Access the world's most extensive library of Lottie animations, or bring your team's private library to Canva in just a few clicks.

LottieFiles, the world's leading platform for Lottie animations, proudly announces it is teaming up with Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, to give Canva users free access to more than 100,000 ready-to-use animations. This integration, a global first, melds LottieFiles' extensive animation library with Canva's unparalleled design platform, giving Canva users the ability to transform their static designs by leveraging the emotive and storytelling power of motion like never before.

The LottieFiles app for Canva isn't just another integration; it's a revolution in the design landscape led by motion.

With the LottieFiles app for Canva, users can access:

• Over 100,000 free, ready-to-use animations: Canva users will have access to animations with hundreds added daily for every industry and every use case.
• Customizable animations to match any brand: Each animation is transparent and background-free that can fit any color palette.
• ‘Tiny but Mighty' file format: Lottie animations, which are six times smaller than GIFs, can now be natively used in Canva. This gives users high quality animations with faster load speeds.
• Access private animations from the LottieFiles platform: Organizations and teams can bring their Private Lottie Library into Canva.

Redefining Creative Boundaries Beyond Static Designs

Serving over 6.5 million designers and developers globally and endorsed by teams from over 275,000 organizations, LottieFiles is no stranger to the design world.

“Our mission at LottieFiles has always been to empower Creators to bring elements of joy into their creations; this integration is a significant stride in that direction. Combining Canva's easy-to-use design platform with the power of Lottie creates a dynamic duo experience like never before," said K Minglani, Co-Founder and CEO of LottieFiles.

The LottieFiles app for Canva emerges as a testament to the transformative power of animation, seamlessly blending intuitive design with rich customizations. It allows users to inject motion and powerful storytelling into their creations. As Canva emphasizes its dedication to simplifying design processes while heightening visual impact, this collaboration with LottieFiles is a testament to that commitment.

“The integration with LottieFiles brings powerful new creative possibilities when creating presentations, videos, whiteboards and more in Canva. Canva aims to make design accessible by integrating the world's best content and technology into one simple platform. By partnering with LottieFiles, we're ensuring that users can effortlessly tap into the captivating appeal of motion graphics,” said Anwar Haneef, Head of Ecosystem at Canva.

Driven by Seedtag's Contextual AI technology, Contextual Audiences allow marketers to activate accurate and scalable targeting to reach their ideal audience

Seedtag, the leading global contextual advertising company, has launched its advanced Contextual Audiences powered by its proprietary Contextual AI technology, Liz. With the launch of Contextual Audiences, Seedtag is providing advertisers with a new targeting capability that empowers them to engage with modern consumer interests without relying on personal data. Contextual Audiences effectively address the hurdles of reach, scale, and privacy that advertisers commonly encounter with the coming deprecation in third-party tracking cookies.

In response to advertisers' rapidly evolving and diverse needs, Seedtag's new contextual audience groups precisely meet each campaign's unique requirements while respecting user privacy. Powered by Liz's real-time analysis of web content, Seedtag ensures relevant and up-to-date audiences that evolve based on Liz's network insights. This enables advertisers to target audiences based on the content they're currently consuming rather than their past behavior. By activating Seedtag Contextual Audiences, brands can target precise interests rather than broad stereotypes, capturing their target audience's attention and engaging them at the optimal moment to maximize campaign effectiveness.

Seedtag offers brands many ways to connect with their audience:

• Signature Audiences: These audiences have predefined configurations, offering advertisers distinct options for specific verticals and across markets. Additionally, they allow for a certain level of customization to accommodate specific advertiser preferences. Signature audiences examples include "Sustainable and Ethical Fashion Advocates" or "Eco-conscious Consumers".
• Seasonal Audiences: These audiences focus on specific temporal events marked by a specific timeframe. This revolutionary approach builds upon the foundation of Signature Audiences, amplifying their effectiveness through timely precision. An example of a seasonal contextual audience would be "Black Friday Consumers".
• Custom Audiences: Some campaigns demand a level of specificity that signature audiences might not fulfill. For such scenarios, Seedtag has harnessed Liz's capabilities to build a campaign-specific machine-learning model that precisely matches the client's brief. This model analyzes every URL and provides a score based on the most relevant content to help connect brands with a niche audience.

With our advanced Contextual AI technology, Seedtag is revolutionizing digital marketing by providing brands with accurate and scalable targeting methods while protecting user privacy," said Brian Danzis, US Managing Director at Seedtag. "Our audiences, built without the need for cookies, are fresh and relevant, based on regular signals from our AI's network level analysis of content trends; it's this unique approach that's driving better campaign performance than signature, stale third-party data segments."

The introduction of Contextual Audiences showcases Seedtag's sustained commitment to providing comprehensive and flexible solutions that align with advertisers' changing needs. As the advertising landscape continues to evolve, Seedtag continues to deliver cutting-edge AI technology to help brands excel in their campaigns.

Industry-first initiative will help publishers accurately understand their carbon footprint and set net-zero targets

Sharethrough, one of the top global independent omnichannel ad exchanges, today announced the launch of the Net Zero Publisher Program. Developed in partnership with measurement company 51toCarbonZero (51-0), this unique initiative aims to help publishers gain an accurate understanding of their carbon footprint, allowing them to set net-zero targets and take tangible actions that will have a positive impact on the digital media industry.

For publishers who choose to participate in the program, Sharethrough will cover measurement costs for the first year, in alignment with Ad Net Zero's measurement methodology recommendations. In addition, 51-0 will provide tailored measurement and guidance on effective actions towards Science Based Target (SBTi) approval and net-zero commitment. Publishers committed to measure and eventually achieve net-zero emissions will also have the ability to join Sharethrough's Path to Net-Zero Marketplace, which will allow advertisers to prioritize spend on sites certified to be working towards net-zero emissions. These publishers will benefit from free measurement for the first year and better positioning among media agencies and brands, ultimately providing the opportunity for more advertising revenue. IPG Mediabrands is one of the early endorsers of the program.

"IPG Mediabrands is proud to be an anchor partner in Sharethrough's latest initiative, bringing more awareness and improved sustainable solutions to the entire digital advertising and media ecosystem," said Martin Bryan, Global Chief Sustainability Officer of IPG Mediabrands. "At IPG Mediabrands, we're committed to improving the sustainability of advertising and supporting the Net Zero Publisher Program which helps accelerate the availability of SBTi-approved media inventory by 2025. We're proud to recognize Sharethrough as the go-to advertising exchange helping publishers, agencies and brands alike achieve this goal."

Over the last 18 months, more and more brands have asked agencies and media partners to aid their efforts in achieving net-zero goals. But while brands, agencies and other ad tech players have launched strong sustainability initiatives, publishers have been falling behind, mainly due to lack of opportunities and economic pressures. Sharethrough hopes the Net Zero Publisher Program will allow publishers to better grasp their carbon footprint which will in turn help advertisers achieve their sustainability goals.

"Sharethrough's Net Zero Publisher Program aligns perfectly with our goals of building a cleaner, more sustainable advertising ecosystem," said Ben Skinazi, Chief Marketing Officer at Sharethrough. "The program creates a turnkey way for publishers to set and achieve net-zero carbon emissions, without initial measurement costs, which will have a lasting impact on the larger industry as well as our bottom line."

"Our data shows that six out of ten U.S. internet users are more inclined to visit websites that are certified sustainable," said JF Cote, CEO of Sharethrough. "The Net Zero Publisher Program allows publishers the opportunity to achieve that certification in a cost-effective, third-party validated way. The Net Zero Publisher Program is another strategic addition to our offerings, and represents our commitment to taking tangible actions to help publishers and the overall advertising industry understand and mitigate the impact digital ad campaigns have on the environment."

"Hearst Newspapers is fully committed to sustainable practices and is proud to partner with Sharethrough to further our shared dedication to a greener future. Our dedication to a more sustainable ecosystem aligns with our strategic pillars, as responsible environmental stewardship is an integral part of our business," said Michael Irenski, VP, Programmatic Revenue, Hearst Newspapers.

Former Head of Product + Engineering Continues to Lead Catch+Release’s Marketplace Tech Innovation on AI-Powered Content Licensing

Catch+Release, the content licensing marketplace for brands and creators, today announced the promotion of Jim McCollom to the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from Head of Product + Engineering. As a seasoned innovator and strategic leader with a deep technical background, McCollom will continue to drive Catch+Release's marketplace capabilities to meet the needs of large to mid size brands and protect content creators through fair compensation..

McCollom brings a wealth of experience gained from his prior positions, including Vice President of Cloud Engineering at DataStax, Director of Platform Engineering at Lending Club, and Software Development Manager at Amazon. In each of these roles, he consistently achieved exceptional results, contributing significantly to the success of these renowned, growing companies that deliver unique customer value.

Over his 20+ year career, McCollom has demonstrated a remarkable ability to grow and retain top talent engineering teams. He has cultivated a product and engineering-centric culture firmly grounded in modern development techniques. His career highlights include shaping technological strategies, leading high-performing teams, and consistently delivering customer-centric solutions on time and within budget, spanning industries from fintech to healthcare.

"Jim has been an integral part of our leadership team, and his dedication to driving innovation has been exceptional. His vision, combined with his commitment to elevating Catch+Release as an industry leader, has resulted in groundbreaking products and features, such as our industry-leading AI search. It's an exciting time in our industry, and with Jim's leadership, we're confident that we'll continue to maintain our position at the forefront of the content licensing world," said Analisa Goodin, CEO and Founder, Catch+Release.

"I'm very honored to take on the role of CTO at Catch+Release. The journey we've embarked upon together has been nothing short of remarkable. I'm incredibly grateful to be part of a team that consistently drives tech innovation, making it possible for us to provide our customers and users valuable solutions in the ever-changing content licensing landscape. As we navigate through the headwinds of innovation, I'm excited about the path ahead, and I'm committed to continuing to advance our mission and deliver pioneering solutions," said McCollom.

Nearly a dozen new Square tools seamlessly integrate generative AI to offer an intuitive helping hand to businesses of all sizes

Today, Square announced 10 new generative AI features that sellers can use now to automate operations, speed up workflows, and regain time. These tools are directly integrated into Square’s powerful business software and provide the company’s millions of sellers with an extra set of hands to help them juggle the multifaceted demands that come with running a business.

Earlier in 2023, Square made generative AI a key business priority, with the aim of providing sellers with generative AI-powered tools that enable them to benefit from the time and cost savings promised by this new wave of technology. Today’s launch marks a major step toward delivering against that goal, and not only putting real, tangible products into the hands of sellers, but also delivering that value across the Square ecosystem, no matter which product – or combination of products – a seller uses.

Key new generative AI-powered features include:

• Menu Generator: Restaurants can now create a full menu on Square in just a few minutes with just a few clicks, giving them – or any business looking to expand into food and drink offerings – valuable momentum and time-savings when launching operations on Square.
• Photo Environments: E-commerce sellers can now add hyperreal AI-generated backgrounds and choose from more than 50 style prompts with the latest version of the Photo Studio app, helping them elevate their websites and attract more customers. Since July 1, while in beta, sellers have created and saved over 14,000 AI Environment images.

"As a one-woman small business, any tools that can save me time or money are tremendously helpful," said Carissa Smith, owner of small batch candle store Fuddy Duddy Co. in Merriam, Kansas. "Square's Photo Studio app has helped me on both fronts as I've transitioned to selling online. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on props and backdrops, and hours of time staging my inventory, I was able to use the app's new AI environments to quickly bring my catalog to life with backgrounds that fit the themes of my various products."

More new Square tools help sellers with content creation, providing them AI-generated content for their public sites, item descriptions, and marketing content:

• Personalized email copy: To make email marketing easier, Square Marketing now offers integrated AI to generate personalized email copy, taking the guesswork – and time commitment – out of subject lines and content optimization.
• Team announcements: To inform staff more efficiently, employers using Square Team Communication can now quickly generate and send out team announcements to let employees know about new products, upcoming promotions, and more using AI-generated copy, with a choice of topic, length, and tone.
• Website copy generator: To lend a hand with short- or long-form website copy, Square Online’s AI-assisted copy generator helps sellers save time, level up their websites, and boost SEO – from set-up to refresh, and headlines to blog posts.
• Suggested replies: To enhance direct messaging with buyers, sellers using Square Messages now have even more sophisticated AI responses, with the ability to personalize messages to buyers with suggested replies that prepopulate names to enrich correspondences.

Whether setting up a business from scratch or switching over to Square, AI-enabled tools focused on onboarding & set-up help sellers get their accounts and catalogs activated in a way that gives them time back and lowers the barrier to entry:

• Auto-generated library: Square Point of Sale’s new AI-powered starter library suggests items for sellers to adopt based on insights about their business. In just a few clicks, sellers can get up, running, and selling. By easily setting up their catalogs and configuring items for sale, Square saves sellers valuable start-up time and removes the need to start from scratch.
• Auto-imported services: Square Appointments has made it easier than ever to switch booking platforms. No matter how many services a salon or spa offers, they can now use AI to automatically import service names, descriptions, durations, and prices during onboarding to get up and running faster.

With a focus on operational efficiency, these new features give sellers powerful tools to increase productivity and optimize their workflows, so they can focus on making more sales:

• Kitchen categories: In restaurants, even kitchen operations can be optimized with AI – now, Square KDS can auto-assign menu items to kitchen categories and station screens to create smooth workflows for back-of-house staff. Restaurant managers can keep menus and operations up to date by editing and saving catalogs with just a few clicks, expediting the process of getting orders fired.
• Item descriptions: Sellers running any Square Point of Sale software can now set up and manage their catalog with ease. With compelling, auto-written product descriptions, sellers gain more efficiency in their operations by adding new inventory quicker and getting them ready to sell – allowing them to focus on attracting more buyers, faster – across all their integrated selling channels.

“Square is uniquely positioned to be the technology partner that enables the most seamless, intuitive applications of AI. Our goal is to help businesses of all sizes scale their operations and take advantage of these new innovations,” said Saumil Mehta, Head of Point of Sale and Omnichannel at Square. “We’ve long been differentiated by the depth and breadth of our integrated ecosystem, and bringing generative AI into our products continues to put Square and its sellers at the forefront of technology.”

Marketers can now converse with their data in natural language to get timely insights without needing any technical skills or resources

Anova.ai debuts today with the first marketing analytics platform powered by generative AI and purpose-built for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Marketing teams can now talk to their data in natural language and get results instantly, all without needing any technical skills or resources. This competitively priced tool is specifically designed to serve the needs of marketers and can be fully operational in minutes, increasing speed-to-insight and accelerating decision-making.

Marketers are often forced to navigate complicated UIs or rely on technical teams to provide the data they need, which causes delays that can span days, weeks, and sometimes even months. Imagine the wasted time and opportunities.

Now imagine if you could talk to your data and get answers immediately. Anova is making that a reality, allowing marketing teams to converse with data in real-time, save queries for ongoing analysis, and create custom visualizations — just a few examples of how you can be truly self-sufficient and empowered by data with their platform.

"We're really excited to unveil Anova and bring the power of generative AI to marketing analytics." says Kunick Kapadia, co-founder and CEO at Anova.ai. "My brother and I have been running a marketing agency specialized in analytics for nearly a decade, so when generative AI exploded onto the scene, we realized we could harness the power of this technology to solve a critical challenge marketing teams face every day, accessing their data on their terms."

Anova is setting a new standard for marketing analytics with these distinguishing benefits:

• Industry-Specific Focus
• Easy to Use 
• Seamless Collaboration
• Competitively Priced for SMBs

This is just the beginning for Anova, as their plans expand beyond just natural language querying.

"We're excited about the impact AI will have on the landscape, which is why we've built Anova to be flexible and scalable." says Neelam Kapadia, co-founder and CTO at Anova.ai. "We see our platform revolutionizing the entire analytics lifecycle, from data ingestion to generating insights to predicting performance. We're already working on some exciting features and can't wait to put them in the hands of our users."

Building on the groundbreaking success of Rosetta, Narrative's AI-powered Data Collaboration Assistant, the company today introduced an expansive ecosystem of AI assistants to shape the future of data collaboration. With Rosetta at the helm as the Chief Data Collaboration Officer, this dynamic team will drive unparalleled capabilities, ensuring swifter response times and a revolutionary collaborative experience.

"Rosetta was the initial step in evolving how businesses access and interpret data," says Tim Mahlman, Narrative's CEO. "The addition of her specialized team members pushes us leaps and bounds further. This initiative isn't merely about faster data solutions; it's about simulating a bustling corporate ecosystem where AI-powered tools collaborate seamlessly to solve complex challenges."

Data Collaboration in Enterprises: It Takes More Than One

In the intricate world of enterprise data collaboration, the old adage rings true – it often "takes a village." Collaboration complexities necessitate diverse expertise, mirroring the multifaceted teams that exist within large organizations. The Rosetta team replicates this dynamic, ensuring that different facets of data collaboration are managed by dedicated specialists. These AI entities mimic the multiple roles and responsibilities seen in corporate data teams, but with the added advantages of being available round-the-clock and being immune to human limitations.

This streamlined approach considerably boosts the speed and quality of data processing, offering users a nuanced and tailored experience. And for those multifaceted tasks, Rosetta's team will collaborate, pooling their unique capabilities to produce comprehensive data outcomes.

24/7 Data Collaboration with Unwavering Precision

One of the crowning advantages of Rosetta and her team is their relentless dedication to service, being tirelessly available 24/7, 365 days a year. This continuous, unwavering efficiency ensures that businesses have constant access to crucial data insights. Beyond mere availability, the precision and reliability of their data processing are always maintained at the highest standards.

Importantly, this non-stop AI-driven support means that human teams can elevate their focus. Freed from the weeds of routine data tasks, they can channel their expertise into higher-value roles and strategic initiatives, thereby driving significant organizational growth and innovation. It's not just about working harder, but smarter, allowing human creativity and strategic thinking to flourish while the AI handles the heavy lifting.

Narrative's latest venture underscores its dedication to refining data collaboration. While Rosetta paved the way, her dedicated team promises to revolutionize the depth, scope, and speed of data interaction. With the complexities of today's data world, having a robust, untiring team ready to handle diverse challenges is not just a luxury—it's a necessity.

-  Delivering joint solutions upgraded with generative AI capabilities for critical uses cases

-  Providing clients with dedicated AWS expertise and plans to train and skill 10,000 consultants

-  Plans for further integration of IBM watsonx with AWS

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced an expansion of its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help more mutual clients operationalize and derive value from generative artificial intelligence (AI). As part of this, IBM Consulting aims to deepen and expand its generative AI expertise on AWS by training 10,000 consultants by the end of 2024; the two organizations also plan to deliver joint solutions and services upgraded with generative AI capabilities designed to help clients across critical use cases.

IBM Consulting and AWS already serve clients across a variety of industries with a range of AI solutions and services. Now, the companies are enhancing those solutions and services with the power of generative AI designed to help clients integrate AI quickly into business and IT operations building on AWS. IBM Consulting and AWS plan to start with these specific solutions:

• Contact Center Modernization with Amazon Connect – IBM Consulting worked with AWS to create summarization and categorization functions for voice and digital interactions using generative AI, which are designed to allow for transfers between the chatbot and live agent and provide the agent with summarized details that expedite resolution times and improve quality management.
• Platform Services on AWS – Initially introduced in November 2022, this offering is newly upgraded with generative AI to better manage the entire cloud value chain including IT Ops, automation, and platform engineering. The new generative AI capabilities give clients tools to enhance business serviceability and availability for their applications hosted on AWS through intelligent issue resolution and observability techniques. Clients can expect an improvement of uptime and mean time repair which means they can act quickly and effectively to potential issues that arise.
• Supply Chain Ensemble on AWS – This planned offering will introduce a virtual assistant that can help accelerate and augment the work of supply chain professionals as they aim to deliver on customer expectations, optimize inventories, reduce costs, streamline logistics, and assess supply chain risks.

Additionally, for clients looking to modernize on AWS, IBM Consulting plans to integrate AWS generative AI services into its proprietary IBM Consulting Cloud Accelerator to help accelerate the cloud transformation process. This will help with reverse engineering, code generation and code conversion.

Commitment to deepening expertise and expanding AWS on watsonx integration
IBM has already built extensive expertise with AWS's generative AI services including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon CodeWhisperer, and is one of first AWS Partners to use Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that makes industry-leading foundation models (FMs) available through an API, so clients can choose the model that's best suited for their use case.

AI expertise and a deep understanding of AWS capabilities are critical for clients looking to implement generative AI, and IBM is already providing mutual clients with access to professionals from IBM Consulting's Center of Excellence for Generative AI with specialized generative AI expertise.

With today's news, IBM Consulting plans to train and skill 10,000 consultants on AWS generative AI services by end of 2024. They will have access to an exclusive, partner-only program that provides training on the top use cases and best practices for client engagement with AWS generative AI services. This will help advance their knowledge, allow them to engage with technical professionals and better serve clients innovating on AWS.

"Enterprise clients are looking for expert help to build a strategy and develop generative AI use cases that can drive business value and transformation – while mitigating risks," said Manish Goyal, Senior Partner, Global AI & Analytics Leader at IBM Consulting. "Paired with IBM's AI heritage and deep expertise in business transformation on AWS, this suite of reengineered solutions with embedded generative AI capabilities can help our mutual clients to scale generative AI applications rapidly and responsibly on their platform of choice."

IBM is also responding to client demand for generative AI capabilities on AWS by making watsonx.data, a fit-for-purpose data store built on an open lakehouse architecture, available on AWS as a fully managed software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution– which clients can also access in AWS Marketplace. The company also plans to make watsonx.ai and watsonx.governance available on AWS by 2024. This builds on previous commitments made by the two companies to make it easier for clients to consume IBM data, AI and security software on AWS.

"Our customers are increasingly looking for the technical support and AI expertise they need to build and implement a generative AI strategy that drives business value from their entire cloud value chain," said Chris Niederman, Managing Director, Global Systems Integrators at AWS. "We are excited to be working with IBM to include embedded generative AI capabilities that assist our mutual customers scale their applications – and help IBM consultants deepen their expertise on best practices for customer engagement with AWS generative AI services."

Generative AI at scale for telecommunications
Clients are already benefitting from the longstanding relationship between IBM and AWS. Bouygues Telecom, a leading French communications service provider with a history of industry-leading innovation, engaged IBM Consulting to support the company's evolving cloud strategy to explore, design and implement AI use cases at scale while giving teams flexibility to select cloud and AI providers based on departmental and application needs.

Leveraging the IBM Garage approach, the team co-designed a custom data and AI reference architecture covering multiple cloud scenarios that can extend to all AI and data projects across Bouygues Telecom's cloud and on-premises platforms.

"As we sought to leverage generative AI to extract insights from our engagements with clients, we were confronted with some unfamiliar issues around storage, memory size and power requirements," said Matthieu Dupuis, Head of AI for Bouygues Telecom. "IBM Consulting and AWS have been invaluable partners in identifying the right model for our needs and overcoming these technological barriers."

With the new AI platform on AWS, IBM Consulting enabled Bouygues Telecom to develop proof-of-concept models and scale them into production quickly while helping to minimize costs and risks. The platform also enables their data scientists to work with greater efficiency, purpose, and satisfaction by allowing them to spend more time on complex, high-value AI projects rather than launching standalone solutions.

An evolving relationship
With over 40 years of combined experience on AI solutions, IBM and AWS have been working together to respond to clients who are looking to leverage AI for cost, efficiency, and growth, whether they are looking for a demonstration of the technology, defining potential use cases or full co-creation of bespoke solutions.

Additionally, IBM is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner with over 22,000 AWS certifications globally and has achieved 17 AWS Service Delivery and 16 AWS Competency designations. Today's news builds on this longstanding relationship and a shared value of the importance of enterprise AI. Getting to enterprise AI at scale requires a human-centric, principled approach, and IBM Consulting helps clients establish guardrails that align with the organization's values and standards, mitigate bias and manage data security, lineage, and provenance.

IBM Consulting accelerates business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become the trusted partner to many of the world's most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven co-creation method, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.