marketing 6 Aug 2026
Sports marketing is increasingly extending beyond stadium walls as brands seek to engage fans throughout their entire event journey. Reflecting this evolution, OUTFRONT Media and the New York Jets have signed a multi-year exclusive partnership that combines digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, experiential marketing, and real-time campaign activation to help advertisers connect with fans before, during, and after NFL game days.
The boundaries of sports marketing continue to expand as advertisers shift from event-based sponsorships to always-on fan engagement strategies. In line with this trend, OUTFRONT Media has entered a multi-year exclusive partnership with the New York Jets, giving brand partners new opportunities to engage NFL fans across the broader game-day experience through digital out-of-home advertising, experiential activations, and creator-driven content.
Rather than limiting sponsorship visibility to MetLife Stadium, the partnership enables advertisers to reach fans throughout their journeys—from transit hubs and commuter routes to restaurants, entertainment districts, and neighborhoods where supporters gather before and after games. The initiative reflects growing demand for omnichannel marketing strategies that combine physical environments with digital campaign intelligence.
The collaboration allows Jets sponsors to activate integrated campaigns across OUTFRONT's nationwide digital out-of-home (DOOH) media network. Advertisers can respond in near real time to live sporting events, player achievements, rivalry matchups, and trending cultural moments, helping brands remain relevant as conversations unfold across multiple channels.
At the center of the partnership is OUTFRONT's ability to combine premium outdoor media inventory with creative production and campaign optimization. Through OUTFRONT Studios, the company's in-house creative team, advertisers can adapt existing television, digital, and social media assets or develop original creative specifically designed for outdoor environments, including transit stations, roadside displays, and stadium-adjacent locations.
This integrated approach reflects broader changes in sports advertising. Modern sponsorships increasingly extend beyond logo placement inside venues, incorporating dynamic creative optimization, audience targeting, experiential marketing, and cross-channel storytelling that follows consumers throughout their daily routines.
According to Stacy Minero, Chief Marketing Experience Officer at OUTFRONT, the partnership recognizes that fan engagement begins long before kickoff and continues after the game concludes. By combining outdoor media with real-time creative execution, brands gain greater flexibility to capitalize on sports and cultural moments as they happen.
For the New York Jets, the agreement strengthens opportunities for commercial partners to build deeper relationships with fans throughout the broader New York metropolitan area. Jeff Fernandez, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Ventures, noted that extending sponsorships beyond game days enables advertisers to create more meaningful audience interactions while expanding campaign reach across regional communities.
The partnership launches during an active period for global sports marketing. Following this summer's FIFA World Cup, where OUTFRONT supported more than 115 advertising campaigns across 11 U.S. host cities, attention is now shifting toward the upcoming college football and NFL seasons. Brands increasingly seek integrated media strategies that connect live events with broader consumer engagement across transportation networks, retail destinations, and urban environments.
To introduce the collaboration, former Jets linebacker Bart Scott hosted a launch event at Penn Station, featuring a "Back to Football" campaign showcasing the new partnership. The activation demonstrates how experiential marketing continues to complement digital advertising by creating memorable in-person brand experiences that generate additional exposure through social media and earned media coverage.
The announcement also builds on OUTFRONT's broader investment in sports and cultural partnerships. The company has expanded its sports marketing capabilities through executive leadership appointments, partnerships with Formula E, and collaborations with organizing committees supporting major sporting events in cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The strategy reflects a wider transformation across the advertising industry. Brands increasingly view Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising as an extension of omnichannel marketing rather than a standalone media format. Advances in automation, real-time content management, audience measurement, and programmatic media buying are enabling advertisers to synchronize outdoor campaigns with digital channels for greater relevance and measurable performance.
According to Gartner, marketers continue investing in customer experience technologies that connect physical and digital engagement across multiple touchpoints. Meanwhile, Statista projects sustained growth in global digital out-of-home advertising as brands prioritize data-driven, contextually relevant campaigns that deliver measurable audience impact.
Competition within the DOOH sector is also accelerating as media companies integrate AI-powered audience analytics, automation, and dynamic creative optimization into advertising platforms. Technology ecosystems from companies including Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and Salesforce increasingly support omnichannel campaign management, enabling marketers to coordinate customer experiences across online, mobile, retail, and outdoor environments.
For enterprise marketers, the OUTFRONT–New York Jets partnership illustrates how sports sponsorships are evolving into integrated media ecosystems. Rather than focusing solely on stadium visibility, brands are leveraging data, creative technology, and connected advertising platforms to engage audiences across every stage of the fan journey. As live sports remain one of the few consistently high-engagement media environments, partnerships that combine experiential marketing with digital out-of-home innovation are expected to play an increasingly important role in future advertising strategies.
Sports marketing is undergoing rapid digital transformation as brands adopt omnichannel engagement strategies that extend beyond traditional venue sponsorships. Digital out-of-home advertising, experiential activations, creator marketing, and real-time campaign optimization are becoming core components of modern sports partnerships.
At the same time, advances in AI, audience analytics, and programmatic DOOH technology are enabling advertisers to deliver more contextual, measurable, and personalized campaigns across physical environments. This convergence is positioning outdoor media as an integral part of enterprise marketing and advertising technology ecosystems.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
Artificial intelligence is reshaping enterprise finance as organizations modernize billing, revenue recognition, and monetization strategies for subscription and usage-based business models. Reflecting this shift, BillingPlatform has expanded its executive leadership team with three senior appointments aimed at accelerating its AI-native platform strategy and strengthening its position in the fast-growing usage-to-cash software market.
Enterprise software vendors are increasingly investing in artificial intelligence to modernize financial operations, particularly as subscription services, consumption-based pricing, and digital business models become more prevalent. Against this backdrop, BillingPlatform has announced three executive appointments that reinforce its long-term strategy around AI-native monetization and enterprise billing automation.
The company has appointed Steven Springsteel as Chief Financial Officer, Rob Zwiebach as Chief Product Officer, and Chris King as Chief Customer Officer. Together, the executives will lead financial strategy, product innovation, and customer success as BillingPlatform scales its AI-native usage-to-cash platform for global enterprises.
The appointments come as enterprise organizations increasingly seek modern billing infrastructure capable of supporting dynamic pricing models, subscription services, usage-based billing, revenue recognition, and AI-driven financial operations. Traditional billing systems often struggle to accommodate today's evolving business models, creating demand for cloud-native platforms that integrate finance, operations, and customer lifecycle management.
BillingPlatform's platform is built around a unified metadata architecture that combines metering, billing, invoicing, revenue recognition, and financial governance within a single operating model. The company says its AI-native architecture enables enterprise finance teams to configure, analyze, and manage complex billing operations using conversational interfaces, reducing operational complexity while improving scalability.
According to MGI Research, the usage-to-cash category has become one of the most strategically important segments within enterprise software as organizations adopt increasingly flexible monetization models. BillingPlatform reports more than 500% revenue growth over the past five years, with enterprise customers including J.P. Morgan, DIRECTV, Instacart, FIS, CCC Intelligent Solutions, Panera, Carrier, and Clear Channel.
The newly expanded leadership team reflects expertise spanning enterprise finance, product development, and customer operations.
Steven Springsteel joins BillingPlatform following his role as Chief Financial Officer at Recurly, where he gained extensive experience in subscription billing technologies. Across a career spanning more than three decades, he has held executive leadership positions at BetterWorks, MetricStream, Actian Corporation, Liquid Robotics, and MarkLogic, leading IPOs, acquisitions, and large-scale financing initiatives.
As Chief Financial Officer, Springsteel will oversee the company's financial strategy while supporting continued global expansion. His experience in subscription monetization aligns closely with BillingPlatform's focus on AI-powered enterprise billing and revenue management.
Rob Zwiebach assumes the role of Chief Product Officer after leading financial product management at Workday, where he directed the roadmap for financial management software used by thousands of enterprise organizations. Before Workday, he spent 17 years at Oracle, leading multiple enterprise financial application initiatives.
His background in enterprise financial systems is expected to support continued development of BillingPlatform's AI-native product roadmap, particularly as organizations seek billing platforms capable of adapting to increasingly complex pricing structures, global compliance requirements, and real-time financial analytics.
Chris King joins as Chief Customer Officer following leadership roles at Medidata Solutions, Salesforce, and Zuora, where he led customer success, consulting, and enterprise transformation initiatives. His appointment reflects growing emphasis on customer lifecycle management as enterprise software vendors compete not only on product capabilities but also on long-term customer outcomes and platform adoption.
The leadership expansion mirrors broader enterprise software trends. Organizations are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence, automation, and predictive analytics into financial operations to reduce manual processes, improve revenue visibility, and support faster business decision-making. AI-powered billing platforms are also becoming critical infrastructure for companies offering subscription, consumption-based, and hybrid pricing models.
Major enterprise technology providers including Oracle, Workday, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google continue investing in AI-driven financial applications, workflow automation, and intelligent business operations. The emergence of AI-native monetization platforms reflects this broader industry movement toward autonomous finance and conversational enterprise software.
According to Gartner, finance organizations are accelerating investment in AI-enabled enterprise applications to improve operational efficiency, automate repetitive workflows, and strengthen financial decision-making. IDC similarly forecasts continued growth in enterprise AI spending as organizations modernize core business platforms and digital finance infrastructure.
For enterprise finance and revenue operations teams, BillingPlatform's executive appointments underscore the increasing importance of leadership expertise in product innovation, customer success, and financial strategy as AI transforms enterprise monetization. As businesses adopt more flexible pricing models and digital revenue streams, AI-native usage-to-cash platforms are expected to play a larger role in helping organizations simplify billing complexity while supporting scalable growth.
The enterprise monetization market is evolving rapidly as organizations transition from traditional licensing models to subscription, consumption-based, and hybrid pricing strategies. AI-native billing platforms are emerging as strategic infrastructure that connects metering, pricing, invoicing, revenue recognition, analytics, and customer lifecycle management within unified financial ecosystems.
At the same time, enterprise software vendors are embedding conversational AI, automation, and predictive intelligence into finance operations to reduce manual work, improve compliance, and accelerate revenue realization. The convergence of AI and financial operations is creating new opportunities for enterprises to modernize monetization at scale.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
Artificial intelligence is becoming a strategic priority for colleges and universities seeking to improve student engagement, fundraising, and operational efficiency. Reflecting that momentum, Gravyty has expanded its executive leadership team by appointing Margaret Onisick Lawless as Chief Product and Technology Officer and Brandon Stec as Senior Vice President of Marketing, reinforcing its focus on AI-powered engagement solutions for higher education institutions.
As higher education institutions increasingly adopt artificial intelligence to modernize student engagement and institutional advancement, technology providers are strengthening their leadership teams to support the next phase of innovation. Gravyty, an AI-powered engagement platform for higher education, has announced two executive appointments aimed at accelerating product development and expanding market growth.
The company has named Margaret Onisick Lawless as Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) and Brandon Stec as Senior Vice President of Marketing. Together, the executives will help advance Gravyty's unified AI platform, which supports student success, alumni engagement, fundraising, institutional advancement, and collegiate athletics.
The appointments come as universities face increasing pressure to improve enrollment, enhance student retention, strengthen alumni relationships, and operate more efficiently with limited resources. Artificial intelligence has emerged as an important technology for addressing these challenges by automating routine processes, delivering personalized engagement, and providing data-driven insights throughout the education lifecycle.
Lawless brings more than 25 years of experience leading product and technology organizations serving education and mission-driven institutions. Prior to joining Gravyty, she served as Chief Product and Technology Officer at TeachTown, where she oversaw engineering, information technology, curriculum, product management, marketing, and customer support. Her previous leadership roles at Blackbaud, Relias Learning, and Intelerad focused on scaling enterprise software platforms, modernizing product portfolios, and improving customer experiences.
As CPTO, Lawless will lead Gravyty's product strategy and technology roadmap while aligning product innovation with customer needs and long-term business priorities. Her responsibilities include advancing AI-powered solutions that help institutions create stronger engagement across the student journey while maximizing technology investments.
The company has also appointed Brandon Stec as Senior Vice President of Marketing. Stec brings more than a decade of experience leading marketing, demand generation, and growth strategies across education technology, nonprofit technology, and professional sports organizations. Most recently, he held senior marketing leadership positions at Frontline Education, helping K–12 institutions modernize operations and improve stakeholder engagement. Earlier in his career, he supported digital marketing initiatives for Community Brands following its acquisition of Gesture.
Stec will oversee Gravyty's global marketing organization, including brand strategy, demand generation, communications, and go-to-market initiatives. His role is expected to strengthen market awareness of Gravyty's AI platform while helping colleges and universities better understand how artificial intelligence can improve engagement with students, alumni, donors, and athletic supporters.
The leadership expansion reflects broader trends across the education technology sector. Institutions are moving beyond isolated digital transformation initiatives toward integrated platforms capable of supporting the entire education lifecycle—from prospective student recruitment and enrollment to fundraising, alumni relations, and lifelong engagement.
Gravyty's platform is designed around this connected approach, combining AI-powered engagement tools that enable personalized communications, automate repetitive workflows, and provide actionable insights for institutional advancement teams. Rather than deploying separate solutions for fundraising, student engagement, and alumni relations, universities increasingly seek unified platforms that centralize data and improve operational efficiency.
According to Gartner, artificial intelligence is becoming a strategic investment across education and enterprise sectors as organizations prioritize automation, predictive analytics, and personalized digital experiences. IDC also projects continued growth in AI software spending as institutions accelerate digital transformation initiatives to improve productivity and user engagement.
Competition within the higher education technology market continues to intensify as software providers incorporate generative AI, intelligent automation, and predictive analytics into their platforms. Enterprise technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and Adobe continue expanding AI capabilities that support customer engagement, workflow automation, and data intelligence, influencing innovation across education technology providers as well.
For colleges and universities, AI is increasingly viewed not simply as an operational efficiency tool but as a means of building stronger relationships throughout the education lifecycle. Personalized communications, predictive engagement models, automated fundraising outreach, and intelligent student support are becoming central components of institutional success strategies.
Gravyty's executive appointments underscore this evolving market direction. By strengthening leadership across both product development and go-to-market strategy, the company is positioning itself to expand its AI platform while helping higher education institutions adopt technologies that improve engagement, increase operational efficiency, and deliver more personalized experiences for students, alumni, donors, and other stakeholders.
Higher education technology is rapidly embracing artificial intelligence to improve student recruitment, retention, fundraising, alumni engagement, and operational efficiency. Institutions are investing in integrated AI platforms that unify engagement across the entire education lifecycle rather than deploying disconnected point solutions.
The market is also witnessing greater convergence between education technology, CRM platforms, marketing automation, and predictive analytics. AI-powered engagement platforms are enabling colleges and universities to deliver personalized experiences while optimizing institutional resources and strengthening long-term stakeholder relationships.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
As marketers rethink the balance between digital advertising and physical customer engagement, direct marketing is making a notable comeback. Quad has introduced Direct, a Quad Agency, a new full-service marketing agency designed to help brands unify audience intelligence, creative validation, production, and campaign measurement as businesses increasingly invest in personalized direct mail and omnichannel marketing strategies.
After years of enterprise marketing budgets shifting toward digital channels, direct marketing is regaining momentum as brands seek new ways to capture consumer attention in an increasingly crowded AI-driven media landscape. Responding to this trend, Quad/Graphics, Inc. has launched Direct, a Quad Agency, a dedicated agency focused on modernizing direct marketing through data intelligence, automation, and integrated campaign execution.
The launch reflects growing enterprise demand for marketing strategies that combine physical and digital customer experiences rather than treating them as separate channels. As consumers become exposed to larger volumes of AI-generated content and digital advertising, marketers are revisiting direct mail and personalized print experiences to improve engagement, increase response rates, and strengthen brand recall.
Unlike traditional direct mail providers, Direct positions itself as an end-to-end direct marketing partner that integrates campaign planning, audience targeting, creative testing, production, logistics, and analytics into a single operating model. The agency is intended to help enterprise marketers streamline campaign execution while improving measurement and operational efficiency.
At the center of the offering is Quad's proprietary marketing technology ecosystem. The agency combines audience intelligence powered by a household data platform covering approximately 97% of the U.S. adult population, pre-market creative validation through the company's Accelerated Marketing Insights (AMI) platform, automated direct mail workflows using At-Home Connect, in-house production capabilities, postal optimization technologies, and end-to-end campaign analytics.
This integrated approach reflects a broader shift occurring across the MarTech landscape. Enterprise marketing teams increasingly seek connected marketing infrastructure that links customer data, creative development, production, measurement, and optimization within unified workflows. Rather than managing multiple disconnected vendors, organizations are prioritizing platforms capable of orchestrating campaigns across both physical and digital channels.
According to Joel Quadracci, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Quad, effective marketing increasingly depends on integrating physical and digital experiences to capture attention and drive customer action. The launch of Direct brings together capabilities the company has developed over several decades into a dedicated agency model focused exclusively on direct marketing.
The agency will be led by Carl Fischer, Vice President of Direct Marketing, who brings more than 25 years of experience in audience intelligence, direct marketing strategy, and campaign optimization. Fischer joined Quad through its acquisition of Realyze, a marketing insights company whose technology now powers Quad's AMI platform. His previous experience also includes leadership at CFM Direct, later acquired by Merkle, along with client-side marketing leadership within the insurance industry.
The timing of the launch aligns with growing industry forecasts supporting renewed investment in direct marketing. Research from Winterberry Group projects that the U.S. addressable direct marketing industry will expand from $525 billion in 2026 to approximately $700 billion by 2029, driven by increasing demand for personalized, triggered, and data-driven marketing programs.
Consumer preferences also appear to support the trend. According to The Harris Poll, 69% of consumers say print media influenced their brand selection during the past year. Interest is particularly strong among younger demographics, with 72% of Generation Z and Millennial consumers indicating they would like brands to create more personalized experiences through direct mail.
Triggered direct mail is also gaining traction as organizations move away from large-scale batch campaigns toward automated, customer-specific communications. Data from the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General suggests triggered direct mail campaigns can generate two to three times higher response rates than traditional batch mailings and could account for up to 30% of total direct mail volume by 2029.
The launch comes as marketing leaders increasingly adopt omnichannel marketing strategies that coordinate digital advertising, email, mobile engagement, direct mail, and customer relationship management into unified customer journeys. Major enterprise technology providers including Salesforce, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft continue expanding AI-powered marketing automation and customer engagement capabilities, enabling marketers to personalize experiences across multiple touchpoints.
According to Gartner, marketing organizations are prioritizing investments that improve customer engagement, campaign measurement, and operational efficiency through integrated marketing technologies. Meanwhile, Forrester continues to emphasize customer experience and cross-channel orchestration as critical drivers of modern marketing performance.
For enterprise marketers, Quad's launch of Direct highlights an important shift in marketing strategy. Rather than viewing direct mail as a legacy channel, organizations increasingly recognize physical marketing as part of a broader, data-driven customer engagement strategy. As AI reshapes digital advertising and competition for consumer attention intensifies, integrated direct marketing platforms may become an increasingly valuable component of enterprise MarTech stacks.
Direct marketing is evolving into a technology-enabled discipline powered by first-party data, AI-driven audience intelligence, marketing automation, and advanced campaign analytics. Enterprise brands are increasingly integrating direct mail with digital channels to deliver consistent omnichannel customer experiences.
The resurgence of direct marketing reflects growing demand for measurable physical engagement in an era dominated by digital advertising. Organizations are investing in connected MarTech ecosystems that unify customer data, campaign orchestration, creative testing, and marketing measurement across online and offline touchpoints.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
As digital advertising grows more complex and AI reshapes campaign management, marketers are increasingly seeking platforms that automate more than just content creation. GIGR, a San Francisco-based AI startup, has introduced Playad Autopilot, a multi-agent artificial intelligence platform designed to automate the entire performance marketing workflow—from competitive research and creative production to campaign optimization and continuous learning.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming performance marketing from a manual, channel-specific discipline into a continuous cycle of experimentation, optimization, and automated decision-making. Against this backdrop, GIGR has launched Playad Autopilot, an AI-native performance marketing platform that uses a multi-agent architecture to automate end-to-end campaign execution for enterprise marketing teams and digital advertisers.
The global launch comes at a time when worldwide advertising expenditure is projected to exceed $1 trillion in 2026, underscoring the growing complexity of digital marketing. As brands expand campaigns across social media, search, retail media, connected TV (CTV), mobile applications, and commerce platforms, marketers face increasing pressure to produce more creative assets, analyze larger volumes of performance data, and optimize campaigns at greater speed.
Playad Autopilot aims to streamline that process by bringing multiple stages of the marketing lifecycle into a single AI-powered workflow. The platform analyzes product information, audience insights, competitive intelligence, historical creative performance, and campaign data before generating advertising hypotheses, producing creative assets, preparing campaigns for launch, evaluating results, and recommending the next optimization cycle.
Unlike standalone generative AI tools that focus primarily on creating images, videos, or marketing copy, Playad is built around what GIGR describes as the complete performance marketing loop. Its multi-agent AI architecture assigns specialized agents to distinct functions such as market research, creative ideation, campaign setup, performance analysis, and optimization, enabling the system to automate workflows that traditionally require multiple software platforms and cross-functional teams.
This approach addresses a growing operational challenge within enterprise marketing organizations. Many large enterprises rely on more than 100 marketing applications spanning customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation, analytics, creative production, media buying, attribution, and reporting. The resulting fragmentation often slows campaign execution, increases operational costs, and makes it difficult for organizations to capture institutional knowledge from previous marketing experiments.
Playad Autopilot seeks to reduce this complexity by consolidating research, creative production, campaign management, and performance learning into a unified environment. Marketers provide campaign objectives, audience information, brand context, and existing campaign data, after which AI agents generate testing strategies, produce multiple creative variations, prepare launch-ready assets, and recommend future optimization opportunities based on campaign outcomes.
One of the platform's distinguishing capabilities is its continuous learning model. Rather than treating every campaign as an isolated project, Playad builds an evolving knowledge base around each brand, retaining information about audience behavior, previous experiments, creative decisions, and historical performance. This allows future campaigns to benefit from accumulated organizational learning rather than restarting optimization from scratch.
The platform also supports production of multiple advertising formats, including static images, videos, user-generated content (UGC)-style creatives, interactive advertisements, and channel-specific assets. Automated formatting for major advertising platforms is intended to reduce production time while helping marketing teams maintain consistency across multiple digital channels.
According to GIGR, early customer deployments have demonstrated measurable operational improvements. The company says one customer reduced recurring marketing operations from an estimated 20–40 hours per week to approximately one hour, while achieving roughly 1.5x improvement in campaign performance over the same period. Although these figures represent company-reported results rather than independent benchmarks, they illustrate the productivity gains AI automation aims to deliver for performance marketers.
The company also reports early commercial momentum, with Playad Autopilot surpassing 6,000 user accounts during its first month of soft launch. Originally developed as an AI creative generation tool for gaming advertisers, the platform has expanded into an end-to-end marketing operations solution serving organizations across mobile applications, gaming, e-commerce, fintech, and consumer services.
The launch reflects broader industry trends toward agentic AI, where multiple AI agents collaborate to complete complex workflows with minimal human intervention. Major technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Adobe are expanding investments in AI agents, intelligent automation, and predictive marketing capabilities, signaling a shift from content generation toward autonomous marketing operations.
According to Gartner, marketing organizations are increasingly investing in AI-enabled automation to improve productivity, optimize campaign performance, and support data-driven decision-making. McKinsey & Company has also identified marketing and sales as among the enterprise functions expected to generate the greatest value from generative AI adoption through automation, personalization, and accelerated experimentation.
For enterprise marketing teams, the emergence of platforms like Playad Autopilot represents more than another AI content tool. It reflects the growing convergence of marketing automation, creative intelligence, analytics, and workflow orchestration into unified systems capable of continuously learning and improving campaign performance. As digital advertising becomes increasingly algorithmic, the ability to rapidly test, learn, and adapt may become one of the defining competitive advantages for modern performance marketing organizations.
Performance marketing is entering a new phase where AI agents automate entire campaign lifecycles instead of individual marketing tasks. Multi-agent AI systems combine research, creative generation, media preparation, analytics, and optimization into unified workflows that reduce operational complexity and accelerate experimentation.
As enterprise organizations consolidate fragmented MarTech stacks, AI-native marketing platforms are emerging as alternatives to disconnected point solutions. The trend is expected to accelerate as brands seek faster campaign execution, lower operational costs, and continuous performance optimization powered by machine learning.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
As artificial intelligence reshapes customer expectations across the broadband industry, technology providers are placing greater emphasis on customer experience as a competitive differentiator. Plume has responded by creating a new executive role that unifies marketing and customer success, appointing Rebecca Stone as its first Chief Customer and Marketing Officer (CCMO) to oversee the entire customer lifecycle for Internet service providers (ISPs) worldwide.
Customer experience is emerging as one of the most important battlegrounds in the broadband industry, where Internet service providers (ISPs) are increasingly competing on service quality, subscriber engagement, and AI-enabled digital experiences rather than network speeds alone. Reflecting this industry shift, Plume Design, Inc. has appointed Rebecca Stone as its inaugural Chief Customer and Marketing Officer (CCMO), consolidating customer success and marketing under a single executive leadership role.
The newly created position expands Stone's responsibilities beyond marketing after she joined Plume as Chief Marketing Officer in January 2026. As CCMO, she will oversee the complete customer journey—from brand awareness and go-to-market strategy to customer success, retention, and long-term growth—for Plume's global network of more than 450 Internet Service Providers across 58 countries.
The appointment signals a broader strategic move as enterprise technology vendors increasingly align marketing, customer success, and revenue operations to create more connected customer experiences. Rather than operating as separate business functions, organizations are integrating these teams to improve customer retention, accelerate product adoption, and generate recurring revenue through lifecycle engagement.
For Plume, whose subscriber experience platform enables ISPs to deliver AI-powered connectivity and network intelligence, the leadership change reflects growing demand for customer-centric business models in the broadband sector. As AI transforms subscriber expectations, service providers are under increasing pressure to deliver proactive support, personalized digital experiences, and consistently reliable home connectivity.
According to Plume President and CEO Dan Herscovici, the new executive role was created to ensure customers experience consistent engagement throughout every stage of their relationship with the company. The strategy brings together brand development, customer engagement, commercial execution, and post-sale success under a unified leadership structure designed to strengthen partnerships with ISPs globally.
Stone brings more than two decades of enterprise technology marketing experience to the expanded role. Before joining Plume, she served as Senior Vice President of Revenue Marketing and Customer Solutions Marketing at Cisco, where she led strategy and operations for a networking portfolio valued at approximately $50 billion. Earlier in her career, as Chief Marketing Officer at Meraki, she led a global marketing transformation that expanded the organization's marketing capabilities while increasing marketing-sourced pipeline contribution.
Her appointment reflects a wider enterprise trend in which customer success is evolving into a board-level priority. Rather than measuring marketing solely by lead generation, organizations increasingly evaluate success through customer lifetime value, expansion revenue, product adoption, and long-term retention. Integrating customer success with marketing enables companies to create more cohesive customer journeys supported by data-driven decision-making and continuous engagement.
The announcement comes as Plume continues investing in its executive leadership team. The company recently named Peter Wulfraat as Chief Revenue Officer to accelerate commercial growth across its global ISP footprint, reinforcing a strategy focused on deeper partnerships with broadband providers.
The leadership changes also follow several company milestones, including multiple Gold Stevie Awards recognizing Plume's technology innovation and leadership, as well as inclusion among the Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces. While these recognitions highlight organizational momentum, the broader significance lies in the company's continued investment across product innovation, customer experience, and executive leadership as competition intensifies in broadband services.
Industry analysts increasingly view customer experience as a defining differentiator for broadband providers. Parks Associates notes that gigabit broadband penetration in the United States has surpassed 25%, creating a more competitive environment where subscriber retention depends less on raw network speed and more on service quality, managed connectivity, and personalized customer engagement.
Supporting that perspective, Plume recently collaborated with Parks Associates on a white paper examining how AI-driven engagement strategies can improve subscriber retention and reduce customer churn. The company has also introduced research focused on leveraging Wi-Fi 7 technologies to deliver performance outcomes associated with next-generation wireless networking.
The announcement reflects a broader transformation occurring across enterprise technology markets. According to Gartner, customer experience remains one of the primary competitive differentiators influencing enterprise technology investment, while McKinsey & Company has reported that organizations adopting AI across customer-facing operations can significantly improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Competition among enterprise platform providers—including Cisco, Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google—has accelerated investments in AI-powered customer engagement, predictive analytics, and lifecycle marketing capabilities. In this environment, executive roles that unify marketing and customer success are becoming increasingly common as organizations seek to align brand strategy, customer engagement, and commercial outcomes.
For enterprise marketers and technology leaders, Plume's leadership restructuring illustrates how AI is reshaping organizational design alongside technology itself. As customer expectations continue evolving, companies are increasingly recognizing that delivering consistent experiences throughout the customer lifecycle requires closer integration between marketing, customer success, and revenue operations.
Artificial intelligence is redefining customer engagement across the telecommunications and enterprise technology sectors. Broadband providers are investing in AI-powered subscriber experience platforms that enable predictive support, intelligent network management, personalized services, and proactive customer retention.
At the same time, enterprise software companies are restructuring leadership teams to unify marketing, customer success, and revenue operations. This organizational shift reflects growing recognition that long-term business growth depends on delivering connected customer experiences supported by data, automation, and AI-driven insights.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
As enterprise organizations expand partner ecosystems and distributed marketing operations, maintaining brand consistency while enabling localized execution has become a growing challenge. Against this backdrop, OneTouchPoint has been included in Forrester's The Partner Marketing Automation Platforms for B2B Landscape, Q3 2026, highlighting the company's presence in the evolving Partner Marketing Automation Platform (PMAP) market.
The rapid expansion of channel partnerships, franchise networks, and distributed marketing teams is reshaping how enterprises execute campaigns across multiple markets. Recognizing this growing segment, Forrester has included OneTouchPoint in its The Partner Marketing Automation Platforms for B2B Landscape, Q3 2026, a market overview of vendors providing Partner Marketing Automation Platforms (PMAPs) for business-to-business organizations.
The report reflects increasing enterprise demand for platforms that help marketing leaders coordinate campaigns across partners, regional offices, dealers, distributors, and franchise locations without sacrificing brand governance or operational efficiency.
Unlike traditional marketing automation platforms that primarily focus on customer engagement and lead nurturing, Partner Marketing Automation Platforms are designed to help organizations manage co-branded marketing, localized campaign execution, digital asset distribution, partner enablement, and performance measurement across distributed business networks.
For OneTouchPoint, its inclusion aligns with the company's long-term investment in connected marketing operations through its Connected Brand Experience™ strategy and the OTP One platform. The platform is designed to centralize brand governance while enabling localized marketing execution, allowing enterprise organizations to create content at scale, integrate marketing technologies, coordinate production and fulfillment, and measure campaign effectiveness from a unified operating model.
The growing importance of PMAP solutions reflects broader changes in enterprise marketing. Organizations are increasingly managing thousands of partners, resellers, retail locations, and regional marketing teams, each requiring localized campaigns that remain compliant with corporate brand standards. As a result, marketing leaders are prioritizing technologies that combine automation, governance, workflow management, and analytics within a single ecosystem.
According to Christine Kropp, President of Technology Solutions at OneTouchPoint, marketing execution has become significantly more complex as organizations balance centralized governance with localized execution across expanding partner networks. The company views its inclusion in Forrester's market landscape as validation of its continued investment in helping enterprises simplify marketing execution.
The OTP One platform supports several strategic capabilities, including centralized brand governance for distributed organizations, localized marketing execution through a unified operating model, and integration across marketing technology, production, fulfillment, and managed services. This connected approach aims to reduce operational complexity while improving consistency across marketing channels.
OneTouchPoint also emphasizes the challenge of execution rather than content creation alone. According to Casey Rush, Vice President of Marketing at the company, enterprise organizations increasingly require integrated platforms that connect strategy with execution across every partner, location, and customer touchpoint. This reflects a broader market trend in which operational efficiency has become as important as creative performance.
The Partner Marketing Automation Platform category is gaining momentum as enterprises pursue more scalable marketing operations. According to Gartner, marketing organizations continue to consolidate technology investments around platforms that improve workflow automation, operational efficiency, and campaign measurement. At the same time, IDC projects continued enterprise investment in AI-enabled marketing technologies and automation platforms as organizations seek greater productivity and more connected customer experiences.
Competition within the PMAP market also continues to evolve alongside broader enterprise MarTech ecosystems. Vendors increasingly differentiate themselves by combining partner enablement, digital asset management, workflow automation, analytics, content personalization, and integrations with platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, and Google. Rather than relying on standalone marketing tools, enterprises are building interconnected technology stacks that support end-to-end marketing operations across both direct and indirect sales channels.
For enterprise marketing leaders, the significance of Forrester's latest landscape extends beyond vendor visibility. It underscores the growing importance of connected marketing infrastructure capable of supporting distributed execution while maintaining governance, compliance, and measurable business outcomes. As partner ecosystems continue expanding globally, technologies that bridge centralized strategy with localized execution are expected to become increasingly important components of enterprise MarTech strategies.
Partner Marketing Automation Platforms are emerging as a specialized segment within the broader MarTech ecosystem, addressing the operational challenges of distributed marketing. These platforms enable enterprises to standardize brand governance, automate localized campaigns, support channel partners, and improve visibility into marketing performance across complex business networks.
As organizations expand partner ecosystems and omnichannel strategies, PMAP solutions are increasingly integrated with customer relationship management (CRM), digital asset management (DAM), marketing automation, and analytics platforms. The trend reflects a shift toward connected marketing operations that balance centralized control with regional flexibility.
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marketing 6 Aug 2026
Artificial intelligence is increasingly shifting from experimental marketing initiatives to core business operations, and industry recognition is beginning to reflect that transition. At its AI Forum Singapore, Forrester announced Fortinet as the Asia Pacific winner of its inaugural B2B Marketing AI Impact Award, recognizing the cybersecurity company's enterprise-wide use of AI to improve marketing performance, sales alignment, and campaign execution across the region.
Artificial intelligence is becoming a foundational capability for enterprise marketing teams, with organizations moving beyond isolated AI pilots toward integrated, data-driven marketing operations. Reflecting this shift, research and advisory firm Forrester has named Fortinet the Asia Pacific recipient of its inaugural B2B Marketing AI Impact Award, recognizing measurable business outcomes achieved through enterprise AI adoption in marketing.
The award, presented during Forrester AI Forum Singapore, highlights organizations that demonstrate successful implementation of AI to improve marketing effectiveness, operational efficiency, and business performance. Rather than recognizing AI experimentation alone, the program focuses on companies that have embedded artificial intelligence into core marketing workflows and delivered quantifiable results.
Fortinet earned the regional recognition after implementing an AI-powered marketing transformation spanning multiple functions, including audience targeting, lead qualification, content creation, campaign optimization, and marketing performance measurement. The company integrated AI across its marketing operations to improve decision-making, strengthen collaboration between marketing and sales teams, and accelerate campaign execution.
The initiative reflects a broader evolution in B2B marketing, where AI is increasingly supporting end-to-end customer engagement instead of isolated automation tasks. Modern marketing organizations are using AI to identify high-value prospects, personalize customer experiences, optimize campaigns in real time, and generate actionable insights from large volumes of customer and campaign data.
Forrester noted that Fortinet's connected approach to AI adoption distinguished the company from traditional point-solution implementations. By integrating AI throughout the marketing lifecycle, the cybersecurity vendor improved marketing return on investment while enabling closer alignment between sales and marketing teams—a long-standing objective for enterprise revenue organizations.
According to Daryl Wright, Principal Analyst at Forrester, Fortinet demonstrated how a strategic and scalable AI deployment can improve marketing ROI while strengthening collaboration across business functions. The company will share its experience during the marketing leadership track session titled "Hello, GTM Singularity" at Forrester AI Forum Singapore.
Fortinet says its AI strategy centers on embedding intelligence into everyday marketing workflows instead of treating AI as a standalone technology initiative. The approach combines audience intelligence, campaign execution, lead qualification, and performance optimization within existing marketing processes, enabling teams to make faster and more informed business decisions.
For enterprise marketers, this recognition reinforces an emerging best practice: AI delivers the greatest value when integrated into existing marketing technology stacks rather than deployed as disconnected tools. Organizations increasingly expect AI platforms to work alongside customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), analytics solutions, and sales enablement systems to create unified revenue operations.
The announcement also reflects growing investment across the enterprise marketing technology landscape. According to Gartner, organizations continue increasing investments in generative AI and intelligent automation as marketing leaders seek measurable productivity gains and improved customer engagement. Meanwhile, McKinsey & Company has estimated that generative AI could contribute trillions of dollars in annual economic value across industries, with marketing and sales representing one of the largest areas of opportunity.
Competition within AI-powered marketing continues to intensify as enterprise software providers expand AI capabilities across their platforms. Major technology companies including Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, and Google have accelerated investments in generative AI, predictive analytics, customer intelligence, and automated campaign optimization. Against this backdrop, recognition programs such as Forrester's AI Impact Awards increasingly highlight execution quality and measurable business outcomes rather than AI adoption alone.
For B2B organizations across Asia Pacific, Fortinet's achievement illustrates how AI adoption is evolving from technology experimentation toward operational transformation. Enterprise marketing leaders are under increasing pressure to demonstrate measurable business value from AI investments while maintaining governance, data quality, and cross-functional collaboration.
As AI becomes deeply integrated into enterprise marketing operations, success is likely to be defined less by the sophistication of individual models and more by how effectively organizations connect data, people, and workflows to improve business performance. Fortinet's recognition signals that scalable AI adoption, supported by measurable outcomes, is becoming a defining benchmark for modern B2B marketing organizations.
Enterprise AI is rapidly becoming a strategic component of modern MarTech stacks rather than an optional enhancement. AI-powered audience segmentation, predictive lead scoring, content generation, and campaign optimization are increasingly integrated into marketing automation platforms and customer data platforms to improve revenue outcomes.
Industry analysts expect enterprise AI spending to continue accelerating as organizations prioritize measurable ROI, marketing efficiency, and stronger sales alignment. Companies that successfully operationalize AI across marketing workflows are expected to gain competitive advantages in customer acquisition, personalization, and revenue growth.
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