ArcSpan Lands $5.2M to Supercharge First-Party Data Monetization for Publishers

As the ad tech world braces for a cookieless future, ArcSpan is doubling down on helping publishers turn their audience data into dollars. The publisher-first audience monetization platform just secured a $5.2 million Seed Extension, aimed at accelerating its AI roadmap and bringing new data tools to market faster.

The raise—backed by a mix of new and existing investors—signals strong confidence in ArcSpan’s mission: enabling publishers to transform first-party audience signals into high-performing, advertiser-ready solutions.

“Publishers are sitting on powerful audience signals but lack the tools to activate and monetize them efficiently,” said Art Muldoon, Co-Founder and CEO of ArcSpan. “This capital helps us build what publishers need—solutions that prioritize control, quality, and yield.”

What’s New: AI Upgrades & Turnkey Monetization

With the fresh funding, ArcSpan will speed up development on several new platform components:

• Audience Builder 3.0 – An AI-driven segmentation engine for building real-time, intent-based audiences.

• PMP Activation Hub – A marketplace layer for curated publisher deals, pre-integrated with SSPs and DSPs.

• ArcSpan QualityCloud™ & AQI – Contextual quality and ad placement scoring for smarter inventory planning.

These additions aim to streamline what has long been a fragmented post-cookie landscape: publishers with rich data but no scalable way to package it for advertisers, and marketers looking for signal-rich inventory without the baggage of third-party tracking.

The Bigger Play: From Data to Demand

Launched in 2023, ArcSpan’s AMS (Audience Management System) introduced the company’s Triple-A Framework—Aggregation, Amplification, and Activation—designed to simplify how publishers extract value from their own user data. Since then, ArcSpan has inked deals with major media companies and supply-side platforms (SSPs), serving as a connective layer between audience data and ad demand.

“ArcSpan is solving one of digital media’s toughest challenges,” said Al Muzaurieta, Co-Founder at investor firm Good Apple. “They’re enabling high-fidelity audience targeting that’s scalable and privacy-forward.”

With third-party cookies on their last legs, publishers are being pushed to act like data companies—whether they’re ready or not. ArcSpan’s model gives them enterprise-grade monetization infrastructure without requiring a PhD in data science or a battalion of engineers.

The company’s emphasis on publisher control and plug-and-play integrations is timely, especially as SSPs, DSPs, and advertisers all scramble for new signal sources.

With this latest round, ArcSpan plans to grow its product, data science, and publisher success teams—and deepen its reach across the programmatic ecosystem.

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Lytx Rolls Out AI-Powered Fatigue Detection Tech to Make Fleet Roads Safer

Fatigue has long haunted the commercial fleet industry—lurking behind late-night highway drifts, slow reaction times, and thousands of preventable collisions. Now, Lytx® Inc., a pioneer in video telematics and fleet safety, is confronting the issue head-on with its new Fatigue Detection solution, fusing machine vision, AI, and human intelligence for early, precise detection of drowsy driving.

Unlike traditional systems that rely on isolated signals or single events, Lytx’s tech monitors a continuous pattern of behaviors—like prolonged eye closures, nodding, lane drifting, and slouching—to proactively alert both drivers and fleet managers before fatigue becomes dangerous.

“Fatigue is progressive—it doesn’t show up in just one blink or swerve,” said Brendon Hill, SVP of Product at Lytx. “We’ve designed our technology to track nuanced indicators over time, delivering more accurate alerts and reducing false positives.”

What Sets Lytx Apart?

While other systems in the market offer reactive tools or basic detection, Lytx’s offering is proactive, contextual, and layered with expert human review, delivering:

• Early Detection: Real-time insight into fatigue onset, not just after-the-fact behavior.

• Advanced Accuracy: The fusion of MV+AI and human oversight ensures smarter, more reliable alerts.

• Workflow Integration: Fleet managers receive timely notifications they can act on immediately.

A safety director from a major healthcare distribution company who tested competing systems noted, “We trialed Lytx and Netradyne and found that Lytx Fatigue Detection was more accurate.”

A Growing Industry Problem

Driver fatigue remains a leading cause of fleet-related accidents, and with longer routes, tighter schedules, and a persistent driver shortage, the pressure isn’t easing. Fleet safety has become a top priority for multinational corporations (MNCs), prompting increased investment in intelligent safety systems that provide measurable ROI—not just in dollars, but in lives saved.

Lytx's Fatigue Detection is already proving to be a timely answer to the industry's demand for real-time, behavior-based interventions that blend technology with human discernment.

Availability

Lytx’s Fatigue Detection is available now and comes integrated with the company’s award-winning MV+AI technology platform, which powers safety and efficiency solutions across some of the world’s largest commercial fleets.

As safety tech evolves, fatigue detection is fast becoming a must-have feature—and with Lytx, it’s getting smarter, faster, and more scalable.

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Lovart, the AI-native branding platform redefining creative work, has officially launched out of beta—aiming to democratize high-end design campaigns with nothing more than a single text prompt. With over 800,000 users across 70 countries, Lovart’s mission is clear: turn what traditionally costs six figures in ad spend into a sub-$90/month offering.

Touted as a creative disruptor, Lovart gives in-house teams and boutique agencies access to branding and advertising quality once only achievable by elite agencies. In an era where AI agents are becoming essential in design pipelines, Lovart positions itself not just as a tool, but as a creative partner capable of driving full campaign execution.

Inside Lovart’s AI-Powered Creative Engine

At the core of Lovart is its proprietary MCoT (Mind Chain of Thought) engine—a reasoning system that mirrors the thinking of top-tier creative directors. It processes business context, brand needs, and audience signals to generate professional-grade visual assets from a single prompt or image reference. Users can expect up to 40 high-quality outputs in minutes, including:

• Brand identity kits

• Social media visuals

• UI/UX flows

• Packaging concepts

• Storyboards

But unlike other generative platforms, Lovart's outputs come with a distinct creative flair—often witty, emotionally tuned, and human-like in nuance.

Key Features

• ChatCanvas: An infinite smart canvas that integrates text, visuals, and design collaboration, enabling human-AI co-creation in real time.

• Multi-Agent Collaboration: Each design task is handled by a specialized AI agent (logo, UX, packaging, etc.) that synchronizes via a central “Design Context Core” for campaign consistency.

• Autonomous Creative Direction: Lovart plans workflows, sources references, and delivers brand-aligned outputs—essentially functioning like an AI creative director.

• Long-Term Recall: Lovart learns and adapts to user design choices, moods, and imported brand assets over time, personalizing its approach.

• Workflow Prediction: It recognizes platform-specific behaviors (e.g., Instagram vs. YouTube content) and flags design issues or creative opportunities in real time.

• Advanced Editing: Users can fine-tune layouts, text, and layers on the fly.

• Cross-Modal Generation: Supports image, video, and audio output, and integrates leading AI models including GPT Image-1, Recraft v3, Kling AI, OpenAI-o3, VEO3, Runway Gen-4, and more.

Designer-Led AI

“We don’t have product managers. We have designers who teach AI how to think like Creative Directors,” said Melvin Chen, CEO of Lovart. “The agent becomes your teammate. The prompt becomes the brief. Together, they recreate how creative work happens—instinctively and emotionally.”

Lovart’s designer-first approach enables even non-designers to express brand narratives effectively. It also ensures professional designers can work faster, more cohesively, and with richer creative inputs than ever before.

As AI continues to embed itself into the core of creative industries, Lovart offers a future where design excellence is no longer bottlenecked by resources—but instead unlocked by collaboration between humans and agents.

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Iterable and Movable Ink Deepen Integration to Advance Real-Time Personalization

In a move set to reshape how brands deliver tailored experiences, Iterable has announced a major expansion of its strategic partnership with Movable Ink, the AI-driven personalized content platform. This enhanced collaboration gives marketers access to a suite of new integrations designed to streamline campaign execution and supercharge personalized customer engagement.

With data activation challenges increasingly slowing down marketing performance, the joint solution empowers teams to deploy hyper-personalized content across channels—email, SMS, push, in-app, and web—faster and with greater precision.

“Together with Iterable, we’re helping brands turn data into powerful experiences at scale,” said Adam Stambleck, President of Movable Ink.

Integrations That Elevate Campaign Performance

The expanded partnership introduces several new capabilities that bring together Iterable’s powerful customer data infrastructure with Movable Ink’s dynamic content creation tools:

• Real-Time Data Export:
  Marketers can now stream engagement data—like opens, clicks, and conversions—directly from Movable Ink into Iterable, enabling triggered journeys and smarter audience segmentation.

• Customer Data API:
  Allows real-time access to event data from Iterable within Movable Ink Studio, letting marketers craft content that adapts to context and customer behavior.

• Catalog API Integration:
  Pulls data on products, services, or content from Iterable’s Catalog into Movable Ink Studio to power dynamic recommendations tailored to each recipient.

• Embedded Messaging:
  Facilitates delivery of visually rich, personalized messages within websites and mobile apps without disrupting the user experience.

• Content API Integration:
  Enables marketers to drag-and-drop Movable Ink content blocks into Iterable’s template builder, reducing friction and boosting speed to market.

“What excites us most is the tangible value this brings to our customers,” said Jeff Samuels, COO at Iterable. “We’re enabling a more human approach to engagement.”

A Unified Path to Scalable Personalization

At the heart of this expanded alliance is a shared vision: eliminate content production bottlenecks and make personalization at scale more achievable. By bridging the gap between data-rich automation and creative execution, marketers are now positioned to:

• Automate journeys with real-time data streams

• Deploy 1:1 content without creative lag

• Centralize workflow and reduce technical complexity

The announcement reflects a growing demand among enterprise brands for scalable personalization solutions that deliver relevance, efficiency, and measurable ROI. As Iterable and Movable Ink deepen their collaboration, marketers stand to benefit from the best of both worlds—AI-powered automation and visually compelling content creation.

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Glassbox Taps Customer Success Veteran to Lead Enterprise Experience Strategy

Digital experience analytics provider Glassbox has appointed Ido Ophir as its first-ever Chief Customer Officer, signaling a deeper push into enterprise markets and a renewed focus on scalable customer success programs.

With over two decades of leadership in enterprise software—including pivotal roles at Personetics and NICE Actimize—Ophir brings a proven track record in scaling global customer-facing teams. At Personetics, he helped build a global customer success and professional services organization from the ground up, while his work at NICE Actimize helped cement its leadership in financial crime and compliance software.

Now, at Glassbox, he’ll take on a newly created executive role aimed at building stronger partnerships with enterprise clients—especially in highly regulated industries like financial services—and ensuring that every customer interaction yields measurable business outcomes.

“Glassbox is built on the idea that better data leads to better experiences,” said Chairman Alex Assim. “Our clients don’t just want dashboards—they want strategic alignment. Ido is the right leader to deliver that.”

The hire comes at a high point for the company. Glassbox was recently named a 2025 TrustRadius Top Rated Award Winner in the marketing software category, driven by glowing customer reviews.

In Ophir’s own words, “Glassbox is uniquely positioned to help financial institutions and other enterprises turn customer behavior into meaningful business outcomes.” His focus will be on elevating customer support and executive engagement, especially for mission-critical deployments.

His arrival aligns with broader trends in the digital experience space, where data-rich insights are no longer enough—clients increasingly demand strategic value and operational outcomes. The addition of a CCO reflects Glassbox’s ambition to move beyond product and into long-term partnership mode.

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EX.CO, a leader in machine learning video technology, has launched a cutting-edge AI-driven taxonomy solution designed to transform how publishers classify, discover, and monetize their video content. The new feature is already live across Ziff Davis properties, including PCMag and Mashable.

This new agentic AI taxonomy leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to automatically analyze video content frame-by-frame, generating rich metadata across more than 30 attributes—such as sentiment, tone, contextual relevance, and IAB categories. This enables publishers to convert sprawling, unstructured video archives into organized, searchable, and monetizable assets—without the manual overhead.

“EX.CO’s AI taxonomy solution has allowed us to deeply tag our extensive video library with a fraction of the necessary time,” said Dan Kamas, Senior Product Manager at Ziff Davis. “This gives the product team confidence in the recommendations being powered by this new technology.”

Unlike legacy video management systems that depend on labor-intensive tagging workflows, EX.CO’s platform brings precision automation with editorial flexibility. The system supports both industry-standard and custom classification models, enabling publishers to retain their existing editorial frameworks while enhancing them with intelligent AI tagging.

Key capabilities include:

• Real-time metadata enrichment across 30+ dimensions, including safety, tone, and context.

• Support for existing taxonomies, allowing seamless integration into legacy content systems.

• Improved ad targeting and yield optimization, by aligning content with demand more effectively.

• SEO enrichment, with taxonomy data embedded directly into video metadata.

• Smarter discovery and curation, boosting both internal CMS workflows and audience-facing searchability.

"What makes this solution different isn’t just automation—it’s precision and adaptability,” said Tom Pachys, EX.CO co-founder and CEO. “We’re recreating a publisher’s unique content hierarchy with LLMs, evolving alongside editorial strategy, and translating that into monetization.”

The taxonomy engine also provides configurable confidence thresholds for category assignment, ensuring high levels of accuracy tailored to publisher needs. It is available to all EX.CO publisher partners with AI-powered analysis enabled, delivering end-to-end tagging at a fraction of the cost of manual workflows.

“Our new agentic AI taxonomy feature doesn’t just drive revenue,” added Pachys. “It deepens our value with editorial and video teams who depend on speed and accuracy to deliver great experiences.”

With this rollout, EX.CO positions itself at the forefront of AI infrastructure for digital publishers—bridging editorial precision with next-gen monetization tools at scale.

Birdelo 2.0: A "New" PR-Tech Platform That’s Actually Been 15 Years in the Making

While PR-tech startups are having their moment, Birdelo is reminding the industry it got there first.

Originally launched in 2008 under a different name, the platform now known as Birdelo quietly solved a problem that has only recently become trendy: how to make brand-to-media collaboration more seamless. Now, with its AI-enhanced relaunch as Birdelo 2.0, co-founders Nikki Carlson and Kailynn Bowling are drawing attention to the system’s early roots—and why that matters in today’s fragmented media landscape.

“We built the original version in 2008 because we were living the pain points ourselves,” said Carlson. “We didn’t see a solution in the market—so we built one.”

Back then, Carlson and Bowling were wearing multiple hats—running ChicBlvd Magazine, launching the consumer tech brand ChicBuds, and scaling their PR firm ChicExecs. The problem? No centralized tool existed for sharing brand assets, samples, and pitches with journalists. The duo built one internally and quietly used it to power their firm for over a decade.

Fast forward to 2024, and PR-tech has become a buzzword. Yet Birdelo 2.0 isn’t just jumping on the AI bandwagon—it’s built on battle-tested infrastructure, now supercharged with automation and smarter matchmaking.

What’s New in Birdelo 2.0?

The platform now connects nearly 100,000 brands with major media outlets through a simplified interface designed to serve journalists and PR teams alike. Editors can access story ideas, affiliate-ready product links, hi-res imagery, and samples all in one place—without the usual back-and-forth emails.

Media outlets already leveraging the system include CNN, The Today Show, InStyle, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Health, GQ, and E! News—a testament to Birdelo’s quiet relevance over the years.

This isn’t a beta-stage product with bugs to iron out. It’s a refined system with over a decade of iteration behind it. The proof? A 2011 video demo of the original platform (then called the ChicExecs Media Networking System) and an 8-year-old YouTube case study showing the tool in action with Madison Media.

Birdelo’s timing couldn’t be better. As the lines blur between editorial and branded content, and journalists grow more selective in the pitches they accept, having a unified system to facilitate authentic, streamlined collaboration is invaluable.

But Birdelo isn’t chasing the hype. “This isn’t a new concept,” Bowling emphasized. “It’s a reimagining of something that’s already worked—for years.”

The startup narrative often favors flash over function. But Birdelo’s story flips the script: function first, flash later. And with AI now part of its DNA, Birdelo 2.0 is positioned to scale its quiet advantage into something far louder in today’s noisy PR-tech race.

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Grossman Marketing Group Acquires Cooley Group, Strengthens Local Roots with National Reach

In a strategic move to deepen its capabilities and broaden its geographic footprint, Grossman Marketing Group has acquired Cooley Group, a Rochester, NY-based provider of custom promotional, print, and fulfillment services.

While many acquisitions focus solely on size or scale, this one is rooted in something far more resilient: shared values. Both companies are family-owned, people-first, and community-driven—traits that have helped them thrive in a crowded marketing services industry.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Cooley Group to the Grossman family,” said David Grossman, Co-President of Grossman Marketing Group. “We both believe our greatest asset is our people—and that’s the foundation of this partnership.”

From Upstate New York to Nationwide Reach

Founded in 1945, Cooley Group has built a stellar reputation in the Northeast for client service, workplace culture, and industry leadership. Named a Top 100 Distributor by PPAI and a Best Company to Work For in New York four years running, Cooley brings both pedigree and performance.

With deep experience in sectors like healthcare, higher education, professional services, food and beverage, and manufacturing, Cooley complements Grossman’s own industry reach—and gives Grossman added strength in key growth markets.

Post-acquisition, Cooley will continue operating under its existing name as a division of Grossman Marketing Group, retaining its full team and offices in Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, and the Hudson Valley.

Why It Matters: Capabilities, Culture, and Continuity

Grossman isn’t new to this game. Over the past decade, the company has steadily expanded through targeted acquisitions, focusing not just on capabilities, but on cultural fit. That’s why this merger clicks.

“For 80 years, we’ve helped clients showcase their brands while staying true to our local roots,” said Phil Yawman, President of Cooley Group. “But clients’ needs are changing, and we need access to more resources to keep pace. Grossman brings that—and more.”

Among those resources: Grossman’s award-winning technology stack, advanced e-commerce platforms, global logistics, and sustainability leadership. That includes SwagCycle, an industry-first program for giving branded products a second life via donation or recycling. So far, it’s redirected over $11 million in branded items from landfills and into the hands of nonprofits or reuse systems.

The Bigger Picture: A People-First Marketing Powerhouse

With Cooley now onboard, Grossman’s value proposition only gets stronger. It further positions the company as a national player with local roots—a rare blend in an industry that’s increasingly being swallowed by conglomerates or sidelined by startups.

“This is about expanding what’s possible for our clients,” said Ben Grossman, Co-President of Grossman Marketing Group. “And we’re doing it while preserving the culture and community focus that make both companies strong.”

Grossman’s growing portfolio now supports some of the world’s most recognizable organizations across sectors like higher education, healthcare, tech, and pro sports—all while maintaining its fourth-generation, family-owned ethos.

It’s not just a merger. It’s a reinforcement of what modern marketing clients want: innovation with integrity, scale with service, and growth that doesn’t forget its roots.

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