Leading technology-led business solutions provider brings its client offerings and new employment opportunities to the market

Conduent Incorporated (Nasdaq: CNDT), a global technology-led business solutions and services company, announced the opening of the company’s first office in Greece, located in Thessaloniki. Initially, Conduent’s team will be focused on providing customer experience management (CXM) services.

Conduent has hired nearly 100 bilingual and multilingual CXM agents, who are working from the office, as well as working from home, providing German language customer care services for a leading European telecom company. As the operation grows, it is expected to add staff, who could be located throughout the country, and expand the range of services offered.

“Thessaloniki continues to see its tech community grow, evolving into a significant tech hub of southeastern Europe. It's the strength of our talent, our strategic location and the quality of life that attracts companies to the city. We are delighted to add Conduent as one of the newest organizations to join our city’s tech ecosystem. We value its contribution to strengthening our economy and providing jobs,” said Konstantinos Zervas, Mayor of Thessaloniki.

“As a technology-focused global business solutions leader, Conduent has expanded our European presence into Greece to meet specialized client needs in the region,” said Katerina Ioannidi, Country Leader at Conduent Greece. “The robust talent pool in Greece was an important factor in our expansion. We are building teams with strong language capabilities and proficiency in the technologies that Conduent utilizes to deliver services that keep pace with customer expectations.”

Conduent provides mission-critical omnichannel CXM solutions and services, both human and digital from a blend of global sites and work at home locations. Conduent CXM teams, who support 20 languages and manage more than one billion customer interactions annually, are working with clients across a range of industries, including banking and financial services, healthcare, retail and ecommerce, technology, telecom and media, travel and hospitality, logistics and utilities.

eGain Corporation, the leading AI Knowledge platform for customer engagement automation, today announced the launch of the eGain® Knowledge Academy™. Dedicated to fostering a community of knowledge management (KM) professionals—executives, practitioners, researchers, academics, and students—the Academy is focused on the pragmatic application of AI-infused KM to create business value.

"We find the information on the eGain Knowledge Academy to be very valuable as we continue on our value creation journey with knowledge," said Natalie Davis, Knowledge Management Administrator at A-dec, a leading manufacturer of reliable dental operatory equipment.

Per Gartner, KM is the #1 technology for enhancing CX, employee experience (EX), and operational performance. Recently, ChatGPT has highlighted the need for modern knowledge management to leverage generative AI capabilities to automate customer engagement.

eGain Knowledge Academy is built to:

• Create a community of KM experts, who can leverage the best of technology and best practices for quick value creation
• Educate business and IT professionals on the what, why, and how of knowledge and AI modernization for business transformation
• Provide one-of-a-kind, open online training on a value-focused approach to KM with optional certification, offered through eGain University™
• Educate members on storytelling to showcase results from KM

“The NCAA Eligibility Center uses the eGain Knowledge Academy to quickly come up to speed on how to be successful with our knowledge deployments,” said Nora Loechel, Associate Director of Communications, NCAA.

“Our customers and partners love eGain Knowledge Academy,” said Ashu Roy, eGain CEO. “It helps them develop and deliver knowledge modernization initiatives in the generative AI era, turbocharging their careers.”

New UI features and VIP points functionality optimize retailer experience

 springbig (the “Company”) (NASDAQ: SBIG), a leading provider of SaaS-based marketing solutions, today announced the launch of its improved platform UI, springbig.io. The new platform UI maintains the same efficient functionality while optimizing navigation and organization and incorporating two new features: email reporting and the Brands Marketplace Caddie:

• Email reporting: An extension of springbig’s robust campaign reports, retailers will now have access to a full suite of email reporting capabilities
• Brands Marketplace Caddie: The Brands Marketplace Caddie is an exciting tool that leverages AI to give retailers insight into whether a brand within the Brands Marketplace is a good fit for their dispensary.

Additionally, springbig has deployed a VIP points functionality to its newly-launched Subscription Loyalty Service, which utilizes springbig’s catalog of advanced marketing tools to power a retailer’s subscriber experience and inspire higher engagement. The service’s new VIP points multiplier functionality allows merchants to give VIP subscribers an optional and exclusive points multiplier. Other updates enable retailers to add a free subscription prompt within their stashboard images, allowing customers to subscribe to their program directly.

“After the exciting launch of the Subscription Loyalty Service last week, we are continuing to evolve our solutions to even further improve user experience,” said Jeffrey Harris, CEO of springbig. “springbig’s updated user interface provides efficient, specific options for retailers to organize their reports, while new features give users more tools to customize their experience. Overall, these updated solutions power premium opportunities for retailers to engage with their customers while effectively keeping track of their reports.”

Other updates included in today’s launch include, in the organization of reports, the "reports" dropdown now includes the bulk of reporting options, such as check-in, member status, credit usage and campaign performance reports. The “advanced reports” dropdown now includes impact and inquiry reports. Customer profile pages have changed slightly to make them more intuitive and valuable for retailers.

New roles to help NoFraud continue growth in rapidly expanding eCommerce market

NoFraud, a world-class eCommerce solution that removes friction while maximizing merchant revenue and creating amazing customer experiences, today announced three new leadership hires, including Amy Frampton as Chief Marketing Officer. Other new additions to the team are Rosie Brown, vice president of operations, and Adam Stonehocker, vice president of sales.

Frampton brings almost 20 years of technology marketing experience through executive roles at BambooHR, Smartsheet, Vulcan, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft. As CMO, Amy will focus on NoFraud's mission of creating safe and seamless online shopping for merchants and shoppers, and building the brand as NoFraud continues to expand its offerings in fraud prevention and eCommerce checkout experiences.

"I'm excited to take on a new challenge as part of the NoFraud team, and look forward to helping the company scale beyond eCommerce fraud, with even broader eCommerce solutions for both merchants and consumers," Frampton said. "I feel that Rosie, Adam and I are all joining at the perfect time to be a part of a revolution in the eCommerce industry and truly help customers and merchants alike have a safer, more enjoyable online shopping experience."

Brown has nearly 10 years of operations management experience from posts including Salesforce and NextRoll (formerly AdRoll). Her management experience focuses on maximizing efficiency with a bias for simplicity, and she will continue to help grow this mindset and the culture of transparency that NoFraud has cultivated.

Stonehocker's 15 years of experience as a sales executive spans companies including Gemini, MarketStar and NextRoll (formerly AdRoll). His emphasis on customer satisfaction and his proven track record leading sales teams for brands like Twitter, Pandora Radio, Ebay and Google's Waze are attributes he plans to share with the NoFraud sales team.

"We are thrilled to welcome Amy, Rosie, and Adam to the NoFraud leadership team. Each of them bring an impressive track record of successfully navigating complex environments within fast growing, iconic brands," said Scott Gifis, CEO of NoFraud, "and I have no doubt they will make an immediate, positive impact on our customers and our business as we continue to accelerate our growth and expand our platform to help our eCommerce merchants create the seamless shopping experiences their customers deserve while also measurably increasing the merchant's conversion rates and repeat customers."

You.com, the world’s first AI chatbot capable of searching the web, introduced YouPro, a subscription service offering unlimited access to the latest AI chat and generative AI writing and image tools at an affordable price and within an intuitive interface.

With YouPro, experience the freedom of unlimited access to cutting-edge AI models, including GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion XL, to search, write, code, and create images, all in one place.

YouPro includes:

• Unlimited AI chat searches with citations, rich media, and web results
• Access to the most comprehensive AI model for summarization, reasoning, and problem-solving
• Unlimited AI image generation, including photorealistic images
• Unlimited AI writing generations
• Priority AI chat uptime, even when demand is high
• Early access to APIs and the latest AI innovations, including personal assistant features

For a limited time, YouPro is available for $9.99/month ($119.99 per year), making it one of the most affordable AI accomplishment tool bundles that utilize GPT-4 (OpenAI’s GPT-4 plan is $20/month).

The free version of You.com is accessible worldwide and provides an alternative to Google search with a chatbot, offering AI chat searches and AI image and text generations.

“Since introducing the first AI chatbot that searches the web, we’ve been committed to democratizing access to the latest AI technology so people can achieve more. We believe that getting access to cutting-edge AI tools at an affordable price within an easy-to-use interface will help more people elevate their productivity, creativity, and online search experience,” said Richard Socher, founder and CEO of You.com.

Aleph Group, a leading global enabler of digital advertising with a coverage across 130+ countries, announces an international sales partnership with Pinterest, the visual inspiration platform.

The partnership will enable Aleph Group, Inc. to offer Pinterest's advertising solutions to its global network of clients across EMEA, LATAM and APAC. Aleph will provide the outreach and management of advertisers in countries across these regions where Pinterest is not currently serving ads. Advertisers in these countries will now have access to reach Pinterest's highly engaged audience in markets where ads are served – an audience who are coming to the platform with intent to discover ideas to take action on with help from brands.

Aleph is uniquely positioned to support clients achieve success on Pinterest. Through this partnership, Aleph will be able to offer its clients the ability to advertise on Pinterest for the first time.

More than 460 million people come to Pinterest each month to discover products and services for their wardrobe, for their new home, for their next holiday and much more. Advertisers want to be discovered during these planning moments and there is a natural alignment with users who are actually seeking brands to inspire their next purchase. On Pinterest, advertisers can reach the consumers they care about and drive them from discovery to decision to do – all in a more positive place online.

"Pinterest is a unique, full-funnel platform where ads can be meaningful content. We're excited about our partnership with Aleph and the value it will bring to our Pinterest users," said Bill Watkins, Chief Revenue Officer at Pinterest. "Pinterest connects advertisers to consumers with intent and when they're open to brands. Aleph's broad coverage of clients across global regions will help to bring a range of new advertisers to the platform and enable us to serve more relevant ads to users when they're looking for inspiration to take action on."

"We are thrilled to partner with Pinterest to help our network of 21,000 businesses drive results and growth by engaging with an audience that naturally comes to the platform to shop," said Gaston Taratuta, Founder and CEO of Aleph. "Pinterest is a differentiated platform where users explicitly come to find something to buy or do. Our clients will now have the opportunity to drive everything from brand awareness to purchase conversions while we bring Pinterest new access to some of the fastest growing economies in the world."

Components include the new State of TV Advertising Viewer Experience (VX) Report, a commitment to ongoing VX research, and continued innovation in FreeWheel’s growing suite of VX products.

Advisors include major programmers and streaming-first companies from the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, including A+E Networks, AMC, FOX, Paramount, Warner Brothers Discovery and NBCUniversal.

FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry, announced that it is spearheading a new initiative, The Viewer Experience Lab, in partnership with MediaScience, a leader in media and advertising innovation, research and technology. The goal of the project is to help media companies ensure a quality experience for viewers across the growing array of traditional and emerging advertising channels that support their premium content.

Over the past few years, the ability for media companies to provide a uniform, quality experience across all of the diverse platforms into which they now serve advertising has grown exponentially harder,” said Mark McKee, General Manager, FreeWheel. “Couple this with the reality that protecting their relationship with viewers has become paramount in an increasingly competitive ad marketplace, and you can see why we’re committed to helping our clients solve this complex challenge.”

The added intricacy in dynamically serving advertising outside of the traditional linear ad environment, whether on AVOD, FAST or other streaming platforms, can result in problems such as latency, ad repetition, the showing of slate and other unwanted consequences. As a result, both the viewing experience and advertising effectiveness can suffer.

To help address these issues, the goal of FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab is two-fold:

• Conduct quantifiable research to help advertising buyers and sellers understand the impact of different ad experiences on viewer experience and performance, including viewer response to new and evolving ad formats;
• Develop solutions and interoperable technologies fueled by these new insights that allow video content providers to implement best practices and provide seamless ad viewing experiences in a multi-platform, premium video ecosystem.

FreeWheel chose MediaScience as an inaugural research partner to provide bespoke research for The Viewer Experience Lab. MediaScience has one of the strongest track records in the industry for testing new media innovations.

“We have completed extensive research into viewing experience, especially as it relates to the impact on advertising performance, but as the media world changes, our research needs to keep on evolving,” said Dr. Duane Varan, CEO, MediaScience. “We are thrilled that FreeWheel, with the support of its council of leading media companies, has chosen us to spearhead this important initiative.”

As its first output, The Viewer Experience Lab today released a new State of TV Advertising Viewer Experience Report, which is a comprehensive analysis of viewer experience today and an exploration of how our industry should define and approach this important subject.

FreeWheel today provides publishers with many capabilities to enhance the viewer experience, including a system for dynamically adjusting the ad load based on time spent viewing, a dynamic ad scheduler for connected TV (CTV) environments, and the ability to frequency cap across devices within the same household. Moving forward, as part of The Viewer Experience Lab, FreeWheel will use emerging insights and recommendations to enhance and build new products within its VX suite.

Companies supporting the new initiative through their work with the FreeWheel Council for Video Excellence represent the full spectrum of viewing platforms and distribution channels, including A+E Networks, AMC, FOX, NBCUniversal, Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount.

“Our viewer relationships are at the center of everything we do as a media company and the unique value we are able to deliver to our advertising clients. These relationships are rooted in a viewer-first strategy across a broad, ad-supported distribution ecosystem that spans linear networks, streaming services and emerging, connected TV/FAST platforms,” said Evan Adlman, executive vice president of commercial sales and revenue operations for AMC Networks. “We are focused on offering the best data targeting capabilities across all of our inventories, so having insights into the consumer experience that allow us to deliver the best products is invaluable in this dynamic and changing environment. We are thrilled to partner with FreeWheel in this new and novel effort.”

In addition to launching the State of TV Advertising Viewer Experience Report, FreeWheel and MediaScience have begun work on a custom analysis into viewing experience that will analyze consumers’ responses to viewer experience stimuli in a lab environment and provide best practices for the industry. Initial findings are expected to be released in January 2024.

Groundbreaking Program Includes Community Developers in Partner Benefits Around Education, Training, and Media

Today during Cannes Lions, Roblox, a global immersive platform where millions of people connect and communicate daily, announced a new Roblox Partner Program designed to scale brand innovation and enable a self-serve, global advertising ecosystem on the platform. The Program’s community-forward approach is focused on engaging a broad network of platform advocates – from Roblox developer studios to early adopters among agencies, brands, and third-party sellers – in global education and best practice sharing for brands. The program also offers all of its partners the same meaningful incentives and transparent Immersive Ads pricing.

The initial group of signed partners includes early adopters who are already setting the standards of marketing in immersive spaces and are close to the Roblox ecosystem today: Century Games, Dentsu (the latter is expanding its existing partnership with Roblox in Japan into a global collaboration), Dubit, Playwire, Sawhorse, The Gang Group, and Vayner3. These partners bring expertise with creating 3D immersive content, the Roblox community and innovative advertising offerings that can be helpful to other marketers who are new to the platform. All partners have demonstrated long-term commitment to supporting brands that want to enter this new space and made minimum media spend commitments for the next 12 months.

The Roblox Partner Program network will focus on four core areas to help brands reach their business goals: platform education, research and measurement, product/content innovation, and Immersive Ads for faster on-platform content discovery. Brands and talent that want to create a successful presence on Roblox can turn to the Roblox Partner Program members for help with creating an authentic presence and visibility on the platform, while also delivering value to Roblox users.

“This program is yet another step towards our long-term vision of building an economy where anyone can create, sell and earn on our platform, and expanding our community with new partners will play a key role in enabling this future,” said Manuel Bronstein, Chief Product Officer at Roblox. “The demand from brands to connect and engage with our global audience, be it through 3D immersive experiences, digital items or our new Immersive Ads products for faster on-platform content discovery, continues to grow. Our new Partner Program will support the development of new ecosystems and help us further scale brand innovation and self-serve advertising on the platform.”

"Roblox strives to innovate across the board, and advertising is no exception,” said Ashley McCollum, Head of Immersive Media Solutions at Roblox. “We took a page from the traditional advertising books by building a Partner Program around our new media offering, but changed the game by making it community-forward and welcoming developers alongside agencies and brands so they can partake in the growth of our Immersive Ads business. The founding members of the Roblox Partner Program represent all corners of the advertising ecosystem and have been leaning into Roblox for years. They will be critical to driving brand innovation forward on the platform, ultimately enabling any and all brands to have a presence on Roblox."

For partners in the program, incentives include access to advanced education, resources, data and insights from Roblox. For example, regular webinars and platform immersion days to further education about Roblox, as well as Game Jams and other custom programming rolling out later this year to facilitate collaboration and innovation across the Roblox Partner Program community. All partners will also have access to the same transparent pricing and financial incentives when offering Roblox Immersive Ads to their clients. The incentives include ad credits based on an upfront media buy commitment (for portfolio-wide client discounts) and/or commission for those selling Immersive Ads directly to their clients. Finally, these partners will help further shape and build brand measurement and other standards for the broader community.

The Roblox Partner Program will continue to expand gradually. Companies interested in joining the Program or interested in working with Roblox partners can inquire here.