Ninth survey of C-suite and executive leaders indicates a record-high rise in tech spending, industry convergence and AI-fueled competition for tech talent.

Mid-market technology spending is at its highest level since before the pandemic, according to Deloitte Private's "2023 Mid-market technology trends report." More than half (53%) of respondents said their organizations are spending above 5% of revenue on technology in 2023, up from the 2019 peak of 43%, and a dramatic recovery from only 20% mid-pandemic in 2021.

Since 2013, Deloitte Private has conducted the survey of mid-market private company executives from organizations with annual revenues ranging from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

Additional findings:

• AI jumps ahead of other technologies as the top tech investment priority for the mid-market. This year, 40% of respondents say AI is their top tech investment priority; in 2021, just 12% of respondents predicted AI would have a significant impact on their business within a year. More than twice as many respondents with active AI solutions (47%) report revenue growth of 20% or higher compared with those not using or exploring AI (23%).
• Leaders appear to be seeing results from a sustained focus on data security. Three in 4 (74%) respondents indicate high or very high confidence in their business' cyber security capabilities. Notably, respondents with active AI solutions are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to have very high confidence in their cyber security capabilities compared to businesses not using or exploring AI at all (32% vs. 11%).
• Industry boundaries blur. More than half of mid-market companies (51%) are aware of competitive threats moving into their markets from outside their sector but appear prepared to expand into adjacent industries. In the survey, 70% of respondents report that their organizations have developed an asset that could be monetized outside of their sector; that number rises to 81% among organizations reporting the highest ROI on their tech investments.
• Mid-market companies pull multiple levers to retain tech talent. Providing competitive benefits and compensation (36%) and offering flexible/hybrid work environments and geographic options (36%) are cited as the most successful strategies to retain tech talent, followed closely by creating flexible career paths, transparency and better performance feedback (34%) and investing in diversity, equity and inclusion programs (34%).
• Demand for AI skill sets intensifies competition for talent. Still, businesses are struggling to find the right talent, with respondents reporting their business is having difficulty attracting AI strategists (40%), engineering talent (37%), as well as data and deep-learning scientists (35%).  

"Middle market private companies are reaping the benefits of a robust technology agenda, including higher revenue growth and greater preparedness to expand outside their industry — fueled by tech spending," said Wolfe Tone, vice chair, and U.S. and Global Deloitte Private leader. "When it comes to talent, digitization is also calling for these companies to leverage a mix of competitive approaches to develop and retain the tech skills needed not only for success today but to be prepared for what is needed five or ten years from now."

"As boundaries between traditional industries, competitors and collaborators continue to blur, middle market private companies will likely face off against companies and sectors not traditionally seen as competitors," said Ryan Jones, private equity leader and principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "Thriving in this dynamic environment hinges on adopting an innovation mindset and actively putting the resources behind the development of assets that can be monetized for value outside their traditional sector to drive growth."

The AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation frees technical experts from creating documentation to focus on strategy, innovation and digital transformation

Digibee, an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) company that helps organizations build flexible, highly scalable integration architecture, today announced the addition of AI-based documentation to its integration platform.

The AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation saves significant time and effort that would otherwise be spent manually creating and maintaining documentation. It ensures the clarity and understanding of integration processes for technical and business team members, aiding in maintenance, collaboration and compliance. It analyzes the pipeline configuration fields, data mappings, transformations, components and connections; it then generates detailed documentation that describes how the integration works, what data is being transferred, the logic applied, and any associated dependencies, and provides diagrams to illustrate the flows and subflows. The AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation will be generally available on Nov. 6.

“Digibee is dedicated to not only successfully enabling our customers’ digital transformation initiatives, but also to expediting them and enhancing transparency with AI-based documentation,” said Digibee co-founder and CTO Peter Kreslins. “Our incorporation of AI-based documentation, combined with low-code development and cloud-native infrastructure, strengthens our mission to simplify complex enterprise integrations and help customers excel in today’s rapidly changing digital environment.”

The features of the AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation include:

• Flow description: automatic generation of a clear and concise description of the integration. In situations where complex integrations lacked documentation, developers previously had to invest days in deciphering and understanding these intricate systems.
• Trigger specification: precise details on how the integration will be triggered, minimizing errors and ensuring smooth integration operations.
• External connections: automatic listing of all the systems integrated into the pipeline, providing a complete picture of the integration ecosystem.
• Events mapping: listing of all events sent within the pipeline, making it easy to track data flow and potential issues, and to understand what other pipelines are being triggered by a pipeline. This level of insight into interdependencies between pipelines can significantly enhance the overall management and coordination of integrated systems.
• Globals (global variables) identification: ensures that developers have a clear understanding of variable usage, which helps prevent accidental misuse of global variables for more reliable integrations.
• Accounts (credential access) identification: documents accounts and credential access, promoting best practices for security and compliance.

Future features may include flow diagram generation, change tracking, integration testing and optimization.

Integration documentation is essential for ensuring the seamless performance of integration pipelines within any system, and integration professionals spend significant time reading documentation. Accurate and well-structured documentation facilitates onboarding new team members, troubleshooting issues, maintaining transparency across departments and complying with industry regulations.

Creating detailed and clear integration documentation can be a challenging and time-consuming process. Manually documenting the various steps, data mappings, transformations, and dependencies requires a deep understanding of the integration's architecture and may involve multiple technical experts. This manual process often leads to inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and communication gaps, hindering collaboration and increasing the risk of errors during maintenance or troubleshooting.

The AI Generator for Pipeline Documentation directly addresses these challenges. It not only vastly reduces the time and effort required to create documentation but also improves its quality and accuracy, delivering a great experience for teams that depend on it. The AI-driven approach frees technical experts from the arduous task of manual documentation, allowing them to channel their expertise toward more strategic and innovation-focused activities.

Enables publishers to account for their deduplicated audience footprint across desktop, mobile and social

Comscore a global, trusted partner for planning, transacting, and evaluating media today announced the inclusion of social metrics in its Media Metrix Multi-Platform suite which provides a deduplicated view of audiences across desktop, mobile, and social to enable publishers and brands to measure their comprehensive total digital population.

By providing a complete view of digital audiences, Comscore's new Social Incremental enhancement enables agencies to achieve channel optimization and publishers to better position the complete reach of their properties for partners to transact on.

"We take enormous pride in the scale of our highly engaged audiences on social media. We're thrilled to finally be able to showcase a holistic view of our readership, no matter where they consume our content," said Wesley Bonner, SVP Marketing & Audience Development at Bustle Digital Group.

"Buzzfeed has built significant scale both on our own properties and offsite across all major social platforms…and Comscore's Social Incremental reporting will allow us to demonstrate how we can deliver strong value to our partners both on our own sites and now also through our huge social reach," said Jörn Rose, Director of Platform Growth Analytics at BuzzFeed.

"iHeart is excited to add social media fans into our Comscore audience, because these are some of our most vital and fastest growing audiences," said Conal Byrne, CEO of iHeartMedia's Digital Audio Group. "Also, notably, the scale of this social media audience is totally unique to iHeartMedia in the audio space: We are the only audio company in the country with this massive, engaged audience across all social platforms – driving home the fact that we are a companionship company like none other."

With this release, Comscore is redefining the landscape of audience measurement. "Comscore's methodology streamlines data with precision and uncovers interconnections across platforms, enabling us to deliver unique reach metrics that now include social," said Greg Dale, COO at Comscore. "It's a solution only made achievable by the massive scale of Comscore's proprietary digital panel. Our Social Incremental methodology, which is inherently privacy-first, allows publishers with significant social presence to capture and monetize the full value of their deduplicated audiences across their entire footprint."

Brands, agencies and publishers can tap into these expanded metrics for audience overlap analysis, combined total audience reach, deduplicated social reach, and customer centric reporting to inform decision making.

Comscore's Digital Industry Rankings will now report on the traffic inclusive of Social for entities that have worked with Comscore to activate this complete measurement.

Company’s appointment of Canadian CEO Alfie Atkinson to CEO of UK signals exciting growth opportunities in priority market

MiQ, the leading global programmatic media partner, today announced several strategic hires as part of the company's commitment in shaping the future of programmatic, further cementing its position as the preeminent authority on digital advertising for customers and the industry at large.

To spearhead efforts in one of MiQ's priority markets, the company has appointed Alfie Atkinson as CEO of UK, which he’ll serve in addition to his current role as CEO of Canada. Having launched and rapidly grown the Canadian business to what it is today, Atkinson’s new role will be integral to driving innovation for the UK. He will also work with the UK leadership team to continue to foster a client-first approach – helping partners achieve their business objectives in the ever-changing programmatic space.

"I'm incredibly excited to lead our UK business, which is so core to MiQ's identity and legacy," said Alfie Atkinson, MiQ’s CEO of UK and Canada. "Our team continues to be laser-focused on making MiQ the leader in all-things programmatic, and double down on what makes us so invaluable to our clients – purpose-built technology, underpinned by the sharpest data insights, and executed by the industry’s most proficient traders, analysts, and data scientists. I’m excited to work alongside the incredibly talented team here, and build upon our amazing culture while being bold and fearless in our quest to make the programmatic industry better.”

MiQ has also hired three new senior executives to join its global leadership team:

• Suzanne Strasser Grant as EVP, Global Head of Agencies & Partnerships, based in New York. With 25+ years of experience in sales and business development, and previous leadership roles at notable TV, print, and tech companies including Google, Snap, NBCU and Uber, Suzanne will play a crucial role in enhancing MiQ's partnerships, especially with major holding companies and brands across the globe.
• Danny Hopwood as Global Chief Commercial Strategy Officer, based in London. Danny brings 15+ years of experience in the digital media industry - previously working for WPP, Publicis, and OMG - and is a seasoned strategist in implementing innovative and effective media solutions that enable growth in both commercial output and capability development. He will use his extensive digital media, marketing, programmatic and ad tech expertise to drive integrated technology and product partnerships with MiQ’s biggest customers.
• Mauricio Leon as Global Chief Commercial Trading Officer, based in London. As a longtime executive of global trading for companies like Spotify and Omnicom Group, Mauricio will be integral to MiQ’s global commercial trading relationships with holding companies and independent agency partners.

"For a decade, Alfie Atkinson has proven himself as a vital leader and visionary for the Canadian market and we’re confident that he will be instrumental in taking our UK business to new heights,” said Richard Dunmall, President of MiQ. “With the additional expertise from Suzanne, Danny, and Mauricio across programmatic strategy, integrated partnerships, and global trading as well – we’re in an incredible position to double down on our mission to transform the industry, unlock new possibilities in programmatic, deliver the solutions and shared success our global customers deserve, and ultimately make MiQ evermore indispensable moving forward."

New Report Provides Insights on Millennials' Streaming Habits and Ad Preferences

Samba TV, the leading provider of TV technology for audience data and omniscreen measurement, today released its Guide to Targeting Millennials study results as part of a survey conducted with global research firm HarrisX. The report, focused on the millennial demographic that covers over 72M U.S. adults with more than $2.5 trillion in spending power, unveils key insights on this massive audience and how to reach them. One such finding from the survey of over 2,500 adults reveals that millennials are more open to ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) than other generations, presenting a unique opportunity for these platforms and advertisers to engage with this influential demographic.

With companies like Netflix and Amazon introducing ads to their streaming services, advertisers have increased opportunities and challenges alike when reaching viewers. Despite their upbringing with cable TV, millennials were the first generation to wield the scissors to cut the cord, making them a key audience to AVOD and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) models compared to other age groups.

"Millennials are the generation that grew up on cable and were first to cut the cord, and have revealed themselves to be a core audience on AVOD and FAST platforms," said Samba TV Co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin. "Their willingness to consume ads when streaming is a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach more than 20% of the US population, with more spending power than retiring baby boomers. By embracing an omniscreen strategy that addresses all the platforms where millennials consume video, advertisers can align their campaigns to connect with this hugely impactful audience."

Key findings from the report include:

• 8 in 10 millennials stream TV shows, with 84% of those streamers using Netflix.
• 73% of millennial parents subscribe to a streaming service for just their kids.
• 68% of millennials have a streaming subscription that shows ads, more than any other generation.
• 21% of millennials with a Netflix subscription signed up for the ad tier, with 68% of this group subscribing to the platform after the lower-cost ad tier was released.

The top companies driving AI adoption in the industry

HG Insights, the provider of go-to-market Technology Intelligence to 90% of tech companies in the Fortune 100, today announced the release of the first annual HG Insights AI 1000^TM — a ranking to guide business innovators with a holistic picture of the generative AI landscape and uncover opportunities in their markets.

HG Insights has been investing in solutions to help customers find success for thirteen years. As AI continues to evolve and revolutionize technology as we know it, HG is already providing customers with the insights they need to capitalize on the rapid growth in the generative AI market. The publishing of the AI 1000 is the next step that the industry-leading Technology Intelligence provider has taken toward moving the market forward.

“Investment in generative AI is moving quickly, with global technology vendors pouring hundreds of millions of dollars and massive computing power into the marketplace,” said Elizabeth Cholawsky, CEO, HG Insights. “The first annual AI 1000 list will unlock selling and buying opportunities for all companies in this fast-changing landscape.”

Identify Businesses Ready To Take The Next Step With AI

The age of AI is now. AI technologies are seeing massive investment across industries — from pharmaceuticals to manufacturing, media, electronics, energy, and more. Generative AI, the fastest-growing segment of AI tools, is a great example of this explosive growth: 60% of organizations using AI are using generative AI solutions and 40% plan to invest more in AI overall thanks to generative AI.¹

Distilled from billions of unstructured digital documents — the same that produce the world’s most sophisticated technology installation information, IT spend, contract intelligence, and intent data — the HG Insights AI 1000 provides insights into individual company’s AI readiness, adoption rates, intent to buy, industry and sub-industry, and revenue range. The data is comprised of:

• 466 distinct locations
• 48 distinct countries
• 548 AI technologies available for profiling

By uncovering what AI-related technologies a company is currently researching and evaluating, the AI 1000 list unlocks a breadth of opportunities for vendors who wish to leverage AI to gain a more significant share of their markets.

Rankings on the AI 1000 are based on HG’s patent-pending AI Maturity Index^TM, which includes insights from a specific company’s AI product adoption, the locations where adoption is detected, the strength of these detections, and the application of an Ideal Customer Profile of data-related product detections. This list is crucial for leaders to help identify companies whose technology stack indicates they’re ready to take the leap and capitalize on the wave of innovation in AI.

Rankings on the AI 1000 are also based on the new patent-pending, machine-learning algorithms based on HG Insights’ Functional Area Intelligence^TM. We detect the footprint of departments and roles within a specific company (such as data science, data engineering, and data analysts) and chart how they change over time—on the individual, department, and organization levels. We can then determine which data science-related technologies are in use, where, and on what infrastructure.

HG’s Continued Investment in AI

AI has been making headlines lately, but at HG Insights AI has been the star for over a decade. The company has been leveraging AI for the past 13 years and has five pending patents. Building on this long history, HG is today exploring novel applications of AI as it continues to evolve and revolutionize technology as we know it.

“Generative AI will be the differentiator between competing companies and ultimately deliver a competitive advantage. The AI 1000 contributes to business value by illustrating new opportunities to increase revenue, reduce costs, better manage risk, and enhance productivity,” said Rob Fox, CTO, HG Insights.

MediaGo, a deep learning-based intelligent advertising platform under the Baidu Global Business Unit, today announced it has upgraded its Smartbid capabilities, which ultimately boost conversion rates (CVR) and significantly reduce cost per action (CPA), ensuring advertisers have the minimum bid necessary to secure a display. The enhanced capabilities improve ad performance and effectiveness, save time, and lower costs by precisely targeting desired audiences.

Leveraging deep learning technology, MediaGo's new Smartbid feature creates tangible value for performance advertisers by effectively managing the bidding process. The Smartbid model, built on a deep neural network with over 1 billion parameters, enables significant improvements in ad performance for advertisers at all scales.

MediaGo's Smartbid technology uses data and deep learning algorithms to predict the likelihood of user conversions and adjusts the baseline pay accordingly. Over 80% of MediaGo's advertisers use automatic bidding. In a test of over 500 ad campaigns, the average CVR for campaigns using Smartbid increased by 25.6%. Notably, an e-commerce platform saw a 42.9% increase in ad CVR and an 35.3% reduction in CPA after using Smartbid for their ad campaigns.

The Smartbid capabilities can also self-learn and continuously adjust to improve ad performance based on historical delivery data and real-time feedback, optimizing the advertiser's ROI.

"One of the most tedious tasks digital marketers face is manually optimizing ad bids for marketing activities," said Rena Ren, Americas Regional Director of Baidu Global Business Unit. "By using MediaGo's Smartbid feature, advertisers only need to set their desired conversion costs or conversion goals, and the system will do the rest – delivering high-quality conversions and allowing advertisers to focus more on creativity and other important aspects of their strategy."

By automating bid management, advertisers can concentrate on refining their overall advertising strategies, driving sustained growth for their brands and businesses.

Merger of leading AIoT Companies will Broaden SaaS offering for AI-based Facility Management Markets Globally

Scenera, a leading AIoT data management company, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire TnM AI Co. Ltd., a Seoul-based AIoT company, for an undisclosed amount. Stemming from the successful long-time collaboration between the two companies, this transaction furthers their relationship and consolidates their resources to continue creating products and solutions transforming the industry on a global scale. 

"With the combination of our strong development teams and global deployment, we are mutually committed to providing optimal solutions that address the growing problem of how to best allocate AI analytics in edge-to-cloud computing," said David Lee, CEO of Scenera. "Together, we can create and deliver unparalleled value and optimal solutions for our customers and partners."

Building on TnM AI's strong retail presence with its AIoT-based energy management software as a service (SaaS) and Scenera's MAIstro AI Topology Manager (SATM), this acquisition brings together an impressive set of capabilities and technology for continued growth and opportunity. The collaboration between both companies has built a standard data processing platform for existing AIoT devices and IP cameras to be used in smart buildings and retail industries—centralizing data management and analysis while offering multiple use cases that deliver value to building owners, facility managers and occupants. The transaction is synergistic and helps expand the target markets with proven solutions by both companies. TnM AI's Retail Environment Management System (REMS) will be integrated into MAIstro brand and offered globally.

"Our teams have worked hand-in-hand to serve our customers with our AI-powered REMS (Retail Energy Management Service) and security and surveillance management SaaS solutions," said Dr. Eui-Seok Hwang, CEO of TnM AI. "We are thrilled to join forces with an industry leader like Scenera and embark on a new chapter, as this acquisition marks an exciting opportunity for us to leverage our combined capabilities to enhance performance on a global level."