The new real-time-driven solutions enable enterprises to remain agile and outperform business objectives amid ever-evolving market shifts

Tealium, the largest independent and most trusted customer data platform (CDP), today announced new solutions that allow enterprises to deliver enhanced in-the-moment experiences for customers, including Tealium for AI, Tealium Moments, Tealium’s Cloud Data Warehouse (CDW) Partner Ecosystem, and Tealium Consent Orchestration.

To remain agile and competitive in today’s dynamic environment, businesses must invest in a thoughtful customer data strategy. Enterprises that are proactive about data collection, enrichment, filtering, and activation are better equipped to keep up in an accelerating AI and machine learning-driven world, according to Tealium’s 2024 State of the CDP report. While many models and algorithms will become commoditized, the true differentiation for companies is the quality of their customer data.

“Customer data can be an organization's most valuable asset, but untrusted, ungoverned data is a liability – especially for AI models,” said Bob Page, Chief Product Officer, at Tealium. “Many AI initiatives are moving slowly because teams cannot access consented and accurate data for model training. Our new solutions start with consented data to deliver in-the-moment experiences and inform AI and machine learning models – so it can be acted on.”

Tealium and the new compliance-backed solutions provide a single platform to manage customer data processes at scale with safeguards. The new features include:

Tealium for AI: Equips teams with consented, filtered, and enriched data in real-time for AI models and data activation.

Tealium Moments: Collects, processes, and activates customer data in real-time and leverages zero-party and first-party data to own the moments that matter.

Tealium’s CDW Partner Ecosystem: Improves customer experiences by scaling the value of AI, Customer 360, Analytics, and other data initiatives housed in your CDW.

Tealium Consent Orchestration: Simplifies and streamlines the process of consented data collection and activation. Ensures consent is shared downstream to lessen compliance risk across the organization.

Andrew Marvin, Digital Developer at Crocs, a Tealium customer, says, “As a developer driving our organization's marketing and analytics, Tealium is my cornerstone for constructing and sustaining intricate vendor integrations, ensuring privacy compliance, consent governance, and facilitating real-time data delivery across our diverse sites and brands. The transition to Tealium has notably elevated our operational efficiency.”

Comscore to Provide Currency-Grade Measurement Metrics for Nexstar’s Local TV, Broadcast, Network, and Digital Businesses

Comscore, Inc. today announced that it has reached a comprehensive multi-year agreement with Nexstar Media Group, Inc. on cross-platform audience measurement. Under the terms of the agreement, Comscore will become a key measurement partner for Nexstar, providing it with critical measurement metrics across Nexstar’s local TV, broadcast, network, and digital businesses.

Comscore has provided local market measurement to Nexstar since 2010, but with continued evolution and innovation in its suite of insights and planning solutions across digital, social, CTV, and linear TV, Nexstar now sees unique opportunities to move Comscore into a leading currency provider position. Together, Comscore and Nexstar will be able to deliver more precise audience insights across screens to help advertisers optimize total reach and measure the holistic cross-platform campaign with de-duplicated in-flight monitoring of key metrics such as reach and frequency, incrementality, and co-viewing.

Comscore, a leading provider of currency-grade television measurement for local TV, provides measurement across all 210 local Comscore Markets. Comscore’s National measurement is the summation of all 210 local markets, establishing Comscore as the foremost authority in comprehensive TV metrics. At the core of Comscore's success is a unified methodology, setting the gold standard in the industry. With local market-level data starting at the household level, building to all 41,704 zip codes, and then seamlessly integrating into and elevating national metrics, Comscore continues to redefine excellence in linear TV measurement.

“Comscore is proud to expand its relationship with Nexstar Media Group to empower Nexstar’s advertisers to unlock optimal reach across key markets and platforms. Nexstar will offer unmatched value to advertisers in a critical election year and beyond, by seamlessly validating its true audience reach with market level precision down to the specific region across linear and digital,” said Comscore Chief Executive Officer Jon Carpenter. “Our partnership demonstrates our ability to eliminate costly ‘make goods’ as Nexstar leverages the strengths of Comscore’s cross-platform solutions to ensure ad dollars are optimized across non-linear mediums to complete incremental reach to what is achieved by linear television.”

“Comscore’s ability to provide us with total audience measurement metrics across our local television stations and websites, NewsNation, The CW Network, and The Hill, enables our cross-platform sales team to leverage our unique scale and reach to customize bespoke advertising and marketing solutions for our clients,” said Michael Biard, Nexstar’s President and Chief Operating Officer. “We look forward to offering our advertisers deeper insight into who is watching and interacting with our programming and when they are doing so, enabling them to focus on the audiences they want to reach.”

Aims to Lure Blue-Chip Advertisers with Automated AI Platform Measuring Advanced Signals for Simplicity and Clarity

Seekr, an artificial intelligence company specializing in transparent content evaluation and generation, announced today the release of Seekr Align, an advanced brand safety and suitability tool that unlocks new audience reach by giving brands and ad agencies unprecedented visibility into hundreds of thousands of podcast episodes whose brand safety and suitability is largely unknown. Align, which is built on Seekr's large language model, combines Seekr's proprietary content evaluation and scoring capabilities with and industry-leading user-friendly interface. 

"Seekr Align unlocks more brand-safe advertising opportunities in a podcast landscape that is notoriously complex and difficult to navigate," said Rob Clark, President and Chief Technology Officer of Seekr. "In a short period, Align has already evaluated over 8 million minutes of podcasts and applied Seekr's proprietary scoring, enabling the desired alignment between a brand and content. The volume of content scored by the platform will increase five-fold by the end of the year, far outpacing competitive offerings."

During the product beta launch, Align generated pre-order commitments from top brands whose collective 2024 spends are expected to exceed $100 million. Leading brands that have signed on to use Align include Babbel, Bayer, Constant Contact, MasterClass, Quip, SimpliSafe, and Tommy John, among others.

"Brand safety and suitability should do more than blocking words or avoiding complex conversations. First-gen audio tools have been overcomplicated and unreliable: they are too prone to false negatives and false positives, routinely allowing key words to trigger risk content ratings. This has created confusion among marketers, while scaring them away from responsible podcasts and generally causing them to underutilize podcasts for advertising," said Dan Granger, CEO of Oxford Road, the nation's largest independent audio advertising agency, which helped in the development of the platform. "Align simplifies the process of finding safe and suitable podcasts by marrying world-class engineering with innovative and transparent ratings, allowing brands to navigate with nuance so they can confidently grow their audio campaign with increased clarity and speed."

Align is being introduced at the outset of what promises to be a highly polarized political season, and at a time when many brands say they're facing growing reputational risks as their ads inadvertently appear next to problematic content. At the same time, brands continue to face challenges in reaching larger, highly engaged audiences safely because they have little to no visibility into the brand suitability of the "long tail" of podcasts – thousands of shows that fall outside of the Top 100.

Seekr Align identifies never-before-measured, industry-specific signals that strike at the heart of safety and suitability by capturing the nuanced essence of a conversation, going above and beyond the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) brand safety and suitability floor, ultimately enabling brands to safely reach a much bigger audience.

The first of these signals, Seekr's Civility Score™ (patent and trademark pending), tracks personal attacks, including those that may not necessarily register as hate speech under GARM, but are still hostile in nature. The Align platform, which is built on Seekr's large language model applied for the Civility Score™, allows the end user to overlay desired risk filters, including GARM, giving brands more control and simplicity.

Because of the limitations of current technology, Seekr offers human-in-the-loop capabilities to ensure that brands can feel confident they're aligning with programs that discuss a broad spectrum of diverse topics without promoting divisive and incendiary content.

Seekr Align is redefining how podcast content is evaluated to align with brand objectives because of its ability to truly understand the nuances of language in audio. Anticipated advances in brand safety and suitability are one of the main reasons why the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) projects podcast advertising revenue will more than double to $4 billion in 2025.

"There is a very different way that Oprah and Alex Jones might treat the same subject in a piece of content," added Granger. "Align supplements GARM with more nuanced capabilities such as the Civility Score™, which puts the emphasis on the spirit of the conversation, instead of punishing creators who take a responsible approach to discussing important issues that are potentially controversial." 

Trust in creators surges more than 20%, redefining the consumer purchase journey

LTK, the platform that powers Creator Commerce™, today released its Creator Journey 2024™ Shopping Trends report, showcasing the impact creators have on consumer behavior and how they are reshaping the traditional consumer purchase journey. 

As marketers recognize the profound impact creators have, spending on creator marketing is expected to reach over $35B in 2024. Consumers now rely on creators from discovery to purchase to loyalty and retention as trust in creators soared by 21% from last year. Across all generations, creators now rank as the No. 1 trusted source over social media ads and celebrities, with Gen Z three times more likely to say they trust creators over ads.

Rise of Creator Trust Transforms Consumer Journey

With creators serving as trusted advisors across all generations, creators have evolved from mere product endorsers to influencing the entire consumer journey. Among Gen Z and Millennials, 66% actively shop and make purchases through creators, and 56% of the wider population now buy from creators, marking a 64% increase from the previous year. On the LTK platform alone, creators are driving more than $4.1B in sales annually - a figure that continues to rise each year.

While creator-guided shopping has become the new norm, creators aren’t just influencing purchase decisions; creators are now integral to a brand's overall full funnel marketing strategy. Consumers are interacting with creators and their content now more than ever. A staggering 69% of Gen Z and 71% of Millennials report a higher likelihood of exploring brands or products after engaging with creator content, finding it more inspirational than direct brand content.

That’s why 92% of brands are increasing their investment in influencer marketing this year. Brands are leveraging creators to support multiple strategies, including increasing repeat purchases and basket, brand and product recognition, expanding consideration to new audiences, loyalty and retention.

The Increased Value of Creator Content

The importance and value of creator content have skyrocketed, making creator marketing a top investment growth channel for brands, alongside connected TV advertising. This rise is largely attributed to creators' powerful storytelling abilities, especially through video content. Video content on the LTK platform drives over 2X clicks per post compared to static content, and creator video posts on LTK grew 4X from 2021 to 2023. The general population watched creator video content 30% more than the previous year and nearly 75% watch creator videos because of the creators’ ability to authentically and meaningfully convey the product and brand value through their personal everyday life stories.

In turn, consumers express a desire to engage with creator content beyond just social media. 34% of consumers said they want to see creator content on TV, followed by in-store and display ads.

“This report underscores the pivotal role creators will continue to play in shaping consumer behavior across all generations - creating a new consumer journey. Creators have become a valuable asset for brands - influencing every phase from sparking inspiration to guiding purchase decisions and fostering brand loyalty,” said Rodney Mason, Vice President and Head of Marketing, Brand Platform at LTK.

Through the collaboration, publishers will have the opportunity to bring diverse, incremental demand to their advertising inventory. 

MediaGo, a deep learning-based intelligent advertising platform under the Baidu Global Business Unit, today announced that it is now integrated with Amazon Publisher Services' (APS) Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM), offering publishing partners of APS a new and easy way to access high-quality native and display demand via MediaGo.

Powered by deep neural network technology, MediaGo provides services to over 10,000 global advertisers. Through this collaboration, APS publishers will have access to increased revenue potential from a large pool of unique demand from top advertisers that work with MediaGo, including APAC search and eCommerce buyers purchasing programmatic for the first time.

APS is a suite of cloud-based solutions offering access to high-quality digital media inventory, including most of Comscore's top 250 publishers. With this integration, MediaGo advertisers can now reach an additional premium traffic channel to enhance their current advertising performance.

"In just under four years of operation, MediaGo has built a robust platform, and we're excited to enable this integration, which will allow publishers to unlock even more high-quality native and display advertising demand," said Bryan Everett, Global Head of Third-Party Demand, APS. "We are impressed by the value MediaGo brings not only to their partners but also to APS publishers."

"We are excited that this enhanced integration will help publishers access differentiated demand for their advertising inventory," said Brian Mun, Director of Global Partnerships for the Baidu Global Business Unit. "For years, we have invested in deep learning to maximize return on investment (ROI) for our partners globally. Through this collaboration with APS' TAM, we can also bring this technology to bridge the gap between publishers and global advertisers."

In 2023, customers across industries used Typeform to publish more than 2.6 million forms and generate more than 568 million responses 

Today, Typeform, the intuitive form builder and conversational data collection platform, released The Data On Data Report, revealing insights and data marketers can use to create more effective forms, quizzes, and surveys that drive higher completion rates. 

With increasing privacy concerns and the deprecation of third-party cookies, companies are turning to zero-party data and using online forms to collect information. This information helps them personalize their marketing strategies to better engage their target audiences. In 2023 alone, Typeform users published more than 2.6 million forms, generated more than 568 million form submissions, and saw an average form completion rate of 47.3%, more than 25 percentage points higher than the industry average completion rate of 21.5%. Since Typeform launched, customers have published more than 8 million forms and generated nearly 3 billion responses.  

Typeform analyzed its 2023 data and aggregated trends from the last 10 years of data to compile tactics marketers are using to boost engagement on their forms:

1. Incorporate visuals: Forms that feature images or video see a 120.6% increase in completion rates over forms that don't. 
2. Keep forms to six questions or fewer: Forms with the highest number of responses asked fewer than six questions.
3. Use multiple-choice questions: Typeform customers use multiple-choice questions nearly twice as often as the second-most popular question type, short text questions.
4. Include 'exclusive' language: Forms that use phrases such as "be the first," "get early access," "members only," "only available," among others, yield 25% higher completion rates. 
5. Use numbers at the start: Using a number within the welcome content provides clarity and boosts confidence, leading to a 7% increase in completion rates. 

"At the heart of every great customer experience is a deep understanding of your customer and their needs, so why not ask them directly?" said Kristen Habacht, Chief Revenue Officer, Typeform. "The impending cookieless future requires a shift in go-to-market strategies, where marketers move away from reliance on third-party data and instead prioritize gathering information directly from people. Businesses that refine the art and science of zero-party data collection today will gain a competitive edge over those that wait." 

Artlist launched a new campaign to guide brands on collaborating with influencers

Artlist, the leading creative technology company trusted by major brands and millions of digital creators worldwide, has launched a campaign guiding brands in their collaboration with influencers. This was largely born out of the fact that influencer marketing is now estimated at $16.4 billion, with more and more brands allocating a significant portion of their advertising budget to creator brand deals. The campaign presents several takeaways that brands should consider when working with influencers, from identifying the right creators to collaborate with, to forming partnerships that are holistic, impactful, and beneficial to all sides. 

Artlist's recent survey of over 6,000 creators worldwide sheds new light on the dynamics between brands and influencers. While nearly 30% of respondents have collaborated with brands on sponsored content or user-generated content (UGC), only 8% aren't interested in creating sponsored content.

A significant 91% of creators expect to increase their collaborations with brands in 2024. This surge is attributed to creators' desire for heightened exposure and income opportunities.

Looking ahead to 2024, 40% of creators are eager to collaborate with as many brands as possible, whereas 37% are more focused on working with brands that resonate with their personal brand. This highlights, on the one hand, creators' continuous desire to earn as much exposure and sources of income as possible, and, on the other hand, the importance creators put on authenticity, aiming to promote content that aligns with their values and identities.

The survey also emphasizes creators' interest in receiving results from campaigns they participate in, with 62% of respondents answering that it would help them learn and improve their performance. Dikla Bengio, Partnerships Team Leader at Artlist, stresses the importance of transparent communication: "One of the main elements of a good partnership is to have an open and honest conversation about the purpose of the relationship. Only then, once expectations have been aligned, can we create a business model that benefits everyone."

Looking ahead to 2024, 37% of creators believe brands should be providing influencers with more creative freedom. A similar 36% mentioned the importance of establishing long and meaningful partnerships. Dikla Bengio, Partnerships Team Leader at Artlist, speaks of Artlist's experience collaborating with creators, saying, "We've witnessed many young creators who began their journey with us, whose channels are now immensely successful. This is a result of our commitment to support them right from the start, and seeing their potential from the get-go".

Another great example of a meaningful brand-influencer partnership can be seen in this video by filmmaker duo Feelm, where Sam Newton, one of Artlist's partners, joins the duo as they share their inspiring story. This highlights how partnering with brands can go beyond conventional product promotion, resulting in authentic and impactful content.

As creative tools become increasingly accessible, 2024 will see more and more creators entering the market, making it an important year for brands looking to take advantage of the phenomenon and collaborate with influencers.

• Infosys and Tennis Australia launch digital platforms to empower fan, player, and media with all-new generative AI features

• Infosys also launched an all-new Gen AI experience 'Rafa Forever' inviting millions of fans missing Rafa at AO to celebrate the legend

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, is advancing it's AI footprint at the 2024 Australian Open (AO) with generative AI technologies for fan engagement, player performance, and digital content creation. Infosys and AO are also leveraging a digital skilling platform to build future leaders in Australia.

Infosys is leveraging its AI-first set of services, solutions, with Infosys Topaz, to evolve the AO experience. Infosys Topaz is delivering the large language models and cognitive core to accelerate Tennis Australia's AI journey. The AO Grand Slam experience has been reimagined in many new ways such as:

AO 2024 Bracket Challenge vs AI: Fans test their predictive mettle against AI through AO's all-new Bracket Challenge on AO's website, a Tournament Challenge that went live on Jan 11, in which fans made predictions for the entire tournament & challenge themselves against AI, and a Daily Challenge to predict the day's match winners.

Infosys Match Centre gets more cognitive with Gen AI Story Cards: For fans experiencing the Infosys Match Centre, the Key Stats feature provides contextual insights in a card-like format as the match progresses. AI Match Bytes, using Gen AI, creates match story visual cards and narrates the story of a match to fans. Win Predictor tracks the probabilities of victory as the match progresses on court.

Graffiti-inspired AI art and VR under one roof: The Fan Zone pays tribute to the iconic graffiti of Melbourne with a series of graffiti portraits, created using generative AI technology powered by Infosys Topaz. Inside the Fan Zone, fans can get up close with Iga Swiatek and Rafael Nadal through Augmented Reality selfies and face off against Rafa in the ultimate VR tennis match up. They will also go home with bespoke giveaways inspired by the graffiti portraits of Rafael Nadal.

Amplifying human potential on court and beyond: AI is watching match action at AO 24 to feed players and coaches winning insights to unlock the keys to victory through a series of features. For the media team, the AI Shot of the Day enhances Tennis Australia's ability to quickly post the highlights from each day's play, packaged as social media ready clips, enabling engagement without the time-consuming task of scouring through match footage manually.

Off the court, Infosys and Tennis Australia are also collaborating for AI-enabled digital skilling, by giving year 10 and 11 students from metropolitan Melbourne, regional Victoria and New South Wales access to curated learning powered by Infosys Springboard. The students will also get a glimpse of a generative AI future by visiting the Infosys Fan Zone.

Beyond the transformation for Australian Open, to celebrate the tennis legend and Infosys ambassador Rafael Nadal, who misses out on this year's tournament due to injury, Infosys has also launched an all-new Generative AI experience 'Rafa Forever' (Infosys.RafaForever.com), through which fans can imagine their personalized creative masterpiece to celebrate the tennis legend, with Generative AI technology.

Craig Tiley, CEO of Tennis Australia, and Australian Open Tournament Director, said, "For the past six years, Infosys has helped Tennis Australia to raise the bar and serve up new experiences for fans using digital technologies. We're excited to see the leaps being made with AI at AO 2024. AI is enabling new dimensions of interactivity for fans and insight for players, not to mention the speed and scale it brings to our content delivery."

Andrew Groth, Executive Vice President Asia Pacific, Infosys, said, "Our association with AO has enabled us to push the boundaries of innovation across key digital and physical touchpoints, to create experiences that inform and engage as much as they entertain. This year, we are leveraging Infosys Topaz to bring a host of AI-first experiences to serve players, fans, and the media, and shape the future of the game. We have also enjoyed our ambassador Iga Świątek, take to the courts to compete in the first grand slam of the year. We are also excited to see our purpose in play at the Australian Open, even as our technologies continue to empower and manifest the next opportunity for everyone."