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."

Adobe today announced that Cristiano Amon has been appointed to its board of directors. Amon currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, a role he assumed in 2021. Amon brings deep technical, mobile and AI experience to Adobe’s board. The Adobe Board now consists of 12 board members with the addition of Amon.

Before becoming chief executive officer, Amon served as president of Qualcomm where he spearheaded Qualcomm’s 5G strategy and drove the expansion and diversification of the business to serve multiple industries, including automotive, computing, VR and AR, networking and industrial. He has overseen the successful execution and integration of acquisitions to augment Qualcomm’s capabilities in areas such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), spatial computing, advanced CPU and RF Front End. Amon has held numerous leadership roles at Qualcomm since joining the company in 1995, including leading Qualcomm’s semiconductor business and overall responsibility for Snapdragon® processors.

Amon has also served as chief technical officer for Vésper, a wireless operator in Brazil, and held leadership positions at NEC, Ericsson and Velocom. Amon holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. He is a member of the President’s Export Council, vice chair of the U.S.-China Business Council and currently serves on the board of directors for the nonprofit Father Joe’s Villages.

"Cristiano's deep technical expertise and leadership in mobile, AI and global operations will be invaluable as Adobe empowers millions more people to create, collaborate, and deliver personalized digital experiences across surfaces,” said Shantanu Narayen, chair and chief executive officer at Adobe. “I look forward to working with him to continue to expand our business and further increase shareholder value.”

Rally AI is the first AI tool in recruiting that uses benchmark data, recommendations and best practices to guide professionals in building a stand-out employer brand that attracts top talent to their company's culture and careers, while tracking and proving the ROI of their strategy

Rally®, the leading platform for learning best-practice recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies, today introduced Rally® AI™, a revolutionary AI recruitment marketing assistant that guides recruiting professionals through every step of creating a highly effective talent attraction strategy so they can gain a competitive edge in recruiting top candidates using modern social and digital marketing strategies.

Rally AI is the newest feature of Rally® Inside™, Rally's innovative recruitment marketing and analytics platform that is enabling more than 1,500 professionals to recruit passive talent and active job seekers through the social media channels and websites where candidates spend time online. With the U.S. unemployment rate near record lows, employers are shifting more of their recruiting strategy to attracting passive talent—workers who are currently employed and not actively looking for a job—estimated to be 85% of the labor force according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Rally AI is built on GPT-4, OpenAI's most advanced large language model capable of following complex instructions and solving difficult problems with accuracy. What's unique about Rally AI is that it uses Rally Inside's built-in best practices, proprietary benchmark data and recommendation engine to guide users through creating highly effective recruitment marketing per job function and channel. As a result, HR and talent acquisition teams can attract 9x more candidates compared to doing recruitment marketing alone, with real-time analytics to prove the ROI of their strategy.

With the addition of Rally AI, Rally Inside becomes a complete solution for developing, creating and measuring a high-performing recruitment marketing and employer branding strategy, empowering professionals to:

• Quickly synthesize employer brand research and see how they compare to talent competitors
• Easily collaborate on multi-channel recruitment marketing campaigns and plan out data-driven content calendars
• Instantly identify tactics and channels that work best to increase qualified applications at a lower cost per applicant
• Confidently craft authentic and compelling employee value propositions for every talent audience
• Streamline the creation of engaging recruiting content for social media, blogs, digital ads, emails and newsletters—in their brand voice
• Automatically track, measure, analyze, report and benchmark results across campaigns in real time, and
• Seamlessly manage their strategy in one, easy-to-use recruitment marketing platform that augments existing recruiting and marketing systems.

"AI is transforming the way every company operates, including how employers attract, engage and recruit talent. Learning to plan, create and analyze using generative AI is a skill that every talent acquisition and talent brand professional will need to develop, and why our goal with Rally AI is to empower them to learn this career-building skill so they can work smarter and more effectively. Today, we're all under pressure to do more with less. With Rally Inside powered by Rally AI, recruitment marketing beginners gain a trusted mentor and experts gain a capable assistant that enables our customers to not just get more done faster, but to take their strategy and results to new heights," said Lori Sylvia, Founder & CEO of Rally.

Bloomfire, a leading AI-powered knowledge management platform provider, is pleased to announce enhanced generative AI and Enterprise Search solutions that are purpose-built to keep data secure, deliver accurate results, and augment employee performance. Bloomfire's thoughtful approach highlights the unique opportunities that generative AI brings to knowledge management software while addressing AI's challenges around security, reliability, and ethical use.

Bloomfire's enhanced features are built for creators, stakeholders, and administrators of knowledge across the company:

• AI Author Assist brings speed and efficiency to content creators by simplifying the time-intensive process of writing and refining high-quality, actionable posts. Authors can build summaries, key takeaways, and insights from their original work using a suite of generative AI tools with cutting-edge prompt engineering.
• AI Chat equips employees and front-line support agents with direct answers sourced from vetted company knowledge. Teams can trust that they will receive accurate responses because Bloomfire's AI technology only provides answers if relevant company knowledge is available.
• Enterprise Search enables organizations to easily scale access to company knowledge through a single AI-powered search engine that integrates with SharePoint and Microsoft Teams document libraries. Streamline content and document management with automated processes for curating, migrating, and updating content in bulk.

"To navigate the complexities of today's information-dense environment, our clients partner with us to develop thoughtful and secure AI technologies. Our customer research shows that 87% indicate Bloomfire helps improve governance and protect against security risks and 83% note work quality and accuracy as outcomes. With that in mind, I'm thrilled that we can meet people where and how they work with this expanded toolset and help them solve their problems in knowledge management, research & insights, and customer support." – Ben Little, CEO

Looking ahead to 2024, the company will continue to build and refine generative AI capabilities and expand the breadth of integrated sources for Enterprise Search to meet the unique needs of different industries and knowledge use cases.

Microsoft and Submittable announce strategic partnership to deliver market-leading grantmaking and corporate social responsibility solutions across Microsoft's cloud offerings

Microsoft Corp. and Submittable, a leading grants management and corporate social responsibility (CSR) platform, on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership to collaborate and innovate together to enable Submittable to develop new solutions powered by Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service, to provide public, private and nonprofit organizations with the solutions to accelerate social impact and better serve their communities.

Among the first offerings to be rolled out by Submittable is a new-to-market set of tools to further the mission of AI for good and improve the application process for grant givers and seekers. These tools include:

• AI-powered service that will auto-fill grant applications based on an applicant's own prior answers, saving valuable time to focus on critical work
• AI bot that can both create grant application forms and translate them into multiple languages, ensuring best practice adherence for funders while also extending opportunities across language barriers
• AI-supported tool that extracts information from official documents into Submittable, creating a simpler experience for applicants and reviewers as well as reducing the potential for human error and fraud.

Under the new partnership, Submittable's solutions will be built on Microsoft Azure including Azure OpenAI Service and will add integrations with the common data model and Microsoft Teams.

"By partnering with companies like Submittable, we can help more organizations increase their social impact effectiveness through technology that delivers better alignment of funding and other critical operational elements that enable them to deliver on their missions," said Justin Spelhaug, vice president and global lead for Microsoft's Technology for Social Impact organization. "Together we'll be able to innovate with purpose on top of the Microsoft Cloud to solve real problems for the social impact sector — one that for decades has been underserved by technology."

As a Microsoft Tech for Social Impact priority partner, Submittable is committed to aligning its solutions to Microsoft's technology stack and industry-specific offerings like Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit that enable social impact organizations to have an end-to-end view of the impact of dollars received from both individual donors and grant funders.

"The people transforming how public, private and nonprofit organizations engage their constituents, communities and employees deserve great tools," said Submittable CEO Thor Culverhouse. "Our grants management and employee giving and volunteering solutions aim to deliver that innovation for our customers. This would not be possible without our great partnership with Microsoft, leveraging the Azure platform and OpenAI service. Together, we are helping customers accelerate social impact."

Submittable's solutions are available on Azure Marketplace and AppSource today. Microsoft and Submittable will go to market together with industry-specific solutions and continue to collaborate on future innovation to help all organizations achieve their social impact goals.