Digimarc Validate Empowers Content Owners in an Era of Generative AI

Digimarc Corporation, the pioneer and widely-recognized leader in digital watermarking, today announced that Digimarc Validate has expanded its powerful identification and protection capabilities to the digital world. Digimarc Validate is the industry’s first offering to empower content owners and creators with the ability to convey copyright ownership of images and digital media assets. The combination of Digimarc’s SAFE™ digital watermarks and detection software enable this new offering to form the foundation of a trusted and scalable digital asset ecosystem, critical in an era of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

Digimarc is well-known for protecting valuable assets, guarding the world’s currency, medicine, food, and more,” said Digimarc President and CEO, Riley McCormack. “We are excited to extend this powerful protection to the digital world today because the time for digital content owners to act is now. GenAI has changed the rules, and once new digital assets are distributed or published for the first time, the ability to protect those valuable assets is forever gone.”

Much of the digital content being used to train GenAI models is copyrighted, it’s just not digitally identified as such. Digimarc Validate applies digital watermarks to original digital content before distribution – analogous to adding a machine-readable “©” to those images – providing a clear signal of content ownership and authenticity. Under section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the rights of owners of watermarked assets are better protected.

“Digimarc Validate enables copyright owners to avail themselves of the benefits of watermarking, which include support of a potential DMCA Section 1202(b) claim,” said John Tehranian, Founding Partner, One LLP. “This DMCA claim provides distinct remedies from copyright infringement without requiring a registration and offers the potential to recover statutory damages and attorney’s fees prior to the occurrence of an actual infringement, while potentially blunting a fair use defense.”

Anchored by its powerful and proven covert digital watermarking technology, Digimarc Validate provides digital content owners with an affordable and self-serve way to add a multi-layered and machine-readable identifier to digital assets. This identifier can communicate other essential digital asset attributes in addition to ownership and copyright, including authenticity, provenance, and more.

“The risk content owners face from failing to add an identifier to their digital assets before distribution or publication goes beyond ‘just’ misuse and theft,” said Digimarc Chief Product Officer, Ken Sickles. “Digimarc is working with industry stakeholders who understand Digimarc Validate will be foundational to an ecosystem of trust, authenticity, and security in the online world. In the future your digital assets will make ecommerce transactions more trustworthy, email more secure, and social media a safer place, but just like with copyright protection, the ability to capture these benefits is gone once the assets have been distributed or published.”

SAFE™ Detection Software and Services

Available today, Digimarc Validate provides immediate digital copyright protection and is the only solution available that is powered by the unique advantages of SAFE™ digital watermarks. Digimarc also offers its SAFE™ detection software and services to a growing number of partners – including machine learning systems, ecommerce marketplaces, security software providers, social media platforms, and many more – to power a trusted and scalable digital asset ecosystem.

By reading the instructions conveyed by a SAFE™ digital watermark, GenAI model training powered by SAFE™ detection software and services makes it easy for GenAI companies to identify content that is owned by others prior to ingestion. This allows GenAI companies to avoid the certainty of costly legal battles over the unauthorized use of copyrighted material today, and avoid exposure to financial damages, injunctions, and forced re-training of models in the future. SAFE™ detection software and services also provide additional benefits to GenAI companies, such as the avoidance of model collapse and the realization of efficiencies in input labeling and other model-training steps.

Availability through Snowflake Data Sharing Efficiently Enhances Real-Time Data Access

NIQ, the global leader in consumer intelligence, is pleased to announce the NIQ Connect platform capabilities have now expanded to use Snowflake Secure Data Sharing. This capability marks a significant milestone for NIQ's Connect platform, empowering customers in 84 global markets with enhanced data-sharing capabilities and seamless real-time data access. As a result, this can eliminate processing and loading wait times, delivering unparalleled efficiency and agility in a complex consumer landscape.

By extending their ability to effortlessly access global, omnichannel data, we can empower clients to uncover new pathways to growth even within a very complex consumer landscape,” said Troy Treangen, Chief Product Officer at NIQ. “Innovation is our compass, and our commitment to reengineering the Connect platform has charted a new course. Our strategic investments have allowed us to unlock the power of modern data sharing capabilities, guiding our clients towards a brighter, data-driven future."

NIQ Connect is a crucial asset for enterprises, enabling them to harness their data across all facets of their organization. With integrated data assets, businesses can readily identify emerging trends, pinpoint performance gaps, and respond swiftly to growth opportunities. This global collaboration is poised to unveil novel insights, leading to a deeper understanding of customers' behavior and preferences.

Additional highlights of the NIQ’s Connect platform integration with Snowflake’s Retail Data Cloud include:

• Seamless Data Integration: Companies will benefit from the seamless integration of NIQ's rich consumer and market data into Snowflake’s environment. This integration simplifies access to vast data sources, and drives significant speed improvements for our clients when accessing data.
• Secure Data Sharing: Availability through Snowflake facilitates near real-time data sharing, enabling businesses to access and query NIQ's data instantaneously. This dynamic exchange of information empowers organizations to stay ahead in today's fast-paced business landscape.
• Scalability and Flexibility: NIQ’s Connect platform with Snowflake Secure Data Sharing is designed to scale effortlessly with the growing data needs of businesses. Whether a company is a startup or a Fortune 500 enterprise, this provides the flexibility to adapt and grow in a rapidly changing environment.
• Enhanced AI and Machine Learning Capabilities: Businesses can leverage advanced analytics and machine learning within Snowflake's platform to derive actionable insights from NIQ's data. This synergy fosters innovation, enabling companies to make data-driven decisions with precision.
• Data Security and Compliance: Both NIQ and Snowflake prioritize data security and compliance. The joint solution ensures that sensitive data is protected providing peace of mind to businesses and their customers while enabling them to meet evolving regulatory requirements.

“NIQ is committed to helping companies become more agile at a time when being able to move quickly based on accurate data is paramount,” Treangen added. “This innovative data-sharing approach will provide Connect customers a competitive advantage today and be better prepared for the future. We are modernizing every level of our Connect platform, and we are excited about the enhancements to help our clients thrive.”

“As an incumbent leader in retail and consumer insights, NIQ has been a staple in the retail industry for delivering data that give a competitive edge to retailers and consumer product companies,” said Rosemary DeAragon, Global Head of Retail and Consumer Goods at Snowflake. “We are so excited to bring together the full power of the Snowflake Retail Data Cloud and the NIQ Connect platform, allowing global frictionless access to critical data through Snowflake data sharing.”

NIQ is dedicated to fostering innovation and enabling organizations to thrive in a data-driven world. The collaboration between NIQ and Snowflake represents a transformative step in the world of data sharing and will shape the future of data analytics. As organizations increasingly recognize the value of data in their operations, allowing them to exchange insights seamlessly and efficiently will empower them to unlock new opportunities and navigate the data landscape with ease.

- Marketers and CX teams benefit from in-depth look at website and mobile app visitor behavior

- Technology collaboration enhances analytics and insights as organizations look to pinpoint digital experiences that cause customer difficulty

- Award-winning AI allows customers to evolve the conversation and breakdown data silos at scale using data from websites, mobile apps, surveys, social, reviews, and conversations

InMoment, the leading provider of Experience Improvement (XI) solutions, announced today that it has partnered with Contentsquare, a global leader in digital experience analytics, to help businesses visualize customer’ experiences to add an additional layer of analysis and visualization for uncovering digital experience behaviors.

InMoment’s XI Platform and integrated CX approach gather data signals from everywhere and use award-winning AI-powered tools for richer analytics, and its collaboration with Contentsquare gives CX teams and marketers an in-depth look at the behavior and in-page experience for website and mobile app visitors. Using Contentsquare’s suite of advanced digital experience analytics tools and Session Replay capabilities helps teams pinpoint specific experiences that cause customer difficulty so they can take smarter actions faster to further optimize the customer experience.

“In today’s world where consumers research brands and purchase products and services digitally, our collaboration with Contentsquare and their suite of digital analytics tools combined with our text analytics and AI-powered platform is key to helping businesses make even more informed decisions across all customer touch points,” said Mehul Nagrani, Managing Director, InMoment North America. “Together with our technology and expertise, we are poised to unlock new dimensions of user experience and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.”

“Contentsquare’s suite of advanced digital experience analytics tools is coupled perfectly with InMoment’s, which drives business value and growth through an integrated CX approach using AI and strategic expertise to help businesses contextualize their data and prioritize their business efforts across the entire customer journey. We’re very proud and excited about this partnership!” said Gilad Zubery, Executive Vice President, Global Business Development & Partnerships at Contentsquare.

InMoment will be speaking at the Contentsquare 2023 CX Circle event on September 28, 2023, an immersive experience focused on the new era of digital experiences where CX meets innovation, transformation, and AI. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics, an InMoment company, discuss how brands are leveraging both direct and indirect feedback to differentiate themselves by leveraging the power of NLP and AI. He will expand on why organizations need to understand the process of creating integrated experiences by breaking down data silos to understand, and act on feedback more effectively.

The InMoment and Contentsquare partnership gives businesses the ability to understand the behaviors and issues beyond the digital experience more intelligently so they know what to act on and when and how to interact with customers

63% of consumers save email marketing messages from restaurants, and 55% who receive these messages plan to dine at those restaurants within a month

HungerRush, the leading POS software platform provider for quick-service and fast-casual restaurants, today announced new results from a consumer survey that examines the impact of restaurant promotional marketing campaigns on repeat orders, return visits and customer engagement.

Post COVID, fast-casual and quick-service restaurants have an opportunity to leverage marketing campaigns including mailers, email, and text messages to boost brand awareness and drive a healthy increase in both in-store dining and online orders. According to the new HungerRush consumer survey, 93% of customers visit fast-casual restaurants at least once a month, with 32% dining out 4-6 times a month. Consumers cite lower price points as the top motivator for selecting a quick service restaurant.

During a time when consumers are more price-conscious and discerning than ever in their dining selections, marketing campaigns undoubtedly have a positive impact on driving repeat orders. The same survey indicated that 55% of consumers who receive marketing messages (emails, mailers, and text messages) from restaurants will dine at or order from that restaurant within the next month.

Consumers want to hear from restaurants, and when they do, restaurants win

Tapping into coupons and marketing messages is a classic technique used by many to bring in new and existing customers, and restaurant operators should be pleased to know these efforts are well received. The majority of consumers surveyed indicated a positive sentiment toward receiving marketing messages from restaurants, with only 29% saying they actively ignore or opt out of marketing communications. Moreover, 32% said they receive up to five marketing messages per week directly from restaurants, demonstrating an interest in hearing from multiple businesses on a consistent basis.

Overwhelmingly, consumers are more likely to act within one week of receiving a marketing message, whether that be a coupon, a promotion or menu/seasonal updates. In fact, 62% of consumers said they are 50% to 100% more likely to visit a restaurant within one week after receiving a promotional offering. This shows an immediate return on investment for restaurant operators. For those not leveraging a marketing messaging strategy, they are missing out on repeat orders and visits.

Connecting the right message, at the right time, in the right channel delivers the highest impact

Knowing what types of messages stick with a customer is instrumental in properly executing a successful marketing campaign. According to HungerRush, 82% of consumers cite weekly or monthly menu updates as their top reason to stay in the loop with a restaurant – outside of deals and promotions – followed by new store openings at 43%. Lower priority topics cited were business updates and community involvement news. Highlighting content that excites consumers' taste buds and gives them incentives to repeat an order online or revisit a restaurant is key.

Across every age group surveyed, email marketing was the preferred method of contact, with 63% saving email messages, followed by mailers (61%) and text messages (55%). When it comes to which type of message has the most impact, email marketing messages are the most popular across all age demographics, with Boomers (60%), Gen X (67%), Millennials (64%), and Gen Z (60%) all saying they save email coupons more than physical mailers and text messages. As many as 61% of respondents said they use coupons and promotions as often as possible.

Andy Nannoshi, Owner of Uncle Andy’s Pizza, has simplified his marketing process by leveraging automated solutions from HungerRush.

“As a restaurant owner, I have the added challenge of figuring out how and when to connect with my customers,” said Nannoshi. “Text messages are something that customers are more open to now than ever, and HungerRush simplifies the process of sending out email blasts and text messages with customized promotions based on dining behaviors. The HungerRush technology has been instrumental in helping me build a loyal customer base.”

“Restaurant operators have been facing a number of challenges in recent years,” said Olivier Thierry, CRO of HungerRush. “Inflation and economic uncertainty are heavily impacting consumer decisions on where and how often they eat out. Meanwhile, with more options available to consumers, it’s increasingly difficult for restaurants to capture customer attention and bring them back for more. The good news is restaurants can gain a significant advantage and see a positive impact on their bottom line through automated omni-channel marketing campaigns that drive repeat orders and improve brand loyalty by meeting consumers in their favorite channel, be it text, email, or direct mail.”

Leveraging marketing campaigns to gather greater customer insight

In addition to driving repeat orders and brand loyalty, marketing messages offer additional benefits to restaurant operators in the form of data. The impact and usage of third-party delivery apps surged during the pandemic, and while these apps offer benefits to consumers, it can create a blind spot for restaurant operators looking to know more about their customers. Knowing the best topics and timeframes to push promotional offerings are important data points that operators can obtain through marketing campaigns.

Restaurants can look to improve and offer a comparable or better experience through streamlined payment options. Thirty-four percent of consumers cite the convenient checkout process with their saved payment information as the top reason for selecting third-party delivery apps.

“Our survey confirmed what we know anecdotally from our customers: nearly 40% of consumers are not using third-party delivery apps,” said Thierry. “At HungerRush, we see this as a huge market opportunity for QSR operators to bring consumers directly to their sites or mobile apps to communicate, engage and learn about ordering behaviors. Harnessing this data and keeping consumers engaged through weekly and monthly marketing messages is a foolproof way to capitalize and encourage repeat visits and revenue.”

Today, HungerRush restaurant owners that use the HungerRush 360 Marketing add-on module routinely see an increase in repeat online orders by as much as 12%.

Publisher-first approach aims to deliver safe inventory while providing a path to quality

Sovrn, a publisher technology platform that helps content creators remain independent and thrive on the open web, today announced its "publisher first" approach to tackling made-for-advertising (MFA) sites in its inventory, effectively ensuring that all private-marketplace deals transacted through the Sovrn Ad Exchange are 100% MFA free.

Working with Chris Kane, Founder of Jounce Media, Sovrn created a framework to audit and assess its publisher inventory on an ongoing basis to dynamically pinpoint and remove sites that meet Jounce's MFA classification criteria. These changes assure media buyers that their ad spend through Sovrn's private deals deliver a better return on investment against key business outcomes and confirms its commitment to solving for sustainability and quality while eliminating waste and inefficiency. Furthermore, Sovrn's attention-based deals allow advertisers to target highly engaged inventory, resulting in a three times higher response rate.

"Sovrn's decision to block MFA inventory by default from all private marketplaces does not just serve buyer interests. It also rebalances revenue toward the most premium publishers," said Chris Kane, Founder of Jounce Media. "The long-term durability of the open internet requires ad tech platforms to create incentives that financially reward the highest quality content creators, and this is exactly what Sovrn is doing."

In addition, Sovrn has built into its framework a way to identify former MFA publishers who are making investments to rebuild their businesses around organic traffic. Rather than enacting a ban on sites identified as MFA, Sovrn is committed to providing programmatic tools and data insights — including ad performance and CPM data, benchmarking analytics, and audience engagement — that deliver an objective view of the opportunities and incentives for publishers to reconsider their business practices.

The release of ANA's supply chain transparency study has shone a spotlight on how suspect inventory can hijack and divert targeted media spend by taking advantage of the complexity of the open web programmatic marketplace. Not only does an unnecessarily complex system that relies on trading and reselling ad space, rather than on transparency and directness, drain revenue from publisher pockets, it decreases advertisers' return on spend — and most of all — makes the consumer experience miserable. However, since establishing direct relationships with every ad buyer isn't feasible for all but the largest open web publishers, Sovrn is focused on creating a more transparent system that delivers the right checks and balances for buyers while ensuring independent publishers drive value from their most important asset: their content.

"Our goal at Sovrn is to add value to the advertising supply chain for both sellers and buyers," said Walter Knapp, CEO of Sovrn. "Sovrn takes a long-term approach to building and developing relationships and making sure that independent publishers thrive by providing tools, support, and data to help them better monetize their quality supply."

Kyndi 6.0 includes new features and enhancements that accelerate knowledge creation and enhance end user experiences

Kyndi, the Answer Engine company, today announced the immediate availability of its latest Generative AI Answer Engine, Kyndi 6.0. The latest release introduces several new features that address the need for more effective knowledge management and AI transparency. Integrated into Kyndi's award-winning Platform, the new features expand on the existing generative AI use cases for enterprises looking to optimize their knowledge management process and the information retrieval experiences for the end users.

The current content and knowledge management process is manual and time-consuming for enterprises. Worse, building a comprehensive, agile knowledge base that consistently provides accurate and timely information for business users is a huge endeavor, given the wealth of information organizations create and maintain today.

Using Kyndi 6.0, content leaders can leverage a new generative AI-enabled feature called "Topics" which empowers them to curate, validate, and manage knowledge bases in under one hour while ensuring the correct and relevant answers are always available to the end users. Another capability is the new generative AI-enabled user interface called "Citation", which presents end users with the citations of the content sources for enhanced AI explainability. Users can also copy the citations for future references and continued research. 

Key features of the Kyndi Version 6.0 include:

• Topics - Content and knowledge management teams can leverage generative AI to auto-generate suggestions of both Topics and related Question-Answer pairs anchored in trusted enterprise content. Using the Topics feature, content and knowledge management leaders can build a knowledge base in as little as an hour, saving internal teams significant time and resources from manually organizing and creating content while optimizing the outputs.
  
  
• Citation - A new end user interface powered by generative AI that serves up both curated and auto-generated answers. Citation targets use cases like blog sites, online publishers, and research sites, offering a citation section that lists the sources of the content that contributed to the concise summary presented to the end user. The user can also copy their query, the auto-generated answer, and all the relevant citations for easy reference later.
  
  
• End-user Feedback - Facilitates feedback on the results users receive. Kyndi 6.0 supports "like/dislike" feedback and allows users to provide detailed insights on unsatisfactory answers. This comprehensive feedback system captures user sentiments at various levels, guiding content teams to fine-tune the knowledge base to meet their customers' content needs.
  
  
• Query Export - Enables content and knowledge management leaders to easily export query history from Kyndi's Analytics tool and import it into Kyndi's Forecasts tool to tune and optimize the system performance easily.

"While many organizations were initially swept up in the hype of GenAI, they soon witnessed deal-breaking issues from inaccurate answers due to hallucinations, difficulty in incorporating domain-specific information, lack of explainability, and security challenges," said Ryan Welsh, CEO and Founder of Kyndi. "As an end-to-end enterprise solution, Kyndi 6.0 addresses these challenges by bringing new capabilities that enhance relevancy, AI transparency, and automation to organizations looking to modernize the way their users find critical business information."

New enterprise generative AI service helps organizations automate business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences

Oracle CloudWorld -- Oracle today announced the limited availability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service. The new generative AI service will support large language models (LLMs) to help organizations automate end-to-end business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences, while keeping their data secure and private.

Built on OCI in collaboration with Cohere, the leading AI platform for enterprise, the OCI Generative AI service is a managed service that enables users to integrate LLMs in their own applications through an available API. Once generally available, this service and Cohere models will work seamlessly with AI Vector Search, a feature of Oracle Database 23c that provides retrieval augmented generation (RAG), a generative AI technique that combines pretrained LLMs and proprietary business data to deliver responses with higher accuracy. This service will also form the basis for generative AI capabilities embedded across Oracle's suite of SaaS applications, including Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, Oracle NetSuite, and industry applications such as Oracle Cerner.

"Oracle's unique industry knowledge has enabled us to create state-of-the-art generative AI services for organizations to automate their processes, make better decisions, and improve the experiences they deliver to customers," said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. "Through our partnership with Cohere, customers will be able to embed generative AI easily and securely into their technology stack with full confidence that our solutions align with their most stringent data security and privacy requirements. Our approach further enables organizations to refine these models using their own data—so the models will understand their internal operations like no one else."

With its low-cost, secure, high-speed AI infrastructure, OCI will enable customers to use Cohere's models as a managed service specifically targeted for enterprise use cases. Customers using the OCI Generative AI service run their workloads in a dedicated infrastructure on Oracle's unique AI Supercluster architecture. This enables customers to control their specific cost and throughput requirements, whether they are fine-tuning models with their own data or deploying their custom models.

The new OCI generative AI service includes the following models:

• Command: This model takes a user's prompt and generates text. Available in two different sizes, Command is highly customizable for business use cases, including text generation, text summarization, RAG, and chat.
• Summarize: This model does abstractive summarization of the text and enables the user to configure the results with a variety of parameters to support unique use cases. For example, summarizing complex documents for legal teams, technical support documentation for customer service representatives, and long email chains for busy employees.
• Embed: This text representation model translates text into numerical vectors that models can understand. It provides industry-leading English and multilingual models (100+ languages) for a range of use cases, including semantic search, text classification, search engine for RAG and legacy search improvement.

"Oracle and Cohere center our enterprise AI offering on the principles of data security, model customization, latency, and helping companies quickly, meaningfully, cost-efficiently, and responsibly deploy AI technology," said Martin Kon, president & COO, Cohere. "We are working closely together with Oracle to enable enterprises to supercharge their businesses with AI, with a data security and privacy-first approach."

"Oracle has been a valuable partner for Altair and with Altair's focus on computational science and artificial intelligence, Altair has begun integrating large language models into our solutions because of their transformative promise," said Sam Mahalingam, chief technology officer, Altair. "We believe generative AI will transform the way we work. For example, customers will be able to describe the desired outcome in natural language format and an LLM will automatically produce solutions. In data analytics, customers will no longer need to code for machine learning but simply ask for the predictions. In engineering, customers can describe product properties and the models will do the design. The applications are limitless."

In addition to the OCI Generative AI service news, Oracle AI has continued to add enhancements to existing services with multiple limited availability programs, including:

• Oracle Digital Assistant: Adds generative AI features to allow customers to integrate LLMs and other generative capabilities into their digital assistants. In addition, developers can use generative AI to build digital assistants more quickly and efficiently.
• OCI Language Healthcare NLP: Adds healthcare insights with natural language processing. This new feature of the OCI Language service helps better process language in the medical domain. New models will help recognize medical terms, relationships and entities in records such as clinical trials notes, patient progress notes, and electronic health records.
• OCI Language Document Translation Experience: Adds new document translation feature to support a wide range of formats – Word, PPT, HTML, JSON, and Excel – ensuring content remains intact and translated across diverse file types.
• OCI Vision: Adds Facial Detection, gaining the ability to recognize faces and facial features in images, and expanding the number of OCI Vision use cases.
• OCI Speech: Adds diarization, allowing the service to embed speaker information into transcribed sections of audio. Diarization makes OCI Speech a valuable tool for organizing, analyzing, and extracting meaningful information from spoken interactions.
• OCI Data Science: Adds Feature Store, a central repository used to manage features developed by data science teams. Feature Store provides a cohesive framework where features are meticulously documented, shared, stored, and served in a streamlined manner.

"The OCI Generative AI service is the first generative AI cloud service to deliver enterprise-level security, flexibility, and user tuning that the market has been demanding. It provides tight security and governance of users' proprietary data, and models that limit its use and visibility to only that customer," said Marc Staimer, senior analyst, Wikibon. "Just as importantly, customers can control their dedicated OCI Supercluster AI infrastructure to meet their specific cost and throughput requirements as they fine-tune their models or deploy their custom models. The OCI Generative AI service is a winning combination of enterprise capabilities and cost-performance."

Productsup joins network of companies certified to help businesses implement GS1 standards

Productsup, the leading Product-to-Consumer (P2C) software company, has become a gold member of the GS1 US Solution Partner Program, a designation signifying a commitment to delivering services and solutions that enable quick, efficient, and accurate GS1 Standards implementation.

GS1 US® is an information standards organization that brings industry communities together to improve supply-chain business processes through the adoption and implementation of GS1 Standards. The GS1 System of Standards, the most widely used information standards in the world, uniquely identifies products, services, assets, and locations worldwide to support supply chain visibility and efficiency. The GS1 US Solution Partner Program facilitates the implementation of GS1 Standards by connecting users with solution providers that have proven standards expertise.

"The GS1 System of Standards is the most widely-used framework in the world, and the need for a universal standard for data quality is only becoming more crucial for brands and retailers," said Rick Hultermans, Director of Data Services at Productsup. "Increasing consumer demand and tighter regulation for more transparency and traceability in the supply chain have required businesses to make significant improvements to the caliber of their product information. By streamlining the GS1 certification process, companies can speed up their time-to-market, avoid regulatory fines, and strengthen brand loyalty."