As the 2025 holiday season approaches, NielsenIQ (NIQ) reveals that Canadian shoppers are navigating economic uncertainty with pragmatic spending choices. The company’s latest Consumer Outlook: Guide to 2026 report highlights a shift toward value-driven decisions—favoring affordability and relevance over patriotic purchasing.

Inflation Fatigue Drives Smarter Spending

While inflation across fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) stabilized between 2.1% and 3.1% from December 2024 to August 2025, Canadians continue to feel the pinch. Consumer confidence rose to 60.3 points in September, yet over one-third (36%) feel financially worse off.

Rather than cutting back entirely, consumers are adapting—49% plan to stock up on sale items, while 42% say their spending will focus only on essentials.

Patriotism Yields to Practicality

Support for homegrown products remains strong, but the “Made in Canada” sentiment is softening as price sensitivity takes precedence. “Canadian Loyalists” dropped to 14%—down three points since early 2025—while avoidance of U.S. brands declined by seven points to 30%.

Although Canadian-made goods still outperform U.S. products (+5.3% vs. –7.9% YTD), the performance gap is narrowing as consumers weigh quality against price.

Retailers Pivot to Value and Convenience

In response, retailers are expanding private labels and discount offerings to meet evolving expectations. Over 100 new discount stores have opened nationwide in the past two years, signaling a decisive shift toward affordability.

Smaller, agile brands now contribute 38% of FMCG dollar growth, while online FMCG sales surpassed 10%—a five-point rise in two years—driven by digital innovations that streamline shopping and save time.

“As the holidays approach, Canadians are redefining celebration—choosing smarter spending over splurging and supporting local when it aligns with value,” said Mike Ljubicic, Managing Director, Canada, NielsenIQ. “Retailer success will depend on making products affordable, accessible, and relevant to consumers’ lives.”

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Podiatry Content Connection™ (PCC), a leading marketing firm dedicated exclusively to podiatry, has announced a $500,000 investment in artificial intelligence education and innovation, marking a bold step toward transforming digital marketing in the healthcare niche.

Following completion of advanced AI programs at UC Berkeley and MIT, PCC’s leadership team translated academic knowledge into practical marketing solutions. The result is a suite of AI-driven tools designed to help podiatry practices attract, engage, and retain patients more effectively.

AI-Powered Tools to Strengthen Practice Growth

PCC’s flagship Practice Builder™ platform now integrates advanced AI capabilities:

• Patient Pro-Connect™ enhances email deliverability and boosts campaign conversion rates.

• SEO Tracker improves search rankings and online visibility.

• Geo-targeted campaigns and directory optimization help practices connect with local patients.

• Targeted Reviews strengthen reputation management and trust-building.

“Artificial intelligence is not just a trend—it’s a transformation,” said Jeffrey Hartman, Founder of PCC. “By investing in AI, we’re giving podiatrists the tools to thrive in a marketplace that’s evolving faster than ever.”

Driving Real-World Impact Through Innovation

PCC has also launched AI-generated video solutions and smart chatbots to enhance engagement and responsiveness. These innovations are already delivering tangible results—more reviews, higher visibility, and a steady rise in new patient appointments.

Setting a New Benchmark for Medical Marketing

“Our clients measure success by new patients walking through their doors,” Hartman added. “AI enhances what we already do best—helping practices attract, engage, and retain patients—while setting a new benchmark for podiatry marketing.”

Looking ahead, PCC aims to continue evolving its AI tools, ensuring clients remain competitive in the rapidly changing healthcare marketing landscape.

“This is only the beginning,” said Hartman. “We’re constantly refining our technology because the future of podiatry marketing will be defined by smart software and innovation.”

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Teleskope, the company redefining data security for the AI era, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by M13, with continued participation from Primary Venture Partners and Lerer Hippeau. The round brings Teleskope’s total funding to $32.2 million and will accelerate product development, hiring, and go-to-market expansion.

As enterprises adopt AI at scale, 74% cite data security as their top barrier. With budget constraints and talent shortages limiting traditional security teams, legacy tools fail to meet modern demands.

Teleskope’s platform introduces the industry’s first agentic data security system, designed to function like a human security team—automatically discovering, classifying, and protecting sensitive data across cloud, SaaS, and hybrid environments. The system autonomously remediates risk in real time, giving enterprises continuous, context-aware protection.

“When I was a security engineer at Airbnb, existing tools couldn’t keep up,” said Elizabeth Nammour, Founder and CEO of Teleskope. “We built Teleskope to think and act like a human security team—detecting, contextualizing, and remediating risk automatically so enterprises can confidently adopt AI.”

The platform’s multi-stage classification pipeline uses lightweight machine learning models and contextual AI to map misconfigurations to frameworks such as NIST, GDPR, and CIS, enabling proactive compliance enforcement.

“Teleskope has transformed how we manage data security and retention,” said Lock Langdon, CISO at Aprio LLP. “It’s like having a full data management team embedded in our environment.”

As part of the funding, Karl Alomar, Managing Partner at M13 and former COO of DigitalOcean, joins Teleskope’s board of directors. “AI is reshaping enterprise infrastructure and risk,” said Alomar. “Teleskope’s agentic model delivers a new level of control and clarity for security teams.”

Teleskope is expanding its data science, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

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Cooperate Marketing, one of the fastest-growing MarTech firms in the U.S., has appointed Gary DuVall as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO), marking a pivotal step in the company’s push toward AI-powered growth and innovation.

Recognized by Inc. 5000 for its rapid expansion in channel marketing, Cooperate Marketing is strengthening its leadership team to amplify its enterprise technology capabilities and deepen its foothold in AI, machine learning (ML), and large language model (LLM) technologies.

A New Chapter in MarTech Leadership

“Building on our continued success, today marks a new chapter for Cooperate,” said Brian Fourman, Founder and CEO. “Gary brings a wealth of MarTech experience and will help advance and transform our enterprise platform solutions. With his strategic vision, leadership, and talent, we’re poised for tremendous innovation and growth ahead.”

DuVall succeeds Sean Li and brings over 25 years of experience leading digital transformation initiatives at top-tier firms such as Razorfish, Dentsu, and DigitalOcean. His expertise spans conversion rate optimization (CRO), enterprise cloud platforms, and technology-driven marketing solutions across industries like telecom, insurance, and education.

Driving the Next Wave of AI-Powered MarTech

Under DuVall’s leadership, Cooperate plans to refine its AI and ML investments, embedding intelligence into every layer of its operations—from data-driven insights to predictive automation. The company aims to elevate its co-op and channel marketing platforms with AI-enhanced personalization, performance analytics, and scalable integrations for enterprise clients.

“Cooperate Marketing has single-handedly and sustainably built a unique niche within the co-op marketing space,” said DuVall. “By prioritizing the ownership of its technology and infrastructure, it delivers a truly differentiated end-to-end offering. I’m honored to join at this key inflection point and help take the company and our clients to the next level—leading with innovation and heart.”

Turning Advanced Tech Into Measurable Impact

Cooperate’s strategy extends beyond developing cutting-edge technology. Its mission centers on translating technical excellence into tangible client results.

“Creating great tech alone doesn’t create value—what you do with it does,” said Ryan Parker, Director of Operations & Growth. “With Gary leading the charge, we’re reinforcing our commitment to turning AI and engineering into real business outcomes. Our goal is to empower clients and their channel partners to scale smarter and grow stronger.”

The Broader MarTech Landscape

Cooperate’s move mirrors a broader trend among MarTech firms racing to embed AI and automation at the core of their offerings. As marketing ecosystems become more data-centric, companies like Cooperate are leaning on AI-driven infrastructure to simplify co-op advertising, enhance partner engagement, and measure ROI more effectively.

By combining proprietary technology with AI innovation, Cooperate aims to stay ahead in the competitive MarTech landscape—offering clients not just tools, but strategic intelligence that drives measurable growth.

With DuVall at the helm of technology, Cooperate Marketing looks ready to redefine how brands and partners collaborate in the AI-driven future of marketing.

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Amsive, a leading performance marketing agency that bridges data, creative, and media, has been crowned “Agency of the Year – SEO” at the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards, one of the most respected honors in the global search industry. The agency also clinched “Best Overall SEO Initiative – Enterprise” for its groundbreaking partnership with MSN, reinforcing its dominance in enterprise-scale SEO innovation.

Driving Global SEO Excellence

The Agency of the Year – SEO award recognized Amsive’s campaign, “How Amsive Rescued MSN’s Global Visibility Through Enterprise Technical SEO at Scale.” The initiative showcased the agency’s ability to deliver measurable growth and sustainable impact through complex, multinational search strategies.

Amsive’s win for “Best Overall SEO Initiative – Enterprise” celebrated another landmark project titled “825 Million Clicks, Zero Content Edits: How Amsive Engineered MSN’s Technical SEO Turnaround.” The campaign boosted MSN’s search visibility and engagement through pure technical SEO innovation—without a single editorial content change.

This marks the fourth time Amsive has received this award from Search Engine Land, having previously won in 2018, 2020, and 2022—a testament to its consistency, innovation, and long-term leadership in technical SEO at scale.

Data, Creativity, and Performance in Harmony

“These awards recognize not only the strength of our SEO + AEO practice but the impact of our integrated approach connecting audience intelligence, creative strategy, and performance execution,” said Michael Coppola, CEO of Amsive. “I’m incredibly proud of our team’s innovation and the measurable results they deliver for our clients every day.”

Amsive’s success reflects a broader shift in the search marketing industry—where technical precision, data-driven insights, and creative alignment are becoming inseparable components of high-performing SEO. The agency’s culture thrives at this intersection, transforming search into a scalable growth engine for enterprise clients.

“This recognition from Search Engine Land reflects years of deep collaboration and innovation within our SEO team,” added Lily Ray, Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research. “We’ve built a culture that thrives at the intersection of data science, technical excellence, and creative strategy. It’s incredibly rewarding to see that work celebrated on an industry stage.”

Proving the Power of Technical SEO

For Amsive, the MSN project is more than an award-winning campaign—it’s a proof point for what’s possible when enterprise SEO is done right. By combining precise diagnostics, strategic prioritization, and technical craftsmanship, the agency helped MSN achieve massive performance gains without altering its editorial footprint.

“Winning these awards validates the power of enterprise-scale technical SEO done right,” said Romain Damery, Sr. Director of Technical SEO. “Our MSN partnership showcases how precision and innovation can unlock exponential growth, even for some of the world’s largest and most complex web ecosystems.”

A Standard for Enterprise SEO Innovation

As SEO evolves into an AI-augmented, automation-driven discipline, Amsive continues to set benchmarks for excellence. Its focus on audience-first strategy, technical mastery, and cross-channel measurement positions the agency at the forefront of performance marketing innovation.

With this latest recognition, Amsive cements its place among the industry’s most influential SEO leaders—proving that data, technology, and creativity can work together to deliver meaningful, measurable business growth at global scale.

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Gabriel Marketing Group (GMG), a leading B2B tech PR and growth marketing agency, today announced a partnership with Brandi AI™, the industry’s most advanced platform for enterprise AI visibility and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Through this collaboration, GMG joins the Brandi Agency Partnership Program, a global initiative empowering agencies to help clients enhance their authority and presence across AI-generated answers.

As generative AI redefines digital discovery, the partnership equips GMG clients with data-driven insights into how their brands are represented within AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude—and actionable intelligence to strengthen visibility and trust in the emerging “AI discovery layer.”

“With Brandi AI, we can finally show clients how they appear inside AI-generated answers—and why,” said Michiko Morales, President of GMG. “It’s unlocking a new layer of visibility and control, turning what was once a black box into measurable, actionable insight that drives brand trust and market impact.”

Brandi AI enables agencies and brands to uncover the real questions people ask AI systems, track citations and trust signals, and benchmark competitive visibility through its Brandi Competitive Market Universe™. By integrating these insights into GMG’s strategy and communications frameworks, clients can align messaging, content, and authority-building efforts with how AI models surface and recommend brands.

“Agencies partnering with Brandi AI are leading the next evolution of digital influence,” said Leah Nurik, Co-Founder and CEO of Brandi AI. “Together with GMG, we’re helping brands understand how they’re perceived and cited by AI—and turning that understanding into more authentic, data-informed visibility where buying decisions increasingly begin.”

The Brandi Agency Partnership Program provides agencies with access to enterprise-grade AI visibility data, competitive benchmarking, and GEO best practices to help clients optimize how they appear in generative answers across major AI systems.

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Ecer.com, one of the world’s leading mobile B2B marketplaces, has officially launched a comprehensive AI Strategy aimed at reshaping cross-border trade and driving the intelligent transformation of global commerce. The move signals a major step forward in the evolution of AI-powered international trade, marking the start of a new era for the global B2B industry.

AI Reshaping the B2B Trade Model

The new AI Strategy fully integrates artificial intelligence across the entire foreign trade value chain—from lead generation and supplier matching to order fulfillment and logistics optimization. By embedding AI at every stage, Ecer.com is building a self-learning, intelligent trade ecosystem capable of streamlining operations and improving accuracy across global transactions.

Early results from Ecer.com’s AI adoption are already showing impressive gains:

• Invalid inquiry filtration rate reduced by 40%

• High-quality business opportunity conversion up 65%

• Mobile transaction volume growing at an average annual rate above 40%

These outcomes highlight how data-driven intelligence can optimize global supply chains and empower businesses to engage faster, smarter, and more efficiently.

A Global Powerhouse in B2B Commerce

Ecer.com continues to solidify its leadership in the B2B sector. Third-party data shows the platform records over 60 million monthly overseas visits, ranking it among the top global B2B marketplaces.

In China, Ecer.com stands as the No. 2 B2B platform overall and the largest mobile B2B marketplace, hosting over 2.6 million registered suppliers and serving 4 million buyers annually across more than 150 countries and regions.

The company’s long-term investment in R&D has produced over 200 independent intellectual property rights in marketplace infrastructure, digital marketing, and big data analytics. Over the past 16 years, Ecer.com has built a reputation for excellence and innovation—earning Google Premier Partner status for ten consecutive years and winning accolades like the Google Search Ads Innovation Award and the Google Overseas Technology Innovation Award.

AI as the Next Growth Engine for Global Trade

Industry observers see Ecer.com’s AI initiative as a pivotal moment for the B2B landscape. By embedding machine learning and data intelligence into the marketplace’s core, Ecer.com is redefining efficiency, accuracy, and personalization in cross-border trade.

According to trade analysts, this move could set new standards for global B2B platforms, enabling smarter matchmaking between buyers and suppliers and reducing friction in international commerce.

“Ecer.com’s AI-driven approach is not just an upgrade—it’s a reinvention of how global trade operates,” noted one industry expert. “The platform’s intelligent systems will allow businesses to make faster, data-backed decisions while improving transparency and trust across the trade chain.”

Empowering ‘Made in China’ on the Global Stage

With its AI-first strategy, Ecer.com aims to inject fresh momentum into the global expansion of ‘Made in China’ products. The platform’s focus on intelligent trade matching, predictive analytics, and mobile-first engagement positions it as a key enabler of China’s digital export economy.

By merging its deep technical foundation with advanced AI capabilities, Ecer.com is setting a new benchmark for B2B innovation—one that aligns with the broader digital transformation sweeping global commerce.

As AI continues to redefine how businesses trade, Ecer.com’s strategic leap underscores one truth: the future of international B2B isn’t just connected—it’s intelligent.

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Iozera has announced the acquisition of a fully operational 4.5-megawatt data center in Houston, Texas, which it plans to expand and modernize into a 10-megawatt, AI-ready multi-tenant hub. The facility marks the first in Iozera’s planned network of AI factories—data centers engineered to deliver real-time inference, fine-tuning, and deployment capabilities directly where enterprises need them most.

Building the Foundation for AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS)

Iozera’s approach introduces a new operational model for compute: AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS). Unlike traditional cloud providers that merely rent capacity, Iozera’s AI factories combine high-density GPU infrastructure with human expertise, enabling a closed-loop system where every model learns and adapts continuously.

Each site integrates trained human teams who supervise, label, and refine models in production—a rare “humans-in-the-loop” design that ensures AI systems align with real-world context and enterprise goals. This combination of automation and human oversight bridges the gap between research and reliable production-scale intelligence.

“Compute isn’t just leased—it’s orchestrated,” Iozera’s leadership noted, framing AI infrastructure as an intelligent service rather than a static resource.

Technology, Cooling, and Global Partnerships

The Houston facility will leverage NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs on a Rubin-ready roadmap, offering next-generation performance for advanced workloads in inference, training, and fine-tuning.

Iozera has partnered with ZutaCore to deploy its HyperCool® direct-to-chip, waterless liquid-cooling system, capable of delivering up to 140 kW per rack. The system’s efficiency allows for dense GPU configurations without compromising sustainability.

Schneider Electric will provide value engineering and system optimization, ensuring efficiency and scalability in power and energy design, while Pegatron (Taiwan) will supply GPU servers and integrate hardware for rapid global deployment.

Together, these partnerships reinforce Iozera’s goal: delivering GPU-dense, sustainable AI infrastructure built for real-world, enterprise-scale use cases.

Why Houston Matters

Houston is emerging as the AI capital of the United States, attracting over $3 billion in tech investment from companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, and Foxconn. Anchored by the Texas Medical Center (TMC)—the world’s largest medical complex—Houston combines rich clinical data, advanced research ecosystems, and high-volume decision-making, making it a prime hub for AI innovation.

For Iozera, the location aligns strategically with Kriss.ai, its healthcare large language model (LLM) deployed across hospitals and clinics worldwide. The platform is evolving into the Doctor Digital Twin LLM, designed to capture medical reasoning, empathy, and communication style—pushing AI closer to human-centered care and clinical trust.

Ecosystem and AI Portfolio

Iozera’s AIaaS backbone powers an expanding portfolio of ventures, from healthcare to digital engagement, including:

• Kriss.ai – Healthcare LLM platform for clinical intelligence

• Chatli.ai – Conversational AI for enterprise engagement

• AI Mate – Companion intelligence platform

• $AIMAtoken – Ethereum-based digital asset for AI ecosystems

In partnership with MCV Group, one of Southeast Asia’s largest creator networks, Iozera is developing AI Mate and Kickit.ai, platforms merging emotional intelligence with scalable creator monetization. This ecosystem demonstrates Iozera’s ability to translate compute power into cultural and commercial intelligence—bridging infrastructure with human experience.

Efficiency as the New Scale

As the AI industry transitions from experimental development to mass deployment, Iozera’s acquisition strategy stands out. By upgrading existing operational facilities rather than building new ones—each typically costing $10–12 million per megawatt—Iozera achieves capital-efficient expansion and faster market readiness.

The Houston site, currently leased back to Men’s Wearhouse (Tailored Brands) during retrofit preparation, underscores this efficiency-driven model. By repurposing active infrastructure into AI factories, Iozera is pioneering a more sustainable, distributed path to large-scale intelligence.

An Open Invitation

Iozera is inviting AI developers, investors, and enterprises to collaborate through upcoming joint-innovation discovery sessions, aimed at co-developing next-generation AI infrastructure, applications, and partnerships.

As the company scales its network of AI factories, one thing is clear: Iozera isn’t just building data centers—it’s constructing the operating system for the AI economy.

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