PagerDuty, Inc., a global leader in digital operations management, announced today the appointment of Jeff Hausman as Chief Product Development Officer. Hausman will lead PagerDuty’s product strategy and execution including Product Management, Engineering, Design, and User Experience to expand the PagerDuty Operations Cloud.

“We are thrilled to welcome Jeff to PagerDuty, where he will lead our Operations Cloud platform strategy and all product innovation including our Generative AI offerings,” said Jennifer Tejada, CEO and Chairperson, of PagerDuty. “Jeff brings extensive enterprise product development experience in highly relevant spaces like ITOM and cybersecurity to PagerDuty, making him a great addition to our leadership team as we help customers grow revenue, reduce cost and modernize operations.”

Hausman joins PagerDuty from Samsara, where he was the Chief Product Officer. Previously, Hausman served as ServiceNow Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Operations Management Portfolio - ITOM, ITAM, Security, Risk and ESG. He brings a strong track record of over 25 years leading product development as a senior executive across a wide range of products at McAfee, Symantec, Hewlett-Packard and Veritas. Hausman will join PagerDuty’s executive management team and report to PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada.

“What attracted me to PagerDuty was the company’s long and successful track record of delivering a world-class platform to drive operational transformation for global organizations,” said Hausman. “We are ideally positioned to accelerate innovation of the PagerDuty Operations Cloud to serve the needs of enterprise Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Development Officers. I look forward to building on our strong history of innovation to drive automation and AI innovation for our customers.”

Hausman received his MBA at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with degrees in mathematics and economics.

Choozle, a leading omnichannel digital advertising platform and services provider, today announced that it has appointed Annie Wissner as Vice President of Marketing, effective January 2, 2024. This strategic move comes at a pivotal time as Choozle relocates its headquarters to Downtown Denver, signaling a new era for the company.

As Vice President of Marketing at Choozle, Wissner takes the helm of all marketing functions, including brand management, go-to-market strategy, product, digital, demand generation, partnerships, and media relations.

Wissner, a seasoned leader with over 20 years of global marketing experience in the technology sector, brings a wealth of knowledge to Choozle. Her previous role as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at High Level Marketing and leadership roles at Hexagon, Ivanti, Microsoft, Oracle, and Software AG attest to her expertise in driving success in both start-up and enterprise organizations, domestically and internationally.

Choozle CEO Adam Woods expressed enthusiasm, saying, "Annie Wissner's appointment as Vice President of Marketing is a positive milestone for Choozle. Her wealth of experience and innovative approach aligns perfectly with our vision of exceeding our clients' and partners' expectations through our dynamic digital advertising platform and world-class services. We believe her leadership will play a pivotal role in propelling Choozle to new heights."

Annie Wissner shared her thoughts, stating, "I'm thrilled to join Choozle during this significant period of growth and expansion. The company's core values of bold innovation, growth, collaboration, and personal ownership align well with my principles. I look forward to leading the marketing efforts and contributing to Choozle's ongoing success in the ever-evolving digital advertising landscape."

AisleOne’s personalized marketing automation and loyalty system are transforming the way grocers go to market with the ability to target and engage each customer individually.

Mercatus, a leading provider of grocery eCommerce solutions, today announced the launch of the all-new AisleOne. 

This intelligent targeting and enhanced personalization solution leverages the customer engagement technology from parent company Relationshop to provide regional grocers and independents with a competitive advantage over national chains, mass merchants, and discounters.

AisleOne enables grocery retailers to seamlessly activate data insights to deliver a more connected and individualized digital experience for each customer. For grocers using this enhanced personalization capability, results show more cart conversions, higher baskets and an overall sales lift as high as 5% and a 14:1 return on digital engagement investment annually.

“Growing competition in the grocery industry has led to increasingly fragmented shopper behavior, underscoring the significance of customer retention,” said Randy Crimmins, President, AisleOne. “In order to keep customers engaged, grocery retailers need to deliver a digital experience that is not only seemless and convenient, but relevant to the individual. AisleOne gives regional grocers more control with advanced personalization solutions that transform the shopping experience and grow their market share.”

The challenge: Grocers know the importance of personalization when it comes to enhancing customer engagement, loyalty and overall sales, but often lack the technical capabilities and know-how to turn customer data into a truly personalized experience.

The opportunity: AisleOne empowers grocers to customize every shopping experience based on their customers' unique preferences. Every cart tells a different story. AisleOne uses the data from each customer’s story to deliver the right message, with the right offer, at the right time — automatically. This capability is embedded into the entire customer journey, in store, online and from any device, driving larger basket sizes, less customer churn, and optimized lifetime value.

“Grocers understand the importance of personally connecting with their customers,” said Crimmins. “The real challenge is finding a cost-effective way to implement and offer tailored experiences to customers without overcomplicating marketing efforts or overburdening IT teams. With AisleOne, every retailer can automate the delivery of personalized marketing and 1:1 targeting across all channels— without the burden of additional staff, coding or development work.”

Built on Relationshop’s personalized digital engagement technology, the all-new AisleOne combines proprietary algorithms with decades of grocery-industry experience to deliver a seamless, cost-effective solution. Whether growing share of wallet with a new customer or preventing customer churn through targeted offers, AisleOne’s technology provides grocers with increased incremental sales and bottom-line value, through:

• A consistent web and mobile experience configured with dynamic content blocks that offer customers personalized coupons, ads, recipes, and loyalty rewards.
• The ability to execute on new loyalty strategies quickly – without additional coding or development time — through easily updated web and mobile content.
• Targeted lists for personalized campaigns based on customer demographic and behavioral data.
• The aggregation of in-store and online customer data to create actionable insights with a single view of customer data.
• Full tracking of shopper engagement campaigns from impression to transaction.
• A clear view of ROI on digital engagement programs.

AisleOne is available as part of the Mercatus Digital Commerce platform or as a standalone integration for regional grocers and independents.

New integration with Annex Cloud empowers brands to build deeper customer relationships and drive revenue with sophisticated personalized loyalty programs.

Customer loyalty is paramount, but brands are struggling to keep up with consumers’ evolving expectations and complex tech stacks. SAP Emarsys, a leading customer engagement platform, and Annex Cloud, a SaaS loyalty management platform, are announcing a native integration to incentivize customer interactions and deliver highly personalized, loyalty-driven omnichannel experiences that grow customer lifetime value. 

The SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform executes intelligent omnichannel campaigns to customer segments at scale to turn marketing strategies into revenue. The Annex Cloud Loyalty Experience Platform specializes in omnichannel incentivization for transactional, social, and behavioral loyalty activities in exchange for personalized rewards, adding robust technical capabilities and richer loyalty member experiences executed by the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform.

The SAP Emarsys and Annex Cloud integrated solution manages promotions, tracks customers, scores behaviors, and delivers personalized experiences to collect richer, more relevant zero- and first-party data. Together, they offer a seamless solution that empowers marketers at brands like Molton Brown to:

• Build loyalty programs to fit unique business needs: From global to regional variations, spanning multiple languages, currencies, brands or even including partners.
• Track and incentivize customer actions: Online, in-store and across all channels.
• Automate personalized communications: Delivering loyalty messages and offers that increase average order values, purchase frequency and customer lifetime value.
• Improve customer data intelligence: Integrate loyalty data and AI-driven insights across business systems for informed decision-making.
• Measure program effectiveness: Continuously optimize marketing strategies for maximum impact.

Effortless Implementation, Powerful Results

This integration goes beyond simple points-based programs. With flexible, holistic configurations and granular control, brands can structure complex earning rules, create individualized customer journeys, and decrease the time it takes to launch and manage successful loyalty programs, giving time back to marketers to focus on revenue. This integrated solution features flexible configurations, enabling SAP Emarsys customers with Annex Cloud to:

• Implement quickly and easily: SaaS-based loyalty program management platform accelerates program launch and reduces time to value.
• Structure complex earning rules: Go beyond points and reward customers for diverse behaviors and interactions.
• Seamlessly manage loyalty across channels: Deliver consistent experiences online, in-store and across all touchpoints.
• Built-in loyalty tactics and templates: Configure and trigger automation to pre-defined segments based on demographics, behaviors, or preferences.

"At Annex Cloud, we're passionate about fostering deeper relationships between brands and customers," said Erin Raese, SVP GTM at Annex Cloud. "Simplifying the complexity of enterprise loyalty for the marketer combined with delivering the right message at the right time enhances both platforms and empowers brands to build truly valuable programs."

“The partnership between SAP Emarsys and Annex Cloud enhances our ability to empower enterprise brands to foster true customer loyalty with AI-fueled personalization. Going beyond simple points-based programs, this joint solution enables marketers to focus on delivering highly personalized omnichannel experiences that create value for customers and revenue for brands," added Sara Richter, CMO at SAP Emarsys.

Future-proof Loyalty with SAP Emarsys and Annex Cloud

By combining the customer engagement prowess of SAP Emarsys with the enterprise loyalty expertise of Annex Cloud, brands of any size and complexity gain access to a powerful, scalable solution ready to tackle the ever-changing customer landscape. With this partnership, brands unlock a world of possibilities, empowering them to build deeper customer relationships, drive engagement and achieve sustainable growth.

24/7 Software, the industry leader in venue operations technology, is proud to announce the launch of EliteOps by 24/7 Software. This groundbreaking enterprise solution marks a transformative leap in the world of premier venue management.

Elevating Premier Venue Management
EliteOps by 24/7 Software is specifically designed to meet the needs of larger premier venues and sports and entertainment districts worldwide. It caters to the unique requirements of premier destinations such as Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park, Melbourne & Olympic Parks, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and Cedar Fair Entertainment.

The company will continue to offer its current product suite to wider markets for venues of all sizes. In addition, the company will be launching a new product package geared towards smaller venues in early 2024.

Gerald Hwasta, CEO of 24/7 Software, remarked, "EliteOps represents a transformative leap for our industry. This enterprise solution exemplifies our unwavering dedication as the market leader to drive innovation for venue operations, delivering Peace of Mind for the World's Greatest Properties™ with our new advanced analytics suite, new automated partner integrations, new mobile applications, and SOC II Type 2 compliance."

Key Highlights of EliteOps: 

• Entire Platform and New Workflows: EliteOps includes all 24/7 Software modules, as well as new platform additions such as an event calendar, pre-event planning, work orders for events, staffing, and Health and Safety inspections.
• Seamless Suite of Partner Integrations: EliteOps by 24/7 Software includes out-of-the box automated partner integrations across drone detection, weapons detection, ticketing, customer experience, video management, accreditation, and facilities management.
• New Analytics Dashboards: A new product for managing all aspects of venue operations for individual venues and multi-venue organizations. This provides deep insights into your data to help make operational decisions, identify trends, reduce risk, and highlight deviations from your standard operating procedures.
• Enhanced Mobile Functionality: EliteOps includes a new Communicator Application for iOS and Android, as well as a new unified messaging platform to enable mass communication capabilities.
• Enterprise Security Compliance: EliteOps sets the benchmark for security compliance standards with SOC II Type 2 compliance and the esteemed Department of Homeland Security Safety Act Designation, helping venues reduce risk and liability.

In categories like Shopping, Health & Fitness, Photography, and Business, top apps grew engagement by over 1,000% between 2022 and 2023

Similarweb released its new Apps 100 official ranking today, showcasing 100 of the fastest-growing mobile apps in the US. 

The most successful digital businesses build engagement with consumers across all channels, but pay ever-increasing attention to the intimate and constant connections mobile apps make possible. Convincing the right consumers to download your app is a victory, but getting them to use it regularly is the ultimate goal. Similarweb’s Apps 100, a new companion to the Digital 100 ranking of websites, distinguishes itself from other app rankings by providing insight into user engagement.

Building on the Digital 100 methodology, Similarweb identified the apps with the most growth between 2022 and 2023. The ranking is based on estimates of average monthly active users (MAU) for iOS and Android combined within the US. Studying MAUs, rather than app downloads, shows how much apps are actually used – a metric far more significant than downloads for most businesses.

The winners in 10 categories

The full Apps 100 identifies 10 winners in 10 industry categories, with the 10 category winners listed below, ranked by those that showed the biggest percentage gain.

• Shopping: Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire, +4,173%, 107M average MAU for iOS and Android combined in 2023
• Health and Fitness: Hims: Telehealth for Men, +2,175% to 1.5M MAU
• Photography: Lisa AI: Cartoonify Avatar Art, +1,064% to 979.2K MAU
• Streaming and Media: The Chosen, +1,014% to 511.4K MAU
• Personal Finance: Fidelity Bloom: Save & Spend, +748.4% to 827.7K
• Business: Etsy Seller: Manage Your Shop, +451.2% to 1.3M
• Travel and Tourism: Airalo: eSIM Travel & Internet, +369% to 540.1K MAU
• Food and Drinks: Food Lion To Go, +143.5% to 441K MAU
• Education: Plantum - Plant Identifier, +106% to 847.2K MAU
• Home and Real Estate: Wansview Cloud, +55.3% to 429.5K

“The best digital businesses are not web-only or app-only, but understand how to meet their customers wherever they are and pay close attention to their needs,” Similarweb CEO Or Offer said. “Clearly, getting your app on a device people carry with them wherever they go is huge, but only if they actually open your app and use it on a regular basis. That’s what makes the Apps 100 winners so impressive.”

To qualify for inclusion, each app had to have averaged more than 300,000 monthly active users in 2023 and at least 30,000 in 2022. Discount shopping juggernaut Temu qualified even though it launched in the US in late 2022. Temu grew so fast that the engagement in those first few months averaged out to more than 2.5 million MAU in 2022. That growth continued into 2023, when Temu’s average monthly active users topped 107 million.

“While Temu also saw dramatic growth in web traffic, it always encourages app downloads and delivers many of its most powerful features through mobile apps, including enhanced gamification of the shopping experience,” said Inès Durand, Senior Market Insights Manager at Similarweb and one of the lead authors of the report. “Many of the other winners also take an app-first approach and rightfully so.”

“We saw another megatrend at play in the photography category, where the top 5 apps all used AI to enhance or modify images,” Durand said. “I suspect many of the other apps in other categories are employing AI behind the scenes.”

New AI-powered tiered categories allow for even more nuanced MFA content monitoring and protection, serving to boost campaign performance and optimize digital investments

DoubleVerify, a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data and analytics, today announced the launch of new tiered brand suitability categories to address “Made For Advertising” (MFA) measurement and protection in a more nuanced and brand-specific way. 

Unlike ad fraud, MFA inventory is not inherently invalid, and many advertisers may opt to run ads across MFA sites. Marketers need tools to help determine whether specific MFA sites align with their brand values and advertising goals. DV’s tiered MFA categories give brands enhanced granularity and control to determine the level of protection that best suits their requirements.

"DV’s AI-powered MFA brand suitability categories offer marketers a groundbreaking, nuanced approach to effectively tackle MFA challenges,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. “With this launch, we offer the most expansive, scaled MFA solution in the market today. Our MFA controls enable brands to boost campaign performance and optimize media investments, by carefully balancing brand protection and campaign scale based on their specific requirements.”

DV’s tiered MFA brand suitability categories use a proprietary analysis process that leverages a unique blend of human and AI-based auditing to identify MFA sites at scale. MFA sites are identified by analyzing several factors across their ad monetization activities, ad traffic sources and approach to content creation. Based on the characteristics of an MFA site, it is then assigned to one of three DV brand suitability tiers:

• MFA High: Identifies sites exhibiting the most extreme MFA content or characteristics, including, but not limited to, significant ad density relative to page content, a predominant dependance on paid traffic sources with little to no organic traffic, and an average ad intensity – a measure of the viewable time duration of an ad – that is significantly lower than the DV benchmark.
• MFA Medium: Identifies sites with varying degrees of MFA behavior. For example, a site might employ high ad density relative to page content, but the average ad intensity might be near the DV benchmark.
• MFA Low: Covers sites or sections with a blend of MFA and non-MFA content – for example, sites where only a section or a subdomain exhibits MFA content or characteristics.

DV’s approach allows for the deepest and most nuanced level of analysis, preventing miscategorization and false positives. For example, a website may feature a significant number of ads, while still registering high rates of direct and search-enabled traffic. In this instance, the publisher would not meet DV’s definition of an MFA website.

"The introduction of our MFA brand suitability categories is a critical development for the advertising industry,” said Jack Smith, Chief Innovation Officer at DoubleVerify. “Our goal is to equip marketers with tools for nuanced measurement and management of MFA content, significantly enhancing precise brand protection. This innovation ensures that marketing efforts are strategically aligned with brand goals and values, fostering deeper consumer engagement and trust, while also optimizing investments and performance."

With this launch, DV now offers one of the most robust and granular toolkits in the industry for MFA classification, measurement, and protection. DV's tiered MFA categories will soon be integrated into DV Authentic Brand Suitability (ABS) for pre-bid avoidance. In the interim, DV can provide a curated MFA exclusion list for programmatic buyers.

DV’s tiered MFA categories seamlessly integrate into an advertiser's brand safety and suitability profile for post-bid measurement and monitoring through DV Pinnacle^®. The new offering bolsters DV's controls in response to the surge in online MFA content, building on its September 2023 beta release.

Zefr, the global leader in brand safety and suitability technology, proudly announces the promotion of Jon Morra as its new Chief AI Officer. With an extensive background in Machine Learning, Data Science, and Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Jon Morra is positioned to leverage advanced ML and AI techniques to meet the core needs of Zefr's customers. In this pivotal role, Morra will spearhead the integration of emerging AI technologies, including Large Language Models, advanced computer vision techniques, and video analysis into Zefr's technology stack, aiming to refine the brand experience by providing even deeper insights to Fortune 100 advertisers worldwide.

Morra has been with Zefr since 2016, yet his journey in AI and machine learning began at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a BSE in Biomedical Engineering, followed by a MSE (2007) and a Ph.D. from UCLA (2009) in the same field. His unique blend of academic excellence and professional experience, including pivotal roles at eHarmony as Director of Data Science and a venture in radiation oncology leveraging machine learning, equips him with the necessary expertise to innovate in the brand safety domain.

"I am thrilled to leverage the vast and diverse dataset of social media to deliver unparalleled value to our customers," Morra stated, emphasizing his commitment towards using AI to enhance the effectiveness of brand advertising on social media platforms.

Morra's strategic vision for AI and Machine Learning across Zefr's operations, along with the development of core ML technologies, underscores a significant stride forward in Zefr's mission to strengthen responsible marketing environments for brands. Morra spearheading the role of Chief AI Officer is a testament to Zefr's dedication to maintain its leadership in AI-driven products for social media, ensuring brands can navigate the complexities of digital advertising with both confidence and precision.

Richard Raddon, Co-CEO and co-founder of Zefr, said, "We are thrilled to have Jon Morra lead our AI and ML efforts. His extensive expertise in AI and machine learning is crucial for us as we navigate the complexities of the digital advertising landscape. Jon's leadership in AI will drive our efforts to deliver safer and more suitable advertising environments for brands, across the world's largest social platforms."