technology 11 Oct 2023
Deloitte Digital's new research on Generative AI in Marketing Content Production reveals that Generative Artificial Intelligence is already reshaping content production for marketing, with 26% of surveyed marketers already using Generative AI, with another 45% planning to by the end of 2024. In a rapidly evolving digital world, content marketing stands as a key element for marketing success for businesses across various industries. The research reveals content marketing has become vital to the digital marketing strategies of 8 in 10 surveyed leaders, with its importance growing between 2022 and 2023.
The demand for personalized, timely, and relevant content has presented organizations with significant challenges. The research reveals the demand for marketing content grew by 1.5x in 2023, but marketing teams were only able to meet that demand 55% of the time. Marketers leveraging Generative AI can potentially get ahead of that demand by using Generative AI to support higher quality, greater volume of content, and higher employee productivity.
"Generative AI solutions are not just about keeping up with content demands; they are about staying ahead of them," said Mike Brinker, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Content Studio leader at Deloitte Digital. "By working alongside artificial intelligence, businesses are empowered to create high-quality, personalized content efficiently, giving them a competitive edge in today's digital marketplace."
This study engaged 650 leaders from U.S. companies in the business-to-consumer and business-to-business sectors, each with 100 or more employees and annual revenues exceeding $50 million. These leaders represented a diverse array of industries. All respondents held senior managerial positions or higher in e-commerce, marketing, or product marketing departments, with responsibilities spanning communications, content creation/marketing, and editorial/publishing, ensuring a comprehensive and pertinent dataset for the study.
Key findings from the research include:
"In today's hyperconnected digital landscape, content marketing is the backbone of successful customer engagement. It's not just about creating content; it's about orchestrating a seamless journey from idea to delivery, ensuring that every piece of content contributes to the narrative that captures hearts and minds," said Beth Adams, managing director, Marketing & CX Transformation and Global Adobe Alliance Generative AI Leader at Deloitte Digital.
Deloitte Digital's Content Studio is leading the way in transforming content creation and supply chains. By harnessing Generative AI, the Content Studio combines the experience of content creators, data scientists, and AI engineers to efficiently produce personalized, high-quality content for clients seeking to scale their content marketing.
With its innovative approach, the Content Studio underscores Deloitte Digital's commitment to delivering top-tier content that meets the demands of a dynamic marketplace, emphasizing both quality and quantity. This studio exemplifies how Deloitte Digital is reshaping content marketing to empower clients in an era where content personalization is paramount. Deloitte Digital's experience in customer-centric solutions, demand adaptability, and synchronized planning, enables businesses to plan, create, deliver and analyze content at scale.
Deloitte Digital is proud to be a Diamond sponsor of Adobe MAX, the world's leading creative conference, from Oct. 10-12 in Los Angeles, California. At Adobe MAX, Deloitte Digital will showcase its experience in content supply chain and Generative AI, offering insights into the future of content marketing.
Deloitte is infusing Generative AI applications and capabilities across its organization to help its professionals become more efficient and productive. As part of this ongoing commitment, Deloitte is rolling out purpose specific Large Language Models (LLMs) and chatbots to support specialized teams across its business, including DARTbot to support Audit & Assurance professionals. These applications and productivity tools are focused on proprietary functional and industry content that is applied with Deloitte's Trustworthy AI™ framework, managing AI risks such as hallucinations, and improving user confidence and trust.
Additionally, Deloitte is increasing AI fluency, training more than 120,000 professionals as part of the next generation of AI talent via the AI Academy, a Deloitte Technology Academy program, as well as investing more than $2 billion in global technology learning and development initiatives to boost skills in the application of key technology areas, including AI, to key industry and functional issues.
Deloitte Digital combines consulting and creativity to solve new problems with new ideas and unlock growth across the entire customer experience. By uniting leading digital and creative capabilities with the deep industry knowledge and experience Deloitte is known for, we help clients tackle their biggest challenges. New problems are arriving faster than ever before and we're using creativity, purpose, and technology as our solution to power modern business transformation. Alongside all of Deloitte, we foster the connections necessary to shape a better future for our clients, culture, society, and the planet.
social media 11 Oct 2023
Kajabi, the leading creator commerce platform, announced today that its creators have surpassed $6 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), also known as creator revenue, just a few months after reaching the $5 billion mark. Since 2017, Kajabi's GMV has increased by over 1,500 percent.
Kajabi creators continue to benefit from the platform's direct-to-creator philosophy, which helps entrepreneurs own their audiences, brands, and revenue in a way that creates consistent income independent of social media platforms and brand deals.
Matt Steffanina, Founder of DNCR Academy, comments on how moving his audience off social platforms helped him reach new financial goals, "At one stage, I was averaging 30 million views on my YouTube videos, which is just unbelievable but while my channel growth was huge, I wasn't able to monetize much of that content effectively. I was waiting for brand deals or for algorithm changes. Building my community and being able to move my followers off social platforms to a subscription model like Kajabi was a game changer that allowed me to earn more than seven figures and enable me to control my future."
Since Kajabi's $5 billion GMV milestone, it has launched several disruptive innovations, including a series of generative AI tools that have reduced creator time spent on content creation by 90 percent; its own payment processing solution, Kajabi Payments, has processed over $25 million in creator revenue since its launch in August; and the branded mobile app, which allows creators to build their own mobile app experiences without technical complications or a high price tag.
As Kajabi entrepreneurs march towards $9 billion in revenue by the end of 2024, Kajabi remains dedicated to helping them monetize their audiences regardless of their social followings, turn their side hustles into profitable full-time businesses, and keep 100 percent of their earnings.
Julie Soul, CEO of Soul Sparklettes Art, an online art project program for homeschooled students, comments on how much she earns with a relatively small social following, "When I joined Kajabi in August 2020, I gave myself 30 days to create and build a business that would make money, and that I was proud of. On my first day I sold 100 art bundles. With Kajabi's support my current revenue is roughly $700,000 a year - despite a relatively modest number of social media followers, and now we're about to reach the $1 million mark!"
Karla Lim, Founder of Written Word Calligraphy, a calligraphy school, comments on how Kajabi supported her passive income stream, "My business initially relied heavily on creating wedding invitations, which was very time intensive. When I became a mom for the first time, I knew I needed to diversify my income to balance my work life. With Kajabi's support, I am now able to earn a six-figure income in a more passive way, which allows me to run my company in a way that works for me."
Next year, the company will take Kajabi Payments global, prioritizing new markets, including Canada, Australia, the UK, and the EU. The newly released solution helps creators easily manage every aspect of their payment processing, from collecting payments to handling refunds. The additions of Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Afterpay have boosted creator conversion rates by up to 10 percent, adding thousands to creators' bottom lines.
With nearly 40 percent of Kajabi creator content consumed on mobile, Kajabi is also expanding its Branded Mobile App to enhance the user experience for the millions who consume content on Kajabi via a mobile device. Launched in May, the custom-branded app gives creators a user-friendly, affordable, build-your-own offering that allows them to extend their brands beyond desktop and truly own the relationship with their audiences. In 2024, Kajabi will add push notifications as well as community and livestream features so users can more easily engage in discussions and join live classes, meetups, and webinars on the go.
Rob Lennon, AI Whisperer "Being at the forefront of an emerging and very fast-paced industry, I knew my knowledge was in high demand. I needed a platform that was simple so I could spend my time doing what I love most. This is my first year as a solopreneur - I crossed $500,000 in the eleventh month of operating my business at 96% margins. I aim to be above a million in revenue next year with Kajabi's support."
"Hitting $5 billion in creator revenue a few months ago was a massive moment but to be back here again so quickly, with another reason to celebrate our creators, has exceeded our expectations," said Ahad Khan, CEO of Kajabi. "We put creators at the forefront of everything we do and this commitment permeates across every meeting we attend, product we launch, and investment we make. It's incredible to think that together, we're already starting to carve a path to $9 billion. In the meantime, we're continuing to pioneer even more products and services that solely focus on helping our creators turn their knowledge, experience, and expertise into thriving online businesses. Their success is our success."
digital experience 11 Oct 2023
Today, at Adobe MAX – the world’s largest creativity conference – Adobe announced over 100 major innovations and updates across Creative Cloud that dramatically advance power and precision for creative professionals. Adobe Firefly and AI-powered features are transforming Creative Cloud applications including Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Stock empowering anyone to bring their creative visions to life at the speed of their imagination.
Building on the success of the commercial release of Generative Fill in Photoshop, Adobe is introducing new Firefly-powered workflows in Illustrator with Text to Vector Graphic and in Adobe Express with Generative Fill and Text to Template. Additional innovations across Creative Cloud include new tools in Illustrator, such as Mockup and Retype; AI-powered advancements to Lightroom including Lens Blur as well as a new streamlined editing experience in Lightroom mobile. Adobe also announced the general availability of Photoshop on the web, AI-powered Text-Based Editing in Premiere Pro and Roto Brush in After Effects, plus dozens of other new innovations across Creative Cloud apps.
AI is most powerful when deeply integrated into the core of creative workflows, and these innovations are released alongside new Adobe Firefly Image 2 Model, Adobe Firefly Vector Model and Adobe Firefly Design Model, the most advanced generative AI technologies in the market today, designed to generate content safe for commercial use.
“Bringing Firefly and the power of AI directly into creative workflows has unleashed a new era of creativity across every segment of our business,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president, Digital Media at Adobe. “We’re excited to introduce dozens of new AI-powered capabilities in Creative Cloud to advance web workflows and accelerate creativity with new ways to ideate, express ideas, and save time.”
Breakthrough Innovations across Creative Cloud
Adobe has pioneered numerous AI innovations over the last decade, introducing hundreds of AI-powered features across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud. Today’s announcements bring significant new value to Creative Cloud members, supercharging every creative workflow with additional power, precision, speed and ease:
Adobe Firefly
Additional new generative AI-powered Text to Image capabilities in the popular Firefly web application where 90% of its users are new to Adobe products. They include Generative Match to apply the style of a reference image to generate new images at scale; Photo Settings, empowering users with new creative controls over image generation; Prompt Guidance for suggestions on improved prompts, inspiring new creations; and Share from Firefly and Save to Libraries to facilitate collaboration and cross-app workflows.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Frame.io
Adobe Stock
marketing 11 Oct 2023
Foundry, the media, data, and martech division of IDG, Inc., today released its inaugural 2023 AI Priorities Study. The study comes at a time when ChatGPT and a host of other Generative AI (Gen AI) tools are becoming widely accessible, even as organizations grapple with the technology’s reach, power and capabilities. Foundry surveyed global IT decision-makers (ITDMs) to understand AI and Gen AI use cases, investment and implementation levels, and the challenges these technologies pose for organizations.
One standout discovery was how widespread Gen AI adoption already is among organizations. Almost half of ITDMs reported implementing (20%) or piloting (25%) Gen AI technology to some extent in their organization, and an additional 47% are actively researching the technology. Yet despite this rapid rate of adoption, nearly one-quarter of ITDMs expressed concerns that their organization is moving too fast with respect to the use of Gen AI.
“Generative AI is poised to unleash the next wave of productivity within organizations, and IT leaders are extensively researching and piloting these technologies to understand their full potential and mitigate the risks,” said Stacey Raap, Marketing & Research Manager, Foundry. “We undertook this AI Priorities study to understand the marketplace dynamics and align priorities surrounding AI, namely the driving objectives among organizations, the specific implementation concerns, and how vendors can build products and educational tools that address both, and hone in on the specifics around Gen AI.”
Integration Speed Bumps
Due to AI and machine learning’s ability to constantly monitor and analyze large amounts of data, and automate mundane activities, it is no surprise that ITDMs reported their current top use cases for AI applications to be data analysis, employee productivity, and process automation. However, only 34% say that their organization currently has the right data and technology in place to enable effective AI.
AI technologies also present challenges and ethical implications that ITDMs must address when implementing it into their IT systems and processes, including data privacy (prioritizing data privacy and ensure that AI systems handle and process data compliantly), security and robustness (strength and ability to protect AI models and data from unauthorized access), and transparency and explainability (ability to understand how decisions are made and access to explanations).
Specific to Gen AI, top factors impacting the integration with existing systems include data integration (45%), security and privacy (45%), and user experience (34%). Alarmingly, only 36% of ITDMs reported that their organization has a policy in place and/or system in place to monitor the use of Gen AI.
Preparing for the AI-Driven Workplace
Despite these apprehensions, the vast majority of organizations and IT leaders are preparing for a workplace that embraces Gen AI. ITDMs are actively identifying use cases (57%), initiating pilot programs (45%), training/upskilling employees on Gen AI (41%), and establishing policies and guidelines (40%).
Regarding the addition of Gen AI capabilities into existing vendors’ product areas, 38% affirmed their vendors have added Gen AI into productivity/collaboration tools, 26% marketing/sales, 25% CRM, and 25% security tools. The majority of ITDMs also say that these additions have resulted in some/strong positive impact, and they believe productivity, marketing/sales, and security would benefit from additional Gen AI capabilities.
Investing in the AI Future
Recognizing AI’s vast potential to enhance company operations and fuel growth, the majority of IT decision-makers remain enthusiastic about investing in these technologies. Three quarters are either actively researching or piloting AI initiatives, and when it comes to Gen AI specifically, a mere 8% expressed no interest (11% SMB vs. 5% enterprise). Currently, 36% of all ITDMs and 45% of enterprise IT leaders have dedicated budgets for AI projects, with 61% anticipating an increase in AI spending in 2024.
The top five business objectives driving AI investments include improving employee productivity, enabling innovation, gaining a competitive edge, improving customer support or services, and developing new products or services. Reflecting the value of achieving these priorities, 44% of ITDMs agree that their organization is willing to pay more for AI-infused products from vendors.
As ITDMs work to enhance their understanding of how to integrate AI technologies for the greatest business benefits, technology vendors must keep customers informed on effective tool utilization and share their product roadmap. This will allow organizations to plan strategically for the integration of AI products and services into their organizations.
technology 10 Oct 2023
Streaming TV advertising is taking a step toward the future. This week, TV advertising agency Marketing Architects launched a new platform for CTV advertisers called Annika Streaming. Based on technology initially developed for linear TV, Annika Streaming buys CTV and streaming inventory more efficiently than current marketplace offerings allow. This enables performance brands to capitalize on streaming’s potential.
Annika’s development began six years ago when Marketing Architects built an AI-powered DSP for linear TV. The platform was designed to evaluate custom audience and performance criteria, set it against market trends and historical data, then calculate which media buys will drive the best ROI for individual brands. The result was a linear TV marketplace that delivered premium inventory for TV advertisers without premium price tags.
But as viewership shifted to streaming and connected TV, it was essential brands follow consumers to the channel. Unfortunately for performance marketers, streaming’s promise of advanced targeting and measurement capabilities has been overshadowed by its high prices, typically 5-10X higher than linear TV.
To close this gap, Marketing Architects spent the last two years building a proprietary streaming capability, bringing the efficient prices Annika achieved in linear into streaming and CTV. Now, Annika Streaming solves some of the biggest challenges for performance marketers on the channel.
artificial intelligence 10 Oct 2023
UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, today announced a new Integration Service Connector that gives customers access to Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that provides access to industry-leading foundation models (FMs) via an API to build and scale generative AI applications.
Using UiPath’s connector for Amazon Bedrock, automation developers and citizen developers alike can seamlessly integrate Generative AI directly in their UiPath Studio and Studio Web automations, using the model of their preference and within Amazon Web Services (AWS). The connector supports text/chat capabilities through Amazon Titan FMs and several other FMs from leading AI providers via Amazon Bedrock, including the Jurassic-2 family of multilingual large language models (LLMs) from AI21 Labs, which follow natural language instructions to generate text in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch. Customers can also choose Claude, Anthropic’s LLM, which can perform a wide variety of conversational and text processing tasks and is based on Anthropic’s extensive research into training honest and responsible AI systems.
“The UiPath connector for Amazon Bedrock is simple to use and brings the power of foundation models to all UiPath customers so they can accelerate building their own Generative AI applications,” said Graham Sheldon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath. “With its open, flexible, and responsible approach, UiPath provides organizations with a comprehensive platform for implementing and harnessing the power of AI-powered automation. This functionality complements our vision for helping customers innovate faster with Generative AI.”
Generative AI is powered by FMs—very large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data. According to AWS, “FMs can perform so many more tasks because they contain such a large number of parameters that make them capable of learning complex concepts. And through their pre-training exposure to internet-scale data in all its various forms and myriad of patterns, FMs learn to apply their knowledge within a wide range of contexts.”
In addition, since all data is encrypted and does not leave a customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), customers can trust that their data will remain private and confidential.
Earlier this year, UiPath also announced that data science teams using Amazon SageMaker, an end-to-end machine learning (ML) service, can now quickly and seamlessly connect Amazon SageMaker-hosted ML models into UiPath business processes without the need for complex coding and manual effort. By connecting Amazon SageMaker to UiPath, users can interact with deployed models via the connector and use their outputs in their workflows.
technology 10 Oct 2023
Usercentrics, a global leader in the field of Consent Management Platforms (CMP), has once again been awarded multiple badges by G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace.
For Fall 2023, Usercentrics has been awarded an overall Leader Badge for Consent Management Platforms, as well as the European Leader Badge in this category.
These Badges are particularly meaningful to the team as they represent the experiences of real business professionals and software buyers around the world who are implementing Usercentrics’ solutions.
“Rankings on G2 reports are based on data provided to us by real software buyers,” said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. “Potential buyers know they can trust these insights when researching and selecting software because they’re rooted in vetted, verified, and authentic reviews.”
Usercentrics is well established as the leading European provider of consent management solutions. It is also gratifying to also receive an overall Leader badge in recognition of the company’s substantial global growth. Usercentrics is committed to empowering organizations to embrace data privacy while building trust with their users through freedom of choice. This will continue to be accomplished via innovation and strategic partnerships.
In September 2022, Google launched a new CMP Partner Program for their Consent Mode solution, which featured the Usercentrics and Cookiebot Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). Then in June 2023, Usercentrics also announced that it was one of the first CMP providers certified by Google to meet Google’s new requirements for publishers.
Usercentrics CEO Donna Dror noted, “We are thrilled to receive this recognition of our hard work to delight our customers and help them achieve and maintain seamless, reliable compliance with data privacy regulations around the world. We are committed to relentless innovation in our Consent Management Platform (CMP), adapting to new data protection regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), industry standards like TCF 2.2 and other emerging legislations, to ensure that our solutions continue to lead the privacy ecosystem.”
artificial intelligence 10 Oct 2023
Wizeline, an AI-native digital services provider specializing in modern, scalable products and platforms, announced the development of new generative AI services as part of its Intelligence Everywhere offering in partnership with Google Cloud. This partnership complements Wizeline's generative AI strategy with new solutions and experiences built on Google Cloud technologies, helping clients accelerate the adoption of AI-native capabilities.
“As part of our mission to empower customers with transformative AI solutions, Wizeline is taking our partnership with Google Cloud to the next level, focusing on creating innovative solutions using generative AI to grow market share and optimize business operations,” said Aníbal Abarca, Chief AI and Technology Officer, Wizeline. “We have launched a massive transformation initiative to train 100% of our team on AI technologies, expecting that by the end of the year, more than 80% of our technologists will be leveraging generative AI to augment software development and business processes for our clients across industries.”
The partnership with Google Cloud expands Wizeline’s consulting and technology delivery offerings to help clients materialize the value proposition of generative AI in their businesses, using its AI-Native Framework to accelerate adoption of next generation capabilities. Wizeline’s AI-Native Strategy Workshop guides customers through the development of a short-term action plan, from defining business goals to outlining a concrete action plan, and positions them for a seamless transition into the development phase with Wizeline’s team of certified engineers.
“Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities can add real world value for organizations of all types and sizes,” said David Ruiz, Data and AI Lead for Google Cloud México. “New services and solutions from partners like Wizeline will scale these capabilities to customers more quickly and effectively, and create even more opportunities for organizations to accelerate their AI-driven transformations.”
Wizeline plans to continue investing in the development of its Google Cloud partnership over the next year, certifying an additional 100 engineers on Google Cloud technologies through Wizeline Academy to qualify their teams across specializations and expertise in the Google Partner Program.
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