ADvendio, a leading provider of advertising management software, is delighted to announce the release of its updated media buying solution tailored for publishers and agencies.

The decision to enhance the media buying offering was driven by ADvendio's commitment to address the challenges faced by its customers in the complex and time-consuming media buying process. This strategic update aims to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and minimize user effort through the introduction of automated tools.

With the latest update, publishers and agencies gain access to a broader scope of services, enhancing their advertising capabilities. They now have the ability to activate campaigns and run ads on behalf of their advertisers from platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Google, and other partners, thereby expanding campaign reach beyond their own inventory and offering a more diverse range of advertising options. Additionally, agencies can optimize their operations by focusing solely on activating and running campaigns on different external sources. The integration of media buying within ADvendio's platform consolidates both media selling and buying activities, empowering publishers and agencies to manage their operations seamlessly.

Key enhancements of the updated media buying offering include:

• Execution of media selling and buying activities within a single platform
• Support for cross-channel campaign activation on multiple partner networks
• Performance management features to track orders and budgets
• Robust reporting capabilities to synchronize media spend data
• Streamlined invoicing and reconciliation processes from a central hub

The updated version includes multiple social media and demand-side platform (DSP) integrations, offering a broader selection of inventory sources and enhanced flexibility for campaign execution. These integrations have been seamlessly integrated into ADvendio, resulting in a smoother user experience with various user interface enhancements.

The updated media buying offering is available to all customers with the ADvendio ONE edition as part of the release. This integration eliminates additional effort for publishers and agencies, allowing them to allocate resources efficiently and invest in media-buying technologies to optimize advertising campaigns.

"At ADvendio, our commitment is to provide customers with trusted, innovative, and future-focused solutions that cater to all their buying and selling advertising requirements," said Julian Ahrends, VP of Business Development at ADvendio. "We have a deep understanding of our customer's needs and the evolving industry landscape, and our dedicated team has tirelessly worked to develop an enhanced media buying solution that empowers publishers and agencies. It is with great pride that we officially launch this updated solution to the market. With streamlined processes, comprehensive reporting, and expanded reach to inventory sources, our advanced solution enables data-driven decision-making and maximizes campaign performance for maximum ROI."

Quadient Software Platform Maintains Leadership Position in Aspire Leaderboard

• The Aspire Leaderboard is an interactive, digital-first comparison tool that dynamically visualizes the customer communications management technology vendor landscape

Quadient , a leader in helping businesses create meaningful customer connections through digital and physical channels, has been named a Leader in several segments of the recently updated Aspire Leaderboard™, which showcases the best customer communications management (CCM) and customer experience management (CXM) software vendors.

Aspire, a global analyst and market research firm in the CCM and CXM industry, analyzes and ranks software vendors in regularly updated interactive online grids, called the Aspire Leaderboard. Quadient has been named a Leader on the Leaderboard for six consecutive years and is again positioned as a Leader in the 2023 AnyPrem CCM Software, Vendor Hosted SaaS CCM and Communications Experience Platform (CXP) grids.

“It is an honor to maintain our position as a Leader in the Aspire Leaderboard for CCM and CXM software. To consistently be recognized as a leader in this evolving, dynamic industry demonstrates our drive to innovate and harness the power of artificial intelligence, cloud and automation to unlock ever more customer experience possibilities for our customers,” said Chris Hartigan, chief solution officer, Intelligent Communication Automation, Quadient. “Just last month, Quadient Inspire Release 16 brought expanded cloud deployment options, event-triggered omnichannel delivery of business communications and intelligent content management tools to our customers. More cloud, more automation, more control for ever better customer experiences that allow our customers to realize better business outcomes than ever before.”

Quadient is a long-standing trusted CCM solution provider, listed as a Leader in three top independent industry analyst reports on the CCM industry. With Quadient Inspire, a high-performance platform, Quadient enables organizations of all sizes across complex industries, such as banking, utilities, insurance and healthcare, to create and deliver personalized, omnichannel customer communications from one centralized hub. The only fully integrated solution in the market with end-to-end CCM capacities, Inspire is available for “any-prem” deployments on-premise, full SaaS or hybrid.

The Aspire Leaderboard also shows that Quadient is particularly well positioned in the SMB and mid-market customer segments in the area of omnichannel orchestration. Quadient Impress, an outbound document workflow tool, enables businesses to process, send and manage documents from anywhere and via multiple channels: print, digital or outsourcing. Impress is the most flexible document management solution, designed to support small and medium business successfully orchestrate their communications and succeed in their digital transition.

“The latest developments clearly demonstrate Quadient’s ongoing commitment to the evolving CCM-CXM market space,” said Kaspar Roos, CEO and founder of Aspire. “We are particularly impressed by the progress that Inspire Evolve has made; it’s getting close in feature parity with Quadient’s flagship Inspire Flex solution that has been extended with better cloud, orchestration, and digital experience capabilities. Quadient continues to push the CX envelope while maintaining high customer satisfaction scores and seeing good market traction, particularly with Impress, which shows that CX is also highly relevant for smaller businesses.”

In pursuit of Quadient’s mission to unify business communications and financial automation into one single cloud platform, Quadient this year introduced the first version of the Quadient Hub, a user-friendly and centralized access point for Quadient cloud solutions, including the company’s CCM, multi-channel document delivery, accounts payable and accounts receivable solutions.

Mindbreeze InSpire, an insight engine, is the perfect basis for the secure use of Large Language Models in the enterprise.

Mindbreeze, a leading provider of Knowledge Management and Information Insight, enables customers to leverage innovations in Generative AI for sensitive enterprise data securely. Advanced Large Language Models (LLM) combined with Mindbreeze InSpire provide exceptional customer experiences in natural language processing, text generation, and data security.

"Generative AI (GenAI) and tools like ChatGPT have taken the world by storm," explains Daniel Fallmann, founder and CEO of Mindbreeze. "However, for these technologies to be used professionally in companies, numerous challenges must be addressed – for example, data hallucination, lack of data security, permissions, critical intellectual property issues, expensive training costs, and the technical implementation with confidential company data. Mindbreeze InSpire solves these challenges to form the ideal basis for making Generative AI the best fit for enterprise use."

Integration and the many advantages for users

In contrast to applications such as ChatGPT, whose data origin is usually not traceable, Mindbreeze InSpire uses existing company data as the basis for machine learning to ensure that the data used to train the models always belong to the respective company and do not flow into a public model. Existing and generated content is always secure, correct, trustworthy, and, above all, traceable. Since the solution references the source in addition to the answer, users can validate the answers at any time if necessary.

Mindbreeze InSpire provides users with intelligent, informed, and personalized answers to offer companies the chance to use AI safely, responsibly, and sustainably.

Mindbreeze offers maximum flexibility through open standards

Mindbreeze leaves the selection of the preferred LLM to its customers. The Mindbreeze InSpire insight engine is delivered with pre-trained models. Due to the use of Transformer Models and open standards, models from communities such as Huggingface can be easily used. In addition, Mindbreeze offers customers qualified support in selecting a suitable LLM and the associated use cases.

"What makes Mindbreeze unique in this area is that the models run both in the cloud and on our on-premises appliances. Customers have complete freedom of choice in selecting their LLM and where they want to process their data," explains Jakob Praher, CTO of Mindbreeze. "Our many years of experience with highly scalable processing of huge data sets enables us to deliver customized hardware and software solutions."

Mindbreeze has been offering a complete hybrid approach for years, resolving critical dependencies by making all of Mindbreeze InSpire's capabilities available on-premises and in the cloud.

Paperspace’s high-performance GPU tooling enables small and medium-sized businesses around the globe to test, build, and scale AI models in the cloud

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. , the cloud for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and startups, has acquired Paperspace, a leading provider of cloud infrastructure as a service for highly scalable applications leveraging graphics processing units (GPUs). The acquisition and integration of Paperspace’s advanced technology into the DigitalOcean platform will extend DigitalOcean’s offerings, enabling customers to more easily test, develop and deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications, augment and enhance existing AI/ML applications and utilize GPUs in ways that have predominantly been the domain of large enterprises.

The increasing demand for AI/ML cloud solutions makes Paperspace’s GPU-powered infrastructure and AI/ML focused software stack valuable additions to DigitalOcean’s portfolio. Like DigitalOcean’s approach to the cloud, Paperspace simplifies the AI/ML experience, enabling easy and cost-effective experimentation and production across various AI/ML use cases, such as generative media, text analysis and natural language understanding, recommendation engines, image classification and many others.

The acquisition benefits both organizations’ customers. Paperspace’s customers will now have access to a broader cloud services platform. Paperspace customers will also gain access to DigitalOcean’s extensive documentation, tutorials and support system to assist them in their journey to build and deploy AI applications. DigitalOcean customers exploring or already building AI/ML applications will now be able to leverage GPUs alongside their CPU workloads. Together, DigitalOcean and Paperspace will provide smaller businesses and startups with a comprehensive suite of cloud offerings, advanced networking, and the flexibility to harness both GPU and CPU capabilities as AI/ML technologies evolve and demand increases.

“We are excited to expand our portfolio tailored to the world’s SMBs and startups with simplified AI/ML offerings,” said Yancey Spruill, CEO of DigitalOcean. “This acquisition marks a significant milestone in DigitalOcean's journey to revolutionize how SMBs and startups harness the power of the cloud and AI/ML for their applications and businesses. The combined offerings allow customers to focus more on building applications and growing their businesses and less on the infrastructure powering them.”

Paperspace will benefit from DigitalOcean’s highly effective self-serve model and efficient go-to-market strategy. The acquisition expands DigitalOcean’s serviceable market and presents cross-sell and upsell opportunities for both entities, leveraging DigitalOcean's mature platform, efficient marketing engine and its extensive customer base to drive growth.

"DigitalOcean is renowned for simplifying complex cloud technologies and making them more accessible to developers and business alike,” said Dillon Erb, Co-founder and CEO of Paperspace. “We are thrilled to join forces with DigitalOcean, as we believe there is no better company to unlock the endless possibilities of AI/Ml for developers and businesses alike."

Importantly, the alignment in organizational history and culture between DigitalOcean and Paperspace will ensure a smooth integration process and a collaborative work environment. The two companies’ shared values and commitment to customer success will continue to foster innovation, enhance customer experiences, and reinforce both entities as industry leaders in cloud computing.

Transaction Terms

Under the terms of the transaction, DigitalOcean acquired Paperspace for $111 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to have an immaterial impact on 2023 financial results. “Paperspace is a rapidly growing business with leading edge technology that significantly accelerates our AI/ML capabilities. We expect it to enhance our revenue growth in 2024 and beyond and we will invest commensurately to further accelerate its growth and take full advantage of this tremendous emerging market opportunity,” said Matt Steinfort, DigitalOcean’s CFO. On its Q2 2023 earnings call on August 3, 2023, DigitalOcean will share more details on the strategic benefits of the acquisition and update the Company’s financial outlook for 2023.

AdTech Holding is pleased to announce that its lead project, PropellerAds, has successfully passed the annual ISO 27001 surveillance audit conducted by the Cyprus Certification Organization's auditor, reaffirming its commitment to information security and the protection of clients' information.

The ISO 27001 standard provides the global benchmark for best practices in information security management systems (ISMS). Compliance with the ISO 27001 standard is a testament to PropellerAds' commitment to continuous improvement of control over its sensitive and confidential information, bringing reassurance to sponsors, shareholders, and customers about the organization's expert control over risk management and data security.

"Having the ISO/IEC 27001 certification is crucial for a global online advertising company like ours," said Farukh Rakhimov, Head of Compliance at AdTech Holding. "The surveillance audit is a continuous evaluation process that ensures our organization adheres to these standards. It showcases how we implement ongoing improvements to meet the requirements and prepares us for the recertification audit."

As part of achieving the ISO/IEC 27001 Security Certification, PropellerAds has strengthened its security to the highest level, including asset management, security policy development, hands-on employee training, and extensive regular auditing. This not only safeguards PropellerAds' digital framework, protecting essential assets such as client and team member data but also provides an extra layer of assurance and comprehensive protection for its partners.

The certification offers PropellerAds' clients an additional quality guarantee, ensuring the highest level of security and creating an environment where customers can be confident that they are kept in the safest possible environment. Furthermore, it attests that PropellerAds is compliant with all GDPR requirements, guaranteeing that customers' Know Your Customer (KYC) data is uncompromised.

With over 200,000 partners, generating more than 12 billion daily impressions from over 195 countries and regions, PropellerAds' successful audit and unwavering commitment to security provide an additional layer of assurance and comprehensive protection for its partners.

Eventcombo, a leading all-in-one event technology platform, announced today it is investing $10 million over three years to expand its operations and establish a new headquarters in Calgary, Alta. With ambitious plans for growth in the region supported by Invest Alberta and Calgary Economic Development, the company intends to create 250 highly skilled jobs to serve clients around the world. 

The expansion of Eventcombo into Alberta represents a significant milestone for the company, and highlights their dedication to foster economic growth, innovation, and job creation in the region.  

Eventcombo has been making waves in the industry by driving innovation through collaborations, including with Alberta Innovates and a recent partnership with Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) that has opened new frontiers for incorporating artificial intelligence into event technology, revolutionizing the way events are planned, executed, and analyzed.  

Eventcombo's pioneering event management solution plans to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to streamline the entire event lifecycle. By harnessing the power of these technologies, Eventcombo offers event organizers a comprehensive suite of tools to enhance attendee engagement, optimize event logistics, and deliver personalized experiences. The company's innovative platform empowers organizers to make data-driven decisions, increase operational efficiency, and maximize event success.  

Invest Alberta and Calgary Economic Development have supported Eventcombo’s plans to relocate to Alberta by helping navigate the local business and investment landscape and making valuable introductions to service providers and partners. Calgary Economic Development has also partnered with Eventcombo to deliver its signature events including the flagship economic forecast event, 2024 Economic Outlook, which will be hosted on Eventcombo’s all-in-one eventtech solution. 

QUOTES: 

“Alberta’s government is pleased to have Eventcombo expanding its new global headquarters in Calgary. Business-friendly policies, the lowest corporate tax rate in Canada, and a growing, skilled workforce are keeping Alberta’s economy strong and will for years to come. Eventcombo’s ambitious vision for the technology and innovation sector will contribute to our increasingly diverse economy.” - Matt Jones, Minister of Jobs, Economy and Trade 

“Our mission for global expansion is being accelerated due to rapid adoption of EventTech, which has led to increased demand from our existing customer base in the US. To facilitate this growth, we have found a welcoming ecosystem here in Calgary. With a booming talent transformation and a focus on innovation, we see tremendous opportunities to make a global impact right from within Alberta.”  – Saroosh Gull, CEO, Eventcombo 

“Calgary attracts innovators that are revolutionizing industries with advanced technology like AI and machine learning. Eventcombo’s selection of Calgary for its North American headquarters is testament to Calgary’s attractive business environment, livability and bright minds who want to make a difference. We offer a winning combination for game-changing companies looking to solve global challenges.” – Brad Parry, President and CEO, Calgary Economic Development. 

“Eventcombo’s decision to anchor its operations in Alberta is evidence of the opportunities available here. Alberta’s world-class talent and state-of-the-art research create the ideal conditions for companies like Eventcombo to innovate, flourish, and revolutionize their industries.” – Rick Christiaanse, CEO, Invest Alberta

UneeQ, a leading provider of digital human technology, is thrilled to announce the launch of its groundbreaking SDK. This software development kit (SDK) vastly accelerates how brands deploy AI-powered digital human experiences into digital environments – not least of all in augmented and virtual reality applications, including Apple's cutting-edge Vision Pro.

According to Gartner, by 2026, an estimated 25% of individuals will spend at least one hour per day engaged in VR activities related to work, shopping, education, socializing and entertainment. In anticipation of this significant shift, UneeQ's new SDK lets brands seamlessly integrate AI-powered digital humans into their AR or VR applications, providing the tools to bring life into their virtual worlds.

“In this new immersive computing age, AI digital human interfaces will be the new UX paradigm,” remarks UneeQ’s Chief Metaverse Officer, Victor Yuen.

“Let’s take retail, for example, customers don’t walk into shops to flick through brochures or tap on touchscreens. They want to talk to an expert.”

Gartner also predicts that by 2027, the majority of B2C enterprises will allocate dedicated budgets for digital humans in metaverse experiences, with the responsibility resting in the hands of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

UneeQ's CEO, Danny Tomsett, says “The new SDK empowers enterprises to take the lead in digital transformation while accelerating the productive uses of mixed realities. UneeQ's new SDK marks a significant milestone in the evolution of digital human technology, and the very-near future of online commerce will become more intimate and personalized. Having a product expert in your living room to talk through and answer any questions is not the work of science-fiction anymore; it’s in the hands of brands who want to unlock this future.”

Among these brands is Dell Technologies, who last month showcased a digital human named Clara, developed by UneeQ, at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. Clara interacted with thousands of visitors in 3D space, offering guidance and a personalized experience throughout the conference.

More broadly, digital humans have been increasingly deployed to create interactive and immersive conversational experiences for web, mobile and virtual worlds. Renowned companies such as L'Oréal, Deutsche Telekom and Mercedes-Benz have already embraced digital humans to enhance customer experiences.

UneeQ's new SDK follows a host of other developer-friendly tools, allowing enterprises to quickly deploy digital humans on web, mobile and kiosk applications – often within a matter of hours.

These SDKs eliminate the need for complex coding, so brands can integrate conversational experiences into their channels often in a matter of minutes, reducing the time it takes to experiment and realize value.

“By eliminating the need for custom development and providing a painless deployment process, we are ensuring that brands can effortlessly tap into the power of lifelike digital humans in a way they haven’t been able to before,” Tomsett continues.

“We believe that the future of customer engagement lies in this seamless integration of virtual beings, and UneeQ is proud to lead the way in this transformative journey."

TeamViewer, a leading global provider of remote connectivity and workplace digitalization solutions, is driving performance gains for the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team by enabling improved access to critical data during practice and qualifying.

In the highly competitive world of Formula 1, where every millisecond counts, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team leaves nothing to chance. The team relies on cutting-edge technology at every stage of its operations to gain a competitive advantage.

With engineers both trackside and in the Race Support Room (RSR) at the factory, the team requires seamless communication between engineers and drivers to make split-second decisions. Instant access to data, videos, and telemetry is crucial for determining race strategy.

Previously, the team faced software reliability challenges that hindered the delivery of accurate and real-time data to the drivers. However, after successfully implementing TeamViewer Tensor as its remote connectivity platform in the whole organization, the team turned to TeamViewer once again for the dropdown screen data feed in the garage trackside.

TeamViewer's Tensor platform offers enterprise-grade remote connectivity with unmatched security, scalability, and manageability. It empowers the engineers to provide drivers with fast and one-hundred-percent reliable access to live data during practice and qualifying sessions while the driver can remain in the car. This includes weather updates, run plans, strategy insights, competitor analysis, live feed TV, run playbacks, and on-track footage.

"During a practice session, it's important to give the driver the right information at the right time," said Riccardo Musconi, Head of Trackside Performance. "TeamViewer has never let us down and has really improved the way we work at the track and communicate with the driver."

"TeamViewer is faster, more reliable, and has more features than anything on the market. So for us, where milliseconds mean the difference in results, and communication between the driver and race engineers is critical, that's how we deliver performance," stated Steve Riley, Head of IT and Service Operations.

TeamViewer's remote connectivity solution ensures that every decision is based on accurate and up-to-date information, enhancing the team's strategy for each run. In addition, end-to-end encryption and conditional access policies are important for the team's data security.

"Given the pace of race weekends, any technology implementations must be able to keep up. Even a second delay in the drivers having access to the data they need between runs could impact the entire weekend. Our enterprise remote connectivity platform, Tensor, meets these performance demands and has security built in meaning proprietary data stays with the team. For the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 team it is all about reliability, speed and security and that is what Tensor delivers," said Peter Turner, Chief Commercial Officer, TeamViewer.

With TeamViewer's remote connectivity solutions, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team continues to push boundaries, leveraging data access to gain a competitive edge and drive success on the track.