New Features Complement the Previous Addition of Social Display Ads for Increased Engagement

Simpli.fi, the advertising success platform that provides programmatic advertising solutions and workflow software to agencies, brands, and media companies, today announced the enhancement of its social programmatic solution suite. The offering allows advertisers to seamlessly and in real-time convert social media content into programmatic online video and CTV ads, resulting in meaningful improvements in performance.

This release enables any Simpli.fi client with a social media presence to translate social media posts instantly into production-ready, rich-media creatives that are pre-configured for immediate activation on Simpli.fi's platform. The new offering can automatically generate authentic video ads from a brand's social media posts, including display, CTV, in-banner, and in-stream videos.

"As CTV advertising continues to be the fastest growing segment of programmatic, we are excited to further expand our social programmatic offering with the addition of online video and CTV ads for our clients," said Paul Harrison, co-founder and CTO of Simpli.fi. "By tapping into this fully automated solution, advertisers can increase reach, user engagement, creative efficiencies, and performance from high impact social assets."   

The capability adds to Simpli.fi's existing social display programmatic offering, in which ads can be created by regenerating posts from top social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Reactions such as likes and comments on the original post update in real-time on the corresponding online video or CTV ad, as well as the added optional capability of embedding a QR code to CTV ads for increased engagement.

New Tools Enable Advertisers and Publishers to Captivate Audiences, Increase Operational Efficiency, and Drive Higher Campaign ROI

Nativo, the storytelling platform where advertisers and publishers distribute brand stories at scale and gain unparalleled insights about their content, today unveiled its new ContentAI suite. This groundbreaking application of generative AI enables publishers and advertisers to launch brand content campaigns easily while decreasing costs and improving performance.

"The most challenging part of the customer journey for most marketers is the mid funnel— where people educate themselves by consuming content rather than ads," said Justin Choi, Founder & CEO of Nativo. "Our application of generative AI is a huge leap forward in making brand-created content easier to execute, measure, and scale."

The ContentAI suite elevates the branded content space by automating campaign creation through the following generative AI features:

• Suggested Headlines: Enables advertisers and publishers to easily generate multiple creative headlines, applying different styles and tactics, at the click of a button.
• Tone Control for Suggested Headlines: Allows users to refine headlines to convey a desired story and attitude aligned with campaign objectives and brand goals.
• Suggested Preview Text: Generates high-impact preview text aligned with an advertiser's desired tone and enables easy comparison of options.
• Content Rephrase: Keeps native article content fresh by rephrasing existing content for additional impact; enables advertisers and publishers to rapidly move from draft versions to on-point messaging that aligns with an advertiser's brand story.
• Contextual Delivery Insights: Provides insights into the impact of context on campaign performance, removing the need for advertisers and publishers to look across multiple dimensions of data manually to understand outcomes.

"Generative AI, as we've incorporated it into our ContentAI suite, represents not only a revolutionary efficiency play, but also a substantial improvement in the test-and-learn process for marketers," said Eugene Cherny, SVP of Product at Nativo. "ContentAI automates the best practices of content marketing and lowers the barrier to more impactful content and campaigns when it comes to branded content."

The ContentAI suite is available to publishers, brands and agencies, and self-service customers of the Nativo platform

Market-Leading Link Management Provider Expands Leadership Team and Continues Exponential Growth

Today, Rebrandly, the market-leading provider of link management solutions, announced it had appointed two new members to its global executive team - Nataly Kelly is the company's new Chief Growth Officer, and Chris Davies is Senior Vice President, Global Head of Legal.

Kelly joins Rebrandly with a tenured background as a global marketing and go-to-market (GTM) executive with deep expertise in leading and developing commercial operations for high-growth companies. Most recently, Kelly led international expansion at HubSpot from 2015-2023. As VP of Marketing, in addition to other leadership functions focused on global operations and strategy, Kelly helped drive the company's top-line growth from $170M to $1.5B+ and accelerated non-US revenue from 20% to 50%. Kelly is an award-winning B2B SaaS commercial operations executive, an ongoing contributor to Harvard Business Review, and the author of the forthcoming book, "Take Your Company Global" (Berrett-Koehler).

Davies brings more than 10 years of global legal and B2B SaaS experience to Rebrandly, including having grown a market-leading cyber security SaaS platform (Immersive Labs) from $5M to $50M ARR in under three years. At Immersive, Davies steered the company through three funding rounds (led by Goldman, Insight, Summit, and Menlo), acquiring a US-based entity and expanding into the US, European, and MENA markets. Most recently, Davies served as General Counsel at AND Digital, a 1,800-person, £150M digital transformation business. There, he led the legal team focusing on commercial contracting, data privacy, and security and was a key advisor to the company's global oversight boards.

Founded in 2015, Rebrandly has attracted tens of thousands of customers, over 2 million users, and an active community of 90k developers who rely on the company's platform and APIs to securely create and manage custom links at scale (the company has generated more than 1 billion branded links to date and processes a vast amount of monthly conversion data for its customers).

Kelly and Davies join Rebrandly at an exciting inflection point. The company has achieved exponential user growth (34% year-over-year), stringent SOC 2 Type II certification, and recently launched Rebrandly On Demand, the industry's first dynamic volume-based pricing model for link management. Rebrandly made recent headlines for its work with Meta and others to help identify and mitigate malware across the internet, along with a growth investment from Five Elms Capital in July 2022.

"These executives bring a strategic growth mindset cultivated by years of in-depth B2B SaaS experience driving global expansion and commercial success for market-leading companies," said Rebrandly CEO Carla Bourque. "I look forward to partnering with Nataly, Chris, and the rest of the Rebrandly team, to further our leadership position in the market and deliver digital innovation at scale to our customers."

For the first time brands will have a fully-integrated suite of tools to better understand emotions that unlock winning customer experiences, boost engagement & drive loyalty

QuestionPro, a global leader in survey and research, data and insights services, today announced it has acquired PathosAI - a platform that uses AI to help companies drive brand value and reputation. The combination of both companies’ research and customer experience technologies will offer an unparalleled new option for brands to fundamentally understand, predict and ultimately influence the drivers behind consumer behavior.

“Consumers make rational decisions for emotional reasons,” said Vivek Bhaskaran, founder and CEO of QuestionPro. “Now, for the first time, brand marketers and customer experience professionals have the ability to truly understand the emotions behind customer decisions and – finally - unlock better experiences, drive increased engagement and create raving fans.”

Gallup research has found that 70 percent of consumer decisions are based on emotional factors while only 30 percent are based on rational factors. While traditional after-the-fact surveys are more than adequate for customer research and insights, the ability to understand emotions is the next frontier in driving a great customer experience. PathosAI has developed and deployed AI models to not only unearth stated and not-stated emotions from these three human actions (what people say, how they say it and how they move), but also measure what drives those emotions and how those moments are going to impact consumers’ future behavior.

The PathosAI technology will be incorporated into QuestionPro’s leading research and insights platform, where it will build on existing AI and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. The new feature will enable brands to identify consumer intent and sentiment by measuring emotions and correlating them to drivers of decisions. Best of all, it enables them to predict – and influence – future decisions.

PathosAI was created to support insights and consumer research leaders and help them make better decisions. The proprietary models can unearth: eight distinct emotions and their intensity; 18 possible drivers and their importance to the speaker; and hundreds of behavior enablers and disablers. It also identifies and infers specific contextual information from customer generated data.

“It’s no longer good enough to just listen to customers – increasingly they demand that brands actually empathize with them,” said Sumair Sayani, PathosAI’s founder. “Our integrated service, which will enable brands to unearth customer emotions, predict what drives those emotions, and create a customer pathway to maximize delight represents a quantum leap in the power of market research and CX to drive better business outcomes.”

Evans Bank and WyHy FCU among first to deploy Illuma Shield™ on Glia Interaction Platform

Glia, the customer interaction leader unifying Digital Customer Service (DCS), phone and automated self-service on a single platform, and Illuma Labs today announced a strategic partnership to streamline voice authentication for customer service interactions. 

By integrating Illuma Shield™ with the Glia Interaction Platform, financial institutions can offer quick, seamless and secure real-time voice authentication that enhances the customer experience, improves operational efficiency, and helps prevent fraud.

Milind Borkar, CEO and founder of Illuma noted, "Glia's ChannelLess™ solution enables a frictionless experience that enhances the customer experience and drives new efficiencies. Illuma Shield™ fits seamlessly with the Glia Interaction Platform, adding more efficiency by making voice authentication effortless. Our joint customers are experiencing the real value that the Glia and Illuma partnership delivers."

According to Eric Valla, CIO at WyHy Federal Credit Union, "The more complex authentication is for telephone banking, the more friction members face during an interaction. Illuma's real-time voice authentication makes it easy to begin an engagement and the Glia Interaction Platform makes it seamless from start to finish. This combination has greatly improved our overall member experience."

Jennifer Zorn, EVP and CIO for Evans Bank commented, "We wanted to remove friction from the authentication process and also enhance security for our customers. Illuma delivered a frictionless approach with voice authentication that matches the seamless interactions that Glia provides. We were impressed with the joint solution, as well as the white-glove implementation experience provided by both companies."

The Glia Interaction Platform brings Digital Customer Service (DCS), traditional phone and AI-driven self-service options together to enable a seamless experience that can accelerate interactions and drive new opportunities.

Steve Kaish, SVP of Alliances for Glia stated, "Illuma and Glia share a philosophy on making each customer interaction as effortless as possible. Authentication, particularly for phone banking, has traditionally been cumbersome and a major source of friction. By verifying enrolled customers in the first few seconds of natural conversation with the Illuma Shield™ software, Glia quickly enables an authenticated interaction, reducing fraud and letting customers focus on their immediate need, be it an account balance, mortgage inquiry or loan origination."

Sojern, the leading digital marketing platform for the travel industry, announces the latest version of its Sojern Travel Marketing Platform with enhanced Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered audiences. Sojern has leveraged its long-standing AI capabilities to provide expanded support for more than 10,000 travel marketers annually. Customers include hotels and resorts of all sizes, destinations, attractions and airlines.

"Our customers needed to respond swiftly to the rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape, so during the pandemic, we expanded our automation and AI capabilities. It all begins with data, specifically the Sojern Traveler Ecosystem™, which powers our platform with billions of travel intent signals from thousands of travel brands in every corner of the globe," said Kurt Weinsheimer, Chief Solutions Officer at Sojern. "While AI is making headlines now, we've been harnessing its capabilities for years and are excited to announce these new updates. We have competitors that are just now building AI functionality, and I can tell you firsthand that it takes several years to develop and refine the sophisticated AI models that power our platform. Our 15 years of experience and deep technological expertise gives us a significant advantage in delivering results with AI-powered audiences in the latest iteration of our Platform."

Sojern's AI-powered audiences offer travel marketers a strategic advantage in optimizing their marketing investments. By leveraging AI technology, marketers can make informed decisions on resource allocation, effectively targeting the right customer segments for maximum return on investment and business impact. Through automated audience segmentation and optimization, brands engage with relevant audiences in real time, achieving greater precision, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. In response to increasing demand for personalized experience, and 71% expressing their expectation of personalization from companies, Sojern's data-driven approach enables brands to deliver highly tailored campaigns at scale while adhering to data privacy regulations. The result is a more strategic and impactful marketing strategy that drives new traveler acquisition, boosts direct bookings, and maximizes guest loyalty.

Here are the three key enhancements to Sojern's AI-powered audiences, built to address travel marketers' objectives, on the Sojern Travel Marketing Platform:

1. Integration of 1st Party Offline Data: By integrating customers' offline data - including unified access to historical booking data across various distribution channels - Sojern empowers marketers to gain greater visibility and develop more robust audiences. Combining offline data with AI-powered audiences provides deeper insights into consumer behavior and preferences, facilitating the creation of highly targeted and personalized campaigns. The platform also enriches and scores offline customer data, helping marketers identify and prioritize conversion-ready customers. Overall, this integration empowers travel marketers to build a holistic and data-driven marketing solution, leading to improved engagement and better business outcomes.
2. Enhanced Support for Reactivation: Sojern's Platform enables marketers a distinctive capability to leverage AI-powered audiences to reactivate prior guests and loyalty members. This capability allows advertisers to identify and engage with previous customers who are currently in the market, driving loyalty throughout the customer journey. By combining reactivation with AI-powered prospecting and retargeting, Sojern's full funnel strategy ensures increased return on investment and heightened customer satisfaction.
3. Expanded Audience Activation: Sojern's AI-powered audiences can now be activated with more control and flexibility in activation through the Traveler Audiences To-Go offering. Advertisers can activate these audiences across multiple advertising platforms of their choice, such as DV360, Xandr, Meta and YouTube, broadening their reach and providing greater convenience and flexibility.

Another significant benefit of Sojern's AI-powered audiences is the integration with extensive data partnerships. By enriching retargeting, reactivation and prospecting audiences with data from Sojern's Traveler Ecosystem, advertisers gain a broader view of customers beyond their owned channels or walled garden media platforms. The use of durable identifiers illuminates blind spots in a privacy-compliant manner, enhancing audience quality and enabling real-time identification of consumers in-market. As a result, AI-powered audiences effectively reach the right audience at the right time with the right message.

"At Sojern, we've always believed in AI's potential to enhance the travel experience. The latest iteration of our Platform benefits both our travel marketing customers and their end consumers," Weinsheimer added.

The CoMarketing Cloud continues to address multi-location marketer pain-points, ranking highly in implementation, usability, and results

SOCi Inc., the leading CoMarketing Cloud for multi-location enterprises, has earned the number one placement in 13 Summer 2023 Reports by G2, the world's largest and most trusted software marketplace, and upheld its place as a Leader in 10 of the company's marketing category Grid^Ⓡ Reports. 

This recognition is based on the responses of real users for each of the categories' related questions featured in the G2 review form. SOCi achieved Leader status on the following G2 Grid Reports by receiving positive reviews from verified users compared to similar products in each category:

• Multi-Location Marketing Platforms
• Local Listing Management
• Local Marketing
• Online Reputation Management
• Store Locator
• Social Media Advertising
• Social Media Analytics
• Social Media Management
• Social Media Monitoring
• Social Media Suites 

From implementation to usability to tangible results, this recognition from G2 and SOCi customers proves that the SOCi platform offers marketers a streamlined tool for maintaining local visibility on countless digital channels across hundreds or thousands of locations, with more "Genius" products on the way. SOCi Genius will help brands drive customer engagement and increase ROI by generating authentic, localized social posts, consistently optimizing online listings data, automatically updating local product and service landing pages, deploying highly targeted and engaging local ads, and more.

"We are constantly working towards unlocking efficiencies for our customers and keeping user experience in mind as we further develop SOCi Genius," said Cynthia Castro, VP of Product at SOCi. "I look forward to getting more highly-intelligent, automated workflows in the hands of marketers so they can leverage generative AI across their digital marketing channels and streamline time-consuming tasks, taking thousands of hours of work off their plates so they can focus on the bigger picture."

Comments from recent reviews of SOCi on G2:

• "SOCi makes it easy to consolidate all the work into a single place… My scheduled posts are easy to see and adjust. I also love the reporting and notifications so I can track and reply to comments and reviews… Awesome platform that does it all." – COO
  
  
• "I love the way SOCi makes it easy to manage all of my listings. With their intuitive interface and range of automated tools, I can easily keep all my online accounts up-to-date. Their analytics provide great insight into our reviews and allow for us to adapt strategies as needed. Additionally, their customer service team is always available to answer any questions I may have." - Director of Marketing
  
  
• "I love pretty much everything about SOCi… I primarily use it for reputation management to get and respond to reviews from a variety of review sites for four brands under our company umbrella in one platform. It gives access to the entire team to stay on top of incoming reviews and has helped us increase engagement across the board!... SOCi is THE reputation management tool, period." - Enterprise Professional

FlexClip introduces AI Text-to-Video, AI Video Script, and AI Image Generator in the latest version to transform the video editing experience.

PearlMountain Limited's flagship video creation platform, FlexClip, is pleased to announce the much-anticipated update to Version 5.0. This release introduces innovative features, including AI Text-to-Video, AI Video Script, and AI Image Generator - marking a new era in video creation.

"We recognize the challenges users encounter in creating unique and high-quality videos," says PearlMountain CEO and founder, Lin Xiao. "To overcome these obstacles, FlexClip has developed innovative video creation tools leveraging cutting-edge AI technology. We believe that FlexClip's AI-powered functionalities will help users achieve never-seen-before results in content creation."

According to the company, the Text-to-Video feature is a game-changer in of itself. More specifically, it can automatically transform prompts or scripts into captivating videos and, with multilingual support, users can create videos tailored to different languages, reaching diverse audiences with ease. Furthermore, FlexClip provides extensive customization options for video editing, allowing users to replace material, add text, modify background music, and apply transition effortlessly, ensuring only the highest quality output.

As a result of these remarkable features, individuals and teams can swiftly create compelling video content for diverse industries, including advertising, product demos, education, brand promotion, and social media, enhancing efficiency and creativity.

If that weren't enough, the AI Video Script Generator also streamlines the creative process by automatically generating well-structured and coherent scripts from provided prompts. Moreover, converting the generated script into a video is a seamless, one-click process that accelerates the production workflow. The AI Video Script feature benefits businesses and individual creators, allowing them to deliver exceptional content with precision and ease.

FlexClip continues to empowers users with the AI Image Generator, enabling automatic generation of visually stunning photos through provided prompts. With 18 style options, such as 3D, cartoons, comics, and art, and support for three common aspect ratios (9:16, 16:9, 1:1), this makes it indispensable for design, advertising, content creation, video production, and web design. Inspiring creativity and saving time, this feature enriches the user experience. 

FlexClip 5.0 introduces powerful new AI tools, expanding its lineup of features that already include Automatic Subtitles, Text-to-Speech, and Background Removal. The enhanced AI toolkit simplifies the production process and enhances creative quality.