Quad/Graphics Inc. is giving audience segmentation a conversational upgrade. The marketing experience company today announced the rollout of natural language prompting within its proprietary Audience Builder platform—powered by Snowflake’s Cortex AI—allowing marketers to create precise audience segments simply by typing conversational commands.

For an industry long reliant on data specialists and SQL queries, the shift is significant. Instead of writing complex queries, users can now ask questions like, “Build an audience of competitive bike riders in South Carolina,” and Audience Builder translates the request into an actionable dataset in seconds.

The integration with Snowflake’s Cortex AI enables Quad to tap into billions of household-level data points covering 92% of U.S. households and nearly 97% of the adult population. By using Snowflake’s natural language processing capabilities, Quad’s system can interpret prompts, analyze stored audience attributes, and enrich them with third-party demographic data—dramatically reducing the time and technical skill needed to design targeted campaigns.

“By tapping Snowflake’s AI expertise for natural language prompts, we’re introducing a new level of innovation to our audience targeting process,” said George Forge, Senior Vice President of Client Technology & Product Development at Quad. “In the increasingly complex world of marketing, we’re making it even easier, faster, and more precise to gather insights, build audiences, and help our clients make meaningful connections with their customers.”

Snowflake sees this as part of a larger trend in marketing AI. “Our collaboration with Quad is a testament to how AI can transform how marketers interact with their data,” said Erin Foxworthy, Global Head of Marketing & Advertising at Snowflake. “By combining natural language processing with the ease of use of the Snowflake platform, we’re helping brands unlock sophisticated insights and act on them with speed and precision.”

Quad originally developed Audience Builder to give advertisers a more transparent and efficient way to reach relevant audiences—especially as walled gardens like Google and Meta restrict data access. By leveraging household-based data, rather than volatile identifiers like email or IP addresses, Quad claims to provide a more stable, long-term foundation for cross-channel marketing.

The new AI prompt feature is another sign of how AI-driven audience design is becoming a competitive differentiator in marketing technology. While traditional segmentation tools depend on analysts and rigid taxonomies, Quad’s conversational approach lowers the technical barrier and allows marketers to focus on creative strategy rather than data mechanics.

In a landscape where privacy rules, cookie deprecation, and walled gardens have complicated data-driven marketing, Quad’s blend of AI-powered simplicity and household-level precision could help marketers regain some control over their targeting destiny.

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Alloy is turning up the heat on its marketing transformation strategy. The Atlanta-based agency, known for blending creativity with data-driven strategy, announced the acquisition of fellow Atlanta firm Hot Sauce, a digital marketing agency recognized for its expertise in martech and growth marketing.

The move signals Alloy’s deepening investment in AI-era marketing, uniting Hot Sauce’s martech know-how with Alloy’s existing portfolio of strategy, branding, and performance solutions. Together, the combined team aims to deliver more powerful, technology-enabled campaigns for clients navigating increasingly complex buyer journeys.

Founded in 2010, Hot Sauce carved a niche helping technology, financial services, and public sector clients refine their messaging and engage target audiences through digital transformation. Its data-driven approach and expertise in marketing technology make it a natural fit for Alloy’s growth-focused vision.

“Alloy’s mission has always been to help brands stand out, connect, convert, and grow,” said Raj Choudhury, CEO of Alloy. “Hot Sauce’s martech talent and experience in running sophisticated campaigns strengthen our capabilities, especially as we help clients reach and influence buyers in an AI-powered landscape.”

The acquisition comes amid a period of explosive growth for Alloy. The company recently ranked 121st among metro Atlanta’s fastest-growing businesses and 132nd statewide on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list—rising over 300 national spots from the prior year. A three-year revenue jump of 143% underscores its expanding leadership in the marketing and technology space. Alloy also landed a spot on the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter List of the city’s 75 fastest-growing private companies.

For George Carless, founder of Hot Sauce, joining Alloy represents a strategic alignment. “We’ve long admired Alloy’s vision and share a similar mission,” Carless said. “Our team is thrilled to join forces and help shape the next chapter of the agency’s growth.”

Under the deal, Hot Sauce’s full team will integrate into Alloy, with its leadership taking active roles in guiding expanded martech and digital growth initiatives. The partnership underscores a broader trend in the marketing industry: agencies consolidating capabilities to keep pace with AI, automation, and evolving buyer behavior.

With the acquisition, Alloy positions itself as a stronger contender in the competitive martech ecosystem—where intelligence, agility, and integration are fast becoming the new differentiators.

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Alloy acquires Hot Sauce to expand its martech and digital growth expertise, fueling AI-era marketing innovation and client impact.

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Zoom’s not just for meetings anymore. The company today announced that Zoom Phone, its AI-first cloud telephony platform, has officially crossed 10 million seats globally—a milestone that underscores both the rapid rise of AI-driven business communications and the decline of legacy PBX systems.

Launched in 2019, Zoom Phone has evolved into one of the fastest-growing cloud calling solutions in the market, competing head-to-head with enterprise mainstays like Microsoft Teams Phone, RingCentral, and Cisco Webex Calling. Its appeal lies in simplicity and intelligence: an AI-powered communication layer that unifies voice, meetings, messaging, and contact center interactions on a single, scalable platform.

“Reaching 10 million seats isn’t just a milestone for Zoom—it demonstrates that organizations across the globe are rethinking what their phone system can do,” said Chris Moss, General Manager of Zoom Phone. “Customers are realizing tangible value via simpler management, reduced costs, and smarter interactions powered by AI.”

That intelligence is more than a buzzword. Zoom Phone taps into the company’s AI Companion to transcribe calls, summarize meetings, and assist in real-time communications. This move aligns with a broader enterprise trend: embedding AI into collaboration tools to automate routine tasks and improve responsiveness.

Industry analysts see the growth as validation of Zoom’s strategy. Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, called the milestone “remarkable, but unsurprising,” pointing to Zoom’s knack for innovation and user satisfaction. The company, he noted, applied the same customer-first, iterative model that made its video platform dominant to its telephony product—an approach paying clear dividends.

Real-world use cases back that up. Sydney Film Festival, for instance, reported an 81% reduction in phone costs during its peak period after switching to Zoom Phone—a figure that neatly captures the platform’s promise of cost efficiency and operational agility.

This momentum also signals Zoom’s broader evolution into a unified communications powerhouse. Beyond meetings and calling, the company is integrating AI capabilities across mobility, messaging, and customer engagement tools, creating a seamless ecosystem for modern hybrid workplaces.

For businesses still tethered to outdated phone systems, the message is clear: the future of communication isn’t just cloud-first—it’s AI-first, and Zoom wants to be at the center of it.

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As AI reshapes how users find information online, Adogy wants to make sure brands aren’t left behind. The digital marketing agency, known for its work in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), has released a new industry report titled Top Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agencies in the World—a guide aimed at helping businesses navigate the fast-evolving world of AI-driven search.

Unlike traditional SEO, which revolves around keywords and backlinks, GEO focuses on discoverability within AI-generated responses—think Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), ChatGPT, and Bing Copilot. The discipline ensures that when users ask AI systems for insights, products, or recommendations, a brand’s name surfaces naturally and accurately.

“AI search is redefining how people discover brands,” said Tim Worstell, Chief of Digital at Adogy. “This guide gives businesses a clear framework for choosing GEO partners who know how to position content effectively for AI-driven platforms, not just traditional search engines.”

The report ranks GEO agencies based on performance, innovation, authority leverage, and client impact:

• Performance evaluates how well agencies boost brand visibility within generative search environments.

• Innovation measures their ability to deploy new tools and techniques tailored to AI search models.

• Authority leverage assesses how agencies convert media mentions into long-term GEO benefits.

• Client impact examines tangible outcomes like increased brand mentions, organic traffic, and inclusion in AI-generated summaries.

Adogy’s findings underscore a shift in SEO fundamentals. Mentions in authoritative publications now carry more weight than ever, semantic clarity is outperforming keyword stuffing, and AI visibility is fast becoming the new search currency.

For businesses, this marks a turning point: success in generative search means understanding not just what people query—but how AI interprets, contextualizes, and presents those answers. Adogy, which blends SEO, digital PR, and GEO, is positioning itself as a key navigator for brands adapting to this new search landscape.

As large language models increasingly mediate how consumers discover products and services, one thing is clear—brands that ignore GEO risk becoming invisible in the next era of search.

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Vianai Systems is giving enterprise analytics a serious AI upgrade. The company today announced that hila, its agentic deep-analytics solution, is now integrated directly into Gemini Enterprise and available through the Google Cloud Marketplace—a move that could streamline how business users, analysts, and executives access and interpret enterprise data.

For companies buried under the weight of BI dashboards and middleware stacks, hila offers a refreshing alternative: a GenAI-driven personal data analyst capable of answering complex business questions in plain language. Think of it as ChatGPT meets your finance and supply chain systems—only faster and more contextually aware.

With hila running on Google Cloud, users can query live data from BigQuery, ERP systems, or mixed sources without requiring traditional analytics setup. Common use cases range from identifying cost-cutting levers to spotting anomalies in procurement patterns. For instance, executives can ask hila to “recommend concrete levers to cut operating costs by 10% without affecting revenue” or “flag Q2 2025 gross margin declines by product and channel.”

At its core, hila combines proprietary technology for business knowledge capture and accurate analytical code generation, allowing enterprises to bypass the usual bottlenecks in decision-making. The system also provides interactive charts, detailed reports, and granular context modeling, all designed to help decision-makers move from data to action faster.

Dr. Vishal Sikka, Founder and CEO of Vianai Systems, positioned the launch as a pivotal shift in enterprise analytics:

“GenAI has opened a door to this capability, leapfrogging traditional analytical stacks and business processes, which are slow, unresponsive, and expensive,” Sikka said. “With hila on Gemini Enterprise, every business professional gains instant, interactive access to deep insights across operational data—from finance to HR to supply chain.”

Google Cloud’s Kevin Ichhpurani echoed the sentiment, emphasizing that hila leverages the Gemini model’s intelligence to help organizations “deploy sophisticated analytics without technical expertise.”

The timing couldn’t be better. As enterprises increasingly turn to GenAI for decision support, hila’s native availability on Google Cloud positions Vianai Systems squarely among leaders like Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot and Microsoft’s Fabric Copilot—both vying to democratize data insights through conversational AI.

If the early traction within large organizations is any indication, Vianai’s bet on agentic analytics may redefine how companies interact with data—making insights as accessible as asking a question.

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Marketers constantly juggle the risk of over-communicating with customers while striving to maximize engagement. Hightouch, a leading data and AI platform for marketing and personalization, is addressing this challenge with Smart Suppression, a new feature in its AI Decisioning suite.

Traditional suppression rules—like static frequency caps—treat all messages equally, leaving marketers to choose between lost conversions or damaged relationships. Smart Suppression introduces a smarter, data-driven approach.

How Smart Suppression Works

The feature taps into customer data from warehouses, including purchase history, engagement patterns, and behavioral signals, to predict which messages will deliver incremental lift and which could risk unsubscribes or harm brand equity. Marketers can set suppression thresholds through the AI Decisioning interface, giving them direct control while automatically filtering out risky messages.

“Decisioning agents are greedy. They're designed to maximize outcomes, and if you give them permission to send five times a week, they'll send five times a week,” said Rishabh Anand, Product Lead for AI Decisioning at Hightouch. “Smart Suppression ensures they focus that volume on messages that actually drive impact, not just fill quotas.”

Unlike black-box optimization tools, Smart Suppression balances automation with marketer oversight, ensuring that AI-driven campaigns enhance customer relationships without unintentionally driving unsubscribes or damaging sender reputation.

Implications for Lifecycle Marketing

By predicting the impact of each message, Smart Suppression helps marketing teams maximize engagement while protecting brand equity, a critical differentiator in crowded digital channels. As AI-driven personalization becomes the norm, tools like this offer a way to scale outreach intelligently without sacrificing customer trust.

With this launch, Hightouch reinforces its position as a platform that combines data-driven decisioning with marketer control, allowing organizations to send smarter, safer, and more effective communications.

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Utilities are facing a looming challenge: by 2030, energy demand is projected to rise 25%, with peak electricity demand climbing 14%. To help utilities meet these pressures, ICF (NASDAQ:ICFI) has unveiled the next generation of Sightline®, its industry-leading platform for utility program management.

The upgraded platform brings AI-powered analytics and insights that give utilities a 360-degree view of customer programs. Sightline can now pinpoint high-demand periods, predict grid stress, and optimize energy efficiency initiatives to reduce costs while enhancing customer engagement.

Smarter, Faster Utility Program Management

Sightline’s enhancements include centralized business intelligence dashboards and analytics that enable faster program design and real-time management. Utilities can see how customer energy usage impacts the grid, allowing them to make timely, data-driven decisions that benefit both operations and customers.

“Utilities must be equipped to make data-driven decisions with greater precision and agility when navigating a much more complex and dynamic grid,” said Kyle Wiggins, ICF senior VP and utility programs lead. “Our latest upgrade to Sightline enhances data integration, workflow automation, analytics, regulatory reporting, and customer engagement.”

The upgrade also comes on the heels of ICF’s AEG acquisition, strengthening the company’s capabilities in demand-side management and customer program support.

Meeting the Challenges of a Changing Energy Landscape

As energy consumption rises and distributed energy resources proliferate, utilities need flexible, modular solutions. Sightline’s architecture allows utilities to simplify operations, optimize incentives, forecast adoption trends, and measure the impact of demand-side management programs—even at the individual customer level.

Already deployed by over 90 utilities and government entities across the U.S., Sightline helps clients simulate program value, anticipate customer behavior, and plan interventions that enhance grid reliability and reduce the need for costly infrastructure upgrades.

With this next-gen release, ICF reinforces its position as a leading energy consultancy, providing end-to-end solutions for utilities, energy developers, and government agencies—from strategy and planning to implementation and analysis.

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Product teams often struggle to keep up with the pace of modern software development. Feedback is scattered across support tickets, surveys, and calls, while manual analysis creates bottlenecks that slow decision-making. Dovetail aims to fix that with the launch of its AI-native customer intelligence platform, designed to turn customer feedback into actionable insights and real-world prototypes—fast.

The platform closes the gap between customer signals and product execution. AI structures feedback into requirements, surfaces insights, and delivers them directly into prototyping and coding environments. The result: product momentum stays constant, and teams build features that customers actually need.

Turning Feedback into Action

Dovetail’s platform operates as a continuous four-stage cycle:

1. Assemble: Centralizes every customer voice—sales calls, support tickets, surveys, app reviews, usability tests, and more.

2. Analyze: Uses AI to classify feedback, build dashboards, compare segments, and track sentiment shifts.

3. Uncover: AI-powered Chat surfaces insights, generates PRDs, research reports, and Voice of Customer updates.

4. Act: Closes the loop with Linear tickets, Slack alerts, automated reports, and Alloy prototypes.

As part of its launch, Dovetail announced a partnership with Alloy, enabling captured feedback to instantly become live prototypes. Coding platform integrations are on the way, further bridging the gap from insight to execution.

Key Features for Fall 2025

• AI Contextual Chat: Drill into data with scoped, relevant answers.

• AI Docs: Generate PRDs, VoC reports, and summaries with citations.

• AI Agents: Intelligent operators that act on Dovetail data autonomously.

• Dashboards and Segments: Visualize sentiment and slice intelligence by ARR, plan, or region.

• Integrations: Enrich accounts with Salesforce, sync calls from Gong, import Outset reports, and link Linear issues directly from Dovetail.

Scaling Intelligence Across Teams

By unifying signals from product, design, ops, sales, marketing, and customer success, Dovetail ensures teams operate from a single source of truth. AI accelerates analysis, making insights immediately accessible to the people who need them.

“Building great products has never been the job of one team,” said Benjamin Humphrey, CEO and co-founder of Dovetail. “Sales, success, product, and design all bring critical signals, but too often those signals are fragmented or lost. With the Dovetail customer intelligence platform, we bring every voice together, analyze them with AI, and make them accessible across the organization.”

With this platform, Dovetail positions itself as the operating system for customer-led product development, enabling faster, smarter, and more coordinated decision-making across modern product organizations.

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