Bridgeline Digital, Inc. a leading marketing technology software provider, and Xngage, a leading digital eCommerce services firm, together announce the launch of the Xngage Connector for Bridgeline’s HawkSearch AI software in the Optimizely Configured Commerce platform. This new connector, a product of the collaborative efforts of Bridgeline and Xngage, marks a significant step in enhancing eCommerce search functionalities and product discovery for Optimizely customers.

HawkSearch, recognized for its powerful onsite search and product discovery tools, now seamlessly integrates with Optimizely, thanks to the collaboration between Bridgeline and Xngage. This integration prominently features HawkSearch’s 'workbench,' a key tool enabling merchants to fine-tune search results, manage promotions, and apply the "boost and bury" functionality for personalized search experiences. Aimed at increasing online revenues, conversion rates, and the average order value (AOV) for businesses, this development is a testament to Xngage's expertise in eCommerce and technology implementation.

Jeff Cheal, VP of Global Strategic & Technology Partnerships said: "We’re excited to announce the Xngage connector for HawkSearch to our customers who want enterprise-level capabilities that can drive more revenue and higher conversions in the Optimizely Configured Commerce online store." Optimizely customers can now effortlessly utilize HawkSearch within their Optimizely Configured Commerce solution, a development made possible through Xngage's efforts, accelerating their online shopping experience.

"The partnership between Bridgeline and Xngage to build the connector symbolizes our shared commitment to advancing eCommerce experiences and to lowering implementation efforts for our clients,” says Joe Albrecht, CEO at Xngage. “We also decided to license this connector to anyone interested in benefiting from HawkSearch capabilities within their Optimizely Commerce solution.”

“Integrating HawkSearch with Optimizely's platform through our partnership with Xngage enhances our ability to provide superior search and merchandising tools,” remarks Ari Kahn, CEO of Bridgeline. “This integration is a testament to our dedication to deliver out-of-the-box, revenue-generating solutions to the eCommerce market.”

This strategic collaboration between Bridgeline and Xngage demonstrates a unified vision to offer scalable, cutting-edge solutions that address the evolving needs of the B2B eCommerce sector.

Retool, the leading development platform for business software, today released the results of its first State of AI Survey, which polled over 1,500 technology workers including software developers, business and engineering leaders, executives, product managers, designers and more, to learn about how they are using and building with AI.

The survey found bullish yet level-headed perceptions on AI’s power to revolutionize the way we work and build technology products, across a variety of roles and titles. Respondents reported lower than expected use of the generally hyped AI and LLM technologies on the market — for now, companies are mostly consumers of AI applications like GitHub Copilot. The majority of companies building internal AI applications on their own are using ChatGPT.

Key findings of the survey include:

• Those in operations roles had the highest expectations of change fueled by AI (7.8 out of 10), followed by product (7.5), and data and engineering (around 7.4). Slicing by seniority, C-suite executives expected the biggest changes (7.8).
• 54% of respondents that use AI at work do so at companies that encourage it, while 14.7% of respondents are secretly using AI at work even when their employers have policies against it.
• Even among AI’s biggest skeptics (respondents who deemed it overrated), only 14.4% said their company was overinvesting in AI.
• A majority (77.1%) of survey respondents said that their companies have made some sort of effort to adopt AI. But around half (48.9%) said those efforts were fledgling—just getting started or ad-hoc use cases.
• Across sectors and industries, data policy strictness was a spectrum. On the low end, less than 40% of respondents working in the non-profit (31%) and education (35%) sectors reported a strict data policy at their companies. On the high end, healthcare (59%) was 11 points ahead of its closest runner up, energy (48%). Financial services, often a highly regulated space, was in the middle of the pack at 44%.

“The AI revolution has been breathlessly covered but we’ve seen a lot less about use cases, especially in business,” said David Hsu, CEO and founder of Retool. “We did this survey and report because it won’t be possible to truly harness AI without first appreciating how it’s being used. What our findings make clear is that while AI isn’t replacing most technical jobs, it’s reshaping them—and people are latching onto the technologies that help them accelerate and strengthen their work.”

71% of TV viewers in Southeast Asia watch ad-supported streaming

Magnite, the world’s largest independent sell-side advertising company, today unveiled its latest research study Streaming TV’s New Era: Embracing Ad-supported Streaming Across Screens in Southeast Asia. The research, which spans markets including Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, finds that ad-supported streaming services deliver scale and impact for brands and that 71% of TV viewers in Southeast Asia watch ad-supported streaming, closing the gap with traditional TV viewers.

The study reveals that ad-supported streamers are spending an average of two hours a day watching streaming content and embracing content across devices. These cross-device viewing habits generate more meaningful connections with brands and influence purchasing decisions. 68% of ad-supported viewers take action after seeing an ad on streaming platforms, and 94% are more likely to make a purchase from a brand they engaged with across multiple devices.

“Ad-supported streaming in Southeast Asia is flourishing and enabling advertisers to reach new audiences across screens, providing them with more opportunities to captivate their valuable attention,” said Gavin Buxton, Managing Director of Asia at Magnite. “Our research shows that engagement with streaming content extends to the advertising that accompanies it. With streaming’s ability to capture viewer attention and move consumers down the purchasing funnel, brands are presented with a significant opportunity that will only continue to grow alongside expanding viewership.”

“Magnite’s research findings confirm the power of ad-supported streaming and its ability to engage viewers by delivering an immersive experience across screens,” said Mary Yeo, Regional Director at WeTV. “As consumers increasingly choose to stream ad-supported content, buyers are presented with new opportunities to place their campaigns around premium streaming inventory and foster meaningful connections with their desired audiences at scale.”

Additional key findings from Magnite’s study include:

• Ad-supported streaming audiences are highly engaged when watching streaming, which is winning viewers’ attention over social video. 92% of ad-supported viewers report being engaged when watching streaming content as compared to 62% of social media users who say user-generated videos on social media don’t hold their attention very long.
• Viewers in Southeast Asia see the value exchange in streaming ads. 79% of ad-supported streamers are comfortable providing demographics about themselves if it results in a more relevant ad experience.
• Streaming TV’s relevant and personalized environment generates better outcomes. 9 in 10 ad-supported streamers are more likely to pay attention to ads that are relevant to their interests.
• Ad-supported viewers place a high level of trust in the ads they see on streaming platforms and nearly half indicated they buy the product or service advertised.

To explore additional insights from the overall report, please click here. Individual market reports will follow in the coming months.

Methodology
Magnite engaged Harris Interactive to execute an online survey of 6,139 respondents across Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, from September 7 - 19, 2023. The respondents are people ages 18-74 (age 20-74 in Thailand) who watch 7+ hours of TV a week, including streaming.

Messagepoint announced today enhancements to its generative AI capabilities to further support organizations in creating communications that are easy for customers to understand. As part of its Intelligent Content Hub for customer communications management, Messagepoint’s AI-powered Assisted Authoring will now support translation into over 80 languages and suggest content rewrites to align communications with the ISO standard for plain language. Messagepoint’s Assisted Authoring capabilities are governed by enterprise-grade controls that safely make it faster and easier for marketing and customer servicing teams to translate and optimize content, while still retaining complete control over the outgoing message.

“As organizations strive to make complex topics and communications more accessible, the time and effort to support multiple languages or rewrite communications using plain language principles can be prohibitive,” said Steve Biancaniello, founder and CEO of Messagepoint. “By leveraging generative AI in the controlled environment Messagepoint provides, organizations benefit from the speed and accuracy of AI-based translation and optimization without introducing risk. These capabilities represent a massive opportunity for organizations to better serve vulnerable populations and those with limited English proficiency.”

Plain language has been adopted by a wide range of industries and government agencies over the last three decades to make communications easier for the general public, vulnerable populations and those with limited English proficiency to understand. Research by Forrester has found that using plain language to communicate with customers can have a significant impact on customer loyalty in a variety of sectors including financial services. The ISO standard for plain language (ISO 24495-1) was published in June 2023, providing a definitive guideline for plain language principles. Messagepoint’s generative AI capabilities rewrite communications to align with the ISO standard by using familiar words and phrases, avoiding acronyms and jargon, using short, clear sentences and concise paragraphs, ordering content so the most important points appear first, using the active voice and personal pronouns, and using consistent headings to help introduce what comes next.

Translation of communications is mandated in some sectors, such as in areas of health and human services, health insurance and financial services, and represents costly, time intensive processes that can prevent wider adoption of the practice. Leveraging AI to support translation can greatly accelerate processes, reducing the cost and time required. Users of Messagepoint’s new translation feature will have the option to leverage capabilities based on either OpenAI or DeepL’s generative AI-based translation services from within the Messagepoint content hub.

Messagepoint’s Intelligent Content Hub offers a unique modular approach to content management that enables business users to manage content across all channels whether it is used in composed communications or delivered to a digital endpoint via headless APIs. The solution enables the reuse of common content components and templates across communications, increasing the efficiency, speed and accuracy of content authoring, optimization, translation and management. This means that common content which appears in multiple communications or across multiple channels only needs to be translated or optimized once, greatly reducing the overhead associated with these initiatives. By integrating translation and plain language into Messagepoint’s content management platform, customers can more efficiently manage the customer communication content update process.

Messagepoint’s proprietary AI engine, MARCIE (Messagepoint Advanced Rationalization and Content Intelligence Engine), powers its Assisted Authoring capabilities which include content optimization capabilities for reading levels, sentiment, plain language, brand and length, as well as translation, content similarity analysis, tagging and other key functions in its content hub.

First and only global AI-powered platform integrating best-in-class solutions for Event Management, Appointment Scheduling, and Queuing/Lobby Management, joins the Temenos Exchange

JRNI, the enterprise-grade customer engagement platform with solutions for Event Management, Appointment Scheduling, and Queuing/Lobby Management, today announced availability on the Temenos Exchange, the open marketplace for fintech solutions.

The Intelligent Customer Engagement Platform enables financial institutions to drive more engagements, less waiting, and faster revenue. AI-Powered Automation proactively identifies and communicates with customers while automating event management and appointment booking workflows, while Natural Language Processing (NLP) automates coordination and communication around customer scheduling requests. Integrating with Temenos provides financial institutions an enterprise-grade option to enhance the customer journey to drive improved business outcomes.

Temenos Exchange brings open innovation to market faster, and at scale. The marketplace offers pre-integrated and approved fintech solutions that can be easily deployed on top of Temenos open platform, enabling banks to accelerate the creation of new financial services, while reducing the costs of development.

Martin Bailey, Director of Innovation and Ecosystems, Temenos, said: “Temenos Exchange acts as an accelerator for fintechs and software developers, helping them develop, validate and monetize new banking solutions. Joining Temenos Exchange means JRNI can write once and sell its solution across a vast banking audience of more than 3,000 clients in 150 countries. Collectively, this community serves the banking needs of 1.2 billion people worldwide.”

“In the current high-interest rate environment, it is critical that financial institutions create outstanding customer experiences that drive deposits, lending transactions, and advisory/wealth services,” said Phil Meer, CEO of JRNI. “JRNI’s participation in Temenos Exchange further extends our commitment to the banking community and enables Temenos customers to easily drive engagement volume and improve transaction velocity through the Intelligent Customer Engagement Platform. AI-Powered Automation is particularly effective in reducing the administrative time spent scheduling and booking interactions, freeing staff for more productive activities. We look forward to leveraging the power of the Temenos platform to help us achieve our business goals.”

The JRNI Intelligent Engagement Platform allows global financial institutions to command and control options to maintain necessary oversight and regulatory compliance, while at the same time gives frontline staff such as wealth managers, mortgage officers, and branch managers the freedom to facilitate appointments and events efficiently and effectively.

Andy Florance, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoStar Group, a leading provider of online marketplaces, information and analytics in the property markets, was named amongst Inman’s Best of Proptech Award winners for the Entrepreneur category.

Since his founding of CoStar Group in 1986 to IPO launch in July 1998, Andy has led the company to tremendous success, solidifying the platform as a dominant market resource and industry-leading provider of commercial and residential real estate information. With Andy at the helm and a global workforce of over 5,600 employees across 14 countries, CoStar Group has continued to create innovative, tech-forward products and services that address market and client needs across the world.

Despite much of the real estate industry experiencing a slowdown, CoStar Group has continued to witness incredible growth in earnings and website traffic across its industry-leading brands. At the end of the third quarter for 2023, CoStar Group reported its 50^th straight quarters of double digit revenue growth with revenue increasing of 12% year-over-year and net income of $91 million, a year-over-year increase of 25%. In September 2023, CoStar Group’s network of U.S. real estate websites saw over 160 million monthly unique visitors. In particular, Homes.com achieved 100 million unique monthly visitors, positioning itself one of the fastest growing home search sites in the industry.

“I’m honored to be recognized as one of Inman’s Best of Proptech entrepreneur winners,” said Florance. “Entrepreneurial spirit has been at the core of CoStar Group since its founding and it is an incredible moment when you see hard work and dedication come full circle. The company would not be at its market-leading position today without our talented team and commitment to providing best-in-class technology solutions. This award exemplifies the success of our combined efforts and I am proud to be listed amongst other influential leaders in the proptech industry.”

Inman’s Best of Proptech Awards spotlights the achievements of the companies and leaders leveraging technology to change the residential landscape. Inman celebrates the entrepreneurs, VCs and visionaries that are building the future in the world of property technology, or proptech.

DoubleVerify (“DV”), a leading software platform for digital media measurement, data and analytics, today announced that Mark Zagorski, CEO, and Nicola Allais, CFO, will participate in the following investor conferences:

RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
Fireside chat at 9:20 a.m. ET available via webcast on https://ir.doubleverify.com/

Stephens Annual Investment Conference
Thursday, November 16, 2023

Raymond James TMT and Consumer Conference
Monday, December 04, 2023
Fireside chat at 8:35 a.m. ET available via webcast on https://ir.doubleverify.com/

Comcast announced it has appointed Shawn Adamson to Senior Vice President of Comcast Business for Comcast Cable’s Northeast Division. In this role, Adamson will lead all aspects of Comcast Business’ operations, from deepening small business relationships to implementing strategies in the midmarket and enterprise segments, across 14 northeastern states from Maine through Virginia and the District of Columbia.

“Shawn is a seasoned leader with an excellent track record of exceeding business goals and building high-performing teams who deliver innovative products and solutions to business customers,” said Amy Lynch, President of Comcast Cable’s Northeast Division. “Having previously worked with Shawn, I know first-hand the invaluable skills and leadership she will bring to the role and impact she will provide to our Comcast Business customers.”

Adamson has more than 25 years of telecommunications industry experience. In her 10 years with Comcast, Adamson has served in a variety of leadership positions within Business Services, Business Operations and Sales Strategy. In her most recent position, Adamson served as Vice President of Sales and Strategy for Comcast Business at the company’s headquarters where she led the successful sales integration of the Masergy acquisition which helped to enable Comcast Business to grow its enterprise segment globally.

Prior to joining Comcast, Adamson served as Regional Vice President for XO Communications’ West markets. Adamson received her bachelor’s degree in IT & Business Management at Western Governor’s University and went on to further her executive education at Wharton and Harvard. She currently serves on the board of the Colorado Technology Association and its Women in Tech Council.