Company augments its Southeast Asia operating footprint, accelerating continued global expansion

DoubleVerify, a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data and analytics, announced today that it is expanding its global presence with the launch of business operations in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

This expansion underscores DoubleVerify's commitment to provide local support to its growing client base across Southeast Asia. Conrad Tallariti, RVP of Sales for Asia said, “The region has enormous potential, evidenced by high growth in digital ad spending as compared with the worldwide average. As advertisers increase their digital investments in the region, our team is working closely with them to protect their ad spend and maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns. Key DV customers in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam include local, regional and global brands such as Colgate-Palmolive, foodpanda and OPPO among numerous others.”

With the increasing momentum in these markets, the company recently elevated Stephanie King to the role of Senior Director overseeing Indonesia and the Philippines market. Jeremy Chang’s expanded role as a Senior Director will encompass growth responsibilities across Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong. In conjunction with the regional growth and expansion of leadership roles, DoubleVerify plans to increase local in-market sales resources in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam over the coming quarters.

"DoubleVerify's expansion into Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines is a milestone in our global growth strategy," said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. "These markets have shown significant growth in digital advertising, and our increased presence will enable us to better support our customers, respond to local market needs, and strengthen our overall position across the Southeast Asia region."

DV’s agency partnerships in the region include the regional offices of all major global and regional agency networks. The company also works with supply-side and demand-side platforms, marketplaces, ad exchanges, and retail media networks within Southeast Asia.

The expansion into these new markets demonstrates DoubleVerify's commitment to build an expansive global footprint. The company will continue to explore opportunities for further growth as it pursues its mission to make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure – worldwide.

Banuba released the new versions of its plugins for Agora SDK, available worldwide. Now Agora users can easily get access to the Banuba extension since Agora is a one stop for communication and integration of the SDK.

Banuba, a market leader in augmented reality, is deepening its relationship with Agora, a global leader in Real-Time Engagement Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). With the release of the updated extensions for iOS, Android and Web, the companies are moving to the next level in their cooperation. Agora will manage the entire plugin integration process, making it even more convenient for the clients.

The products of both companies have a natural synergy.

1. Complementary features. Agora SDKs provide the video calling functionality, while Banuba Face AR SDK augments it with virtual backgrounds, AI face touch-up, AR filters, and other important functionalities.
   
   
2. Cutting development time. The main selling point of SDKs is the massive decrease in time-to-market they grant. Using two of them together allows for even more useful features in a fraction of the time it takes to build them from scratch.
   
   
3. Easy integration. When using two SDKs in the same product, they have to seamlessly work with each other as well as with the core app. Ensuring everything connects smoothly could take a lot of time. However, Banuba’s extensions are built to be natively compatible with Agora’s products, which means integration takes a few lines of code and doesn’t require extensive testing.

Banuba and Agora have been working together since 2019. The partnership has been beneficial to our joint customers , and we have expanded our SDK platform coverage with Agora so our customers can deliver compelling AR features to their end users across a wider range of platforms and devices.

Trend Micro study finds many business leaders don't get the connection 

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global cybersecurity leader, today released new research revealing that many business leaders don't see the link between security and data insight – despite acknowledging that effective security can accelerate digitization.

Jon Clay, VP of Threat Intelligence at Trend: 

"Data-driven insight is an increasingly critical foundation for the sustainable growth boards are demanding today. But unless that data is properly secured, such initiatives will be built on sand. It's time for business leaders to recognize the importance of security to their growth plans, and for CISOs to make a more compelling case for their function."

Trend Micro's interviews with global business decision makers found 61% of organizations agree there is an urgent need to diversify their revenue streams in 2023, against an uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop.

A further 68% said access to data will be fundamental to unlocking these new revenue streams, while the vast majority (91%) claimed they can achieve cost savings to some extent through better use of data.

Data analytics and similar tools can drive enhanced business agility, by helping organizations to anticipate market trends, run financial forecasting scenarios and more.

However, more than one third of business decision makers said they don't understand the connection between cybersecurity and data insights. Even more fail to join the dots between security and both generating new revenue streams (48%) and cost reduction (55%).

Also of concern is the fact that more than half of respondents claimed their organization's current security policies and processes create information silos. This could actively undermine data insight projects, and reinforces the need for more joined-up, platform-based security approaches.

Although some business leaders are still not convinced, nearly two thirds believe security policy can increase the speed of digitization.

The research also revealed evidence of maturing security posture. Nearly three quarters of IT decision maker respondents said the organization tracks and reports on cyber risk levels, with a third reporting this to the board as a business risk measurement.

A further 79% said their organization has a Cyber Improvement Program to help meet its digital transformation goals.

*Trend Micro commissioned Sapio Research to poll 2718 business decision makers in companies with 250+ employees across 25 countries.

Partnerships With Neutronian, Deepsee.io & SafeGuard Privacy Will Help
Marketers Achieve DEI Goals, Reduce Fraud, Improve Privacy Compliance

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the world's leading program to fight criminal activity and promote brand safety in digital advertising, today launched a new frontier in marketer transparency through the integration of robust industry data around DEI ratings, privacy compliance, and Made-for-Advertising (MFA) sites into TAG TrustNet, the technological framework for the TAG Certified for Transparency Program.

Through partnerships with Neutronian, Deepsee.io, and SafeGuard Privacy, TAG TrustNet will provide marketers with unprecedented visibility into their ad campaigns to help them achieve their diverse media spending goals, reduce MFA waste, and strengthen privacy compliance.

"Building on the success of our transformational partnership with the ANA to give marketers access to full transactional data across their supply chain, TAG is opening a new frontier in transparency that allows marketers to better achieve their diversity, anti-fraud, and privacy goals," said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. "By extending its capabilities to include a broad range of vital marketer priorities, TAG TrustNet can serve as an end-to-end transparency solution for brands and their partners."

Among TAG TrustNet's expanded transparency capabilities will be:

• Minority ownership ratings - Based on Neutronian's NQI Minority Ownership Verification, TAG TrustNet will integrate validation and scoring of publishers or companies who identify as minority owned, including female-owned and LGBTQ+ owned businesses, so brands can better achieve their DEI goals.
• MFA site identification - Using Deepsee.io's PublisherRisk platform, TAG TrustNet will help marketers identify and non-performant and low-quality MFA sites from their campaigns.
• Privacy compliance - In partnership with SafeGuard Privacy's Vendor Compliance Hub software, TAG TrustNet will be able to show marketers that their supply chain partners are transparently demonstrating their privacy compliance.

"Brand advertisers increasingly want to ensure their marketing dollars not only drive revenue but also support the broader social and corporate goals of their companies," said Lisa Abousaleh, CEO and co-founder of Neutronian. "We are delighted to work with TAG to provide enhanced data to help marketers improve the transparency of their supply chains and achieve their DEI goals."   

"Marketers are wasting billions of dollars in programmatic ad spend each year on Made-for-Advertising sites which plaster huge amounts of viewable ad-units over recycled clickbait content, and which don't have organic visitors," said Rocky Moss, CEO of DeepSee.io. "When auditing campaigns for our partners, we find that filtering the domains in this list regularly produces unbelievable results in terms of conversion efficiency. By integrating DeepSee.io data into TAG TrustNet, we will pull back the curtain on those deceptive sites, so marketers can direct their resources into more effective and brand-safe inventory."

"Privacy laws like CPRA require vendor due diligence, and compliance can be a complex undertaking for marketers, given the vast number of companies involved in the supply chain and the difficulty in obtaining relevant privacy information from them," said Richy Glassberg, co-founder and CEO of SafeGuard Privacy. "SafeGuard Privacy's standardized, auditable assessments streamline and automate that process even further for marketers. Working with TAG TrustNet, we provide the transparency marketers need around the privacy practices of their partners."

TAG's "Certified for Transparency" Program establishes a "shared truth" on campaign data for participants across the supply chain, increasing confidence and control for buyers and raising the value of inventory for sellers who can prove they are responsible, accountable, and transparent. A central requirement for seal recipients is participation in a TAG-recognized utility that has the ability to create a single trusted record for transactions through real-time reconciling and sharing advertising log files with marketers.

Opera's flagship browser today passes the baton to the brand-new Opera One on Windows, Mac and Linux. Opera One introduces the first truly native browser AI, Aria, and boasts a new Modular Design, a redesigned browser architecture, and innovative new features like Tab Islands.

Opera One, the latest incarnation of the Opera browser, is out of testing and ready for download. What would have been the 100th version of Opera now marks the beginning of a new evolution cycle for the Norwegian browser company's flagship product.

Redesigned from the ground up to usher in a new era of AI-based browsing, Opera One is the first browser to come with an integrated browser AI, Aria. Aria can be reached via a new command line, as well as from the browser sidebar. It offers free access to a leading GPT-based solution along with up-to-date information from the web.

Since earlier this year, Opera has been making bold moves in the generative AI space in order to provide its users with a reimagined browsing experience that boosts their productivity and creativity through various ways of interacting with browser AI.

"As people who obsess over browser innovation, we saw fit to rethink the role of the browser in light of the recent developments in the AI space. As opposed to other browser companies, Opera didn't simply add AI services to its browser. We went back to the drawing board and redesigned our flagship browser. Opera One is built around Aria, our native browser AI, and is the culmination of our work so far," said Joanna Czajka, product director at Opera.

The first Opera browser with native browser AI

Aria, Opera's new browser AI, is a key component of Opera One and the first Opera feature that named itself. With Aria, Opera One users are getting access to a leading generative AI service for free. The service is a result of Opera's collaboration with OpenAI, but with expanded capabilities.

Based on Opera's own Composer AI engine, Aria connects to OpenAI's GPT and is enhanced by additional capabilities such as adding live results from the web. Aria is both a web and browser expert that allows users to collaborate with AI while looking for information on the web, generating text or code, or getting their product queries answered. When it comes to customer support, Aria is knowledgeable about Opera's entire database of support documentation and uses the company's current product knowledge to answer users' questions.

Opera One users are also getting a brand new command line that allows them to use the ctrl+/ (Win) or the cmd+/ keyboard shortcut to display an overlay and interact with Aria. Whenever a question comes to mind, they can use the command line to ask Aria a question and either interact with the browser AI's response immediately in the sidebar or go back to browsing.

Aria also makes use of the AI Prompts feature Opera introduced earlier this year in early access. Following user feedback and extensive testing, the ability to get contextual prompts by right-clicking or highlighting text in the browser is now plugged into Aria as well.

Acknowledging the popularity of ChatGPT, Opera One also offers users access to the popular service in the browser sidebar.

As opposed to other browser solutions, the AI in Opera is a user-controlled experience, which means users can choose to opt into AI services or to not engage with them. To use Aria, they have to open the browser AI in the sidebar and log in or sign up for a free Opera account if they don't already have one.

Tab Islands: a new, intuitive way of interacting with tabs

A key element of Opera One is Tab Islands, and the way they change how the browser's tabs behave. Tabs are a fundamental part of browsing but the standard way of interacting with them hasn't evolved much since the early days of the web and no longer corresponds to the richness of the internet and the countless ways we utilize it. For example, researchers have found that the existing tab design in browsers makes it difficult to jump between sets of tasks. Moreover, according to Opera's own research, the majority of people feel overwhelmed by how messy their tabs get and wish web browsers would do more to help them manage this.

Opera One's Tab Islands address this challenge. Tab Islands are a new way of keeping related tabs together in an intuitive way, based on context – without forcing users to change their habits or to even give it a thought. Users gain flexibility in interacting with their tabs: they can keep different browsing contexts separate, move tabs around, collapse islands to make them small and come back to them later or save them into bookmarks or pinboards.

When a user creates a trip itinerary and researches hotels and routes, the tabs opened in that context will stay together in a dedicated tab island. Or maybe they have a bunch of Google Docs they use for work? They, too, will automatically get a tab island of their own. As they browse and more tab islands are created, Opera One users can easily distinguish the topics they were focusing on and switch between them.

Opera One's new Modular Design and new architecture with Multithreaded Compositor for smoother navigation than ever

Opera has a history of reinventing itself to address the changing needs of its users as well as the evolving nature of the web. With Opera One, the browser has been redesigned according to Modular Design. The new design philosophy, which is being implemented in Opera's flagship today for the first time, allows Opera to over time build a more powerful and feature-rich browser that is ready for a generative AI-based future. The Opera browser is thus beginning its metamorphosis into a browser that will dynamically adapt to users' needs by bringing only the key features to the foreground: the relevant modules within Opera One will adjust automatically based on context, providing the user with a more liquid and effortless browsing experience.

Beyond rethinking the look of its interface, Opera also re-engineered its desktop browser under the hood, implementing a new browser architecture with a multithreaded compositor to deliver a faster and smoother user interface layer. With the Multithreaded Compositor, Opera One is the first major Chromium-based browser that brings its UI to life like never before. Combined with the new Modular Design Principles, this new architecture enables the implementation of new features and allows Opera to continue its differentiation from other Chromium-based browsers.

Opera One is the beginning of a new evolution cycle for the flagship Opera browser with many more AI-centric updates that will vastly enhance the users web experience planned for later this year.

Generative AI is here to stay and Opera One offers an intuitive entry point into the space, allowing users to immediately start enhancing their lives by tapping into its potential in a controlled way.

CMS Max, one of the leading eCommerce website builders in the United States, has developed an integration with Fast Simon. This new collaboration allows for seamless site search without coding or integration requirements, along with no need for maintenance. Fast Simon is compatible with all merchants and eCommerce platforms, making it the perfect choice for companies looking to upgrade their online presence.

"Modern consumers expect elite shopping experiences that are tailored to their needs and desires," says Zohar Gilad, CEO of Fast Simon. "Fast Simon and CMS Max enable retailers to provide exactly that."

Fast Simon is the leader in AI-powered shopping optimization. Its revolutionary platform uniquely integrates shopper, behavioral, and store signals for strategic merchandising and optimized shopping experiences that dramatically increase conversions and average order value (AOV). Fast Simon powers shopping optimization at thousands of fast-growing merchants and sophisticated brands.

"Together, CMS Max and Fast Simon offer a wide range of eCommerce solutions that will help businesses get the most out of their website," said Sam Pizzo, CEO of CMS Max. "This includes enhanced search capabilities, increased conversation rates, and advanced SEO techniques to improve online visibility and attract more customers."

With this powerful platform, customers can quickly find what they're looking for with visual search results, personal search recommendations, and refined product captures. With better search results and enhanced merchandising capabilities, they are also more likely to purchase products or services from your site.

CMS Max is known for having the fastest website technology, the most SEO-friendly websites ever developed, and the perfect structure to make browsing, ordering, and payment processing as secure and user-friendly as possible. Our websites are also ADA compliant.

Phocas Software, a cloud-based, SaaS company specialising in business planning and analytics, today announced the successful completion of its System and Organization Controls 2 Type II (SOC 2 Type II) examination.

The SOC 2 Type II qualification reinforces the company’s ongoing commitment to data security.

SOC 2 Type II reports are recognized globally and affirm that Phocas’ infrastructure, software, people, data, policies, procedures and operations have been formally reviewed.

The external audit examined how well Phocas data security systems and controls performed over a 12-month period. The Type II accreditation is a progression from the Type I audit completed by Phocas in 2021.

Myles Glashier, founder and CEO of Phocas says data security is a priority for the privately-owned global software business.

“Our customers rely on us every day to store and process critical information so they can do the jobs that need accurate data like managing cashflow, budgeting, forecasting and workforce planning, which makes protecting that data essential,” said Glashier.

"Business owners, CFOs, accountants and sales managers need to have assurance that their sensitive data is safe within our cloud-based ecosystem, so our infrastructure and processes need to be aligned,” explained Glashier.

“A dedicated team at Phocas looks after the data systems and controls and carry out regular testing. We also work closely with world-class technology partners like AWS. It’s imperative with the rise of cyberattacks to undergo audits to ensure our high standards are maintained and assessed. It gives us and our customers great peace of mind that the measures are in place to keep their data and their customers’ data safe by having achieved all requirements of SOC 2 Type II,” said Glashier.

Established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the SOC 2 examination is designed for organizations of any size, regardless of industry and scope, by ensuring the personal assets of their potential and existing customers are protected.

The independent examination, conducted by global cybersecurity assessment firm A-LIGN validated Phocas’ security practices and controls. A-LIGN was satisfied Phocas met the Trust Services principles and criteria for security and availability from January to December 2022.