If the AI boom has made one thing clear, it’s this: data isn’t just the fuel—it’s the steering wheel. Starburst, the data platform for apps and AI, is doubling down on that message with AI & Datanova 2025, set for October 9 at The Westin New York Times Square.

The one-day in-person event promises a mix of strategy, tech deep dives, and forward-looking predictions. Expect a crowd heavy on CDOs, CIOs, CTOs, chief architects, and data power users—translation: the people actually responsible for making sure AI doesn’t collapse under the weight of bad data.

Borgman’s Keynote: The Enterprise Agent Era

The highlight? Two keynotes from CEO and co-founder Justin Borgman, who plans to take attendees on a tour of the near-future enterprise AI landscape. The tentpole topics:

• Enterprise Agents — AI-powered, autonomous systems that can execute complex business tasks across functions.

• The Data Readiness Gap — Why companies with governed, high-quality, and accessible data will be the only ones still standing in three to five years.

• Blueprints for Scale — The critical role of federated query, governance, and real-time data access in fueling AI apps that work in practice, not just in PowerPoint.

• Predictions for the AI-Driven Enterprise — From reshaped decision-making to entirely new categories of customer experience.

Borgman’s positioning isn’t theoretical. Starburst has built its reputation helping organizations unify and query data across silos, and he’s expected to share real-world customer use cases that show where the data-to-AI pipeline breaks—and how leading firms are patching it.

Executives from Arity, Expedia, OCBC Bank, and others will round out the speaker lineup, offering cross-industry perspectives.

Not Just Talk: The Datanova Edge

Lisa Luscap, CMO of Starburst, pitched the event as less hype, more hands-on strategy:

“AI & Datanova 2025 is designed to give data and technology leaders the strategies, insights, and peer connections they need to drive tangible AI outcomes.”

That’s a deliberate framing in a market increasingly flooded with AI conferences long on buzzwords and short on actionable detail. For Starburst, the event also positions its platform as the bridge between raw enterprise data and AI apps that actually deliver.

The Data Visionary Awards

Alongside the event, Starburst opened nominations for its 2025 Data Visionary Awards, celebrating customers and partners who’ve turned data into competitive advantage. Categories span everything from the AI & Data Visionary Award to the Impact Through AI Award and Data Disruptor Award, with regional and partner-specific honors as well.

Key dates:

• Deadline for submissions: September 5, 2025

• Winners announced: October 9, live at AI & Datanova 2025 in NYC

• Eligibility: Customers, partners, and employees can submit entries, with multiple nominations allowed.

The awards serve a dual purpose—spotlighting customer success stories while showcasing how Starburst’s platform underpins real-world transformation.

The timing couldn’t be sharper. With generative AI hype cooling into questions of ROI and operational reality, enterprises are increasingly focused on data readiness. Analysts have warned that without strong governance and high-quality inputs, AI deployments risk hallucinations, compliance failures, or worse—irrelevance.

By positioning itself at the crossroads of data infrastructure and enterprise AI, Starburst is angling for the sweet spot: enabling companies to connect disparate data sources in real time while making that data usable by AI systems. In other words, if AI is the brain, Starburst wants to be the circulatory system.

And the concept of Enterprise Agents—autonomous AI systems that don’t just analyze but act—is one of the most closely watched frontiers in enterprise tech. If Borgman’s predictions pan out, we may soon see data-driven bots handling everything from pricing adjustments to customer service workflows, backed by clean, federated data.

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PebblePost, the performance marketing company that turned direct mail into a programmatic channel, just added more firepower to its leadership bench. The company has appointed Will Harrington as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), a move designed to accelerate its push into Programmatic Direct Mail and Connected TV (CTV).

Harrington isn’t a newcomer to adtech. With senior roles at Criteo, Vayner3, and MiQ Digital, he’s led revenue teams, scaled client partnerships, and driven growth in both agency and brand-direct settings. Now, he’s bringing that experience to PebblePost at a moment when marketers are hungry for channels that blend digital-like precision with measurable outcomes.

Direct Mail Meets CTV

PebblePost is best known for its Performance Marketing Engine, which transformed direct mail from an old-school tactic into a performance-driven channel. CEO Jacob Ross puts it bluntly:

“PebblePost brought direct mail into the modern CMO's stack by making it a true performance channel, rivaling search and social. Now, with our launch into CTV, we're doing the same for TV advertising.”

That CTV play is no small bet. PebblePost’s new Performance CTV product extends its engine to streaming households across the U.S., engaging “decision-ready consumers” with ads that are measurable and attributable. Early numbers look impressive: 23x incremental ROAS and a 36% lift in conversion rates.

For brands under pressure to prove ROI in a fragmented media landscape, those metrics could make CTV more than just another brand-awareness play.

Leadership Momentum

Harrington’s appointment is part of a broader leadership build-out. Over the last 18 months, PebblePost has brought in Amit Nigam as SVP, Head of Product, and Ryan Horn as SVP, Head of Marketing, signaling a strategy to scale beyond mail and into the wider performance marketing ecosystem.

Harrington seems aligned with that vision:

“PebblePost has the technology, the data, and the vision to lead the next era of performance marketing. The company can combine the precision and measurability of digital with the immersive power of TV—and deliver outcomes marketers can trust.”

The addition of Harrington underscores PebblePost’s bid to be seen not as a niche player but as a performance-first alternative to search and social. With advertisers demanding verifiable ROI, PebblePost is positioning itself to make both mail and CTV channels behave like precision digital campaigns—data-driven, measurable, and performance-backed.

As CTV grows more crowded—with offerings from The Trade Desk, Roku, and Google’s YouTube TV—PebblePost’s angle is clear: measurable outcomes that justify the spend. The question now is whether Harrington can scale that proposition to enterprise marketers looking for a fresh edge in performance.

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Retail media is booming—and Costco just made a strategic move to keep pace. The membership retail giant has selected GrowthLoop to help accelerate its retail media business, tapping the company’s Compound Marketing Engine to improve audience creation, personalization, and campaign performance.

For Costco, the deal is about speed and scale. GrowthLoop’s platform lets marketers build audiences directly from the data cloud, iterate campaigns faster, and maintain the privacy and governance standards that matter to a member-driven business. In practice, that means advertisers on Costco’s retail media network can deliver more relevant messages while Costco sharpens the value it delivers to its 130M+ members.

Turning Data Into Action

Retail media is now a multibillion-dollar category, with players like Walmart, Kroger, and Amazon setting a fast pace. Costco’s adoption of GrowthLoop signals it’s serious about competing. The Compound Marketing Engine essentially gives Costco a centralized hub for retail media operations, letting its team streamline workflows and give advertisers clearer access to audience targeting and measurement.

GrowthLoop positions itself as a bridge between the data cloud and activation layers—helping marketers collapse marketing cycles from months to days. For Costco, that could mean moving from static, batch-based campaigns to real-time personalization at scale.

Chris O’Neill, GrowthLoop CEO, called the partnership a milestone:

“Costco’s commitment to its members is second to none, and we’re grateful to be part of their continued innovation in retail media and marketing.”

The timing is key. Retail media is forecasted to surpass $150 billion in U.S. ad spend by 2026, outpacing TV and traditional digital. For Costco, which has historically relied on its membership model more than ad revenue, this partnership shows intent to monetize its massive member base while keeping customer trust intact.

Unlike open-web advertising, retail media offers highly contextual, first-party data environments—something marketers crave as cookies fade away. Costco’s move to embed GrowthLoop’s engine puts it in the same conversation as other retail media heavyweights, though its value proposition is unique: affluent, loyal members who already trust the brand.

For advertisers, this could mean more precise campaigns running across Costco’s retail media channels with faster iteration cycles and richer personalization. For Costco, it’s an infrastructure play that turns its retail media ambitions into a scalable growth engine.

Whether Costco can catch up to Walmart Connect or Amazon Ads is still a question, but with GrowthLoop under the hood, it’s clearly positioning retail media as a strategic growth driver, not a side hustle.

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For years, advertisers have struggled with a familiar disconnect: creative teams focus on storytelling, while media buyers obsess over performance metrics. Clinch wants to close that gap.

The company, known for its Agentic AI platform for omnichannel advertising, has announced a first-to-market dynamic creative optimization (DCO) strategy that feeds media performance data directly into creative workflows within its Flight Control platform. The result: advertisers can now optimize creative not just by guesswork or surface-level engagement, but by hard business outcomes.

Creative Meets Media in Real Time

Clinch’s new feature expands on its existing ability to ingest external data like offline conversions. Now, it supports third-party aggregated performance data from media partners—think signals from The Trade Desk or other DSPs—pushed directly into Flight Control’s optimization engine.

Inside Flight Control’s Campaign Insights dashboard, those enriched data streams are visualized alongside creative performance metrics, offering advertisers a unified view of what’s actually working across channels and media partners.

CEO and co-founder Oz Etzioni framed it as a necessary evolution:

“By bridging the gap between external media performance and creative insights, we’re giving marketers unprecedented options to control driving outcomes and visibility into what’s truly working and what is not.”

The pitch is clear: Clinch wants to be the only platform that fuses creative and media data into one real-time feedback loop.

Early Proof: Genesis USA and Canvas Worldwide

Clinch says the innovation is already in-market. Genesis USA, working with its agency Canvas Worldwide, tapped the system to move beyond traditional video metrics like CTR and VCR. Instead, they optimized dynamic video creative toward post-exposure search engagement—a mid-funnel signal of intent—using external data from The Trade Desk.

According to Marisa Corvallis, VP and Director of Performance Strategy at Canvas Worldwide:

“We were able to optimize our video strategy in real time based on key intent signals, ultimately delivering more efficient business outcomes.”

That’s a glimpse of how Clinch wants brands to think: don’t just measure impressions or clicks, measure the signals that actually predict conversions.

Dynamic creative optimization isn’t new, but tying it directly to media performance data is. Traditionally, media and creative have operated in parallel silos, with optimization loops limited to clicks, view-through rates, or offline lift studies delivered long after campaigns ended. Clinch’s move brings automation and unification into the workflow, effectively making creative a performance lever, not just a narrative device.

In an era where CMOs are under pressure to prove ROI, that kind of integration could reshape how brands value creative. Instead of “the art department’s domain,” creative becomes a measurable, real-time driver of business results.

Redefining Creative’s Role in Performance Marketing

Flight Control has already built its reputation as a workflow efficiency machine, thanks to integrations across a broad ecosystem of media partners. Now, with this update, Clinch is staking a claim to redefine creative’s role in performance marketing: not just storytelling, but storytelling optimized by the same data signals that drive ad spend decisions.

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In the crowded world of healthcare marketing, timing and context can make or break engagement with physicians. Doceree, the AI-powered operating system for healthcare marketing, is aiming to solve that with its latest innovation: Premium Programmatic.

The platform is designed to reach healthcare professionals (HCPs) precisely when they are consuming clinical content—reading journals, researching treatment options, or exploring new clinical insights. According to Doceree, this is the moment when physicians are most receptive to information and shaping their prescribing opinions.

Precision Meets Scale

Unlike traditional programmatic solutions, Premium Programmatic combines scale, clinical relevance, and innovative formats. Doceree’s platform now allows life sciences marketers to deliver brand messages at the exact moment physicians are searching for answers, making impressions more meaningful and actionable.

Founder and Global CEO Harshit Jain framed it as a leap forward:

“Premium Programmatic brings precision, personalization, and context to every impression. We're meeting HCPs at the point of intellectual curiosity—when they're most receptive to information—with unmatched relevance, reach, and responsibility.”

He added that the platform solves a common challenge in healthcare marketing: the limitations of large, inflexible endemic platforms. Premium Programmatic offers a more interconnected, agile, and intelligent ecosystem, where every impression is contextually relevant, identity-verified, and optimized for format.

Premium Programmatic is purpose-built for how physicians think, search, and learn, offering three main advantages:

1. More Reach

• Largest verified HCP network with 6M+ authenticated professionals across 45+ specialties

• Integration with 2,000+ specialist medical platforms, including journals, news portals, educational sites, and physician communities

2. More Context

• 7M+ clinical terms mapped via Doceree’s patented MeSH-based taxonomy

• Real-time contextual targeting ensures brand messages appear only alongside relevant medical content

• Deterministic NPI-based identity matching enhanced with device/IP data and specialty-level filters

3. More Formats

• Beyond display: programmatic delivery of sponsored scientific articles, branded case studies, CME partnerships, and expert-driven features

• Formats optimized for physician learning, turning marketing impressions into meaningful medical dialogues

• Integrated AI-powered sales rep coming soon, providing HCPs round-the-clock access to personalized content

Healthcare marketing is increasingly moving toward precision, personalization, and accountability. While broader programmatic platforms often struggle with relevance or verification, Doceree’s solution ties every impression to verified HCP identities and clinical context, reducing wasted spend and improving engagement.

The platform also signals a larger industry trend: life sciences marketers are shifting from generic display campaigns to content-driven, educational formats that support real medical decisions—an approach likely to improve both ROI and physician trust.

For brands, the implications are clear: targeted programmatic campaigns can now reach physicians at the point of learning, not just while scrolling a generic site, turning advertising into actionable clinical dialogue.

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ZINFI Technologies, a leader in Unified Partner Management (UPM) solutions, has successfully completed a SOC 2 Type 2 audit for its UPM platform, underscoring the company’s commitment to security, compliance, and operational reliability.

Conducted by Sensiba LLP, the independent audit verified that ZINFI’s internal controls and operational processes meet the stringent standards set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The final report issued a clean opinion with no exceptions, confirming the platform’s robustness and reliability.

Security and Compliance at the Core

The SOC 2 Type 2 certification evaluates operational effectiveness of internal controls over a defined period, focusing on security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. For ZINFI, this audit validates the safeguards and processes protecting sensitive partner and client data across its Unified Partner Management ecosystem.

Founder and CEO Sugata Sanyal commented:

“The successful SOC 2 Type 2 audit is a testament to our strict security measures and dedication to maintaining the highest levels of compliance. This enhances our platform’s security posture and supports our customers’ regulatory requirements.”

ZINFI’s UPM platform allows businesses to manage the entire partner lifecycle, from recruitment to sales and ongoing success—making compliance and security particularly critical in channel-driven environments.

Customer Assurance and Trial Access

To provide transparency, ZINFI makes the SOC 2 Type 2 report available to potential and existing customers under NDA. Additionally, prospective users can experience the platform through a 30-day free trial, which requires no credit card and offers access to ZINFI’s full UPM automation suite.

This approach not only demonstrates confidence in the platform but also allows potential clients to validate its capabilities firsthand before purchase—a critical differentiator in the competitive channel management space.

Industry Context

In the broader UPM and partner marketing industry, security and compliance are increasingly vital. As organizations rely on partner ecosystems to drive sales and customer engagement, platforms that combine automation with verified security controls gain a competitive edge. By achieving SOC 2 Type 2 certification, ZINFI aligns itself with top-tier providers and sets a benchmark for trustworthiness in the channel management sector.

Sensiba LLP, the audit firm, is recognized globally for accounting, tax, risk assurance, and consulting services. Its SOC 2 Type 2 assessment reinforces ZINFI’s credibility among enterprise clients, particularly those with strict regulatory and data governance requirements.

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Understanding human behavior in the workplace has long relied on frameworks like MBTI® and DiSC®, but those tools capture only snapshots of personality. WethosAI, the Organizational Empowerment & Performance Platform, is raising the bar with its new Artificial Individual Intelligence (Aii™)—an AI-powered system that continuously maps and analyzes employee behavior, communication styles, and decision-making patterns in real time.

The goal: give organizations an unprecedented “mirror and lens” to understand, align, and optimize human performance at scale.

Beyond Legacy Behavioral Frameworks

Powered by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and advanced analytics, WethosAI now synthesizes insights from traditional personality frameworks with ongoing behavioral data from daily interactions. CEO Stuart McClure emphasizes that this is more than personality profiling:

“We are delivering the world’s first true Artificial Individual Intelligence (Aii). It’s not just about understanding personality; it’s about providing a dynamic, evolving ‘mirror’ that reflects individual traits and biases in real-time context, enabling unparalleled agility and strategic responsiveness.”

Board member CeCe Morken notes that such intelligence can be transformational:

“WethosAI’s always on-demand coaching and actionable insights create alignment, enabling teams to collaborate effectively, adapt quickly, and deliver results. In today’s hybrid and virtual environments, that combination of alignment, trust, and inclusive leadership isn’t just a competitive advantage—it’s essential.”

1. Artificial Individual Intelligence (Aii™)
Aii™ synthesizes behavioral preferences, communication styles, and decision-making patterns into a multi-layered profile, providing prescriptive guidance far beyond traditional assessments.

2. Dynamic “Mirror & Lens”
Unlike point-in-time evaluations, WethosAI continuously updates its insights. By combining Wethos Styles with MBTI®, DiSC®, and real-world interaction data, leaders gain a comprehensive behavioral blueprint for coaching, team formation, and talent deployment.

3. Agility in an AI-Driven World
WethosAI enables organizations to anticipate friction, leverage strengths, and mitigate biases—essential in an era where AI is reshaping roles and workflows. Decision-making becomes faster and more informed, fostering responsive, high-performing teams.

4. Context-Aware Coaching
The platform tailors guidance to each situation, ensuring that coaching is actionable and directly relevant to both individuals and teams.

As AI reshapes the workplace, human capital insights are becoming as critical as technical capabilities. WethosAI’s approach bridges the gap between behavioral science and actionable AI intelligence, allowing leaders to optimize team performance, improve alignment, and drive measurable outcomes.

For enterprises looking to future-proof their workforce, Aii™ offers a competitive advantage: a system that continuously adapts to both human behavior and organizational needs, turning insights into strategy.

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The NFL isn’t just a football spectacle—it’s still TV advertising’s most powerful stage, according to EDO’s third annual NFL TV Outcomes Report. The study analyzed every national TV ad across the 2024–25 season to identify which creative strategies, categories, and media placements drove measurable consumer response.

“In conversations with CMOs and media directors, I’ve arrived at an undeniable conclusion: the NFL remains the ultimate platform for brand engagement at scale,” said Laura Grover, SVP, Head of Client Solutions at EDO.

NFL Ads Outperform Traditional TV

EDO’s report confirms the league’s unmatched influence on consumer engagement:

• TV Impact vs. Average: One NFL ad during the 2024 regular season generated the same impact as 23 standard TV ads, with 19% higher effectiveness during the regular season, 63% during playoffs, and a whopping 243% for the Super Bowl. The league drives an estimated $5.2 billion per year in national TV ad spend.

• Streaming Boosts Engagement: Streaming-exclusive NFL broadcasts outperformed traditional TV by 66%, with highlights including Amazon’s Black Friday game, Peacock’s Week 1 Brazil broadcast, and Netflix’s Christmas slate.

Winning Categories and Standout Advertisers

Not all industries benefit equally from NFL airtime. The report found:

• Restaurants (+69%), Luxury Auto (+42%), and Finance (+27%) brands delivered the strongest engagement during the regular season.

• Solo Stove led the pack, outperforming the league average by 1,403%, making it the season’s most effective advertiser.

NFL players themselves also proved valuable in driving results: ads featuring stars were 13% more likely to generate engagement. Davante Adams’ Taco Bell spots outperformed the average NFL ad by 124%, while Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce drove standout outcomes for State Farm and Subway.

Strategic Insights for Marketers

The report, introduced by Gina Reduto, EVP of Strategy, Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal, positions the NFL as convergent TV’s crown jewel. Reduto notes that evolving formats and streaming options create new ways for brands to connect with highly engaged viewers.

EDO’s NFL TV Outcomes Report also covers:

• Super Bowl LIX performance and engagement trends

• Regional and demographic analysis of ad effectiveness

• Top-performing categories and creative strategies

For marketers planning campaigns ahead of the NFL Kickoff on September 4, 2025, on NBC and Peacock, these insights offer actionable guidance on maximizing ROI and engagement on the nation’s most-watched sports stage.

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