Seal Storage Technology, a leading provider of blockchain-powered cloud storage, is now able to enter Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) to handle protected health information (PHI) with its completion of HIPAA certification. Seal's compliance with HIPAA regulations is further enhanced by meeting the stringent standards set by the HITECH Act, solidifying Seal's role in safeguarding healthcare data. This development is not just about the audit itself, but more importantly, it represents an expanded capability to provide secure and compliant data management solutions in the healthcare sector. This underscores Seal's commitment to maintaining the highest standards of data security and integrity in healthcare, giving healthcare providers and patients the confidence that their valuable data is stored with the utmost vigilance.

In the dynamic digital landscape, data security and compliance have never been more critical, particularly in the healthcare sector. Healthcare organizations that deal with patient data, medical records, insurance claims, and treatment plans are referred to as Covered Entities under HIPAA regulations. They require the highest levels of protection and privacy. Blockchain ensures the verifiability, traceability, and complete immutability of data records, an essential tool to protect healthcare data by providing decentralization and cryptographic algorithms. Decentralization ensures there is no single point of failure for healthcare data and data integrity is guaranteed because blockchain is tamper-proof. Through Seal's HIPAA-certified healthcare data storage solution, Seal is dedicated to providing assurance to clients in the healthcare industry.

"A HIPAA Business Associate is a company that provides critical additional services to Covered Entities as defined by HIPAA," explains Bruce McKnight, Seal's Director of Technical Operations who leads compliance efforts. "Seal is now certified and perfectly positioned to be the go-to business associate for storage of healthcare records."

"Seal redefines data security in healthcare with our HIPAA-compliant blockchain-based data storage. Achieving  HIPAA compliance reflects our dedication to setting the highest bar for data security and integrity in healthcare," said Scott Doughman, Seal Chief Business Officer. 

This announcement is already resonating in the industry as Seal recently signed new Healthcare clients such as Boxfin Inc., along with its Common Care division. This represents a major advancement in the field of healthcare data management, signaling a new era in custodial record keeping by leveraging blockchain-powered data storage.

In the face of escalating cybersecurity threats in healthcare, Seal's HIPAA-compliant blockchain-based data storage offers a robust solution, setting a new benchmark for data protection in the industry. With an unwavering commitment to excellence, Seal ensures that its data storage not only meets but exceeds industry standards, providing a secure and resilient environment for healthcare data.

LG Ad Solutions, a global leader in connected TV (CTV) and cross-screen advertising, announced today the appointment of Angela Barnett as Head of Corporate Communications.

Barnett is an accomplished corporate communications leader with extensive expertise in advertising technology. Before joining LG Ad Solutions, she spearheaded communications efforts for prominent organizations such as GumGum and IAS, where she established best-in-class communications programs, focusing on enhancing brand awareness and reputation across key audiences and regions.

In this role, Barnett will be at the forefront of shaping and executing comprehensive communication strategies. She will be responsible for fostering positive relationships with media, investors, employees, and other stakeholders and play a key role in enhancing the brand's reputation and navigating the complexities of the ad tech landscape.

"In an industry as complex and fast-paced as ad tech, having a communication leader who understands how to build an efficient and agile communications organization is crucial, and Angela has demonstrated that time and again," stated Tony Marlow, CMO at LG Ad Solutions. "With our cutting-edge innovations and advanced technology, we anticipate substantial growth over the next few years, and Angela will play a pivotal role in ensuring widespread awareness across the market."

“CTV isn’t a status quo environment; it's primed for innovation in elevating the relationship between a brand and a consumer. As a communicator, I’m eager to contribute to the global growth of LG Ad Solutions, expanding market share, and fostering brand adoption among key stakeholders," said Barnett.

Based in the New York office, Barnett will report directly to Tony Marlow.

ID-free Delivered 250% Lift in Conversions Against Cookie-based Targeting for Tombras 

Dstillery, the leader in AI ad targeting, revealed today the success its privacy-safe ID-free® technology delivered for independent advertising agency Tombras in a recent ad campaign for one of their large retail brands. ID-free outperformed cookie-based targeting for the retail brand with 7.6x more impressions and 2.5x more conversions per dollar. The campaign's success helps solidify Tombras' goal of leading the agency and brand transition to cookieless advertising.

"Our collaboration with Tombras proves the exciting possibilities for brands to adopt new innovations in a pivotal industry transition away from cookies," said Michael Beebe, CEO, Dstillery. "These results illuminate a compelling future for the programmatic advertising industry and allow us to rethink our assumptions about digital ad targeting. Indeed, they show that by applying AI, programmatic campaigns can outperform cookies in terms of performance and scale, without relying on user tracking, setting a new gold standard for user privacy."

ID-free, the industry's only ID-less behavioral targeting technology, uses Dstillery's patented* AI technology to predict the value of an impression to a brand without knowing anything about the user. The technology uses AI to learn from browsing patterns detected in de-identified, opt-in panel data.

Similar to how AI language models, such as ChatGPT, learn by predicting the next word in a sentence, ID-free learns by predicting the next website visit in an opted-in panel of anonymous users' online journeys. The result is targeting that reaches any display ad impression with or without IDs and can be used to power a range of Dstillery products.

"We are proud to work with companies like Dstillery to redefine value and identity in an ever-changing landscape for our brands, no matter the vertical," said Alexander Potts, SVP of Programmatic & Digital Investment, Tombras. "Dstillery is an essential partner in helping brands and agencies embrace innovative solutions like ID-free without sacrificing campaign results."

Tombras, whose clients include Pods Moving & Storage, Orangetheory, RE/MAX, and Sally Beauty, activated ID-free with Predictive Bidding, an AI-powered methodology that predicts the exact value of an impression to the brand and how much they should bid for it, driving cost-efficient precision targeting at scale.

Datawrkz (a Nazara company), a specialist provider of advertising technology solutions, is excited to announce that advertisers can now access Amazon-owned audiences and inventory via its self-serve demand-side platform, Vizibl.

This makes Vizibl one of the first DSPs to give advertisers and agencies self-serve access to intent, behavioral, and demographic data available through Amazon. Vizibl is also able to tap into inventory from an extensive array of Amazon-owned/operated websites and applications including Streaming TV, Twitch, and IMDB.

Advertisers and Agencies get a range of benefits from this integration:

Not reliant on third-party cookies: Advertisers can utilize Amazon’s first-party data, meaning they no longer have to be dependent on third-party cookies to achieve their advertising objectives.

Precise targeting: With audience engagement insights from Amazon, advertisers now gain access to precise targeting based on intent, purchase history, demographics, look-alike audiences, and in-market audiences.

Simplicity: With most of the massive array of Amazon campaign parameters pre-configured for effectiveness by Datawrkz’s experts, setting up and running display and video campaigns becomes a simple task.

Prabhu Eswara, Head of Vizibl DSP at Datawrkz commented, “This is a game changer for advertisers. With no minimum spend requirements and no long-term contracts, advertisers can now effectively run their marketing campaigns to precisely target the right audiences across the web through connected TV, banner, video, and audio ads.”

Senthil Govindan, the CEO of Datawrkz added, “This release further showcases Datawrkz’s strengths in democratizing ad tech and bringing powerful functionality and expertise to the fingertips of mid-market brands and agencies. The launch of Vizibl’s Amazon integration is a huge benefit for this segment which would otherwise not have been able to access Amazon’s audiences and inventory. ”

Generative AI app, Seek AI is now market-ready and has an extended free access period

Bubblr Inc., d/b/a Ethical Web AI (OTC: BBLR) - a frontrunner in ethical technology determined to revolutionize the digital domain, has released Version 6 of its innovative Generative AI app AI Seek. AI Seek is market-ready, with all the necessary capabilities to be distributed by Ethical Web AI, as well as other marketing agencies, on a revenue share basis. In addition, Ethical Web AI offers an extended free period to use the app.

Until now, Ethical Web AI has made AI Seek available in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play store, primarily to garner opinion on the product. After the release of Version 5 of AI Seek, which uniquely provided embedded multimedia (images and videos, etc.), the Company has concluded that it is now demonstrably better than any of the competitive generative AI LLMs such as Chat GPT 4, Bard and Claude 2, it is now ready to take AI Seek to the market.

To do this, Ethical Web AI needed a new AI Seek app release Version 6, that provides the additional capabilities essential for market adoption and is also suitable for distribution by third-party marketing partners on a revenue-sharing basis. Consequently, the Company has launched AI Seek Version 6, which contains the following new capabilities:

• A default seven-day free trial period 
  Uniquely, AI Seek can now be utilized for free for seven days before being asked to subscribe to the app. This allows the consumer to try the app for free before buying a subscription. There is no registration process because AI Seek is uniquely anonymous for an AI LLM. Consumers can simply download AI Seek and use it for free immediately.
• The provision of marketing attribution codes.
  Using marketing attribution on web pages is very straightforward, but delivering market attribution coding when installing apps is much more challenging. Despite the genuine challenges, the Ethical Web AI development team has managed to overcome them and implement a very innovative solution. 
• Better management of search capacity 
  The capability for AI Seek users to be able to purchase more search capacity if their monthly allocation runs out through overuse.

Finally, we are also extending our existing one-week free access offer to two weeks of free access for those people who install the app before the end of February 2024.

Steve Morris, CTO and founder of Ethical Web AI remarked, “This is a crucial milestone for the Company as it allows us to engage third-party marketing companies to help us distribute AI Seek on a revenue-share basis. We are now extremely confident that AI Seek is demonstrably superior to Chat GT 4.

“From March 2023, AI Seek was our primary development focus. However, from the beginning of February 2024, we will focus on using most of our development capability to finalize the Ethical Web AI Open-Source SaaS platform to be demonstrable in Q2 this year.”

GroupBy Inc., a SaaS-based B2C and B2B eCommerce product discovery technology leader, is thrilled to announce the successful implementation of its AI-first eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI, for New Era Japan, the Japanese branch of New Era Cap Co.

Established in 1920, the New Era Cap Company has been a global leader in the headwear and apparel space for decades. Operating in the Japanese market, which has extremely high standards for customer service, New Era Japan sought to elevate the digital shopping experience for its customers.

Dedicated to providing world-class digital experiences for its customers, New Era Japan selected GroupBy’s eCommerce Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI to provide its customers with Google-quality shopping experiences. GroupBy’s solution easily connects to New Era’s Shopify store, seamlessly tapping into catalog data and purchase history to enhance the digital customer experience by delivering relevant, buyable, personalized search results and product recommendations that are optimized for revenue.

Powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI, GroupBy’s platform can seamlessly handle multilingual content, such as New Era Japan’s extensive product catalog, which includes many product entries that contain both English and Japanese text. This has allowed New Era Japan to nearly eliminate null search results, dramatically improving the online customer experience.

“We are excited to join forces with industry leaders GroupBy, Google and Grid Dynamics. These companies are at the forefront of the eCommerce technology revolution in Search and Product Discovery. Their collaboration allows us to access a large network of experts who have accelerated our speed to market with a seamless and speedy implementation process,” said Manabu Hashino, New Era Japan’s Senior Director, Direct to Consumer & Digital. “New Era’s focus and commitment is to drive world-class digital experiences for our global shoppers while increasing revenue per visitor. This joint partnership has enabled faster speed-to-market and will maximize our ROI, while delivering optimal customer experiences with next-generation AI-powered search and product discovery technology.”

The AI-first technology that powers GroupBy’s platform leverages Google’s years of experience delivering personalized content across their flagship properties, such as Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube. Trained on significantly more data than traditional legacy systems, these state-of-the-art machine learning and AI algorithms possess a superior understanding of user intent. Purpose-built for eCommerce, the algorithms allow New Era Japan to optimize its user experience for key eCommerce metrics, such as click-through rate, conversion rate, revenue and more.

To hasten New Era’s speed-to-market and improve overall ROI, implementation partner Grid Dynamics joined GroupBy on this project. A cloud-native digital engineering company, Grid Dynamics specializes in accelerating growth for top brands worldwide with specialized, data-driven solutions. With their vast experience helping global companies swiftly and seamlessly integrate Google Cloud Retail Search, Grid Dynamics’ team of experts was able to expedite the implementation process.

“By choosing GroupBy’s AI-first Search and Product Discovery Platform powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI, New Era has lept to the forefront of eCommerce customer experience, said GroupBy CEO, Roland Gossage. “With the implementation of this new product discovery platform, which will provide Google-quality search and recommendations results, New Era is able to deliver relevant, buyable, personalized search results – that are optimized for revenue – for searches in both English and Japanese.”

GroupBy Inc. remains at the forefront of revolutionizing eCommerce Product Discovery through its AI-first platform, helping retailers like New Era Japan drive success in the highly competitive eCommerce landscape.

GroupBy recently launched its AI Search & Discovery app on the Shopify App Store allowing Shopify merchants to leverage the power of true AI through the company’s platform, powered by Google Cloud Discovery AI, to maximize sales with unmatched search results. The company’s AI-powered search possesses a superior understanding of shopper intent, delivering relevant results while drastically reducing null search results, and improving site-wide metrics. By combining the power of next-generation search, merchandising, and analytics and reporting, GroupBy’s platform allows Shopify retailers to seamlessly create uniquely curated digital experiences, personalized to every visitor on their site.

Appointment Comes At a Time of Significant Growth For The Performance-Driven Company

Performance CTV ad platform Blockboard announced today the appointment of Carlos Restrepo as its new Chief Revenue Officer. The hire comes at a time of significant momentum for the programmatic platform as it builds upon four consecutive years of growth since its inception and positions itself for continued expansion in 2024. In his new role, Restrepo will lead Blockboard's sales, marketing, and account management disciplines and be an instrumental driver of the company's continued growth and development.

Blockboard is a CTV, OTT, and Online video-buying technology platform that utilizes Blockchain technology to ensure total transparency, verification, and trust. Founded in 2019 by a team of video innovators, Blockboard's proprietary technology was built to eliminate fraudulent and illegitimate advertising impressions while delivering complete transparency and unparalleled performance. This optimizes ad dollars, leading to measurable consumer behavior, higher conversion rates, and greater ROI.

"We believe that no waste equals better results and have dedicated ourselves to establishing the CTV/OTT space as a safe environment for investment to reach real humans for actual business," said Matt Wasserlauf, CEO and Co-Founder of Blockboard. "Carlos shares our passion for ensuring trust, transparency, and accountability and has an impressive history of building innovative companies and helping customers achieve great success. We know this combination makes him the perfect person to lead our sales, marketing, and account management teams as they bring our next-gen, fraud-free technology to modern marketers."

An industry thought leader, Restrepo is recognized as a trusted advisor to CEOs and executive teams that are focused on ambitious growth goals, which is backed by a proven track record of launching and scaling media, data, and measurement businesses from the ground up. Prior to joining Blockboard, he served as a consultant in the digital AdTech space, where he held senior advisory roles focused on growth and go-to-market strategy. From 2012-2018, he was the Chief Revenue Officer at OpenSlate, the leading brand safety, suitability, and ad verification solution for social video (acquired by DoubleVerify in 2021), where he forged strategic partnerships with Google and top MCNs to increase the value of their video assets to compete with linear TV offerings, resulting in billions of dollars in YouTube programmatic revenue. He also signed and activated all six major advertising holding companies to global multi-year customer agreements and structured strategic partnerships with Google and other prominent tech partners. Earlier in his career, he held sales leadership roles at Thomson Reuters, Univision, and Reader's Digest.

"Blockboard's technology can't be found anywhere else in the programmatic ecosystem," said Restrepo. "I'm incredibly excited to bring the unparalleled results that Blockboard achieves for clients to an entirely new group of brand marketers. With four years of consistent growth and development to build on, I'm confident that 2024 will be a banner year."

In addition to Restrepo's hire, Blockboard has promoted Greg Srilapa to SVP, Operations. The company has also welcomed several new team members across its operations and account management teams and expanded its engineering team in the US and India.

Safary, the web3 alternative to Google Analytics, has announced the successful closure of its pre-seed round, raising $2.4 million USD. The round was led by Lemniscap, with participation from Arca, SevenX, Big Brain Holdings, Saison Capital, Diaspora Ventures, and 20 web3 angel investors – 14 of which are members of the Safary community.

The funding will be leveraged to add firepower to Safary's team and accelerate the development of Safary's marketing attribution platform, which enables Web3 teams to analyze their marketing CAC, channel ROI, and customer LTV. Safary's free, user-friendly solution allows projects to unlock powerful Web3 analytics simply by adding one line of code to their website.

Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies by 2024 means marketers will no longer be able to use the tracking methods they've long relied on to understand user behavior, personalize experiences, and optimize campaigns. Acknowledging this impending shift, Safary empowers marketers with the ability to protect user privacy while collecting only the data they need to make informed decisions.

As the only cookie-free Web3 tracking platform, Safary allows marketers to centralize their growth data and measure the results of any Web3 marketing campaign from organic content to KOLs, quests, ad networks, and more – offering critical insights without infringing on users' privacy. Safary tracks wallets, shows Web3 conversions, and links to on-chain actions in an intuitive no-code dashboard.

Safary's journey has been unprecedented, from launching as the first Web3 growth community, to evangelizing the Web3 growth ecosystem, and now to building a powerful growth platform. As Safary co-founder Justin Vogel says: "Growth leaders are at the center of everything we do – that means we'll work hard to support them whether they're using our software or not."

Every new Safary member speaks one-on-one with a Safary co-founder, Justin Vogel or Eliott Mogenet, upon joining the community. They've spoken directly with over 400 Web3 growth leaders, more than any other team, giving them an intimate understanding of the most pressing growth challenges in the industry. The community now consists of heads of growth from Ledger,  dYdX, and over 200 Web3 companies.

Safary's team is a unique blend of growth and privacy experts. Their founding engineer Ricardo Carvalho holds a PHD in data privacy, and the company's technical advisor is among the leading experts on decentralized identity and privacy, having spent six years as a tech lead at ConsenSys.

Justin Vogel, Co-founder of Safary, said: "We believe that growth leaders will change Web3 for the better, and with it the world. Our goal is to empower them with the network, knowledge, and technology they need to grow the next generation of great companies. We've built a next generation tracking platform designed to uphold the highest standards of privacy while offering valuable insights into the performance and efficacy of every marketing activity and campaign. We're excited to join forces with leading Web3 investors to build the Web3 growth ecosystem and create a more ethical and secure data future for all."

Roderik van der Graaf, Founder of Lemniscap, said: "As the era of third-party cookies draws to a close, the digital marketing and data privacy landscapes are facing a watershed moment. Safary offers marketers a timely lifeline, providing a way to gather actionable intel without compromising user privacy. With an unrivaled partner network featuring top Web3 growth leaders, Safary is in prime position to address immediate industry needs and deliver a powerful new attribution system that can drive Web3 adoption. We look forward to supporting their mission to enable every company to thrive in the new internet."