By adding Rebrandly custom short links to MessageBird-powered communications, brands can improve content deliverability, boost conversion, and increase customer retention

Rebrandly, the leading provider of link management solutions, today announced a strategic partnership and integration with MessageBird, the leading omnichannel communications automation platform. Now, through the Rebrandly Connector for MessageBird, businesses can easily improve the performance of — and engagement with — their marketing campaigns and other large-scale communications by using branded and trackable shortened links.

With tens of thousands of customers and millions of active users, Rebrandly provides a platform for securely creating and managing custom short links at scale — and has generated more than 1 billion links to date for brands worldwide across industries. MessageBird powers and streamlines communications between businesses and their customers — driving powerful, personalized, and engaging experiences across SMS, email, voice, WhatsApp, and more. MessageBird has processed over 5 trillion messages, calls, and emails for 29,000+ customers, including Google, Facebook, and Uber.

Branded links have a 39% higher clickthrough rate than unbranded ones, according to Rebrandly data, and now organizations can take advantage of the integration between Rebrandly and MessageBird to drive higher-impact and "stickier" communications across SMS, email, and WhatsApp channels. Using Rebrandly and MessageBird, businesses delivering marketing campaigns or seeking to drive online and mobile app and software sign-ups can increase revenue, traffic, customer acquisition, and conversions by including branded links in their messages. Travel, financial services, healthcare, e-commerce, and logistics companies that provide time-sensitive notifications to customers via SMS and email can now use shortened, branded links to improve link deliverability and track engagement.

Through the Rebrandly Connector for MessageBird, companies can:

• Grow Revenue — Leveraging mobile deep links to send customers directly to the content they care about so they can quickly reach product pages and complete purchases with fewer clicks.
• Grow Traffic — Creating unique QR codes or referral links at scale for better delivery through SMS, email, and WhatsApp — accelerating top-of-funnel (TOFU) conversion.
• Grow Efficiency — Managing branded links easily via one tool without leaving the MessageBird interface. Users can edit destination URLs and apply traffic routing features anytime to ensure optimal deliverability and user experience (UX).
• Grow Intelligence — Benefitting from advanced and actionable insights, with click data from Rebrandly directly streamed into MessageBird's analytics dashboard in real-time. 
• Grow Trust — Improving brand trust, customer acquisition, and retention with safe, secure (SOC 2 Type II) and recognizable branded short links at every step of the customer journey. Brands can also track link engagement for funnel improvement.

"MessageBird helps businesses automate their communication workflows and engage customers individually and in real-time," said Asha Thurthi, Chief Product Officer, MessageBird. "Our partnership and integration with Rebrandly augment our powerful tools, so companies can add branded short links to their communications — improving campaign results and deepening brand trust among recipients. Many companies already use our solutions together, seeing measurable results and delivering more effective communications. This partnership will allow MessageBird and Rebrandly to reach more customers and accelerate the value we bring to the market."

Carla Bourque, CEO of Rebrandly, said: "Rebrandly offers the most complete and advanced link management solutions in the market and is an essential piece of the global MarTech stack. Our AI-enabled link management technology and commitment to digital innovation empower customers to connect more effectively and securely with the content they care about — driving value, brand trust, and performance at scale. Our partnership with MessageBird is the latest manifestation of Rebrandly's mission to make every link matter with high-impact, measurable, and engaging omnichannel communications. We're proud to partner with MessageBird to help even more businesses benefit from Rebrandly's powerful link management technology."

Key Takeaways

• More than 4 in 10 companies are still in the early stages of their identity-security journey.

• Security professionals are struggling to communicate the business value of identity.

• Even mature companies cover less than 70% of the identities in their organization.

• Companies leveraging SaaS, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and automation scale 10-30% faster.

SailPoint Technologies, Inc., a leader in enterprise identity security, today released the findings from the 2023 edition of its annual research report, ‘The Horizons of Identity Security,’ at Navigate 2023. Produced in collaboration between SailPoint and Accenture, a leading global professional services company, the report is based on insights from more than 375 global cybersecurity executives across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The goal was to examine the current state and future direction of the identity security market.

With 90% of cybersecurity breaches being identity related, identity security is the most important security aspect that every organization must get right. Yet, findings from the Horizons of Identity Security report show that 44% of companies are still at the beginning of their identity journeys. And, concerningly, even mature companies cover less than 70% of the identities in their organizations through foundational governance capabilities. However, respondents noted that communicating the business value of identity security to executives is a key challenge. This underscores the need for identity security advocates to build executive-friendly business cases that are tailored to their audiences’ strategic priorities and value-driven mindset.

A worrying 77% of respondents indicate that “limited executive sponsorship or focus” is a primary obstacle to investment in identity security, second only to budgetary constraints (91%). However, report findings clearly demonstrate that a strong identity security program can power business agility and innovation, risk mitigation, efficiency gains, and advancement of tech initiatives. For example, it can accelerate organizational change by as much as 30% through quicker integration of identities, applications, data and infrastructure.

“A strong identity security program can generate real value for today’s organizations, but that value isn’t always obvious to business stakeholders,” said Matt Mills, President of Worldwide Field Operations, SailPoint. “In today’s threat landscape, stopping just one breach can save millions of dollars in lost revenue, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. It’s important for security teams to have the information they need to communicate their needs in an outcomes-based way. Focusing on the business value that identity security drives is going to resonate best with executives and help them understand the pressing need to accelerate their identity maturity if they want to avoid becoming the next major victim.”

Identity ecosystems are becoming increasingly complex and a preferred attack vector for threat actors. According to the report findings, on average more than 30% of the identities in an organization are not properly covered by identity solutions, with particular gaps around third-party identities, machine identities and data. Bringing those identities under the umbrella of a strong identity management program is essential for breach avoidance. Foundational security capabilities accelerate incident response, prevent bad actors from authenticating into internal systems and limit excessive access rights for employees — which survey respondents selected as the most common security deficiency enabling breaches.

Among other notable findings in the report was the fact that AI-based solutions have proven to be a potent accelerator, helping businesses add advanced new capabilities and drive greater agility. Encouragingly, the report shows a growing number of organizations are exploring AI-backed dynamic trust models to evolve access based on user behavior. The findings also show that companies leveraging SaaS, AI and automation scale a notable 10-30% faster and get more value for their security investment through increased capability utilization. More specifically, an identity platform leveraging automation and AI enables companies to scale identity-related capabilities up to 37% faster than companies without AI enablement.

“Organizations are facing unprecedented challenges when it comes to managing their complex identity environments and massive data sets,” said Damon McDougald, the global Security Digital Identity lead at Accenture. “While advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and generative AI are making it easier to expedite, manage and scale identity security initiatives many organizations are still at the start of their journeys. Organizations should view this as an opportunity to accelerate their identity maturity timetable and establish a foundation for a secure digital transformation.”

The engagement reinforces Mediahub's commitment to supporting minority-owned media through CTV and OTT inventory

Sabio Holdings Inc.(the "Company" or "Sabio"), a leading provider of Connected TV ("CTV")/over-the-top ("OTT") advertising platforms validated by performance, today announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with Mediahub U.S., an award-winning global media agency, across both companies' portfolio of brands. The relationship reinforces Mediahub's commitment and support of minority-owned media and a focus on diverse audience insights, leveraging Sabio's unique data sets so their clients can effectively reach growing US multicultural audiences.

The multicultural landscape in the U.S. is rapidly evolving and growing, with a multicultural majority expected in the next decade. As marketers and their agency partners seek new ways to connect with these important audiences, mobile and CTV/OTT media are becoming even more critical. In a recent App Science U.S. Multicultural Trends Report it was found that multicultural audiences are bigger streamers than the general market, with Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans 33 percent, 17 percent, and 17 percent, respectively, more likely to have CTV streaming apps than the general market.

Through this partnership, Mediahub will have access to media activations across Sabio's unique CTV/OTT inventory and customized audience segments, and the ability to use mobile data to target anonymized segments on CTV/OTT across Sabio's inventory network, reaching multicutural consumers more efficiently and supporting minority-owned publishers. Further, Sabio will also provide access to App Science's™ (a wholly owned division of Sabio) proprietary 55MM HH graph data, which provides insights and access to Quarterly Trends reports, first-looks at published vertical and multicultural reports and exclusive analyses customized towards Mediahub priorities.

The partnership is the first Sabio has struck with a global media planning and buying agency.

"The engagement with Mediahub further solidifies their support of minority-owned media. Mediahub clients will now have partnership, sponsorship and production opportunities with Sabio's soon-to-be launched Ad-supported Video-On-Demand (AVOD) hub SabioTV app, focused on unique streaming content from creators that resonate with diverse audiences," said Jon Stimmel, Chief Growth Officer of Sabio. "As the multicultural audience population continues to grow, advertisers are constantly looking for opportunities to reach and target these groups. Mediahub's commitment to these audiences makes it easier for marketers to better understand and reach these users, with exclusive inventory available through Sabio's CTV/OTT network."

As CTV continues to grow and attract attention from advertisers looking to connect with diverse audiences, the industry faces challenges with targeting and inventory. Sabio was founded with the goal of providing brands a way to accurately reach minority audiences on mobile devices. While it has since expanded into general market audiences across an array of verticals, Sabio's core foundation is rooted in diversity and inclusion, remaining a minority-owned business today.

This comprehensive set of solutions tailored to CTV environments provides Mediahub's extensive network with the opportunities they need to continue growing and supporting these minority-owned businesses.

"Mediahub is excited to formalize our relationship with Sabio, and to provide our clients with more opportunities and inventory to connect with multicultural audiences. We've found that Sabio is unique not only because they reach total market audiences, but can also get very granular in corroborating and reaching multicultural audiences based on endemic mobile usage and behavior – this is critical in a world where it is getting increasingly difficult to verify and qualify audiences, particularly diverse audience," said Femaris Peña, SVP, Director, Diversity Demand and Supply, Mediahub. "Sabio's supply is complemented with unique CTV/OTT inventory sources and access to insights and data through the App Science Household Graph - all of which enable our clients to efficiently activate at scale. We are pleased to partner with Sabio to continue to our clients grow while also narrowing the equity gap in the media ecosystem."

This strategic offering enables brands to seamlessly navigate influencer marketing with the expertise of GRIN professionals

GRIN, the leading creator management platform for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, today announced the launch of its Professional Services offering — an expert-led influencer marketing solution which will simplify building and managing creator programs for brands. With this offering, brands can leverage GRIN's team of seasoned experts to help successfully establish a creator program from the ground up or optimize an existing one.

GRIN's new Professional Services arrive as influencer marketing increases in popularity with brands — nearly three-quarters of B2C decision-makers will partner with creators and influencers in 2023, according to Forrester. But as more brands foray into influencer marketing, they're confronted with the ever-changing nature of the creator landscape, making maneuvering these changes while developing a creator program difficult. Professional Services, powered by GRIN's best-in-class software, will provide brands with the guidance they need to navigate the creator economy, bring their vision to life and ensure their program runs optimally.

This new offering from GRIN, comprised of multiple support options, is designed to fill the short- or long-term needs of brands, which they can customize to fit their creator programs:

• Modular Services: GRIN experts fill gaps in brands' existing programs, whether that's creator recruitment or campaign management, allowing brands to get support and strategic guidance where they need it most.
• End-to-End Services: GRIN experts take the reins and run brands' programs from start to finish while brands focus on the bigger picture.

"With GRIN's Professional Services, we're venturing into a new space and expanding the way we support brands with creator management," said Brandon Brown, co-founder and CEO of GRIN. "This offering is for brands who are just getting started with influencer marketing, don't have an in-house team or are looking for additional strategic assistance, giving brands the flexibility to choose how we partner with them and allowing us to broaden the customer segments we appeal to."

GRIN professionals, who have worked with brands like Uber, SKIMS and Macy's, will provide their expertise to brands, acting as an extension of their team. Aided by their proven track records, GRIN experts will work as strategic partners to ensure the success of a brand's creator program.

"I have been a GRIN customer for over two years now and have had an amazing experience. So when GRIN said it was launching a Professional Services offering, I jumped on it,” said Sara Panton Rogier, CEO and co-founder of Vitruvi. “It’s exactly what my small team needed to take our program to the next level. As a part of our custom offering, GRIN's team of seasoned influencer marketers will support us in both developing program strategy and in its execution. I’m excited about our continued partnership with GRIN and confident that it'll help take our program to new heights."

New, privacy-centric, cloud-native capabilities help clients overcome signal loss, accurately connect customer views across the enterprise, and effectively reach more consumers throughout the ecosystem

LiveRamp today announced new clean room activation and cloud-first identity capabilities that empower clients to more effectively activate and connect their data while unlocking deeper analytics and audience insights. As a result, brands, publishers, and technology platforms can maximize the value of their first-party data, seamlessly unify and activate their data from any environment, and deepen consumer insights through more granular measurement—all within their existing enterprise technology stack or partner ecosystem.

With these platform enhancements, LiveRamp’s 900+ clients now benefit from:

Activation to Hundreds of Partners Directly from Snowflake’s and LiveRamp’s Data Clean Room. With LiveRamp’s next-generation, cloud-native clean room capabilities, clients can now activate their data with hundreds of partners directly from their collaboration platform of choice, including Snowflake and the LiveRamp Clean Room, with enhanced accuracy and connectivity.

With RampID™—the most durable, privacy-centric identifier for connecting the digital ecosystem—LiveRamp clients can take immediate action on new insights generated through secure partner collaborations while achieving incomparable scale and reach. With seamless connectivity to the industry’s most expansive, data-rich network, LiveRamp also offers the ability to activate across this ecosystem without the need to use multiple solutions or build a new integration for each partner and platform.

“Partnering with LiveRamp to evolve clean room capabilities through our Converged platform and ecosystem has helped to improve first-party data activation and create targeted, accurate audience segments – all from the same environment," said Mike Bregman, Chief Activation Officer at Havas Media Network North America. "This has enabled Havas Media to better assist clients who increasingly need cross-channel insights to reach business goals.”

“Data clean rooms have become a critical tool for delivering more customer intelligence to our brand partners while maintaining the transparency and control we require as a steward of our audiences’ data,” said Brian Lin, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Advertising at TelevisaUnivision. “The ability to activate directly out of LiveRamp’s next-generation clean room deepens the expanse of our strategic partnerships while maintaining the highest level of privacy protections.”

Industry-First Identity Resolution Across All Major Clouds. With cloud-native and embedded identity resolution capabilities, clients can now choose to expand their pseudonymised first-party data to include known data elements, such as CRM and email addresses, directly in their preferred cloud platform, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Databricks, and Snowflake. LiveRamp clients can now maximize marketing ROI from wherever their data lives.

Fragmentation of customer data makes unlocking person-based identity in the cloud an ongoing challenge. For example, 86% of consumers have multiple email addresses, which need to be resolved to an individual to enable best-in-class activation and measurement. Consumers also, on average, have 13 connected devices that may be leveraged for a holistic advertising and measurement strategy. Household-specific purchasing patterns are also changing, making it difficult to accurately measure attribution. Using LiveRamp’s cloud-first identity capabilities companies are able to address these challenges by resolving multiple personal identifiers back to an individual and a household, thus enhancing measurement and enabling more personalized advertising while minimizing the need for data movement.

“The ability to utilize LiveRamp’s technology without leaving our cloud environment is an incredible benefit,” said Seth Hirsh, Partner, Head of Analytics at Acadia. “As we look to our future on Snowflake, LiveRamp will give us the tools to streamline how we onboard data to cloud data warehouses, target audiences broadly across the ecosystem, and improve measurement outcomes for our clients without having to move data between environments.”

Kimberly Bloomston, SVP of Product at LiveRamp, added, “Bringing cloud-native, clean room-optimized activation and identity capabilities to the market ensures enterprises have the ability to scale data practices, maximize insights, and build flexibility for the future. The new features deliver access to otherwise inaccessible datasets, allowing them to simplify campaign activation and optimize the ability to reach consumers in a consistently accurate manner. With LiveRamp, businesses are empowered to evolve their digital transformation initiatives alongside the demands of a vastly fragmented ecosystem and complex journeys of their customers and partners, including clouds and clean rooms.”

LiveRamp continues to advance its solutions and power next-generation data collaboration across four critical components.

• Live/Identity: Build the enterprise identity infrastructure to accurately identify and match customers across channels, partners, and platforms for the most connected customer view possible.
• Live/Access: Expand the value of data, deepen customer understanding, and reach new audiences with LiveRamp’s network of high-quality data partners.
• Live/Connectivity: Overcome signal loss, embrace the future of addressability, and connect with high-value audiences at scale, wherever they’re spending time.
• Live/Insights: Fuel innovation and unlock powerful measurement and analytics with robust clean room capabilities, with advanced controls and permissioning and cutting-edge privacy-enhancing technologies built in.

IntentKey provides a cookieless, identityless solution that aligns with Apple's enhanced privacy policies, while improving audience targeting and measurement

Inuvo, Inc., a leading provider of marketing technology, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that serves brands and agencies, announced today that by using its IntentKey solution, advertisers can reach their desired audiences on Apple's Safari browser across the open web in a compliant manner despite new privacy restrictions introduced in iOS 17.

Apple’s updated operating system contains additional privacy protections that restrict the ability of third-party companies to track users' web browsing habits, which poses challenges for marketers targeting audiences and seeking campaign performance insights when consumers are using a Safari browser.

Inuvo's AI solution, IntentKey, is uniquely positioned to provide a cookieless, identity-less solution that aligns with Apple's privacy stance while enabling improved audience targeting and measurement.

"Apple is systematically eliminating the use of a consumer's identity for the targeting of advertising,” said Richard Howe, CEO of Inuvo. “They have facilitated private browsing, eliminated third-party and limited first-party cookies, obfuscated email addresses, and, now in their latest update, removed URL tracking parameters. With IntentKey, we're able to help our clients achieve their marketing goals on Safari without compromising on privacy compliance or performance."

Using real-time AI models generated from knowledge gained from crawling the entire open web, Inuvo is able to detect user intent without using traditional identity tactics like cookies, third-party consumer data, IP addresses, and user fingerprinting. The models are constantly updated to reflect changes in interest and behavior, analyzing huge volumes of data in real-time that model audiences and optimize campaigns. The technical infrastructure allows rapid pattern recognition that leads to immediate decisions regarding the placement of advertising.

Since Inuvo’s large-language-based AI is not reliant on consumer data, the ability to discover and target audiences is not impacted by the privacy changes occurring within Safari and other browsers.

IntentKey enables granular, concept-based targeting for Safari web traffic, with an approach that collects no personally identifiable information from users. Combined with integrated AI that also optimizes media spend across channels in real-time, IntentKey drives higher returns for advertisers struggling to reach Safari audiences.

"At a time when advertisers are rightfully concerned about reaching Safari users, IntentKey provides a solution to the industry's largest problem: consumer privacy," said Howe. "We look forward to working with more partners to ensure compliant, effective targeting on iOS and other platforms moving forward."

Creating a single “content supply chain" solution, delivering measurable ROI from awareness to conversion

Bazaarvoice, the leading provider of full-funnel authentic user-generated content solutions, announced today the acquisition of the affable.ai platform from Affable Technologies. With the affable.ai platform, Bazaarvoice adds creator discovery and management technology to its existing creator-managed services. This ensures clients can build a creator marketing strategy with the choice of service options that best suits their social commerce needs.

“We are thrilled to acquire affable.ai, a leading technology platform specializing in AI-driven influencer marketing solutions,” said Keith Nealon, CEO of Bazaarvoice. “The creator economy will double in size to $480 billion by 2027, and there is no better time for Bazaarvoice to expand our product portfolio to address our customers’ evolving full-funnel content marketing and commerce needs.”

The acquisition of the affable.ai platform accelerates Bazaarvoice customers’ ability to harness the power of social commerce, by activating content across their communities of everyday customers, creators, and brand ambassadors. According to a recent study commissioned by Bazaarvoice, creator content is the most used type of content by e-commerce sites, after branded content.

“Our vision is to seamlessly integrate affable.ai with both our Social Commerce and Content Activation Solutions, allowing clients the unique ability to create, curate, and manage content from a single interface, and connect the silos between their social and ecommerce strategies. When combined with Bazaarvoice’s unparalleled retail distribution networks, clients have the ability to amplify their creator content to more destinations where customers shop and to measure the ROI of content in terms of brand awareness and sales, with true full-funnel data for their campaigns, unlike any other solutions available today,” added Colby Smith, EVP & GM, Content Activation Solutions, Bazaarvoice.

“We built affable.ai with the belief that the future of commerce will be social-led and that creators and influencers will help brands scale their reach through authentic, trusted voices. We are excited to realize this vision faster with Bazaarvoice's leadership and expertise in social commerce," added Nisarg Shah, co-founder, CEO of Affable Technologies, Inc.

Virtual event leader maximizes streaming capabilities for enterprises through Hive’s VX Platform and premium eCDN services

GlobalMeet, a virtual event company that hosts engaging and accessible hybrid and virtual events, today announces its partnership with Hive Streaming, a leader within enterprise video experience, to provide companies with powerful tools to secure, control and optimize internal video communication events at every stage, while maximizing their reach and quality. The partnership supplements GlobalMeet’s secure event solutions with access to invaluable video performance and experience insights, including employee engagement analytics from a growing suite of Hive’s next-generation products.

“GlobalMeet strives to provide businesses with engaging virtual experiences at every level, and our key partnership with Hive further enhances our customers’ large-scale productions and drives engagement through high-quality video broadcasts,” said GlobalMeet President Michele Dobnikar. “Great video experiences can make or break a company’s ability to survive, thrive and gain momentum, and our companies’ combined 35+ years of experience within the enterprise communication space will ensure the highest quality broadcast possible.”

GlobalMeet Webcast integrates seamlessly with Hive’s next-generation video experience products and eCDN solution, providing significant bandwidth savings and up to 99% network offload of video consumption. Hive’s capabilities ensure a high-quality video with easy configuration, without any required installation. Participating businesses can access crucial analytics and metrics of video performance, viewer experience, and engagement down to an individual level to improve communications strategies for events of all sizes and types.

“We all know that live video and events play an increasingly important role in the digital workplace. However, it is not always easy to get it right and enhance employee engagement. For GlobalMeet Webcast, corporate events are part of their DNA,” said Johan Ljungberg, CEO of Hive Streaming. “We are very excited about our collaboration which will be a big advantage for customers transforming their enterprise Video Experience.”

GlobalMeet’s customizable browser-based events system provides businesses with an easy-to-use and secure environment to produce high-profile, engaging webcasts with Q&A chats, surveys, polling, testing and certification, dynamic layouts and social media interactive features with the click of a button.