Transaction allows Perion to be at the forefront of the fast-growing DOOH channel, further diversifying its offering and expanding its global footprint

Perion Network Ltd., connecting advertisers with consumers through technology across all major digital channels, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Hivestack Inc., a global innovative full-stack programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) company. The terms of the transaction include US $100 million in cash paid upon closing and a 3-year employee retention and performance-based payment plan of up to US $25 million.

DOOH advertising transforms ordinary public spaces into dynamic experiences, engaging audiences with eye-catching, personalized content in real-time. It harnesses cutting-edge technologies to target, deliver and measure unforgettable, immersive ads that connect brands with people on the go. With the acquisition of Hivestack, a programmatic DOOH technology innovator since 2017, Perion is entering an exciting market at its nascent stage, positioning the company to capitalize on its anticipated growth.

Hivestack’s platform is used by many of the world's largest brands, agencies, media owners, and partners including Uber, Colgate, Lego, InterContinental Hotel Group, Doordash, GroupM, dentsu, The Trade Desk, Xandr, Clear Channel, Lamar, Stroër, and many more.

"We are excited about the acquisition of Hivestack, which both complements and advances our long-term growth strategy. Hivestack’s DOOH technology platform stands out by offering brands and advertisers what they crave the most: high-visibility creative, precise targeting, immediate impact, wide reach and measurement," said Tal Jacobson, CEO of Perion. "In addition to advancing our diversification strategy, this transaction aligns with our objective to expand our technological capabilities and product offerings, and we will continue to pursue additional inorganic growth opportunities."

More Regions. More Reach. More Technology

• Hivestack’s state-of-the-art platform is deployed in 32 countries, spanning North America, EMEA, LATAM and APAC. This global footprint will enable Perion to capitalize on economic trends impacting advertising budgets globally, and offer a variety of solutions in these additional markets.
• This transaction significantly contributes to Perion’s diversification strategy, enabling it to establish a considerable footprint in the fast-growing DOOH channel, which according to a PQ Media research report, is predicted to increase from US$21.5 billion in 2023 to US$30.7 billion in 2026, reflecting a 15.3% CAGR.
• Hivestack offers media owners an array of purpose-built software like the DOOH Ad Server, SSP, and Header Bidder, designed to manage, deliver, and optimize targeted advertising on digital screens, enhancing yield and sourcing demand efficiently.
• For media buyers, Hivestack's DOOH DSP, along with tools for audience planning and campaign measurement, provides robust capabilities for sourcing optimal inventory and maximizing the effectiveness and ROI of DOOH advertising campaigns.
• This acquisition is expected to create synergistic opportunities with Perion’s existing advertising offering and business and fits nicely with the company’s retail network strategy.

Mr. Jacobson concluded, “We welcome Hivestack and its impressive team of professionals to Perion. We look forward to capitalizing on the synergies between Hivestack’s technology and Perion’s existing solutions, to provide clients an even more comprehensive, end-to-end offering.”

Andreas Soupliotis, Founder and CEO of Hivestack, said, "Joining Perion marks a significant milestone in our journey. The strength of our technology, coupled with Perion’s market expertise and compelling advertiser solutions, will result in new synergetic solutions that resonate with customers on a worldwide scale. We are thrilled about the endless possibilities that this unlocks."

WEX, the global commerce platform that simplifies the business of running a business, today announced that Sachin Dhawan has been appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In this position, Mr. Dhawan will lead WEX’s global Technology Organization, including product and platform technology, architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure and cloud engineering, technical operations, enterprise applications and Corporate IT, and technology-risk management.

“Sachin is a career technologist with decades of global experience articulating and implementing product and technology visions for both consumer and B2B businesses,” said Melissa Smith, WEX’s Chair, Chief Executive Officer, and President. “Sachin’s background and experience in payments technology, AI, and machine learning align with our commitment to stay at the forefront of technology and harness its power to propel our business into the future. I’m confident he will be an ideal leader for our Technology Organization and a strong fit for our culture and business. I’m thrilled to welcome Sachin to the WEX team.”

Previously, Mr. Dhawan worked at Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service where he served as CTO, leading product and technology development. Prior to joining Stitch Fix, he was Visa’s Senior Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, responsible for building and scaling global technology infrastructure. Additionally, he spent more than 16 years at PayPal and Microsoft where he grew PayPal’s consumer products on a global scale and helped shape Microsoft’s Advertising business. He started his career in software design engineering and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology.

"I am honored and thrilled to be joining the remarkable team at WEX, especially at such an exciting time,” said Sachin Dhawan, WEX’s new CTO. “I am excited to shape our technology strategy and to accelerate our pace of innovation in service of our global customers and partners. With a robust technological foundation spanning employee benefits, corporate payments, and mobility, WEX is positioned to contribute to the ongoing AI technological transformation in the global fintech market."

The company plans to release a full guide to help the industry understand how to overcome the challenges based on what consumers value and expect out of their advertising experience

Blis, the integrated ad planning, buying and measurement platform, today announced the initial results of their commissioned research that reveals marketers' and media agencies' plans for next year, as well as what consumers expect and desire out of their advertising experiences in 2024.

Even though marketers are running out of time to find solutions to replace third-party cookies, the research reveals that while nearly every single marketer in the country (98%) is concerned about the disappearance of third-party cookies, just half (51%) have a plan in place to substitute them. A third (36%) of marketers aim to implement a solution in the next six months.

While Google will begin phasing out support for third-party cookies in Chrome next January, over half (61%) of marketers and media planners haven't yet tested the Chrome Privacy Sandbox. Out of the 39% of respondents that have tested it, 56% work in media agencies, and 44% are brand marketers.

To help marketers and media planners in 2024, Blis is sharing these findings ahead of the new year so the industry can become more aware of the challenges ahead. Blis will also launch a guide to share more of the findings touching on burning industry issues, comparing what media planners and marketers think consumers want to what consumers truly value. Blis hopes the e-guide will help brands and agencies better understand how to embrace the privacy-first reality, align their strategies to consumers' expectations and tackle the challenges around omnichannel campaigns and measurement.

"All the past delays in phasing out third-party cookies created a false sense that advertisers still have time to figure it out," said Gil Larsen, Managing Director US at Blis. "But the current reality is much more troubling, as advertisers that still rely on IDs are already missing out on almost half of their audiences, and most of them still don't have a plan in place to substitute third-party cookies. Consumers are also much more aware of their privacy than the industry may think. I'm happy to share some of the initial results now and looking forward to sharing all the other findings of our research to continue helping our clients and the industry move forward next year."

Blis commissioned an independent study from Sapio Research among a representative group of 2000 consumers and 200 media agencies and brands across the US. The interviews were conducted in late October 2023.

Infobip, a leading global cloud communications platform, and Community, the leading messaging and engagement platform that connects global brands, sports teams, film and TV studios, music labels, public figures, artists, and more to their audiences at scale through personalized experiences, have joined forces to unveil an expanded global mobile messaging offering. This partnership marks a significant milestone for both companies, enabling Community to extend its reach internationally and providing Infobip with enhanced access to the North American market.

Known for its innovative mobile messaging platform, Community previously operated exclusively in North America. However, with Infobip's robust technical infrastructure and extensive network of relationships, Community is now poised to engage global audiences like never before. Infobip's backend capabilities and cutting-edge tools will seamlessly integrate technologies such as WhatsApp messaging into Community's platform.

This collaboration empowers major brands, artists, celebrities, and properties that utilize Community to connect with their worldwide fan bases through personalized, precisely targeted mobile messages. Notably, the initial launch of select properties resulted in signups from over 100 countries within just 90 minutes. Data reveals exceptionally high engagement rates for Community messages compared to other communication channels.

“Through this strategic partnership with Infobip, Community is positioned to reach new heights by connecting our customers to new audiences and experiences across the globe,” said Josh Rosenheck, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Community. “In addition to the value this brings to our existing business, I’m particularly excited about the opportunity to serve international customers in need of innovative ways to scale their audience engagement.”

For Infobip, this partnership represents a strategic entry into the large North American market, while Community leverages the opportunity to expand its global footprint. Together, they have achieved a successful launch and unlocked a range of capabilities through their technical collaboration.

"Infobip is thrilled to partner with Community to bring the power of personalized mobile messaging to a global audience," said Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip. "This collaboration exemplifies our commitment to enhancing customer engagement and communication experiences worldwide."

Community and Infobip anticipate that this partnership will revolutionize mobile messaging for brands, artists, and organizations seeking to engage with their fan bases on a global scale.

Joint customers can build trust in data directly within their cloud environment

Precisely, the global leader in data integrity, today announced that its Precisely Data Integrity Suite is Powered by Snowflake. Joint customers can leverage the Precisely Data Integrity Suite for access to data that is accurate, consistent, and full of rich context – without having to move data from their cloud environment.

“It's undeniable that data integrity challenges persist as an obstacle in the cloud. Often, during the cloud migration process, organizations move the same messy data they’ve traditionally stored on-premises into their cloud data environment,” said Eric Yau, Chief Operating Officer at Precisely. “With the Data Integrity Suite, organizations can run data integrity processes natively in Snowflake and at scale. It essentially eliminates the need to move data stored in Snowflake into other environments.”

Building the Data Integrity Suite to run on the Snowflake Data Cloud allows users to leverage the scalability, flexibility, and performance of Snowflake’s unified platform. Joint customers can quickly solve a variety of data integrity challenges, including:

• Replicating data, including data from the mainframe, to the Snowflake Data Cloud
• Cataloging data for better visibility into business and technical metadata
• Profiling data quality and receiving proactive suggestions for quality rules
• Verifying addresses and geocoding locations
• Enriching business data with curated datasets

The news underscores the long-standing partnership of the two companies, with the data integrity leader already having achieved Snowflake Ready Technology status for its Precisely Connect data integration solution early last year. A wide array of Precisely datasets are also available on Snowflake Marketplace, including world points of interest, address data, and more.

“Building on Snowflake allows companies to operate and grow powerful products on the Snowflake Data Cloud,” said Tarik Dwiek, Head of Technology Alliances at Snowflake. “We look forward to supporting Precisely in ensuring customers can easily access foundations of complete and trusted data to help drive industry innovation.”

Industry-leading applications are Powered by Snowflake. By building on Snowflake, product and engineering teams can develop, scale, and operate their applications without operational burden, delivering differentiated products to their customers. With the Powered by Snowflake program, builders can access resources to help design, market, and operate their applications in the Data Cloud.

New data unveils top Generative AI sites, rankings of the most popular social media platforms, and most targeted industries by threat actors

Cloudflare, Inc., the leading connectivity cloud company, today published its fourth annual Year in Review, exploring global Internet insights and security trends, accompanied by a deeper dive on the most popular Internet services in 2023.

The Internet is one of, if not, the most ubiquitous aspect of modern life. Cloudflare’s Year in Review revealed that in 2023 alone, there was a 25% increase in global traffic, with no signs of slowing. This growth underscores the dependency on Internet services to facilitate and underpin vital systems and tasks such as supporting global digital economies, enabling the operations of healthcare networks, maintaining business continuity for enterprises, and ultimately connecting people with their communities.

Some of the biggest highlights of 2023 include:

• Most Popular Internet Service: Google came in first for the second year in a row, followed by Facebook (#2), Apple (#3), and TikTok (#4).
• Most Popular Social Media Platform: Facebook came in first, beating out 2022 leader TikTok (#2), followed up by Instagram (#3) and Twitter/X (#4).
• Most Popular Generative AI Service: OpenAI came in first for this emerging category, followed by Character AI (#2), Quillbot (#3), and Hugging Face (#4).
• Most Targeted Industry: Threat actors most commonly launched attacks on Financial organizations, globally.
• Most Common Cyberthreats: Deceptive links and extortion attempts found in malicious email messages were the top two most leveraged attack types.
• Internet Outages Observed: There were more than 180 Internet outages around the world in 2023 – compared to over 150 in 2022 – with many due to government-directed regional and national shutdowns of Internet connectivity.

“We all depend on the Internet, and Cloudflare’s global network – one of the largest in the world – has evolved into a pillar of the critical infrastructure the digital world relies on,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare. “Our unique role on the Internet allows us to see the ebbs and flows of online popularity and emerging technology trends in real-time – such as the boom in AI and accelerated global use of Starlink. It is our responsibility to be transparent and share the data and perspectives from reports like our Year in Review to help keep the online world more informed, resilient, and secure.”

This data comes from Cloudflare Radar, a free tool that lets anyone view global trends and insights across the Internet. Radar is powered by data from Cloudflare’s global network (one of the world’s largest, spanning 300+ cities in 100+ countries), and aggregated and anonymized data from Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 public DNS Resolver, widely used as a fast and private way to browse the Internet.

Global brands will now benefit from DV’s industry-leading brand reputation protection across YouTube Shorts inventory

DoubleVerify, a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data and analytics, today announced the expansion of its YouTube brand safety and suitability measurement capabilities to include YouTube Shorts – empowering brands to validate the brand safety of their campaigns and protect their brand equity in this highly engaging environment.

"Today's announcement underscores our ongoing commitment to safeguarding brand equity and reputation across all media channels," said Mark Zagorski, CEO, DoubleVerify. "Our innovative offering on YouTube Shorts provides YouTube advertisers with the tools they need to boost clarity and confidence in their media investment and verify brand-content alignment."

YouTube Shorts enables all types of creators to create attention catching videos using nothing but their mobile phones, with over 2 billion logged-in users every month. With YouTube Shorts Ads, marketers can connect with their audiences with interactive, mobile-first creative builds for engagement, and extend the impact of their YouTube campaigns. In July 2023, DV announced the launch of viewability and invalid traffic measurement on YouTube Shorts. With this release of expanded brand safety and suitability measurement, advertisers will be able to measure and verify campaign alignment with safe and suitable YouTube Shorts videos.

With this release, advertisers will benefit from:

• Accurate Classification: DV leverages a combination of manual reviews and proprietary AI-driven tools – empowering advertisers to accurately classify YouTube Shorts videos across all GARM brand safety and suitability categories, additional DV suitability categories and 40+ supported languages.
• Consistent Settings and Metrics: Access industry-standard GARM-aligned brand safety and suitability settings and leverage the same level of insights across different platforms and publishers to inform future media planning and buying decisions across media.
• Trusted Measurement: Gain confidence by leveraging an independent, third-party verification provider to authenticate YouTube Shorts campaigns.

DV has provided viewability and invalid traffic measurement across YouTube and Google ad serving solutions since 2011. In 2018, DV became a Google measurement partner for brand safety and viewability. In 2020, DV launched Authentic Brand Suitability on Google Display & Video 360 and, in 2022, DV was the first verification provider to earn MRC accreditation for independent third-party viewability reporting on YouTube. Earlier this year, DV launched DV Campaign Automator™ to streamline the entire trafficking workflow in Google Campaign Manager 360.

Nearly half of organizations with top-performing demand generation programs anticipate exceeding revenue expectations

Alexander Group, the leading revenue growth consultancy to Global 2000 companies, today unveiled the results of its 2023 Demand Generation Performance and Investment Insights research. As competition across industries continues to intensify, demand generation strategies are evolving to support heightened revenue growth. The research shows that 70 percent of participating organizations reported a shift from “last” touch to first touch, linear, position-based or decay-based attribution models. These organizations report more efficient, more productive demand generation performance than ever before, with an overall average revenue growth rate of 6–10 percent. The findings, which were collected from organizations with top-performing demand generation programs, include a unique look into demand generation and marketing priorities moving into 2024.

“We’re seeing emerging maturity of leading organizations’ demand generation activities, giving them a significant advantage when it comes to capturing market share and growing revenue in the months and years to come,” said Kevan Savage, Principal, Marketing Practice at Alexander Group. “Investment in demand generation is currently higher than ever, and we expect continued growth in this area as organizations realize the many benefits of modern marketing strategies.”

Key takeaways from the research include:

• Demand Generation Investment is Growing: Respondents report a shift in demand generation activities, increasing overall demand generation investment by +55% in FY23 and adding a variety of winning strategies to their toolboxes. These include leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and search engine optimization (SEO) for mid-funnel demand-focused educational content, as well as introducing programmatic personalization and account-based marketing. In addition, these organizations report 10–20%+ pipeline yield stemming from cross-functional paid partnerships, roundtables and virtual forums.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration Drives Marketing Success: Marketing, sales and revenue functions are becoming more and more intertwined, leading to greater organizational gains. Marketing organizations in particular are deploying more functional contribution and sources to pipeline (38%), enabling heightened cross-functional collaboration and accountability alongside sales and revenue teams. Furthermore, 80% of participants reported “alignment of segmentation and ideal customer profile (ICP)” as a top priority to drive growth across functions. As customer experience becomes more multi-faceted, defined by multiple touchpoints across several channels, organizations must also adopt a more multi-faceted, cross-departmental approach.
• Qualified Demand is on the Rise: Organizations are increasing overall marketing qualification levels relative to demand generation investment levels, with a +53% jump from FY22 to FY23. Respondents cite value creation from deeper and stickier cross-functional relationships, prioritizing quality over quantity.
• Marketing Revenue Generation and Returns are Up: Marketing organizations are delivering more closed revenue to demonstrate greater return on investment levels related to demand generation—an increase of +35% in FY23. These investments need to be well-balanced and optimized to justify incrementality, which is why 80% of respondents assess overall marketing performance to inform investment levels at least monthly, while 65% formally assess demand generation investments based on performance of pipeline size and revenue contribution.

“Leading organizations are already delivering increased ROI related to demand generation—and this is just the beginning,” said Savage. “As we continue to assist clients with organizing and optimizing their marketing departments alongside optimization of demand generation activities, this research will serve as a backdrop to improve performance and investment profiles.”

Research Methodology

Alexander Group compiled these findings by surveying C-suite, marketing and sales leaders from more than 250 companies across eight industries (business services, distribution, financial services, healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, media and technology) to uncover their current demand generation habits and performance.