Amagi ADS PLUS, the premium CTV advertising marketplace from the global SaaS technology leader for Connected TV and Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) services, Amagi, today has launched a new, innovative feature called FAST Deals, a curated programmatic marketplace set to enhance the advertiser buying experience across FAST services.

As consumer engagement with FAST services continues to soar, advertisers face the challenge of navigating a fragmented ecosystem to target audiences at scale within premium, relevant environments. Advertisers also struggle to achieve consistent transparency into the programming where their ads are placed, while content owners face challenges in effectively merchandising their inventory across the expansive programmatic landscape. Addressing this issue, FAST Deals marketplace from Amagi ADS PLUS is designed to simplify and enhance the advertising experience for buyers, content owners, and programmatic exchanges.

FAST Deals launches with more than a dozen curated programmatic inventory bundles that address the most commonly targeted CTV inventory, including news, sports, entertainment, seasonal and tentpole events, U.S. Spanish-language programming, and DEI-focused packages. These bundles are underpinned by Amagi ADS PLUS' partnerships across a breadth of leading content owners and FAST innovators. FAST Deals is currently available across leading programmatic CTV exchanges in North America.

"We're seeing a big spurt in growth — among viewers and advertisers — for FAST programming. One key reason for this is the sector's focus on premium, high-quality and niche content," said Emily Bromley, VP, Growth, FreeWheel. "By teaming up with Amagi, we hope to better connect buyers in today's TV ad landscape with quality, transparent, relevant and curated content — with consumers in the FAST space."

James Smith, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Amagi ADS PLUS, commented:
"Advertisers keep asking for ways to go bigger on key audience segments and contextual environments but are often confined by the complexity of running and measuring the same target across so many publishers. At Amagi, our products power the FAST channel programming, playout, and ad insertion for over 3,800 publishers, reaching over 200 million CTV households. This puts us very close to the stream and allows us to leverage our platform metadata and scale to give brands a single destination for the reach they desire on key audience segments in a suitable and premium environment."

Amagi ADS PLUS and the FAST Deals marketplace are built on the foundation of Amagi's industry-leading FAST platform, which currently facilitates content creation, distribution, and ad insertion across more than 110 million hours of viewing and more than 1 billion ad impressions. ADS PLUS leverages Amagi's extensive relationships with premium CTV content owners to establish an advertising marketplace that bridges the gap between content creators and leading advertisers.

Key Features of FAST Deals by Amagi ADS PLUS:

• Enhanced Relevancy: Leveraging Amagi's end-to-end FAST platform, ADS PLUS possesses unparalleled insight into content metadata, enabling precise and granular inventory packaging for advertisers.
• Transparency and Quality: Accurate and readily available content metadata provides advertisers with unprecedented transparency into ad placements, while ADS PLUS inventory curation ensures adherence to all standard industry supply parameters.
• Exclusivity: Through direct and comprehensive relationships with content owners, Amagi ADS PLUS offers unique and exclusive inventory across diverse verticals, providing advertisers with unparalleled opportunities.
• Flexibility in Access: ADS PLUS provides buyers with the flexibility to access FAST Deals via their preferred programmatic exchanges.

Captiv8 Inc., the award-winning Influencer Marketing Platform, including the 2023 Winner of 'Best Influencer Marketing Technology' (Influencer Marketing Awards, London), has officially launched in Italy.

Captiv8's Italian efforts will be led by seasoned veteran, Milan-based Marta De Leonardis, who will be taking on the role of Country Manager. With key experience, including roles at Vodafone, Kiver (Mondadori Group), and influencer marketing agency Open Influence, De Leonardis brings more than a decade of experience in brand strategy, marketing programs, and creator solutions.

"I have admired Captiv8's unified approach to creator marketing for some time now" - De Leonardis says – "With its focus on enterprise solutions, Captiv8 has a track record working with the most innovative Fortune 500 brands and largest global agencies. Italian brands have the utmost sophistication and are on the cutting edge of innovation, making Captiv8 a natural fit to service this market. Marketers are looking for holistic tools that allow them to measure the true impact of influencer campaigns, and Captiv8's technology meets this demand. Its commerce solutions give them the ability to track creator impact across the entire purchase funnel, from awareness to actual transactions, and account for all attributing measurement factors. Captiv8 can track brand and performance campaigns through its comprehensive platform and attribute performance by creator or even by-post level."

Since its inception in 2015, Captiv8 has managed over 25,000 campaigns and has responded to global demand by offering support in 10+ languages: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Japanese, Arabic, and more. In 2023, Captiv8 added robust first-to-market affiliate capabilities, to provide solutions for the growing intersection of influencer marketing and ecommerce.

Krishna Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Captiv8 said, "Since expanding into the UK, we have seen a growing demand for end-to-end influencer marketing capabilities and measurement tools from our partners in the EMEA region. We see tremendous opportunity in the Italian market, and look forward to building upon the success we have had in the United Kingdom. The core offering of our business is simple: to create efficiencies in the world of influencer marketing, and provide marketers with tools to drive the highest ROI and impact, with creative and relevant influencer marketing. With that, we're excited to expand and welcome Marta to our international team. We are excited to work closely with our partners in Italy, and driving meaningful impact and measurable results for our industry peers." 

Industry leaders will elevate omnichannel shopping experiences and help grow retailer profits

Manhattan Associates, the global leader in supply chain commerce, and leading global commerce company, Shopify, announced a new alliance today to help retailers build world-class unified omnichannel shopping experiences. Shopify’s commerce platform will be combined with Manhattan’s leading omnichannel order management solution to help enterprises create exceptional customer experiences at every step of the sales journey.

“Manhattan’s focus on fast, easy, reliable and transparent shopping enables our enterprise retail customers to lower sales friction and elevate purchase confidence, which is why we’re proud to align ourselves with Shopify in our mutual endeavor to improve the digital commerce experience,” said Brian Kinsella, senior vice president of Product Management for Manhattan. “We’re excited about the elevated experience for consumers, and the increased revenue and margin potential for our merchants owing to the combined offering.”

The combined solution will also include Manhattan’s post-purchase customer service tools, including digital self-service solutions that provide the visibility, flexibility and convenience required by today’s consumers.

Nautica, a SPARC Group brand, will be the first joint customer. “By offering our customers the combination of Shopify’s fast and reliable commerce platform with Manhattan’s powerful order promising and post purchase offerings, we are providing them unparalleled visibility and the industry’s premier end-to-end online shopping experience,” said Mike Dupuis, chief digital officer for SPARC Group. “For SPARC, we believe the combined solution will result in improved sales, reduced shipping costs, fewer returns, and improved margins and profits overall.”

Shopify currently powers millions of businesses worldwide and 10% of U.S. ecommerce. Through this new integration with Manhattan Active^® Omni, consumers will have access to more accurate product location and delivery information. Additionally, brands powered by Shopify will gain global visibility of inventory across their entire network, including items in transit, stores, warehouses, suppliers, and other facilities.

“We’re thrilled about teaming up with Manhattan as it's a major leap forward in transforming supply chain operations for enterprise commerce,” said Bobby Morrison, chief revenue officer at Shopify. “This is a game-changer in today's fiercely competitive landscape, and we're excited to provide commerce solutions that will ultimately enhance unified shopping experiences for consumers.”

New direct-to-DSP integration will empower marketers to more effectively target and optimize audiences across CTV and linear TV

tvScientific, the performance advertising platform for connected TV (CTV), and Blockgraph, a privacy-focused data collaboration platform, announced today a partnership to facilitate programmatic targeting, measurement, attribution, and optimization across linear and connected TV (CTV). The new collaboration enables tvScientific’s extensive customer base of leading direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to maximize the value of their robust first party data assets with an emphasis on privacy.

The new partnership will allow marketers and media companies using tvScientific’s performance advertising platform to activate first party programmatic audience campaigns using Blockgraph’s industry-leading identity platform. Data owners will be able to safely and seamlessly deploy their aggregated and de-identified first party data. By incorporating retail data into tvScientific’s CTV targeting and measurement platform, D2C brands can target television advertisements to specific households according to their search, purchase and retail history to drive better campaign performance.

“This new partnership brings together our privacy-enhanced, deterministic household identity solution with tvScientific’s sophisticated demand-side platform,” said Jason Manningham, CEO of Blockgraph. “This collaboration will be particularly valuable to tvScientific’s customers, as they will now be able to apply their first party data assets more effectively and increase the overall ROI for their advertising campaigns.”

Compared to their competitors, D2C brands maintain particularly rich catalogs of first party customer data. D2C brands can apply this data to premium video assets — both linear and CTV — to improve campaign targeting, measurement and optimization. The new partnership between Blockgraph and tvScientific will support inventory both bought and sold programmatically.

“Combining programmatic advertising with premium video is a complex challenge, and it’s becoming more complex with the expanding landscape of services and providers,” said David Koye, co-founder and CPO at tvScientific. “Our new partnership with Blockgraph gives our customers the tools they need to confidently and consistently optimize performance even as campaigns become more complicated. Blockgraph’s privacy-focused identity solution gives our customers the security they need to identify and target new audiences and measure their success.”

Lull, a leading mattress brand, is one of the first director-to-consumer brands to work with Blockgraph and tvScientific and to take advantage of this new partnership. "Using tvScientific’s platform to leverage our first party data has allowed us to unlock an additional channel to retarget our existing leads and customers,” said Sharone Almog, VP Marketing and eCommerce at Lull. “Data drives all of our decisions at Lull, so being able to target unique audiences who we know are interested in our brand has helped us boost campaign performance."

AI-powered analysis at scale shields both publishers and advertisers from harmful and illegitimate ads

MediaGo, the deep learning-based intelligent advertising platform, announced it has expanded its collaboration with The Media Trust (TMT), a global leader in digital trust and safety for online advertising. This partnership will create a safer and cleaner advertising ecosystem by enhancing the quality of advertisements to protect publishers from harmful ads, prevent advertisers from competing with illegitimate inventory bids, and deliver safe consumer experiences.

TMT's powerful, AI-enhanced digital advertising analysis engine allows MediaGo to advance the interests of its media partners by verifying the quality and legitimacy of advertiser landing pages, fostering favorable advertising experiences. By leveraging TMT's global scanning technology to scrutinize campaign landing pages, MediaGo can effectively identify a range of consumer-harming activity including malicious software, pop-ups, fraudulent content, high-risk browser redirecting, viruses, and other threats.

This in-depth analysis of campaign landing pages also ensures a safe and clean advertising experience, protecting audiences from the growing threat of harmful ad content and illegal data tracking. As a result, MediaGo's media partners achieve cost savings from the time and resources they would have otherwise devoted to handling malware attacks.

"We've invested heavily in improving the advertising landscape and consumer experiences and are pleased to deepen our partnership with TMT as an additional layer of security beyond our internal intelligent review system," said Brian Mun, Director of Global Partnerships, Baidu Global Business Unit. "As the advertising industry rapidly evolves, consistently delivering high-quality ad content will create better advertising experiences for consumers and digital companies alike. MediaGo will continue to enhance its review processes to offer optimal ad content for both media partners and audiences."

In addition, the partnership will also enable legitimate advertisers to successfully bid for high-quality ad placements, all while ensuring that advertisers maintain their commitment to delivering premium ad content.

"When consumer well-being is at the heart of your business, everyone wins—including vulnerable demographics like seniors and even the broader advertising industry," said Chris Olson, CEO of The Media Trust. "We are delighted to have a partner like MediaGo that places a high emphasis on the quality and safety of advertising content."

Fineshare Unveils FineVoice 1.5: Create Voiceovers with Your Favorite Voices in the Way You Like

The usage of audio is in-depth in different areas. However, making voiceovers takes lots of time and is highly skilled. Creators who tried dub can't always get satisfying results and creators with speech difficulty cannot dub. Moreover, hiring voice actors is expensive. As an intelligent software company, Fineshare brings a major update to FineVoice after a deep dive inside AI voice area. Now, FineVoice is on its way to becoming a versatile AI voice studio.

AI-powered FineVoice 1.5 provides creators who pursue quality with features like voice changing, dubbing, voice cloning, transcription, etc. Creators can skip tedious processes and generate desired voices without leaving home. FineVoice also lowers skill thresholds while allowing you to control details. You can start audio creation with your favorite voice and preferred way, anywhere, anytime.

"You know, high-quality voices are always 'spoken' by professionals, but AI is changing the situation and making voice creation more accessible," co-founder of Fineshare, Jared says. "What we are doing is to bring this change to everyone in a faster, better, and more affordable way, so people are free to create voiceovers."

Top features of FineVoice Text-To-Speech include:

1. Natural and Lifelike Voices: AI enables FineVoice to create personalized and natural-sounding voices. No barriers, even amateurs can get professional-level voices.
   
   
2. 1000+ Voice Models: Original models for commercial usage, celebrities, characters, and an enormous model community. Any requirement for personalized voices will be satisfied.
   
   
3. 40+ Languages: Covering mainstream languages and accents, creators can expand global business with perfect-fit voices.
   
   
4. Simple and Convenient: Choose voice, paste text, and get results. Save time and effort.

The evolved FineVoice TTS feature helps creators reach new areas of voice creation, and any AI voice tool you need can be found here.

• AI Voice Changer: Turn the original voice into anything you want. Real people or fictional characters, get any style you want.
  
  
• Transcription: Automatically identify language and correct punctuation, faster and more accurately than manual script. Multiple formats available.
  
  
• AI Voice Cloning: AI preserves accents and nuances of human speech, and even mimics real human emotions. Clone once, use forever.
  
  
• Voice Recorder: Simultaneously record multiple sources and adjust details. Get high-quality audio without specialized equipment.
  
  
• Audio Extractor: No extra software needed. One-stop extracting audio from videos and starting creation.

Karp will ensure client success as marketers, agencies, and publishers rapidly adopt DISQO’s brand experience platform

DISQO, the leading brand experience platform, announces the promotion of David Karp to Chief Customer Officer. Karp is a key leader in DISQO’s mission to build the most trusted experience platform that fuels brand growth. More than 800 clients use DISQO’s platform to test, measure, and optimize for every customer, touchpoint, and outcome. DISQO’s platform reaches more than 2M opted-in consumers who share their brand experiences.

Karp joined DISQO as VP of Customer Success in September 2021 and has since played a pivotal role in shaping the company's customer-first ethos. He’s architected and scaled DISQO’s Customer Success organization. With a track record strategizing customer success initiatives at DISQO and prior posts, he’s well-positioned to continue helping DISQO’s clients grow their brands and revenues with a customer experience knowledge advantage.

"Nothing is more important to us than our clients’ success fueling their growth with DISQO, and David has proven that he is the person to ensure they achieve their goals,” said Armen Adjemian, CEO and co-founder, DISQO. “Since joining us, his innovative approach and commitment to customer engagement has significantly contributed to DISQO's growth and reputation."

Karp will actively collaborate with DISQO's 800+ customers including brands, agencies, media platforms, and market research firms. Among DISQO's clients are Inspire Brands (incl. Dunkin’ Donuts), Nestlé Purina, iHeart Media, Condé Nast, Warner Bros. Discovery, Hulu, Spotify, Experian, Digitas, Havas Media Network, Omnicom Media Group, and J.D. Power.

Reflecting on his new role, Karp said, "I'm honored to extend a 'customer-first' mindset across DISQO. For me, it’s always been about the values I share with DISQO’s founders. We believe that the relationships between brands and their customers can be more virtuous - and valuable. So, we’ve built a brand experience platform that is a win-win for consumers and our clients, propelling brand growth and customer satisfaction at the same time.”

Successful completion of third-party audit further demonstrates Sigma360's firm commitment and continued investment in security

Sigma360, the leading AI-driven risk screening and monitoring platform, is proud to announce it successfully earned SOC2 Type II certification in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) standards for Systems and Organization Controls (SOC). This important milestone is another proof point of Sigma360's dedication to customer data privacy and security and further positions the firm to serve enterprises of any size.

The SOC 2 Type II certification provides detailed information and independent assurance about the controls specific to security, availability, and processing integrity of the systems used to handle user data as well the confidentiality and privacy of the information.

"Achieving SOC 2 Type II requires a whole-of-company effort and absolute prioritization around security," said Stuart Jones, Jr., CEO of Sigma360. "Our customers trust us with some of their most sensitive and confidential data and rely upon the security of our platform to perform highly regulated, mission critical tasks every day. Our investment in security will only grow from here, though this certification proves that our systems and procedures already meet industry standards in protecting our customers and their data."

Sigma360's SOC 2 Type II certification comes alongside the appointment of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and the launch of its next generation, cloud-based screening and monitoring platform with industry-leading capabilities across watchlists, political exposure and adverse media. Utilizing a combination of data science, global content and domain expertise, the Sigma360 platform delivers a novel approach that helps firms drive efficiency, meet growing regulatory requirements around know-your-customer and easily configure and consolidate risk management capabilities to drive firmwide value.