Alison Simpson’s tenure has transformed CMA into a future-focused hub for Canadian marketers, setting the stage for continued leadership in the sector.

The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) today announced that President and CEO Alison Simpson will retire in May 2026, concluding a transformative period marked by innovation, growth, and industry leadership. Simpson, who assumed the role in November 2022, leaves behind a legacy of measurable impact on Canadian marketing professionals, brands, and the broader economy.

A Career Defined by Modernization and Growth

During her leadership, Simpson spearheaded initiatives designed to future-proof the profession, expanding membership, professional development, and industry advocacy. Among her most notable contributions:

• AI and digital resources for marketers navigating emerging technologies.

• Modernized Chartered Marketer (CM) program, aligning Canada’s only professional marketing designation with evolving industry needs.

• CMA Marketing Week, launched in 2024, which has rapidly become a marquee event attracting thousands of marketers nationwide.

• Digital Marketing Skills Canada (DMSC) program, upskilling 1,800+ marketers from underrepresented groups and supporting 700 SMEs within its first 18 months.

• Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) initiatives, including an annual national survey and workplace discussion guides to drive sector-wide inclusion.

Under Simpson, CMA membership surpassed 450 organizations, welcoming 100 new members since 2023. The number of Chartered Marketers more than doubled, and member satisfaction reached record highs. The association also played a leading role in national advocacy, addressing digital sales tax and interprovincial trade barriers affecting SMEs.

Leadership Transition

The CMA Board of Directors has launched a search for Simpson’s successor with Boyden Canada, led by Vice Chair Meghan Nameth. The board emphasized that Simpson’s vision and strong team culture leave the CMA well-positioned for continued success.

“Alison has made a lasting impact on the CMA and Canada’s marketing community,” said CMA Board Chair Alan Depencier. “Her leadership has strengthened the Association and positioned it for continued success. We are grateful for her dedication and commitment to a smooth transition.”

Simpson, reflecting on her tenure, said:

“Leading the CMA has been the high point of my career. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and confident the CMA will continue to thrive.”

Simpson plans to devote more time to board work and advisory roles within the marketing industry following her retirement, marking the next chapter in a career spanning over two decades in senior marketing leadership.

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AI-powered engagement earns Braze a third consecutive year at the top of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Customer engagement platform Braze (NASDAQ: BRZE) has been recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs, marking the third consecutive year the company has earned the distinction. The evaluation assessed both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute, highlighting Braze’s AI-driven personalization capabilities and scalable engagement solutions.

“This recognition underscores our commitment to help brands turn action into interaction,” said Bill Magnuson, cofounder and CEO of Braze. “As a Leader, we’re passionate about advancing the customer engagement industry by offering intelligent, adaptable, and composable personalization solutions that deliver strong business outcomes.”

AI and Innovation at the Core

Braze has doubled down on product innovation, integrating AI throughout its platform with tools like BrazeAI™ and the OfferFit acquisition, which enable marketers to ideate, test, and optimize campaigns more efficiently. Other enhancements include:

• Native support for new channels like RCS messaging and banners.

• Braze Data Platform, providing greater data agility and integration capabilities.

• Expanded reporting and analytics, giving marketers deeper insights into customer journeys and engagement performance.

By combining AI-powered personalization with multichannel delivery, Braze allows marketers to engage consumers at scale while maintaining relevance, timeliness, and context. The platform’s emphasis on composable solutions means brands can tailor campaigns to specific audiences without being locked into rigid workflows.

Why It Matters

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant offers a market-wide snapshot of technology providers, grouping them as Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, or Niche Players. Being placed as a Leader signals that Braze not only executes well today but also has a strong vision for future customer engagement innovation.

The recognition positions Braze alongside other top-tier platforms in an increasingly competitive landscape, where AI, real-time analytics, and multichannel orchestration are no longer optional—they’re expected. For marketers navigating digital transformation and rising consumer expectations, platforms like Braze provide both scale and intelligence to drive measurable results.

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Mobile-first CX leader Airship joins Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, validating its approach to seamless cross-channel experiences.

Airship, the mobile-first customer experience platform, has been named for the first time in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs (MMH), marking a major milestone for the company. Previously a six-time recognized vendor in Gartner’s Market Guide for Mobile Marketing Platforms, Airship’s debut in the MMH report highlights its mobile-first expertise and customer-centric approach, which extends beyond messaging to optimizing app and website experiences.

Closing the “Experience Gap”

Airship CEO Brett Caine emphasized the platform’s unique focus on where customers actually engage — their mobile devices.

“Airship’s mobile-first platform makes it fast and easy for non-technical teams to optimize every customer journey across apps and websites,” said Caine. “This recognition by Gartner confirms why leading brands choose Airship — we deliver mobile-first expertise that turns every interaction into lasting value and loyalty.”

The acknowledgment comes as brands face a growing “experience gap” — a disconnect between customer expectations and the experiences brands deliver. Airship aims to close that gap with native, in-app, and web experiences that drive conversion, loyalty, and long-term business value.

What Sets Airship Apart

The platform’s key advantages include:

• Seamless Cross-Channel Experiences: Airship empowers brands to deliver dynamic, no-code native app and web content that converts when it matters. Ulta Beauty, for instance, reported 2.8× higher purchase conversion rates among users who experienced Airship’s intelligent personalization.

• Hyper-Segmentation & Personalization: Airship enables real-time, behavior-driven in-session experiences, collecting zero-party and behavioral data to improve engagement precision over time. Orange France credits the platform for dramatically increasing customer survey response rates.

• Mobile Expertise & Innovation: Airship’s legacy innovations — from commercial push notifications to Live Activities and AI-powered tools like Airship Journeys AI and Airship AI Agents — allow brands to accelerate time-to-value while providing seamless experiences across apps, websites, and channels.

Gartner notes that MMH platforms can deliver transformative productivity gains, enabling small teams to compete with larger marketing organizations through faster, more tailored experiences. Airship’s recognition reflects its strength in meeting these demands.

Why It Matters for Marketers

Airship’s Magic Quadrant inclusion underscores a broader trend: mobile-first customer engagement is no longer optional. Brands seeking to remain competitive must optimize in-app and web experiences alongside cross-channel campaigns, leveraging AI and composable architectures to drive measurable business outcomes.

With this recognition, Airship solidifies its position among top-tier multichannel marketing hubs, providing marketers a platform that balances advanced technology, ease of use, and actionable insights for mobile-centric consumer engagement.

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As cookies crumble and privacy rules tighten, advertisers are scrambling for ways to reach audiences who’ve become invisible to traditional targeting systems. Enter Anonymised, a privacy-enhancing ad tech startup, and Bedrock Platform, a modular demand-side platform (DSP) designed for data sovereignty.

The two companies announced a new partnership that makes Anonymised’s ID-less audiences natively available on Bedrock. For the first time, advertisers using Bedrock can directly tap into these anonymized datasets and run precision campaigns across premium inventory—without relying on third-party IDs.

Why It Matters

Safari and iOS users—representing a massive slice of high-value audiences—have long been adland’s blind spot. Apple’s privacy-first stance left many platforms unable to measure or target effectively, resulting in under-monetized inventory and missed opportunities. Anonymised and Bedrock aim to fix that.

The integration essentially brings “walled garden-level” precision to the open web, letting advertisers chase incremental conversions while keeping brand safety and user privacy intact. Publishers benefit too, by monetizing audiences that were previously unaddressable.

Features and Benefits

• Native Integration: Anonymised’s ID-less audience data is directly embedded into Bedrock’s platform.

• Cross-Channel Reach: Advertisers can extend campaigns across screens, devices, and browsers.

• AI-Driven Tools: Bedrock provides curation workflows, deal management, and real-time activation powered by machine learning.

• Safari & iOS Unlock: One of the partnership’s headline features is making high-value Safari audiences measurable and addressable.

The Bigger Picture

The move reflects a growing trend: privacy-first targeting that doesn’t sacrifice performance. Competitors like The Trade Desk and Google are racing to solve similar ID-loss challenges with their own frameworks (UID 2.0, Privacy Sandbox). But Anonymised and Bedrock’s collaboration could stand out for its simplicity and focus on incremental conversions in low-bid, high-quality environments.

Voices from the Field

“This is exactly the kind of programmatic innovation the industry needs,” said Mattia Fosci, CEO at Anonymised, emphasizing the measurable conversions possible from unaddressable audiences.

For Bedrock, the integration hits at its core mission. “We’re equipping buyers with tools to engage premium audiences while upholding the highest standards of user privacy,” added Shane Shevlin, CEO of Bedrock Platform.

Market Impact

If it works as promised, this could be a blueprint for the post-cookie era—where advertisers don’t have to choose between privacy and precision. For brands with long purchase cycles and multi-device audiences, the Bedrock-Anonymised combo could be a serious competitive advantage.

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Contact centers have long been caught in a tug-of-war between cutting costs and keeping customers happy. The formula has often been simple: squeeze agents harder while deploying more scripts, dashboards, and tracking software. The result? Burnout for humans, frustration for customers.

AmplifAI thinks it has a better answer. The Dallas-based company, founded in 2018, has raised $33.7 million in Series B funding and credit facility to fuel its vision of blending human intelligence and artificial intelligence into one seamless performance platform. The round was led by CVS Health Ventures, with continued support from LiveOak Ventures and Dallas Venture Partners.

The funding will accelerate AmplifAI’s push to scale across industries like healthcare, financial services, telecom, and retail—markets where customer experience can make or break loyalty.

What AmplifAI Actually Does

AmplifAI positions itself as a human + AI orchestration layer for the contact center. The pitch: let AI handle the routine “password reset” or “shipment tracking” calls, freeing up human agents for emotionally nuanced, complex issues that require empathy.

But it goes further than routing. AmplifAI unifies customer surveys, call recordings, chat logs, chatbot transcripts, metrics, and behavioral data into a single system. Generative AI then analyzes this firehose of information to:

• Identify systemic issues (e.g., recurring product glitches or confusing billing steps).

• Generate real-time coaching and tailored feedback for agents.

• Trigger workflows and automated actions to resolve customer pain points faster.

In theory, it’s a closed loop of performance optimization: AI diagnoses problems, coaches agents, and executes fixes—all while delivering measurable improvements in conversion, resolution, and customer satisfaction.

A Market Under Pressure

The timing isn’t accidental. Contact centers are under more pressure than ever:

• Costs are climbing as wages rise and turnover remains stubbornly high.

• Customers are less forgiving, with loyalty hanging by a thread in competitive sectors like healthcare and retail.

• AI hype is hitting full stride, with rivals from Nice and Five9 to Genesys and Talkdesk racing to bake generative AI into their platforms.

Where AmplifAI differentiates itself is in unifying both sides of the workforce. Most competitors either focus on automation (AI agents replacing humans) or on agent performance (training, QA, coaching). AmplifAI insists the future is hybrid: human agents augmented by AI, both optimized in the same system.

Investors Are Buying the Vision

“AmplifAI’s capabilities are bringing greater consistency and effectiveness to call center operations by giving leaders clear insight into behaviors and practices that drive success,” said Vijay Patel, CVS Health Ventures.

Translation: it’s not just about faster call resolution—it’s about systematically coaching an entire workforce at scale, without relying on hit-or-miss manual training. For a company like CVS, which operates massive contact centers, that kind of efficiency could ripple into billions saved and millions of happier customers.

Results That Turn Heads

AmplifAI claims some eye-catching metrics from existing deployments:

• Sales conversions up 100%

• Cost per contact down nearly 10%

• First-contact resolution improved by 20%+

That kind of performance lift explains why AmplifAI was named a Gartner Cool Vendor (2024) and tagged as a Leading Pioneer in Automated QA/QM by CMP Research.

The CEO’s Take

“We are reimagining the contact center with human-centric AI—empowering people to be more effective while virtual agents reduce costs,” said Sean Minter, CEO of AmplifAI.

It’s a careful phrasing: the company doesn’t present AI as replacing humans, but as rebalancing their workload. In practice, that may be exactly the balance regulators, customers, and employees are looking for.

Implications: Beyond the Call Center

The AmplifAI approach could also spill into other industries where human and AI workflows collide—think banking back offices, retail service desks, or even healthcare patient support. The company’s traction with Fortune 500 players suggests the platform isn’t just theoretical but scalable in environments with thousands of employees.

Still, AmplifAI faces steep competition. Giants like Salesforce (with Einstein AI) and Microsoft (via Nuance) are circling the same market, and contact center operators are notoriously slow to rip and replace existing infrastructure. The challenge will be proving AmplifAI can coexist with, rather than compete against, entrenched systems.

The Bottom Line

AmplifAI’s $33.7 million raise signals strong investor belief in a hybrid AI-human model for the future of customer experience. As privacy concerns, customer expectations, and cost pressures mount, companies need smarter ways to blend empathy with efficiency.

If AmplifAI delivers on its promises, contact centers might finally stop being the customer’s least favorite place—and start becoming a competitive advantage.

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Small businesses rarely get the kind of enterprise-grade tools that Fortune 500 companies take for granted. CRMs are either too expensive, too complex, or too fragmented, while customer calls still vanish into voicemail black holes after hours.

Max Pull Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in New York, thinks it’s found the solution. The company just launched Magnet Suite CRM and Magnet Caller, a pair of AI-powered tools designed to centralize business operations, automate workflows, and give small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) a fighting chance against better-funded rivals.

Breaking Down the Tools

• Magnet Suite CRM: Think of it as a Swiss Army knife for SMB operations. It manages workflows, payments, forms, analytics, lead tracking, follow-ups, and customer records—all in one dashboard. Businesses can send invoices, link payments to profiles, and keep tabs on customer activity without juggling half a dozen disconnected apps.

• Magnet Caller: An always-on AI assistant that handles inbound calls, schedules appointments, and captures leads even after hours. No more “sorry we missed your call”—Magnet Caller makes sure businesses stay responsive 24/7.

Together, the two tools aim to plug critical gaps: lost leads, missed calls, and scattered data. For SMBs already stretched thin, the pitch is straightforward—enterprise-level capabilities at small-business prices.

Why It Matters

In today’s digital economy, customer expectations don’t care about company size. A missed call or delayed follow-up can mean losing a customer to a competitor. Enterprise firms solve this with expensive platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zendesk. SMBs, meanwhile, are often left piecing together spreadsheets, Gmail, and Post-it notes.

By packaging AI automation with a lightweight CRM, Max Pull Marketing is betting there’s pent-up demand for an affordable alternative that doesn’t require a dedicated IT team to run.

Early Wins

The company already has proof points:

• Healthcare franchise client: +40% consultations booked by capturing after-hours inquiries.

• Kontota Grooming: +42% revenue and +200% local visibility.

• Long Island Spine Specialist: +61% patient inquiries.

• Crown Findings: +55% engagement and +37% conversions.

These kinds of numbers suggest SMBs don’t just need more leads—they need systems that prevent leaks in the funnel.

Market Context

The launch comes at a time when SMB-focused AI platforms are booming. Rivals like Zoho and Freshworks have been aggressively targeting this market, while enterprise players are scaling down offerings to win smaller accounts. The difference here is vertical focus: Max Pull built its platform while serving franchise and service-based brands, tailoring features like multi-location scheduling, web-form capture, and automated follow-ups.

Integration is another key play. With connections for Gmail, Outlook, QuickBooks, and more, Magnet Suite plugs into existing workflows instead of forcing businesses to rip out what they already use. Zapier integration is also on the roadmap, which could be a game-changer for SMBs who rely on niche apps.

Security and Scalability

For SMBs, security has historically been an afterthought—but not anymore. With rising data protection regulations, Max Pull emphasizes encryption and compliance to give businesses confidence their customer data won’t be compromised.

Equally important is scalability. The platform is designed to grow with the business, avoiding the costly, disruptive platform swaps that plague growing companies.

The Founder’s Take

“Our goal is to give SMBs enterprise-level operational tools at a small-business price,” said Raffi Ohanian, founder of Max Pull Marketing. “By combining AI with their workflows, owners can focus on growth—not manual processes.”

The Bottom Line

The Magnet Suite CRM and Magnet Caller aren’t just about automation—they’re about leveling the playing field for SMBs. By bundling workflow automation, call handling, and lead management into one AI-powered platform, Max Pull Marketing is positioning itself as a credible challenger to bigger names in the CRM space.

For small businesses stuck between too-basic tools and too-costly enterprise platforms, this could be the middle ground they’ve been waiting for.

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If you’re a B2B marketer in 2025, one thing is clear: intent data is everywhere—and not all of it is useful. Most providers still rely heavily on third-party signals, scraped browsing patterns, or inferred activity that doesn’t always map to real buying intent.

pharosIQ thinks it can fix that. The company has announced expanded capabilities for its atlasIQ platform, promising “unmatched visibility into buyers worldwide.” By leaning on its own first-party content ecosystem—think case studies, reviews, pricing docs, and guides—pharosIQ claims it can surface true intent signals at the contact level, not just vague account-level guesses.

What’s New in atlasIQ

The latest release builds on pharosIQ’s proprietary engagement engine and contextual AI to give marketers a more detailed view of buyer behavior. New features include:

• TAM Visibility – Map where accounts sit in the funnel and see which contacts are most active.

• TAL Analysis – Understand which target accounts are actively evaluating solutions and their stage in the journey.

• Expanded Topic Intelligence – Move past broad keywords to capture nuanced product- or service-specific interests.

• Cohort-Level Insights – Segment buyers by industry, geography, revenue, or seniority to refine campaigns.

• Competitive Intelligence – Benchmark attention by comparing engagement with your content against rivals.

• Purchase Propensity Signals – Spot account-level trends across job functions and departments to prioritize outreach.

In short: atlasIQ isn’t just tracking who clicked a whitepaper—it’s showing what content matters, who’s engaging with it, and how close they are to making a decision.

Why It Matters

As privacy regulations tighten and cookies fade into irrelevance, first-party intent data is becoming marketing’s most valuable currency. pharosIQ’s model, which draws from content it owns and controls, offers a level of precision third-party providers struggle to match.

This isn’t just academic. For sales and marketing leaders, the difference between knowing who’s casually browsing and who’s downloading pricing docs after comparing vendors can mean the difference between wasted spend and closed deals.

Competitive Landscape

The intent data space is crowded. 6sense, Bombora, Demandbase, and ZoomInfo all pitch variations of account-based intent tracking. The catch? Many rely on third-party data partnerships or ad network footprints.

By contrast, pharosIQ positions atlasIQ as closer to the source—tracking engagement within its own network of B2B content. The result, the company argues, is not just better accuracy but better context, since it knows exactly which content assets are driving signals.

It’s a subtle but important distinction: instead of guessing at intent, atlasIQ claims to observe it directly.

Industry Voices

“These capabilities give B2B marketers a level of intelligence they’ve never had before,” said Chris Vriavas, Chief Strategy Officer at pharosIQ. “By owning the signals and modeling engagement at the contact level, atlasIQ empowers marketing and sales leaders to prioritize the right accounts, tailor messaging to buyer needs, and outmaneuver the competition globally.”

Translation: if you’re chasing accounts with generic keyword-based targeting, your rivals using atlasIQ may already be tailoring messages to buyers actively comparing them against you.

Looking Ahead

pharosIQ says it isn’t stopping here. The company teased additional features in the pipeline, focused on delivering even greater clarity into buyer behavior and vendor evaluation patterns. If atlasIQ continues to evolve, it could cement pharosIQ’s position as a go-to alternative in a market where “intent” has too often been a black box.

The Bottom Line

In a B2B landscape where marketing budgets are under scrutiny and sales cycles are lengthening, having clear, first-party insights into what buyers are actually doing is a serious advantage. With its latest updates, atlasIQ is making the case that precision beats scale when it comes to intent.

For marketers tired of noisy third-party signals, pharosIQ’s approach may feel like a long-overdue shift toward transparency. The big question now: will others follow suit, or will pharosIQ carve out a defensible niche as the first-party intent leader?

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When it comes to digital experience, fragmentation is the enemy. AB Tasty thinks it has the cure. The company today launched One Platform, a unified experimentation and personalization suite that brings client-side and server-side testing under one roof.

For years, product managers, marketers, and developers have been juggling multiple tools just to validate features, optimize customer journeys, and avoid botched rollouts. AB Tasty’s pitch: a single workflow that handles everything from progressive rollouts to cross-stack experimentation, complete with no-code tools for non-technical teams and robust APIs for developers.

Why It Matters

Experimentation has become a core pillar of digital product strategy, but siloed solutions have slowed teams down. AB Tasty is positioning One Platform as the bridge—connecting marketing’s need for quick tests with engineering’s need for safe deployments.

Key capabilities include:

• Safe, progressive rollouts – Control deployments to minimize risk.

• Cross-stack testing – Measure features across backend, web, and mobile.

• Unified customer journeys – Ensure consistent personalization everywhere.

• AI-driven insights – Optimize based on real sentiment and intent.

• Developer control – APIs, monitoring, and rollback baked in.

“Fragmented tools have forced teams into silos, leading to disruption, tests without impact, and potential mistakes,” said Rémi Aubert, AB Tasty Co-Founder and CEO. “One Platform closes that gap by giving product, marketing, and developer teams one place for experimentation, personalization, and feature management.”

The Bigger Picture

AB Tasty has been steadily bulking up its digital experience stack. In 2023, it acquired EmotionsAI to bring sentiment analysis into the fold. In 2024, it pushed into recommendation and merchandising tech. With One Platform, the company is signaling it’s no longer just another optimization vendor—it’s angling for a seat at the table alongside the likes of Optimizely, LaunchDarkly, and Adobe Target.

Co-founder Alix de Sagazan framed the move as part of a larger mission: “By bringing client-side and server-side experimentation into one platform, we’re empowering digital teams to align on outcomes, de-risk deployments, and deliver customer value faster than ever.”

What’s Next

With AI-powered insights and the promise of unified workflows, AB Tasty is betting that experimentation will shift from a niche activity to the cultural norm inside digital teams. If One Platform delivers, it could help companies move faster without breaking things—a balance many have yet to achieve.

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