats and maintaining customer trust.

The volume and business value of data continue to increase, as does the use of cloud services to manage it. In an effort to become more data-driven, organizations expect to increase their use of Platforms as a Service (PaaS) by 1.5 times and their use of Databases as a Service (DBaaS) by 1.6 times over the next two years. Survey results revealed that the majority (79%) of businesses are investing to improve their data security posture across their cloud environments, automating the creation of data inventories and improving classification accuracy to assure compliance as the use of data grows.

"The cloud has enabled businesses to accelerate value creation by capitalizing on insights from their crown jewels - their data," said Yotam Segev, co-founder and CEO, Cyera. "The insights from this survey underscore for us the criticality of modernizing data security with cloud-native, automated technology that delivers holistic visibility, accurate classification and rapid time to value."

Adopting modern data security technology promises to deliver the most significant benefits. The study found that 71% of security leaders expect automating data risk assessments to deliver a significant or transformational benefit, and 66% expect similar benefits from automating data discovery and classification. The top investment areas security leaders are investing in include data security posture management (DSPM) and real-time data detection and response (DDR) to data security exposures and data activity monitoring to implement dynamic data security controls.

Additional key findings:

• For 78% of respondents, the most critical purchasing considerations are improving the ease of implementation and time to value for data security technologies
• 82% aim to improve the accuracy of their data risk assessments
• 66% struggle to identify security exposures for sensitive data
• 61% struggle to identify compliance violations
• More than half of respondents listed cyber insurance repercussions, including increased premiums and reduced coverage, as the top concern if their business suffers a breach