The self-serve commerce media activation platform debuts integration with Salsify; adds dynamic video formats and new customization options for brands.

Jon Niermann steps down as CEO to focus on Distribution and Revenue – Remains on Board

Justis Kao Appointed as Interim CEO

Bruce Cassidy to become Executive Chairman of the Board

Loop Media to Explore Potential Strategic Alternatives and Financing Opportunities

Loop Media, Inc., a leading multichannel streaming CTV platform that provides curated music videos, sports, news, premium entertainment channels and digital signage for businesses, announced today that Jon Niermann is stepping down as Chief Executive Officer and the Board has unanimously appointed Justis Kao as Interim CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Kao has served in various roles in the Company, including Chief Communications Officer, Chief of Staff, Investor Relations and, most recently, Chief Content Officer. Mr. Niermann will remain a member of the Board and management team, maintaining a strategic focus on revenue and distribution. In addition, Bruce Cassidy has been appointed Executive Chairman of the Board. 

“While I have loved leading our team since I co-founded the Company, it’s time for a change of leadership for the Company and shift in focus for my role,” said Mr. Niermann. “Going forward, I feel I can provide more support to Loop in a customer-focused revenue-generating capacity. My main goal has always been to get a return for our shareholders while growing a meaningful media-tech company that will leave a lasting footprint. Justis knows the Company very well and has my and the organization’s full support and confidence. I look forward to driving growth in revenue and distribution.”

Bruce Cassidy, Executive Chairman of Loop Media, noted, “I continue to have tremendous confidence in the future opportunities for the Company and believe in its success. We believe that we have been ahead of the curve for this industry and should be well-positioned moving forward to achieve the type of growth that we originally set out to accomplish. We are fortunate to have some very talented members on our team. On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Jon for his visionary leadership and unrelenting dedication to Loop Media. Justis understands the Company, its people and the opportunity. He has been instrumental in leading a number of initiatives over the years and I have the utmost confidence in him to help lead Loop Media into its next phase of growth,” he concluded.

“I’m excited to step in as Interim CEO,” said Mr. Kao. “I’ve worked closely with Jon for over a decade now and know that the focus he can bring to revenue and distribution will continue to support us well. The rapport that our entire team and I have built over the last 10 years, since the start of Loop Media, gives me great confidence in leading the next critical stage of the Company’s development.”

In addition to Mr. Niermann stepping down from CEO, Mr. Kao being appointed Interim CEO, and Mr. Cassidy being named as Executive Chairman, Loop Media announced today that Bob Gruters, Chief Revenue Officer of the Company, has resigned after three years to pursue another business opportunity outside of the Company. Mr. Gruters has agreed to remain an advisor to the Company.

Randy Greenberg, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, who joined Loop Media in July 2023, will be stepping down from those roles and leaving the Company to pursue other business opportunities.

The Board of Directors and senior management team conducted an operational and cost-cutting review across the Company which it believes will provide the framework to making the Company more competitive in the CTV for business/DOOH industry. The Board and management team determined that executing operational changes is prudent to accelerate Loop Media’s potential path to break even and operating profitability. As a result of the review, the Company has laid off and furloughed certain employees and has implemented salary reductions to create efficiencies and lower the Company’s overhead. These cost-cutting measures include senior management salary reductions and are expected to result in an annual aggregate cash payroll reduction of approximately $2 million.

Loop Media also intends to explore potential strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value, as well as evaluate potential financing opportunities to help advance its business goals.

PremiumMedia360, the industry leader in media data automation solutions, is thrilled to announce the appointment of Richard Radzik as the company's new Vice President Sales / Agency Solutions. This strategic addition to the leadership team underscores PremiumMedia360's commitment to accelerating growth and enhancing partnerships within the media and advertising agency landscape.

With a storied career that spans over three decades in the media and advertising industry, Radzik brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of driving revenue growth, fostering long-term client relationships, and leading high-performing sales teams. His deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing today's media agencies makes him uniquely qualified to expand the agency footprint for PremiumMedia360's best-in-class solutions for both Digital and Linear media. 

Prior to joining PremiumMedia360, Radzik spent the vast part of his career with Kantar/BVS, where he was instrumental in developing innovative sales strategies and initiatives that significantly increased revenue and market share. His strategic vision and passion for leveraging technology to solve complex media buying and planning challenges have been hallmarks of his career.

As VP of Agency Sales, Radzik will focus on expanding the company's footprint in the media industry, introducing its groundbreaking media data automation solutions to a broader audience, and strengthening relationships with key agency partners.

"We are excited to welcome Richard to our executive team," says Robert DeGennaro, CEO of PremiumMedia360. "His extensive experience and deep industry knowledge will be invaluable as we continue to automate the media data landscape. With Richard at the helm of our agency sales efforts, we are poised for even greater success."

"I am thrilled to join PremiumMedia360 at such a pivotal time," says Radzik. "The company's mission of transforming media data automation and delivering unparalleled efficiencies and insights to media agencies and their clients is something I have always admired.  I look forward to working with the team to drive growth and deliver exceptional value to our agency partners."

The acquisition of global mobile app intelligence company data.ai furthers Sensor Tower's goal of measuring the world's digital economy 

Sensor Tower, a leading provider of data on the digital economy, announced today that it has acquired market intelligence platform data.ai for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition will allow Sensor Tower to further broaden and create an industry standard solution in marketing intelligence.

The acquisition of data.ai is a significant evolution for Sensor Tower as it represents an expansion of its customer base to include major brands such as Microsoft, Sky and Bandai Namco which already use data.ai's mobile app intelligence tools. This is a strategic move for Sensor Tower, which is already a go-to provider for top brands, agencies, gaming publishers and investors, to significantly expand its APAC presence and work with additional Fortune 500 companies. It is expected that the combination of Sensor Tower and data.ai will unlock significant gains in data accuracy, global coverage, and breadth of product offerings to its combined 2,000+ enterprise customers.

"Today we celebrate the beginning of a new and exciting chapter, not only for Sensor Tower, but for the digital marketing and mobile app intelligence industry," said Oliver Yeh, CEO of Sensor Tower. "We have long admired data.ai's stellar product and high quality team. The acquisition will allow Sensor Tower to broaden its audience and expand its best in class offerings to any company that participates in the digital economy – helping bridge the gap between companies and consumers."

This announcement comes at a moment when consumers are spending an increasing amount of time socializing, playing, watching, and shopping across many digital channels. In 2023 consumers spent $130 billion globally on in-app purchases; trends only expected to increase within the digital economy as major platforms such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Instagram, and Snap invest heavily in user acquisition, retention, and monetization.

Sensor Tower's acquisition of data.ai follows its rapid growth and its successful acquisition of Pathmatics in 2021, which expanded its buyer personas and customer base by providing increased visibility into brand activity and advertising spend in the broader digital landscape. Sensor Tower's digital intelligence suite is powered by unique and differentiated first-party panel data, with insights delivered to customers on an annual subscription model.

"Since 2010, data.ai has helped some of the finest brands and publishers globally to optimize their mobile performance," said Ted Krantz, CEO at data.ai. "This evolution offers the best path to innovation, more insights across more channels, and ultimately, more value derived by clients."

Beyond the platform infrastructure and customer integration, Sensor Tower's leadership team will stay intact and manage the combined company. Yeh said, "As we unite Sensor Tower and data.ai, we are eager to incorporate new team members. This merger also necessitates optimizing our team structure. We are committed to providing assistance and resources to our departing colleagues during this transition."

"We were excited to invest behind Oliver and the team in 2020 and continue to be impressed by Sensor Tower as they shape the future of how intelligence solutions can be used to make strategic decisions," said Jeff Parks, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Riverwood Capital and member of Sensor Tower's Board of Directors. "We believe the combined company is now the gold standard for how data can deliver value to customers seeking to better understand and participate in the digital economy."

"The trend of companies actively pursuing a holistic understanding of a consumer's digital footprint has been a vision we have shared with the Sensor Tower team since day one," said Ramesh Venugopal, Partner at Riverwood Capital and member of Sensor Tower's Board of Directors. "It has been incredible to see this pattern continue to emerge as more companies embrace a sophisticated multi-channel market intelligence approach."

Bain Capital Credit led the financing for the transaction with follow-on from Riverwood Capital and a new investment from Paramark Ventures.

"This merger isn't just about scaling Sensor Tower's global presence – it's about amplifying the impact on the entire marketing industry's ability to measure the digital economy, which the combination of these two entities now have made possible through deeper insights and improved product experience. We're especially thrilled to support the team as they delve deeper into the dynamic APAC market, where the digital economy is booming," said Chunsoo Kim, Managing Partner at Paramark Ventures, a Seoul-based venture capital firm specializing in cross-border investments.

"Riverwood and the Sensor Tower team have built an excellent business with unique technology, and we're thrilled to be partnering with them to support the acquisition and the company's next phase of growth," said David Healey, Director at Bain Capital Credit.

William Blair & Company, LLC acted as financial advisor and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP provided legal counsel to Sensor Tower in this transaction.

Business users can deliver NLP and ML-driven search experiences that can be further refined through integrated AB testing and segmentation

Monetate, the leading personalization platform that helps build personal and meaningful digital connections between eCommerce brands and their global customers, has announced a major update to Monetate Personalized Search at Shoptalk Spring 2024. By understanding the nuances of shopper queries in-session, Monetate Personalized Search generates highly relevant results, ensuring shoppers find content or products with unparalleled accuracy. 

At the heart of Monetate's offering is a fusion of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. This powerful combination enables the platform to understand shopper queries with unrivaled precision, resulting in highly relevant search results that leverage and cater to real-time shopping intent, like clicks and search queries, and contextual and historical data, like purchase history or geographical information.

“Helping shoppers find the products they need effortlessly through truly effective search is essential to today’s top brands and retailers. Through Monetate’s continued investment in innovation, we are significantly improving the experience for end users while giving our clients intuitive tools to manage the experience," said Brian Wilson, CEO of Monetate. “With Monetate Personalized Search, on the heels of the release of Monetate for Merchandisers, we're leveraging advanced NLP capabilities alongside our industry-leading machine learning to reshape how merchandisers deliver search experiences and consumers discover new products.”

Key features of Monetate Personalized Search include:

• Sophisticated NLP Capabilities: Understand the intent and meaning behind each search query, enabling more accurate and relevant results.
• Integrated Personalization & Optimization: Deliver the optimal search experience to every customer through AI-driven personalization and testing.
• Superior Merchandising Features: Boost or bury products in search results, create keyword-based campaigns, and enhance type-ahead search terms with relevant product recommendations.
• Segmentation & Targeting: Define different search and discovery experiences for different customer segments.

“These major improvements further transform us into the go-to digital merchandising and discovery solution,” said Eric Rosado, Chief Product Officer at Monetate. “Within an integrated UI, global merchandising and marketing teams can launch search experiences with ease that support larger digital and personalization strategies.”

Commerce is the most targeted sector with 44% of API attacks

Akamai Technologies, Inc., the cloud company that powers and protects life online, today released a new State of the Internet (SOTI) report. Lurking in the Shadows: Attack Trends Shine Light on API Threats highlights the array of attacks that are targeting APIs and finds that 29% of overall web attacks targeted APIs from January through December 2023. Commerce is the most attacked vertical with 44% of API attacks, followed by business services at nearly 32%.

APIs are vital to most organizations because they improve both employee and customer experiences. Unfortunately, cybercriminals have leveraged this digital innovation and the rapid expansion of the API economy to create new opportunities for exploitation. The new SOTI notes that these attacks will continue to spike as the demand for API use increases, and urges organizations to properly account for and secure their APIs.

This latest research analyzes some of the most common problem areas with regard to both posture and runtime challenges. It offers several case studies that underscore the real-world implications of API security for organizations and features breakout reports with data for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region and the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Business logic abuse is a critical concern because it is challenging to detect abnormal API activity without establishing a baseline for API behavior. Organizations without solutions to monitor anomalies in their API activity are at risk of runtime attacks like data scraping — a new data breach vector that uses authenticated APIs to slowly scrape data from within.
• The range of attacks on APIs includes tried-and-true methods like Local File Inclusion (LFI), Structured Query Language injection (SQLi), and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) to infiltrate their targets.
• APIs are at the heart of most of today's digital transformations so it is paramount to understand the industry trends and relevant use cases, such as loyalty fraud, abuse, authorization, and carding attacks.
• Organizations need to think about compliance requirements and emerging legislation early in their security strategy process to avoid the need to re-architect.

"APIs are increasingly critical to organizations but their security is often not designed into the capability, or the security team is not able to keep up with the rapid deployment of new technology," said Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO of Akamai. "Lurking in the Shadows: Attack Trends Shine Light on API Threats provides insights and visibility to help organizations leverage the best practices to protect customers."

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Akamai's State of the Internet (SOTI) reports. The SOTI series provides expert insights on the cloud security and web performance landscapes, based on data gathered from Akamai Connected Cloud.

Cross Screen Media, a CTV activation managed service provider for local agencies specializing in political and public affairs, today announced an expanded partnership with Roku, America's No. 1 TV streaming platform. Cross Screen Media's agency customers can now accurately measure spend on Roku inventory and through Roku's Ad Platform. Agencies can also leverage Roku's ACR viewership data to target precise audiences based on household-level consumption of ads across both linear TV and CTV.

The expanded partnership augments the existing capability for agencies to efficiently reach their target audiences by activating campaigns on Roku's premium inventory through unique first-party data.

As political races enter their critical months, the teams from Cross Screen Media and Roku are working closely to empower agencies to efficiently reach target voters and accurately measure each ad campaign to inform future spend.

"With the continued shift in consumption habits, CTV is more critical than ever for political agencies to drive on-target incremental reach. We are thrilled to expand our partnership with Roku to include measurement for our agency customers," said Michael Beach, CEO of Cross Screen Media.

Tableflow makes it easier to convert streaming data to Apache Iceberg® tables to feed data warehouses, data lakes, and analytics engines

Fully managed connectors are enhanced with secure connectivity to private endpoints and a max 99.99% uptime SLA at a lower price

Stream Governance activates key data governance features automatically for all Confluent Cloud customers for safer sharing and scalability

Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, announced exciting new Confluent Cloud capabilities making it easier for customers to stream, connect, govern, and process data for more seamless experiences and timely insights while keeping their data safe. Confluent Tableflow easily transforms Apache Kafka® topics and the associated schemas to Apache Iceberg® tables with a single click to better supply data lakes and data warehouses. Confluent’s fully managed connectors have been enhanced with new secure networking paths and up to 50 percent lower throughput costs to enable more complete, safe, and cost-effective integrations. Stream Governance is now enabled by default across all regions with an improved SLA available for Schema Registry, making it easier to safely adjust and share data streams wherever they’re being used. 

For companies to make decisions that optimize costs, boost revenue, and drive innovation, it requires connecting the operational and analytical estates of data, which are traditionally siloed in organizations. The operational estate includes the SaaS applications, custom apps, and databases that power businesses such as Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. The analytical estate includes data warehouses, data lakes, and analytics engines that power analytics and decision-making and use data streams and historical tables to run queries and different analytical functions.

"The critical problem for modern companies is that operational and analytical estates must be highly connected, but are often built on point-to-point connections across dozens of tools,” said Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent. "Businesses are left with a spaghetti mess of data that is painful to navigate and starves the business of real-time insights."

Many organizations turn to Kafka as the standard for data streaming in the operational estate, and to Iceberg as the standard open table format for data sets in the analytical estate. Using Iceberg, companies can share data across teams and platforms while keeping tables updated as the data itself evolves.

Companies using Kafka want to utilize Iceberg to meet the rising demand for both streaming and batch-based analytics. As a result, many companies must execute complex migrations which can be resource-intensive, resulting in stale and untrustworthy data and increased costs.

“Open standards such as Apache Kafka and Apache Iceberg are popular choices for streaming data and managing data in tables for analytics engines," said Stewart Bond, Vice President of Data Intelligence and Integration Software at IDC. "However, there are still challenges for integrating real-time data across operational databases and analytics engines. Organizations should look for a solution that unifies the operational and analytical divide and manages the complexity of migrations, data formats, and schemas."

Tableflow makes it easier to feed data warehouses and data lakes for analytics

Tableflow, a new feature on Confluent Cloud, turns topics and schemas into Iceberg tables in one click to feed any data warehouse, data lake, or analytics engine for real-time or batch processing use cases. Tableflow works together with the existing capabilities of Confluent’s data streaming platform, including Stream Governance features and stream processing with Apache Flink®, to unify the operational and analytical landscape.

Using Tableflow, customers can:

• Make Kafka topics available as Iceberg tables in a single click, along with any associated schemas
• Ensure fresh, up-to-date Iceberg tables are continuously updated with the latest streaming data from your enterprise and source systems
• Deliver high-quality data products by harnessing the power of the data streaming platform with Stream Governance and serverless Flink to clean, process, or enrich data in-stream so that only high-quality data products land in your data lake

Tableflow is currently available as part of an early access program and will soon be available for all Confluent Cloud customers.

More New Confluent Cloud Innovations

Connect brings new security, usability, and pricing enhancements to a portfolio of 80+ fully managed connectors

To build a central nervous system for a business, users have to be able to connect all of their data systems to capture continuous data streams. Connectors address the challenges of traditional data architectures that can silo data, decrease data quality, and lead to unplanned downtime. Connectors do this by seamlessly connecting data systems and applications as sources and sinks to Confluent Cloud. Confluent continues to add enhancements to connectors, a critical component of the data streaming platform, so that more users can experience fast, frictionless, and secure integrations.

With new upgrades to Connect, Confluent customers can:

• Connect securely to critical data systems in private networks using DNS Forwarding and Egress Access Points
• Provision connectors reliably in seconds with real-time configuration validations and a 99.99% uptime SLA
• Stream data affordably at any scale with up to 50% reduced data transfer costs of $0.025/GB

Unlocking the full value of real-time data requires widespread connectivity with each of the data systems and applications running your business. Built together with our technology partners, the Connect with Confluent (CwC) partner program expands the data streaming ecosystem by providing easy access to fully managed data streams directly within the tools where teams are already working. This helps to simplify the development of real-time data products to share throughout the business.

Since CwC’s launch last July with 17 technology partners, the program has seen massive growth with more than 40 partner integrations now included in the program. This quarter, CwC added new partners including Advantco, Aklivity, Arroyo, Asapio, Census, EMQX, Kinetica, Nstream, Redis, SingleStore, Squid, and Superblocks—all having built new Confluent integrations within their applications.

Stream Governance improvements increase availability and reliability

Given today’s increased focus on governance and compliance, Confluent is making it simpler for customers to take advantage of key Stream Governance features. Now all Confluent Cloud customers will have Stream Governance automatically enabled in their environments, providing easy access to key features including Schema Registry, Data Portal, real-time Stream Lineage, and more, with support in all Confluent Cloud regions.

Schema Registry is a crucial component for governing data streams, helping teams enforce universal data standards to ensure data quality and data consistency while reducing operational complexity. The schemas stored in Schema Registry must be accessible to teams at all times, since any issues could lead to data compatibility errors and increased troubleshooting costs. To minimize these risks, Stream Governance Advanced now offers a 99.99% SLA for Schema Registry so organizations can avoid disruptions to critical workflows and manage compliance concerns. In addition, with Stream Governance features integrated into Tableflow, the benefits of improved uptime SLA for Schema Registry will soon be extended to Iceberg tables.

Enterprise clusters deliver more cost savings on more clouds

Confluent recently announced new Enterprise clusters with the same benefits as other Confluent Cloud clusters – including an industry-leading 99.99% SLA and a full ecosystem of enterprise-grade tools – plus enhanced security with private networking. This enables teams to uphold stringent security and networking requirements while simultaneously optimizing resources and cost-efficiency. Enterprise clusters automatically scale based on the workload with no manual intervention required. With new advancements in Kora, Enterprise clusters can offer even more cost savings with a lower entry point and reduced throughput costs on both AWS and Microsoft Azure.