Contentsquare, a global leader in Digital Experience Analytics, today announced the appointment of Jean-Christophe Pitié as Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer. In this dual role, Jean-Christophe will lead the company’s global marketing organization and oversee strategic partnerships.

Starting as of today, Jean-Christophe will lead Contentsquare’s global marketing initiatives, focusing on strengthening the brand and driving customer demand in markets around the world. He will also be responsible for identifying, nurturing and enhancing strategic alliances with key partners, and continuing to grow Contentsquare’s rich partner ecosystem worldwide.

Jean-Christophe brings a solid track record of leading global companies through their digital growth and transformation journeys, while building scalable and world-class demand generation strategies. Prior to joining Contentsquare, he spent more than two decades at Microsoft, playing a key role in Microsoft’s journey to cloud-based solutions, and helping to launch Office 365 for consumers and Microsoft 365 for businesses. He also led Microsoft’s digital stores division at the company’s global headquarters in Seattle. More recently, he served as Chief Operating Officer for Microsoft France, where he was responsible for executing Microsoft’s go to market and strategy within the French market.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Jean-Christophe to the team. Not only does he have an impressive track record of bringing innovative technology to market, he also embodies our company values and puts his team first with everything he does,” said Jonathan Cherki, CEO & Founder of Contentsquare. “Contentsquare is at an exciting stage of its journey and Jean-Christophe’s deep expertise in tech will be incredibly valuable as we continue to grow. We couldn’t think of a better person to activate our brand vision and partner strategy.”

“Having access to a holistic understanding of customers is critical in today’s business landscape and Contentsquare is leading the way when it comes to customer experience insights. I’m thrilled to join the company at this exciting moment in time and to help bring its unique insights to more teams,” said Jean-Christophe Pitié.

Jean-Christophe holds an MBA in Business and Economics from INSEAD and a degree in Civil Engineering from ESTP (École Spéciale des Travaux Publics, du Bâtiment et de l’Industrie).

As privacy concerns and weakening marketing performance erode traditional online advertising, Web3 Pro, a leading MarTech SaaS company built around targeted opt-in marketing, closed a substantial round of fresh funding from P101, one of the largest European venture investors, bringing the total raised to date to almost $10MM, with a post money valuation of $57MM.

Marketers are moving quickly to retool their efforts now that Google is planning to eliminate third-party tracking cookies in its dominant Chrome browser in 2024. The decreasing advertising effectiveness of social media has further increased urgency.

"There is a seismic shift towards engaging, 1-1 marketing experiences that consumers enjoy and brands find extremely effective," says Christian Ferri, Web3 Pro's founder and CEO. "We're delighted that our enterprise-grade platform has found such success with marketers and now has the strategic support of P101 and its vast network of European enterprise brands."

After years of building bespoke marketing campaigns for companies including Lamborghini, Juventus, RM Sotheby's, Showtime Sports and Ducati, and others, Web3 Pro recently launched the Hub, a platform that gives companies self-serve access to some of the most powerful marketing tools available anywhere, all for a low monthly SaaS fee.  

"As the leading investor in Web3 Pro's venture round, we are delighted to support their revolutionary marketing SaaS solution designed for enterprises", said Andrea Di Camillo, founder and managing partner of P101. "In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, harnessing the power of web3 technology is paramount. Web3 Pro has showcased a remarkable ability to merge innovation with practicality, offering a transformative solution that aligns seamlessly with the future needs of businesses. We commit to support Christian Ferri and the Web3 Pro team to develop the European market and those industries that are well established here."

P101 currently manages over $400 million in assets across 4 funds, and has backed companies including Fatmap (acquired by Strava) and Musixmatch, which completed a successful exit in 2022. P101 is one of the largest investor groups in southern Europe.

Existing investors of Web3 Pro include Sumitomo Corporation's CVC arm, Presidio Ventures, Seventy-Six Capital, River Capital Group, Ripple, and VU Ventures. Among its notable advisory board are Young Sohn, former President of Samsung Electronics and Gaetano Sciuto, former CEO of Giorgio Armani.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Web3 Pro provides a white-label SaaS MarTech solution that helps companies drive higher engagement, retention, and conversion, outperforming today's sub-par ads and loyalty programs by 3 to 5 times.

Proceeds from the new investment will be used to grow the sales and marketing division, including the expansion into Europe, MENA and APAC, which are centers of growing demand for new marketing engagement models.

Brand Safety and Suitability Solutions Usage Take Off

Today, IAB released a follow up to its earlier podcast study, which found that U.S. podcast ad revenues grew at a rate more than double the total digital advertising market overall.

Part two of the study, titled U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study 2023: Drivers, Strategies, and Tactics for Growth, reveals the drivers, strategies, and tactics propelling podcast ad revenues, and shows where the market is heading.

"The growing interest we're seeing in podcasting among larger, brand awareness advertisers demonstrates the medium's evolution to deliver on a range of buyer's KPIs," said Matt Shapo, Digital Audio and Video Director, Media Center, IAB. "Podcasting continues to be a remarkably agile channel that enables advertisers to reach an expanding user base, adopt new functionalities and solutions, and develop new content with creators."

Key Findings

The report shows that podcasting can deliver on buyers' KPIs across the funnel: the majority of podcast advertising is used for brand-building, which encompasses 61% of total ad revenues — up 13% in the last two years.

For brand marketers, there's a lot to like. For example, podcasting usage of brand safety and suitability solutions has nearly doubled since last year, with 69% of publishers using brand safety solutions and 62% using brand suitability solutions, including contextual transcript analysis. As the report also shows, buyers are continuing to expand their range of measurement solutions commonly used with other digital channels for their podcast campaigns. 

Another key finding in the IAB study is that dynamic ad insertion (DAI) now represents more than 90% of ad revenues as its share has nearly doubled in the last three years. 

"For marketers who need to respond fast to trends and update messaging on the fly — but need a brand-safe and brand-suitable solution — podcasting is a proven winner," said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. "There's still real growth ahead."

Opportunities for Growth

For podcasting to continue this growth, it needs to further develop capabilities to better compete with other digital media channels for buyers' dollars.

For example, the study shows the industry must continue to invest in creating interconnected networks that offer advertisers both scale and precision. While programmatic has shown significant growth — up 5x from 2021 to 2023 — its share of podcast revenue is still only 11%. For comparison, other digital media channels' programmatic share is 87%.

Another opportunity for growth is for publishers to rethink their podcast ad inventory and repackage it to help advertisers reach audiences across shows, episodes, and properties. Right now, podcast ad inventory is still primarily show-specific. The kinds of sophisticated, audience-based buys common in other digital media channels only represent 25% of podcast revenues.

Perhaps the most unexpected opportunity for what had been an audio-only channel is video. Users are increasingly consuming podcasts in both audio and video formats, and are leveraging video platforms such as YouTube for podcast discovery and consumption. With video-enabled podcasts representing less than 10% of revenues, there is a major opportunity to engage listeners across environments and expand podcast monetization. The industry needs to create new ad models that align with larger percentages of podcast consumption within video environments.

Shapo concluded, "While there's significant work ahead for podcasters, there's more than enough investment from brand marketers to make it worth the effort. Buyers believe in podcasting, and they're ready to invest more."

New capabilities optimize the power of Salesforce Einstein and elevate brand performance and ROI with Salesforce Data Cloud

Acxiom®, the customer intelligence company, unveils its AI investment to help the world's leading brands implement Salesforce AI technologies. Acxiom's AI expertise can help brands deploy Salesforce Einstein and Data Cloud to boost the strategic value of their data, resulting in data-driven customer insights and business outcomes for marketers.

As a Salesforce partner, Acxiom provides end-to-end solutions spanning strategy, technology, and data, enabling clients to strategically implement, operate, and optimize Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud. Acxiom’s team of certified Salesforce professionals can help marketers implement Einstein for:

• Personalization: Tailoring content for precision engagement and guiding product recommendations, next-best actions, and focused campaigns.

• Data Analysis & Insights: Accelerating data processing and analysis through deep customer intelligence for spot-on audience insights and data-driven decisioning.

• Customer Segmentation: Applying advanced algorithms to fine-tune audience segments based on criteria ranging from demographics to purchasing patterns.

• Customer Support: Offering always-on chat assistance to elevate customer satisfaction by reducing response times.

• Marketing Optimization: Utilizing real-time analytics to refine message delivery, analyze engagement metrics, and pinpoint the best times for communication.

• Marketing Automation: Streamlining tasks from data preparation to campaign rollouts, ensuring efficiency and consistency.

"As an integral part of modern business operations, Acxiom is proud to collaborate with Salesforce," said Chad Engelgau, CEO at Acxiom. "Our clients trust us to maximize the value of their martech investments. Intensifying our focus on Salesforce's AI capabilities underlines this promise."

Salesforce recognized Acxiom with a 2023 Partner Innovation award for its work serving travel industry clients within the Salesforce ecosystem. Acxiom also recently became one of only four Salesforce partners worldwide to achieve Full Stack certification on Salesforce's Marketing Cloud.

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."