RainFocus™, the next-generation event marketing platform provider, has introduced the Destination Connector, a revolutionary data integration solution with Adobe. By enabling seamless data flow between Adobe Experience Cloud and RainFocus, the Destination Connector transforms customer data into actionable insights, delivering personalized event experiences and driving greater customer loyalty.

Key Features of the Destination Connector

1. Two-Way Data Integration

   • Connects real-time customer behaviors from Adobe Experience Cloud to RainFocus, creating a unified attendee journey.
   • Complements the Source Connector, which maps RainFocus behavioral data back into Adobe Experience Platform.

2. Enhanced Personalization

   • Fuels event personalization with enriched customer profiles.
   • Enables marketers to align year-round sales and marketing data with attendee behavior for tailored experiences.

3. Streamlined Workflows

   • Facilitates seamless collaboration between sales, marketing, and event teams.
   • Provides a constant feedback loop for informed decision-making.

Leadership Insights

• JR Sherman, CEO of RainFocus:

  • "The Destination Connector, paired with the Source Connector, creates a feedback loop that enhances customer engagement and streamlines workflows, ensuring every touchpoint is meaningful."

• Stephen Ratpojanakul, Senior Director, Adobe:

  • "Real-time access to unified customer data through solutions like the Destination Connector fuels personalization at scale, accelerating deal cycles and improving win rates."

Milestones in the Adobe Partnership

1. Adobe Platinum Partnership (2023)

   • RainFocus became a Platinum Partner, solidifying its collaboration with Adobe.

2. Event Support

   • Powered the Adobe Summit 2024, hosting over 10,000 attendees and 250+ sessions.
   • Recognized as ISV Partner of the Year for Technology Innovation at the 2024 Digital Experience Partner Awards.

3. Integration with Adobe Acrobat Sign

   • Streamlined tasks for speakers, exhibitors, and attendees with dynamic, pre-populated contracts, simplifying event participation.

Strategic Impacts

The Destination Connector empowers B2B marketers and event organizers to:

• Leverage First-Party Data: Enhance personalization and improve customer engagement.
• Drive Pipeline Growth: Accelerate acquisition cycles and improve conversion rates.
• Optimize Event Marketing: Deliver high-impact, data-driven event experiences.

The introduction of the Destination Connector reinforces RainFocus’ position as a leader in event marketing innovation. Together with Adobe, RainFocus is setting a new standard for omnichannel marketing, enabling companies to connect, personalize, and optimize every aspect of the customer and attendee journey.

Medallia, Inc., a global leader in customer and employee experience, has appointed Mark Bishof as Chairman and CEO. With over 40 years of leadership experience in software and technology, Bishof succeeds Mike Lipps, who will remain on the Medallia board as part of its next growth phase. Alongside Bishof’s appointment, Medallia has unveiled a revitalized leadership team to accelerate its innovation in customer experience (CX) and AI-driven solutions.

Key Leadership Appointments

1. Mark Bishof – Chairman and CEO

   • Former Chief Business Officer at Qualtrics and CEO at Clarabridge.
   • Pivoted Clarabridge into a leader in conversational AI.
   • Vision: Evolve Medallia’s capabilities from CX surveys to AI-driven automation and conversations.

2. Sid Banerjee – Chief Strategy Officer

   • Former founder of Clarabridge.
   • Focus: Drive Medallia’s AI innovation agenda and support client transformation.

3. Bas Brukx – Chief Financial Officer

   • Previous CFO roles at Therapy Brands, Clarabridge, and Allego.
   • Expertise in financial strategy and operational excellence.

4. Ram Ramachandran – Chief Transformation Officer

   • Former President of CareJourney and CTO at Clarabridge.
   • Role: Lead enterprise transformation initiatives.

5. Karl Knoll – General Counsel

   • Legal expertise from Clarabridge and Womble Bond Dickinson.

6. Jamie Hunter – Chief of Staff and Head of Corporate Development

   • Former COO of Emburse.
   • Role: Enhance organizational efficiency and corporate development.

Strategic Vision

Bishof outlined his goals to leverage Medallia’s legacy of innovation and integrate advanced AI capabilities:

• AI and Automation: Transition from traditional CX surveys to AI-powered conversations for real-time insights.
• Client Success: Help enterprises deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance loyalty, and stay competitive.
• Team Synergy: Unite seasoned industry leaders with Medallia’s core team to redefine the future of CX.

Endorsements

• Orlando Bravo, Founder of Thoma Bravo:

  • "Mark’s leadership and experience position Medallia for unparalleled growth in a transformative industry."

• Mike Lipps, Medallia Board Member:

  • "With Mark at the helm, Medallia is ready to deliver even greater value and innovation for its clients."

Medallia’s new leadership marks an exciting chapter of innovation in CX and AI. With Mark Bishof at the forefront, supported by a world-class team, Medallia is set to redefine how enterprises engage with their customers, leveraging cutting-edge technology to deliver transformative experiences.

Mediaocean and LiveRamp have strengthened their partnership by integrating RampID into Flashtalking, Mediaocean’s creative ad-serving platform. This breakthrough makes Flashtalking the first ad server to fully implement RampID, empowering advertisers to deliver precise, personalized campaigns at scale in a privacy-first digital landscape without relying on third-party cookies.

Key Benefits of RampID Integration

1. Personalized and Optimized Creative

   • Combine contextual signals (e.g., location, weather, or device) with RampID to create hyper-relevant ad experiences across channels.
   • Collaborate with LiveRamp’s premium network to enhance creative impact.

2. Enhanced Measurement and Performance

   • Access accurate attribution and cross-device reach for deeper campaign insights.
   • Improve performance using RampID’s durable, authenticated identity ecosystem.

3. Future-Ready Advertising

   • Seamlessly transition to cookieless workflows, adhering to evolving privacy regulations while maintaining scale and flexibility.

Industry Endorsements

• Princess Cruises leveraged the integration for cookieless personalization.
  • "The combination of identity and creative optimization makes campaigns more effective and future-ready," said Nick Charrow, Director of Media at Princess Cruises.

Strategic Impact

The partnership aligns with Mediaocean and Flashtalking’s mission to bridge creative and media silos, offering advertisers:

• Automation: Simplified workflows for omnichannel advertising.
• Intelligence: Data-driven insights to refine targeting and performance.
• Flexibility: Compatibility with privacy-first standards for sustainable advertising.

Advertisers using Flashtalking can now benefit from global scalability via LiveRamp’s ecosystem, which integrates with 165 demand-side and supply-side platforms.

Expert Commentary

Travis Clinger, Chief Connectivity & Ecosystem Officer at LiveRamp, emphasized the significance of this integration:
“Flashtalking is a leader in ad serving, and with RampID integration, advertisers can deliver personalized messaging at scale while reducing dependency on third-party cookies. This partnership enables precision, performance, and sustainability across digital campaigns.”

The integration of RampID into Flashtalking marks a pivotal moment for advertisers navigating a cookieless world. By combining robust identity solutions with dynamic creative capabilities, Mediaocean and LiveRamp are paving the way for more effective, privacy-first advertising.

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ Edition XX highlights the evolving role of social media as the leading source for trends and cultural moments, surpassing traditional channels like TV and family networks. While this provides a golden opportunity for brands to capture attention, the challenge lies in delivering authentic and personalized experiences amidst a crowded digital landscape.

Key Findings from the 2025 Sprout Social Index

1. Social Media as a Discovery Zone

   • 81% of consumers make impulse purchases driven by social media.
   • 73% would switch to a competitor if a brand fails to respond on social platforms.

2. Consumer Expectations for Brands

   • 93% believe brands should stay culturally relevant, but trend-chasing must be meaningful.
   • Authenticity and originality rank as top traits valued by consumers in brand content.

3. Challenges for Social Teams

   • 94% of practitioners feel the pressure of being "chronically online."
   • Creative fatigue and burnout are significant challenges, exacerbated by the need to stay relevant.

Recommendations for Brands

1. Focus on Authentic, Human-Centric Content

   • Prioritize original, relatable content that aligns with community values.
   • Avoid superficial trend-chasing that may alienate audiences.

2. Invest in Social Customer Care

   • Build personalized 1:1 engagement strategies to foster trust and loyalty.
   • Ensure responsiveness to retain customers and prevent brand switches.

3. Leverage AI to Support Teams

   • 93% of practitioners believe AI can alleviate creative fatigue.
   • AI can help manage repetitive tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategic efforts.

4. Combat Misinformation

   • 93% of consumers expect brands to actively address misinformation.
   • Monitor online conversations to correct falsehoods and maintain brand integrity.

Insights on AI and Marketing

1. Increased AI Investments

   • 48% of marketing leaders plan to boost AI investments in 2025.
   • 97% believe AI proficiency is critical for their teams.

2. AI’s Impact on Team Growth

   • 86% of leaders anticipate hiring more team members despite AI integration.
   • Over half (53%) view AI as a tool to expand team capabilities rather than replace roles.

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ reveals a transformative social media landscape, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, meaningful engagement, and cultural relevance. By focusing on these aspects and leveraging AI, brands can navigate the complexities of the digital ecosystem, strengthen customer relationships, and drive impactful business outcomes.

HUMAN Security, Inc., a leader in cybersecurity, has announced a strategic partnership with TollBit to combat unauthorized AI scraping bots and enable content monetization. This collaboration enhances digital security, enforces compliance with robots.txt directives, and introduces innovative revenue opportunities for publishers.

Key Highlights of the Partnership

1. Enhanced Visibility & Control Over AI Agents

   • Offers deep insights into scraping activity from AI agents.
   • Empowers publishers to make informed decisions to protect digital assets.

2. Advanced Robots.txt Enforcement

   • Enforces robots.txt policies for both known and unknown bots.
   • Prevents unauthorized scraping or summarization of content.

3. Seamless Monetization Through AI Paywalls

   • Implements a paywall requiring AI bots to pay per scrape.
   • Supports enterprise-level partnerships with AI developers for consistent revenue streams.

4. Blocking Unwanted Scrapers

   • Mitigates unauthorized bots while allowing compliant AI agents to access content ad-free.
   • Reduces invalid traffic (IVT), ensuring higher content integrity.

5. Adaptive Learning for Real-Time Protection

   • Continuously tracks and labels AI agents across web properties.
   • Enhances detection feedback loops for quicker response to unauthorized activity.

Statements from Leadership

• Apurva Joshi, HUMAN:
  "This partnership advances our capabilities to control and monetize unwanted traffic while empowering publishers to unlock new revenue streams.”

• Toshit Panigrahi, TollBit:
  "We aim to help content owners monitor, manage, and monetize their data, ensuring sustainable AI scraping practices."

The HUMAN-TollBit partnership is a game-changer for content-driven enterprises, combining cutting-edge bot management with AI monetization infrastructure. By empowering publishers with visibility, control, and monetization tools, this collaboration not only combats malicious scraping but also transforms AI-driven content access into a sustainable revenue model.

Innovid, a leader in advertising solutions, has unveiled Harmony Reach & Frequency for publishers in collaboration with Roku, the top TV streaming platform in the U.S. This breakthrough initiative focuses on optimizing frequency management and campaign effectiveness, offering unique advantages for publishers and advertisers alike.

Key Highlights of Harmony Reach & Frequency

1. Groundbreaking Frequency Management Solution

   • Harmony Reach & Frequency is the first holistic tool for managing ad frequency across CTV and digital video.
   • Now integrated with Roku, it helps publishers enhance the value of their ad inventory by reaching untapped audiences.

2. Advantages for Advertisers

   • Incremental Reach: Suppresses already saturated households, targeting net-new viewers.
   • Maximized Campaign Effectiveness: Reduces waste, increasing ROI on ad inventory.
   • Enhanced Frequency Management: Optimizes ad exposure to deliver measurable outcomes.

3. Strategic Insights via Roku Data Cloud

   • Roku’s integration allows seamless signal sharing, improving audience targeting precision.
   • Alignment of supply and demand-side goals enriches the overall ad experience for viewers and advertisers.

Additional Innovations in Partnership

• Harmony Direct:

  • Simplifies workflows for non-biddable TV streaming media by eliminating inefficiencies like additional tech layers and fees.
  • Roku was the first publisher to adopt this innovative feature, showcasing its commitment to simplifying the CTV ecosystem.

• Harmony Conversions:

  • Provides near real-time conversion insights, enabling publishers to refine in-flight campaigns.
  • Features include identifying high-performing attributes (e.g., geo, genre) and suppressing impressions for converted households.

Statements from Key Stakeholders

• Miles Fisher, Roku:
  “This partnership underscores our commitment to advancing the TV streaming ecosystem and aligning advertiser-viewer goals.”

• Guy Kuperman, Innovid:
  “Frequency management is an untapped opportunity for publishers to differentiate themselves and improve the CTV ecosystem.”

The partnership between Innovid and Roku exemplifies a shared vision of optimizing the CTV ecosystem. By integrating Harmony Reach & Frequency and Harmony Conversions, the two companies aim to revolutionize advertising precision, efficiency, and outcomes for publishers and advertisers alike.

NextRoll, a San Francisco-based marketing technology company, has partnered with Audigent, part of Experian and a leader in data activation, curation, and identity platforms, to deliver a groundbreaking solution within Google Privacy Sandbox. Together, they’ve activated Audigent Interest Groups on the AdRoll DSP, providing an innovative, privacy-first approach to audience targeting without relying on third-party cookies.

Innovation in Google Privacy Sandbox

This partnership unlocks a new use case for Google's Protected Audience API (PAAPI), enabling the creation of Interest Groups using Data Management Platform (DMP) data and activation on Demand Side Platforms (DSPs). This privacy-forward audience solution helps brands maintain advertising performance while adhering to the privacy principles of Google Privacy Sandbox.

Roli Saxena, CEO of NextRoll, shared:
"We are committed to protecting user privacy while helping brands maintain advertising performance, and the solutions we've built within Privacy Sandbox will allow advertisers to retain upper funnel and retargeting tactics while keeping privacy intact. Our hope is that this breakthrough use case encourages industry participants to collaborate and test so we can continue to improve the utility of the Privacy Sandbox APIs."

Initial Test and Results

The first test involved NextRoll connecting over one billion browsers to an Interest Group across Audigent's network of publisher websites. Over a two-week campaign, the Interest Group was targeted across Privacy Sandbox inventory, delivering nearly five million impressions across 42,000 domains. This successful test provided insights into the technical workflows and system requirements necessary to activate Interest Groups at scale.

Industry Insights

Jake Abraham, Chief Commercial Officer of Audigent, commented on the collaboration:
"Audigent is a leader in audience aggregation and segmentation, delivering both at scale to advertisers. With Google representing such a foundational part of the industry, understanding how to activate within PAAPI is a priority. Our work with NextRoll has shown we can deliver scale when targeting with Interest Groups, and marks a positive step forward for the viability of this approach."

NextRoll has played a pivotal role in the development of PAAPI, contributing recommendations to W3C and partnering with IAB and Google Chrome teams to enhance testing and improve the utility of Privacy Sandbox APIs. They’ve also developed a new bidder that enables performance advertising across Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox.

Audigent’s Reach and Future Potential

With a scaled DMP footprint spanning over two million websites and a daily reach of more than 400 million Chrome browsers, Audigent provides the necessary data networks to build actionable, scaled Interest Groups. The partnership with NextRoll allows them to lead audience activation in an evolving ecosystem, particularly as the availability of third-party cookies in Chrome continues to evolve.

InfluxData, the creator of the leading time series platform InfluxDB, has appointed Pat Walsh as the new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Walsh brings a wealth of experience in open source innovation, product management, and go-to-market execution, with a successful track record in scaling businesses and fostering robust developer communities.

InfluxData's Strategic Focus and Leadership Vision

Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData, shared his thoughts on the appointment:
"Real-time systems are reshaping industries, and managing time series data with precision and scale has never been more critical. InfluxDB sits at the center of this opportunity, empowering developers to turn the relentless stream of data into innovation. Bringing Pat on board at this key moment for InfluxData ensures we have the leadership to scale our business, strengthen our developer communities, and continue to drive market leadership in this fast-growing space."

Pat Walsh's Proven Leadership Experience

Pat Walsh joins InfluxData from Privitar, a company acquired by Informatica, where he served as CMO and led the global go-to-market strategy, including demand generation, product marketing, strategic communications, and branding. Before Privitar, he held CMO roles at Tufin, guiding the company through a successful IPO in 2019, and worked in key marketing and product leadership roles at Core Security and Talend (acquired by Qlik). His broad expertise in scaling data management platforms makes him an ideal fit to lead InfluxData’s marketing initiatives.

Focus on InfluxDB 3 and the Future of Time Series Data

As CMO, Pat Walsh will lead the introduction of InfluxDB 3, a groundbreaking advancement in time series database technology. InfluxDB 3 is designed to handle the most complex time series data challenges with new features such as:

• Unlimited Cardinality
• High-Speed Ingest
• Real-Time Querying
• Advanced Data Compression

These features are poised to deliver significant cost savings and provide unmatched performance in a single datastore, empowering businesses to tackle demanding workloads with speed and precision.

Pat Walsh's Excitement for InfluxData's Future

Walsh expressed his enthusiasm about joining InfluxData:
"InfluxData is at a pivotal moment, redefining what’s possible with time series data. I'm excited to join InfluxData, a true category leader built on engineering excellence in solving time series challenges. The potential for InfluxDB 3 is immense, and we’re just beginning to unlock its impact across the market."