Live events have never struggled to attract people—they’ve struggled to measure what actually matters. ROME Insights, a new analytics and AI startup, wants to fix that. Today, the company unveiled ROME (Return on Memorable Experiences), a measurement framework built to capture human attention, emotional engagement, and the lasting impact of in-person experiences. For an industry built on connection, it’s a shift that feels long overdue.

Co-founded by event-technology veteran Justin Zebell and marketing strategist and AI researcher Bob Hutchins, ROME Insights was created in response to a long-standing issue: traditional event metrics don’t tell the full story. Attendance numbers, badge scans, and booth visits offer surface-level signals. What they miss is the depth—the moments that spark memory, influence behavior, and justify sponsorship spend.

“We built ROME because the events industry has been measuring the wrong things,” Zebell said. His argument is simple: event organizers, sponsors, and internal stakeholders need proof of value grounded in real human experience, not just headcounts. ROME provides that proof.

The ROME framework blends multiple data sources—behavioral attention tracking, qualitative feedback, and quantitative analytics—to produce a composite engagement score. It captures both immediate reactions and longer-term recall, offering what the company calls a clearer, more defensible metric for understanding event impact.

Hutchins sees ROME as a tool that protects the value of live gatherings in an increasingly digital world. “Live events are one of the few places where people still gather in person to learn, connect, and be moved by ideas,” he said. “ROME helps organizers protect and prove the value of that experience in a world that demands measurable outcomes.”

ROME Insights will work directly with conference organizers, trade show producers, and corporate event teams to integrate the framework across different formats. The company also provides consulting services to help teams interpret findings and use those insights to shape future events—whether that means adjusting programming, reallocating budget, or refining sponsor packages.

Early adopters are already seeing results. Event organizers using ROME have reported higher sponsor renewal rates, smoother budget approvals, and a sharper understanding of which moments drive the most value. For a sector where gut instinct has often outrun measurement, ROME’s data-backed approach could become a competitive advantage.

In an era defined by metrics, the company is betting that the most important event KPIs aren’t clicks or counts—they’re the moments people remember.

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Thanks, the customer-first native ad network known for reimagining post-purchase experiences, is expanding into live events through a new partnership with Oztix, Australia’s largest independent ticketing company. The collaboration brings Thanks’ AI-powered media monetisation platform directly into Oztix’s digital ecosystem, turning the high-intent moment after a ticket purchase into a smarter, more curated discovery experience for fans.

Instead of generic ads or irrelevant offers, buyers will now see contextually aligned recommendations—travel options, local dining, merch, and experience upgrades—delivered at the precise moment their excitement peaks. It’s a strategy already trusted by brands like eBay, Linktree, and Booking.com, but this marks its first major expansion into the live-events sector.

The partnership extends beyond commerce. As part of the rollout, Thanks and Oztix will jointly support Make-A-Wish Australia, dedicating a portion of proceeds each quarter to help grant wishes for children with critical illnesses. The initiative brings an added layer of purpose to every ticket sale, allowing fans to contribute to a national cause simply by completing their purchase.

“Oztix is a cornerstone of Australia’s live-event scene, connecting millions of fans to the experiences they love,” said Steve Tesoriero, Founder and Co-CEO of Thanks. He noted that Oztix’s audience-first ethos made the partnership a natural fit. The goal, he added, is to “add more meaning to every ticket purchase” while expanding the same AI-driven platform used by global brands into a new industry.

Oztix has spent more than two decades building partnerships across promoters, venues, artists, and community organisations. Its reputation for strengthening the live-events ecosystem makes the collaboration especially aligned with its mission. The integration with Thanks introduces a new way for fans to both receive value and give back—connecting entertainment with meaningful social impact.

Stuart Field, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Oztix, emphasized the human side of the initiative. “Together, we’re showing how retail media and community can work side by side—creating rewarding experiences for fans while giving back,” he said. For many on the Oztix team, the partnership with Make-A-Wish is personal. “It’s about spreading the same joy and connection we see at live events to children and families who need it most.”

For Thanks, the collaboration marks another milestone in its Australian expansion and reinforces its mission to bring more relevance, humanity, and value to the moments brands often overlook. As retail media continues its shift toward high-intent, first-party environments, the post-purchase audience is becoming one of the most strategically important surfaces in digital marketing. By pairing real-time contextual intelligence with charitable impact, Thanks and Oztix are betting that the future of advertising isn’t just more efficient—it’s more meaningful.

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Automotive dealerships have no shortage of data. What they lack is coherence. Today, Data Axle and Tealium announced a partnership designed to fix that problem by unifying fragmented dealership systems and turning scattered records into actionable intelligence. For an industry long plagued by inconsistent communications and conflicting customer profiles, the timing is ideal.

The collaboration blends Data Axle’s verified consumer and vehicle datasets with Tealium’s real-time customer data platform. Together, the companies aim to help dealers and OEMs merge disjointed customer information, eliminate duplicate records, and guide marketing, sales, and service decisions with far greater accuracy.

The need is clear. A new survey commissioned by Data Axle shows consumers are tired of mixed signals from dealerships. Nearly half of respondents reported receiving duplicate or contradictory messages from the same dealer. Even worse, 68 percent said dealership outreach often feels inconsistent or irrelevant. Yet consumers are willing to share core data—emails, phone numbers, and vehicle history—so long as they receive real value in exchange, such as accurate trade-in estimates or relevant service offers.

According to Chris McTague, managing director of automotive at Data Axle, the issue isn’t a shortage of information. “Dealerships are sitting on a wealth of data that rarely works in concert. Cars have become interchangeable, but data isn’t. What separates one dealer from the next is how intelligently they use their information,” he said. For McTague, the partnership offers a foundation that turns verified insights into better decision-making and more trustworthy customer experiences.

At the core of the integration is Data Axle’s deterministic identity graph, which feeds directly into Tealium’s CDP to clean and enrich customer profiles in real time. Dealers gain a unified view of each customer, allowing them to refine audience models, tailor outreach, and strengthen service engagement without relying on guesswork. It’s a shift from fragmented databases to measurable impact.

Stephen Smith, RVP of Partnerships at Tealium, emphasized that automotive data challenges run deeper than outdated CRMs. “The auto industry faces unique challenges and often navigates fragmented data systems, making it difficult for dealers to fully understand and engage their customers,” he said. By combining Tealium’s orchestration engine with Data Axle’s verified datasets, the partnership brings “clarity, control, and connected data” into the dealer’s workflow.

With pressure mounting for dealerships to modernize how they identify and reach buyers, the partnership arrives at a strategic moment. As digital-first shoppers expect relevant and timely interactions, the dealer that masters its data—not just its inventory—wins. Data Axle and Tealium’s solution offers a path toward more credible, efficient, and intelligent customer engagement.

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Interact Marketing is stepping deeper into AI-powered marketing, and the timing couldn’t be more urgent. With Google’s AI Mode and Deep Search reshaping how users find information, traditional SEO is losing ground. Many brands have watched their organic visibility evaporate, and click-through rates tumble by as much as 61 percent. Interact Marketing’s answer is a specialized AI Mode Marketing Program engineered to reclaim that lost traction—and keep brands visible inside the next generation of search.

The agency’s move follows a major industry inflection point. As AI-generated answers replace conventional blue links, search behavior is shifting. Users are relying more on AI summaries, conversational chat responses, and multi-step deep searches that bypass traditional SERPs. For marketers, this means less screen time, fewer impressions, and lower conversions—unless you adapt.

Joe Beccalori, CEO of Interact Marketing, says the program wasn’t an overnight reaction. “GPT sparked a massive shift in how people search, and we began building this program two years ago in response. When Google launched AI Overviews in May 2025, it validated the need,” he explained. Their strategy now centers on the mechanics behind AI responses—citations, relevance scoring, and content structures that large language models prioritize.

Rather than tweaking old SEO frameworks, the agency focused on Google’s AI Mode from the start. This approach includes real-time response testing, performance tracking tuned to generative results, and AI-driven workflows that don’t exist in standard agency packages. Interact Marketing’s team appears to be betting on a simple reality: If AI is becoming the new front page of the internet, then optimizing for it isn’t optional.

The program zeroes in on several areas where brands stand to lose—or gain—the most:

Improved Rankings
AI Mode prioritizes a different set of ranking factors. Interact Marketing uses targeted optimization to help brands secure premium placement inside generated answers.

Enhanced Citations
Credible citations heavily influence whether a brand appears in AI responses. The program ensures accuracy, consistency, and authority across all digital listings.

Increased Conversions
AI responses may reduce page visits, but high-quality content can still drive intent. Interact’s strategies aim to convert those interactions into measurable business outcomes.

What sets the program apart is its early adoption curve. While many agencies are still trying to decode Google’s shifting search ecosystem, Interact Marketing built its framework before AI Overviews even rolled out. As Google continues refining its AI-driven search experience, the agency’s approach centers on continual testing, cross-channel analytics, and rapid adaptation.

The real story here isn’t another SEO product—it’s a preview of the next competitive battlefield. As AI-driven search becomes the default experience, brands that optimize for Deep Search and generative results will shape the visibility landscape. Everyone else risks disappearing from it.

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In an advertising landscape defined by fragmentation, siloed workflows, and platform sprawl, Frost & Sullivan has named Basis its 2025 Customer Value Leader for the global demand-side platform (DSP) market—an award reserved for vendors who don’t just move with the industry but help rewrite its rules. The consulting firm argues that Basis’ unified, AI-driven platform tackles one of modern advertising’s biggest headaches: the chaos created when marketers must stitch together CTV, DOOH, social, search, display, audio, and more without a single pane of glass.

The award underscores a trend that has been bubbling for years but is now impossible to ignore: Advertisers are tired of juggling point solutions. They want orchestration. They want automation. They want transparency. And critically—they want all of that without losing performance.

Frost & Sullivan’s full analysis is available via Basis, but the summary is clear: the company’s platform and operating philosophy represent a meaningful shift in how DSPs are expected to serve brands and agencies in a multi-channel world.

DSPs Are Being Forced to Grow Up—and Fast

The DSP market didn’t start out fragmented; it became fragmented. As new channels emerged—CTV, streaming audio, in-game ads, DOOH—the tech stack ballooned. Instead of unifying, most vendors built add-ons and extensions, leaving buyers to navigate a maze of interfaces, workflows, and attribution blind spots.

Frost & Sullivan doesn’t mince words in its report:

“It is no longer sufficient for a DSP to excel in a single channel. Brands and agencies now demand a single, cohesive interface to orchestrate, measure, and optimize cross-channel and cross-device campaigns harmoniously.”

This is the problem Basis claims to have solved. While many DSPs are busy playing channel catch-up, Basis has spent years building (and rebuilding) an operating system that automates everything from planning and media buying to reconciliation, invoices, reporting, and analytics.

The result: a workflow that resembles a true full-lifecycle advertising platform rather than a patchwork of vendors strapped together with spreadsheets.

Why Frost & Sullivan Picked Basis

To win Frost & Sullivan’s Customer Value Leadership award, companies must excel not only in product innovation but also in measurable customer success, ROI, and long-term partnership value. Basis checked boxes across all criteria—and then some.

Three themes stood out:

1. A Unified, Modular Media Environment

Basis brings planning, execution, optimization, financial operations, and analytics under one roof. No hopping between ad servers, billing systems, DSPs, social dashboards, and spreadsheets.

This centralization matters more in 2025 than ever. As marketers adopt signal diversity strategies (post-cookie), first-party data enrichment, and advanced audience modeling, the ability to manage campaigns across the full journey becomes a competitive advantage.

2. AI That Thinks in Customer Context

Not all AI in ad tech is created equal. Many platforms stitch in AI tactically—an optimization toggle here, an automated bid model there.

Basis takes a different tack. According to Frost & Sullivan, the platform analyzes over 30 brand-level targeting parameters every six hours, re-optimizing against models trained on each client's business.

That means the machine isn’t just predicting who will click—it’s evaluating who drives value.

3. A Customer Philosophy Built for Longevity

One of the most overlooked frustrations among enterprise advertisers is losing historical campaign intelligence when switching agencies or tools. Basis aims to solve this by allowing customers to own their full tech stack and their media data outright.

This gives marketers control over long-term learnings—critical for brands that juggle multiple agencies or rely on in-house teams.

Inside Basis' Platform: What Makes It Different

Basis markets itself as the industry's leading advertising automation platform, and in this context “automation” isn’t shorthand for bidding algorithms. It’s a structural overhaul of the digital advertising supply chain.

Planning & Media Activation in One Place

Marketers can build media plans—across programmatic, direct, search, and social—without leaving the platform. The handoff from plan to execution happens instantly, killing the spreadsheet bottleneck that plagues agencies everywhere.

Intelligent Targeting & Optimization

Basis' AI engine pulls from:

• proprietary optimization models

• 30+ real-time targeting dimensions

• brand-specific performance signals

• cross-channel device and audience mapping

Frost & Sullivan highlighted that this cadence of recalibration (every six hours) is unusually aggressive compared to traditional DSP cycles.

Financial Actualization & Reconciliation

This is the part no marketer loves but every CFO obsesses over. Basis automates invoice matching, reconciliation, vendor payments, and the financial chain that typically eats up weeks of manual labor.

Analytics & Transparency

All campaign data—across channels, formats, and teams—lives in one interoperable environment, avoiding the disconnected dashboards that plague most operations.

Customer Partnerships as a Strategic Pillar

One of Frost & Sullivan’s strongest compliments centers around Basis’ service model.

Because advertisers own their historical media data, the platform isn’t a lock-in tool—it’s a partner enabler. Marketers can switch agencies, build hybrid teams, or bring operations in-house without losing institutional knowledge.

This philosophy is one reason Basis has maintained strong renewals and deep multi-year enterprise relationships in an industry notorious for churn.

“Automation is about empowering people to work more effectively by simplifying and streamlining repetitive and complex tasks,” said Grace Briscoe, EVP of client development at Basis. “Frost & Sullivan’s recognition… underscores the value we have been delivering to marketers for more than two decades.”

Programmatic’s Broader Shift: The Market Wants Fewer Silos, More Intelligence

Basis' win reflects a macro shift happening across the advertising ecosystem:

1. The Consolidation Wave Is Accelerating

Agencies and brands are replacing six or seven-point tools with unified platforms. Not because consolidation is trendy—but because operational drag kills ROI.

2. AI Is Becoming the Differentiator Among DSPs

Bid shading and pacing algorithms used to be the bragging point. Now it’s enterprise-grade intelligence capable of analyzing:

• brand-specific outcomes

• signal decay

• creative impact

• multi-touch attribution

• real-time contextual trends

DSPs that can’t evolve beyond tactical AI are already falling behind.

3. Transparency Is No Longer Optional

The market has grown intolerant of black-box AI, opaque fees, and limited data portability. Basis’ open, customer-owned data model aligns directly with this trend.

4. Cross-Channel Integration Is the New Table Stakes

A DSP limited to programmatic is as outdated as a CRM that only stores email addresses. Brands want search, social, display, audio, DOOH, CTV, and direct buys in one orchestrate-and-optimize environment.

What This Recognition Means for the DSP Market

Frost & Sullivan’s award doesn’t just validate Basis; it spotlights a broader redefinition of what a DSP must be in 2025 and beyond.

Basis Raises the Bar for Competitors

Legacy DSPs now face pressure to:

• unify workflows

• invest in brand-specific AI

• deliver transparent data models

• simplify financial operations

• prioritize customer ownership over vendor lock-in

Most will need substantial rebuilding to catch up.

Agencies Gain Leverage

Agencies frustrated with tool fragmentation may see Basis as an opportunity to modernize operations without adding more software—and without sacrificing performance.

Brands Get a Blueprint for Modern Ad Ops

Enterprise advertisers looking to cut inefficiencies (and headcount bloat) may see Basis as a template for how to run leaner, smarter media organizations.

The Bottom Line

Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Customer Value Leadership award places Basis at the center of the conversation about the future of DSPs—one where automation, transparency, and unified operations matter more than bid mechanics or channel bragging rights.

By centralizing planning, activation, optimization, financial workflows, and analytics in one AI-powered environment, Basis isn’t simply offering a DSP. It’s selling an operating system for modern advertising—one built to survive the next decade of channel proliferation, signal loss, and measurement disruption.

For a market desperate for simplification and intelligence, Basis’ approach is increasingly hard to ignore.

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SiteOne Landscape Supply—the only national wholesale distributor in the landscape supply market and a fixture in the professional contractor ecosystem—has picked Goodway Group as its new paid media strategy partner. It’s a notable move for a 600+ location operator that has grown largely through acquisitions and regional dominance but now wants to modernize its marketing engine to match the digital sophistication of adjacent B2B sectors.

For Goodway Group, a self-styled challenger agency specializing in measurement-led growth, the partnership is a chance to flex its full-funnel media, analytics, and customer-journey muscle in a category that has historically lagged behind other B2B verticals in digital transformation. And for SiteOne, the decision signals a shift from tactical media buying to measurable, data-informed business acceleration—particularly as the company pushes deeper into pro-heavy categories like agronomics, irrigation, nursery, lighting, and hardscapes.

The partnership begins not with a buy, but with a blueprint: a multi-phase onboarding and planning program designed to unify media, data, and creative under a single measurement framework. In other words, SiteOne is trading in disparate campaigns for a clean, centralized, accountable growth operating system.

Why This Partnership Matters Now

The landscape supply market is a fragmented, service-heavy industry where purchase decisions are influenced as much by availability and local relationships as by brand equity. Historically, media investment in this category skewed conservative—focused on trade media, sponsorships, and digital point solutions with limited attribution.

But that model is straining under emerging pressures:

• Professional contractors expect digital convenience.
  They want on-demand inventory visibility, frictionless ordering, and personalized insights across desktop and mobile—fast.

• Competitors are getting smarter with audience segmentation.
  Regional players and DTC disruptors are using first-party data and vertical AI to break into categories once dominated by legacy distributors.

• Measurement gaps limit marketing performance.
  With fragmented analytics, it’s difficult to tie media spending to outcomes such as revenue, retention, and customer lifetime value.

Goodway Group’s pitch, according to both sides, was less about channel execution and more about tearing down these silos.

“SiteOne has an ambitious vision for growth,” said Paul Frampton-Calero, CEO of Goodway Group. “We’re excited to help modernize its media strategy, connecting every investment to measurable outcomes and building scalable pathways for B2B audiences.”

That emphasis on measurable business impact—not impressions or click-through rates—aligned with SiteOne’s evolving priorities.

“We were looking for more than a media buyer,” said Erin Edstrom, Vice President of Integrated Marketing at SiteOne. “Goodway Group demonstrated that from the start. Its approach to uncovering consumer insights, passion for accountability, and customer-first approach were clear differentiators for us.”

Inside the Partnership: Media as a Business Lever, Not a Cost Center

Goodway’s work with SiteOne will include several strategic components that point toward a deeper transformation:

1. Competitive Market Analysis

SiteOne competes across multiple local markets with drastically different dynamics. What works for irrigation buyers in Arizona isn’t what moves hardscape contractors in Michigan. Goodway’s role includes dissecting these differences and mapping out where media can influence revenue at the category and location level.

2. Budget Scenario Modeling

For an enterprise with hundreds of branches, spend allocation is more complex than shifting dollars between channels. It requires modeling:

• regional category maturity

• customer mix (residential vs. commercial pros)

• historical seasonal cycles

• supply chain constraints

• competitive intensity

Goodway’s models are intended to help SiteOne understand where incremental spend yields incremental profit—something the brand has struggled to quantify in the past.

3. Full-Funnel Measurement Framework

The core of the engagement is a measurement redesign meant to tie upper-funnel brand activity to lower-funnel revenue and contract value. This includes:

• Unified KPIs across categories

• Multi-touch attribution for B2B buyer journeys

• Connection of media outcomes to CRM and sales data

• Insights on audience conversion paths

In practice, this means that if a lighting contractor in Denver sees a brand video, downloads a spec sheet three weeks later, and places a bulk order two months after that, SiteOne will actually be able to see the influence of its media spend on the deal.

3. Customer Journey Simplification

Professional contractors move quickly and often default to the distributors who save them time. SiteOne wants to build loyalty not by broadcasting more ads but by removing friction from discovery, ordering, and service. Goodway’s role here includes:

• Identifying attention breakpoints

• Creating clearer paths between interest and purchase

• Personalizing messaging by professional segment

• Coordinating creative and data to reduce noise and increase conversion

In short, the agency is trying to engineer repeatable, scalable loyalty rather than one-off wins.

What Makes This Partnership Different?

Most agencies in SiteOne’s space focus on digital execution—programmatic, paid search, or social. But Goodway is positioning itself as a transformation partner, emphasizing measurement-driven modernization and full-funnel accountability.

A few factors make this move stand out:

A Step Toward B2B Media Maturity

The pro landscape market is not traditionally a hotbed of cutting-edge media strategy. Bringing in an agency known for sophisticated measurement frameworks signals SiteOne’s intention to modernize the category.

A Tight Connection Between Media and Revenue

SiteOne is not just funding ads—it’s building a system where media and revenue performance are threaded together. That shift mirrors what we’re seeing across B2B sectors like manufacturing, logistics, and construction technology.

The Timing Is Ideal

With digital adoption rising among contractors, and the industry facing supply chain challenges and competitive disruption, the opportunity to use smarter media to shape loyalty is larger than it was even two years ago.

The Market Trend: B2B Brands Race to Modernize Media

Goodway’s win reflects a broader shift in B2B advertising. As AI-powered analytics, intent data, and first-party data standardization accelerate, B2B brands are rethinking how they track and optimize customer journeys.

Three trends stand out:

1. AI-Driven Personalization Moves from Luxury to Necessity

Even in a traditionally analog industry like landscaping, professional buyers expect Amazon-level predictability. AI helps:

• anticipate demand cycles

• identify at-risk accounts

• segment by project type

• recommend inventory and services

This context makes Goodway’s measurement-first approach appealing to enterprises like SiteOne.

2. Media Investments Require Board-Level Proof

Marketing budgets are under more scrutiny than ever. Agencies that can demonstrate revenue impact—not just awareness—are winning more RFPs.

3. The B2B Buyer Journey Has Become Nonlinear

Buyers toggle between research, peer reviews, mobile ordering, onsite needs, and relationship-based decisions. Measurement-driven orchestration becomes critical. The buyer is in control; the brand needs the analytics to keep up.

Potential Outcomes: What This Could Mean for SiteOne’s Future

While the partnership is still in its early stages, several strategic outcomes appear likely:

1. Stronger Category-Level Growth

With clearer insight into category-specific opportunities—nursery vs. hardscapes, irrigation vs. lighting—SiteOne may uncover pockets of growth previously hidden in fragmented data.

2. More Efficient Media Spend

Scenario modeling could shift SiteOne from broad, national messaging toward precision-located, category- and customer-specific activation.

3. Better Contractor Retention

Simplifying the contractor journey is one of the highest-impact levers in the pro supply market. Improved experience and personalization tend to drive disproportionate repeat purchases.

4. A More Modern, Scalable Marketing Engine

If SiteOne integrates Goodway’s measurement frameworks across its growing network, it could build one of the more sophisticated B2B media infrastructures in its sector.

A Win for Goodway, A Signal to the Market

For Goodway Group, this client win reinforces its positioning as a challenger agency focused on measurable growth. In a landscape where many agencies still sell impressions, Goodway sells outcomes quantified through data, analytics, and customer understanding.

For SiteOne, it marks a milestone in its marketing sophistication journey—an intentional shift toward a long-term, measurable, tech-enabled strategy designed to support both organic growth and acquisition-driven expansion.

As professional contractors increasingly expect digital precision and frictionless service, this is the kind of transformation that will separate the legacy distributors that thrive from the ones that get disrupted.

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Marchex is doubling down on its AI strategy—and eyeing a major expansion of its business model. The conversational intelligence company reported third-quarter 2025 earnings while revealing an agreement in principle to acquire Archenia, a fast-growing customer acquisition platform built on AI-verified outcomes.

The move signals Marchex’s push beyond insights and analytics into a broader, vertically aligned AI-driven outcomes ecosystem—one the company believes will redefine how enterprises qualify, convert, and measure customers across channels.

Q3: Revenue Dip, But Strength in Bookings and EBITDA

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2025, Marchex delivered results that show a business in transition but tightening its operational discipline.

Q3 2025 financial highlights:

• Revenue: $11.5M, down from $12.6M YoY

• Net loss: $1.0M (flat at $(0.02) per share)

• Adjusted EBITDA: $0.6M vs. $0.3M YoY

• Adjusted EBITDA ex-reorg costs: $1.1M

• Adjusted non-GAAP EPS: $0.00 vs. $(0.01) YoY

While the company continues to experience revenue migration dilution tied to its ongoing platform overhaul, it’s seeing strong traction in sales activity.

Troy Hartless, president of Marchex, highlighted that Q3 brought the highest sales bookings of the year, adding:

“As we near completion of our technology platform migration, we improved Adjusted EBITDA to $1.1 million—up roughly 50% from Q2—and we believe we’re gaining visibility into sustainable sales growth heading into 2026.”

Marchex expects Q4 revenue and EBITDA to be sequentially lower due to seasonality and final migration impacts, but says bookings momentum and new product launches are setting up 2026 for a return to growth.

2026 Outlook: Growth Returns—and Margin Expansion

Marchex is projecting a 10% revenue growth run-rate in 2026, supported by:

• Expanded AI product offerings

• Completion of its platform migration

• Increased sales bookings across enterprise accounts

The company also believes Adjusted EBITDA margins could reach 10% or more next year as revenue grows and operating expenses decline.

AI Product Momentum: Benchmarks, Optimization, GPT Search, and Vertical Intelligence

If 2024 was about rebuilding, 2025 has been about launching. Marchex’s product roadmap is heavily weighted toward new AI modules designed to close the loop from insights to action.

AI Benchmarking

Launched in October, Industry Benchmarking adds competitor and industry-level KPIs inside the Key Insights Dashboard. Enterprise users can now compare performance against peers with prescriptive recommendations for improvement.

AgentAI Optimizer

Coming soon, this module evaluates the performance of third-party AI agents—an emerging but critical need as enterprises deploy large fleets of AI-driven automation tools.

Marchex Engage GPT

Expected later this quarter, this LLM-powered search engine lets businesses query their structured enterprise data using conversational prompts—a business-specific GPT built for Fortune 500-scale search.

New Vertical AI Solutions

Marchex is expanding into industries where conversations directly drive revenue outcomes.

• Healthcare AI Solution:
  Helps providers more accurately attribute patient leads, prioritize high-value appointments, and detect engagement gaps.

• Senior Living AI Solution:
  Surfaces prospect needs, improves marketing efficiency, and analyzes reasons for move-in or rejection.

Marchex says its verticalized AI models deliver “prescriptive analytics uniquely calibrated to each industry’s omnichannel conversational trends.”

The Big Move: Marchex to Acquire Archenia

The headline beyond earnings: Marchex has entered an agreement in principle to acquire Archenia, an AI-driven customer qualification and acquisition company that specializes in performance-based, outcome-driven results.

The proposed deal structure includes:

• $10M convertible promissory note at 6% interest

• Convertible at $1.80 per share

• Additional earn-out of up to 4M shares tied to revenue/EBITDA milestones across two 12-month periods

• Closing targeted for 1H 2026, pending audited financials, fairness opinion, and shareholder approval

A special committee of independent directors has approved moving forward due to related-party considerations among some Archenia sellers.

Who Is Archenia?

Archenia brings something Marchex lacks: AI-verified, pay-for-outcome conversion capabilities.

The platform:

• Uses real-time AI signals and natural-language analytics to detect consumer intent

• Validates outcomes such as appointments, sales, or high-intent conversations

• Optimizes campaigns dynamically across channels

• Serves major verticals including insurance, home services, healthcare, and automotive

Archenia estimates $17M+ in revenue for 2025 and positive Adjusted EBITDA, with roughly $14M delivered through Q3 (unaudited).

Why This Acquisition Matters

If completed, the combination would give Marchex a rare vertically integrated stack across:

1. Insights – Conversational intelligence, benchmarking, and GPT-powered analytics

2. Actions – AgentAI and AI-driven optimization

3. Outcomes – Pay-per-event conversions validated by Archenia’s AI models

This is exactly where the market is heading. As AI rewires how enterprises measure marketing, sales, and customer interactions, traditional cost-per-click or cost-per-lead models are losing relevance. Pay-per-event is rising—and Marchex wants to own the full pipeline.

Strategic upside includes:

• Larger addressable market

• Cross-sell and bundling potential

• Revenue scale approaching $60M annually

• Target growth of 15–20% in 2026

• Potential adjusted EBITDA margins exceeding 10%

The story is becoming clear: Marchex is positioning itself not just as a conversational intelligence vendor—but as a full-stack AI customer acquisition engine.

The Bottom Line

Marchex’s Q3 may look modest on paper, but the underlying signals—rising bookings, a stronger AI roadmap, and the potential Archenia acquisition—paint a picture of a company preparing for an aggressive 2026.

If the deal closes, Marchex would enter the new year with a scaled, end-to-end platform spanning insights, decisions, and outcomes—exactly the direction the AI-powered marketing and sales industries are moving.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

E-commerce may be the fastest-moving channel in fast-moving consumer goods, and NielsenIQ (NIQ) wants to be the source of truth for brands trying to keep up. The consumer intelligence giant has rolled out its enhanced FMCG E-commerce Measurement Solution in Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, promising a unified view of digital sales performance aligned with the company’s widely used Retail Measurement Service (RMS) for offline markets.

The timing is no accident. Southeast Asia has quietly become the third-largest e-commerce market on the planet, and by 2030, NIQ projects that 30% of all FMCG retail sales in Asia will come from e-commerce. That shift is being driven not just by online enthusiasm but by the region’s increasingly fluid, hybrid shopping behavior—consumers browsing online, buying offline, discovering in-store, and completing purchases digitally.

In other words: omnichannel is no longer a strategy. It’s reality.

A Market Growing Too Fast for Partial Data

Over the past five years, Southeast Asia’s FMCG e-commerce market has doubled, and NIQ expects it to double again within five years. The biggest boosts come from Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines—now among the fastest-growing digital commerce economies globally—while Indonesia accounts for more than half of the region’s online FMCG sales and remains its economic anchor.

This explosive growth has pushed brands to demand more complete, harmonized visibility across channels. NIQ’s answer is an e-commerce measurement model built to match its RMS standard: unified definitions, consistent frameworks, and the ability to compare performance apples-to-apples—whether the sale happened in a hypermarket or on a marketplace app.

“Brands need more than surface-level insights,” said Josh Morgan, APAC E-commerce Lead at NIQ. “They need harmonized data that gives a true view of FMCG performance across channels.”

Inside NIQ’s Enhanced Online Measurement Stack

The new solution blends trusted ePOS RMS data with validated alternative data, covering retailers that don’t provide direct feeds—a major gap in many markets. NIQ’s data science team then layers machine learning models and expert validation on top to close the loop.

Key components include:

• RMS ePOS data: NIQ’s gold-standard retail dataset spanning market share, pricing, distribution, and promotional impact.

• Alternative online sources: Capturing performance across non-cooperating digital retailers—critical in Southeast Asia’s fragmented e-commerce landscape.

• Advanced modeling: Machine learning algorithms refine completeness and accuracy.

• NIQ Discover: A unified analytics platform offering monthly refreshed insights, customizable dashboards, and omnichannel comparisons at a global or local level.

The result: brands get a single, harmonized, RMS-aligned view across online and offline FMCG performance—something no other provider offers at this scale in Southeast Asia.

Who Benefits—and How

NIQ’s unified dataset is pitched as a competitive advantage for teams that increasingly rely on omnichannel visibility to make fast decisions.

• E-commerce leaders get RMS-level accuracy for competitive tracking and brand performance.

• Insights teams avoid spending half their week reconciling inconsistent definitions across channels.

• Category managers can spot early demand signals and online category swings.

• Sales leaders can strengthen retailer negotiations with verified, comparable data via NIQ Discover.

In a market where category growth can spike—or stall—overnight, aligned measurement is becoming a strategic weapon rather than a reporting necessity.

Why This Matters Now

Southeast Asia’s FMCG landscape is evolving faster than most global markets, fueled by mobile-first consumers, hyper-promotional marketplaces, and a wave of new digital-first brands. But with complexity comes opacity. Between marketplace ecosystems, inconsistent reporting standards, and non-cooperating retailers, brands often rely on patchwork visibility and guesswork.

NIQ argues the industry can’t afford that anymore.

By aligning e-commerce tracking to its RMS standard, the company is handing brands a single source of truth for FMCG performance across the full omnichannel ecosystem. That consistency unlocks better forecasting, more confident category expansion, and sharper digital investment decisions.

And in a region where e-commerce is outpacing traditional retail by orders of magnitude, a unified measurement framework may soon move from nice-to-have to mission-critical.

NIQ’s Competitive Positioning

The company’s pitch distills down to four differentiators:

• Unmatched Accuracy: RMS ePOS data plus validated alternative online sources.

• Unrivaled Coverage: Major FMCG categories across dominant e-commerce channels and retailers.

• Omnichannel Advantage: Seamless integration of online and offline insights through NIQ Discover.

• Local Expert Support: Ground-level guidance for converting insights into action.

For FMCG manufacturers navigating one of the world’s most dynamic digital marketplaces, the promise is simple: see more, understand more, act faster.

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