MGID Ads deploys AI across campaign optimization, data analysis, and creative generation

MGID, the global advertising platform, has launched a new dashboard for MGID Ads, its self-service advertising campaign planning and execution suite. The new platform presents users with a new, more powerful intuitive interface that surfaces numerous AI-powered features, doubling the speed of campaign setup. 

Users will be guided through MGID Ads with informative tooltips through the entire campaign creation process, from creative development to ad placement, leveraging extensive data analytics for maximum performance alongside a CPC calculation feature, a step-by-step tracking setup, and AI-generated creatives.

The new dashboard has increased campaign metrics from 9 to 27 whilst 100 creatives can now be launched simultaneously in the time it previously took to launch one. Asynchronous validation also instantly alerts users of potential errors, with detailed descriptions of how to resolve them.

“Advertisers always have more to do than there are people to do it, so we’ve overhauled MGID Ads to make it as easy as possible to work efficiently with native ads,” said Matthew Villa, Head of Sales US at MGID. “By weaving AI into the very fabric of our new dashboard, advertisers can leave the heavy lifting to technology while focusing on driving audience attention, maximizing performance, and delivering measurable results.”

Alembic uniquely predicts marketing ROI using contact-tracing mathematics developed during the pandemic; WndrCo leads the round

Alembic, the leading holistic marketing attribution platform for enterprises, today announced it received $14 million in series A funding. The round was led by WndrCo, the venture capital firm started by DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. Existing investors MXV Capital, the venture capital firm started by Braze founder Mark Ghermezian, and Liquid 2 Ventures, the venture capital firm started by Joe Montana, also participated in the round. 

Alembic will use the funds to enhance its engineering capabilities, broaden its product range and accelerate client acquisition.

Alembic’s software predicts revenue and ROI from marketing, applying AI and mathematics developed during the pandemic for identifying causes, treatments and mortality in disparate data and populations. Alembic analyzes and evaluates unstructured and complex data to predict marketing ROI and future revenue based on the results. Alembic is proud to have Fortune 200 and top brands as customers, including NVIDIA, Texas A&M and North Sails.

Justin Wexler, who led the investment for WndrCo and joins Alembic’s board of directors, said, “At WndrCo, we continually ask Fortune 500 CMOs about their top challenges. The most common response is around proving the effectiveness of marketing spend. Our investment in Alembic is the culmination of our search for a company that solves this problem. We are looking forward to partnering with Alembic’s brilliant team to bring the power of AI and cutting-edge statistics to the marketing organizations behind the world’s leading brands.”

Using only anonymous and privacy-respecting aggregate data, Alembic accurately models marketing results and proves quantitatively how value is generated by marketing and sales activity. Alembic provides a real-time view to optimize all marketing activity and sales funnel movement. The Alembic platform leverages unstructured data from TV, radio, social media, out-of-home, sponsorship and digital marketing to predict revenue and profit for its customers. The visibility and transparency of marketing spend and outcomes facilitates reporting, informs strategy and breaks down silos between marketing, finance and business operations.

“Our customers say, before Alembic, what they used to evaluate marketing was like an ultrasound that only looked at one part of the body. Alembic is like a full body MRI scan that shows you a holistic view with much greater detail and precision,” said Tomás Puig, Alembic co-founder and CEO.

“Deploying AI allows companies to increase productivity in ways not possible before,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Alembic is using AI developed for scientific research applications to predict ROI from marketing. NVIDIA marketing is using Alembic with great success.”

“Alembic has a breakthrough solution for a problem I’ve seen throughout my career: Measuring results from marketing initiatives. WndrCo is thrilled to lead the series A round for Alembic and enable the company to introduce its innovative solution to a wider audience. All enterprise marketing organizations should consider Alembic to solve this problem in marketing,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, founding partner, WndrCo.

“In sports and in business, it’s difficult to predict outcomes, but Alembic enables enterprises to accurately predict revenue and ROI from all the components of their marketing mix. For this reason, Liquid 2 Ventures is proud to invest in Alembic. We believe that Alembic will be a winner along with its customers in applying the most advanced mathematics and AI available for predicting marketing ROI,” said Joe Montana, managing director, Liquid 2 Ventures.

“MXV Capital invests in Alembic because its novel, unique, quantitative approach helps enterprises understand which actions and plans from marketing drive the most value. Using AI and mathematics developed during the pandemic for identifying causes, treatments and mortality in populations, Alembic analyzes unstructured and complex structured data to predict revenue and ROI from marketing and improve planning strategy. It’s a great example of how AI initially developed for epidemiology can be applied to predict and help improve business outcomes,” said Mark Ghermezian, founder and general partner, MXV Capital.

“Alembic enables me, for the first time, to show what impact to the organization our marketing dollars today will have on future revenue. Our most recent success has been around time to event analysis — an AI modeling solution initially applied in healthcare. We are leveraging Alembic to guide finance on which marketing spend will provide the most ROI with accuracy,” said Aristomenis Capogeannis, senior director, enterprise revenue marketing, NVIDIA.

“With a plethora of content and proliferation of channels, marketers are constantly faced with choices. Alembic’s AI-driven correlation engine not only provides confidence in decision-making, but delivers return on intelligence and investment for enterprises like NVIDIA, Texas A&M and North Sails,” said Laura Maness, Alembic independent board director and global CEO, Grey.

Collaboration makes one of the leading AI coding assistants available to the entire DigitalOcean customer community

Tabnine, the creators of the industry’s first AI-powered coding assistant for developers, today announced a strategic partnership with DigitalOcean, the developer cloud optimized for startups and growing digital businesses. DigitalOcean now delivers Tabnine’s AI coding assistant to startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the world, empowering them to accelerate and simplify the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC) process without sacrificing privacy, security, and compliance.

As the volume and complexity of applications continue to grow, software engineering teams are struggling to keep pace with the demands of their businesses. Generative AI is emerging as a leading solution, with AI coding assistants demonstrating how AI can accelerate and simplify the entire SDLC. Independent research shows that developers who use AI coding assistants are proving to be significantly more productive, creating a competitive advantage for engineering teams who adopt generative AI in their work.

“AI-enabled software development tools and practices are the answer to continued pressure on engineering teams to efficiently deliver more applications and features — especially for those at startups and SMBs with less resources at their disposal,” said Eran Yahav, Co-founder and CTO of Tabnine. “Our partnership with DigitalOcean gives their entire customer community the power of a private, personalized, and protected AI coding assistant.”

As the originator of the AI coding assistant category, Tabnine’s mission is to accelerate software development through AI for engineering teams of every size. Tabnine currently serves more than one million developers, generating more than 1% of the world’s code and typically automating 30-50% of code generation. By joining forces with DigitalOcean, a leader in cloud infrastructure for startups and growing digital businesses, this partnership expands Tabnine’s reach to even more teams and makes it easier for them to benefit from generative AI.

Professional engineering teams are excited to embrace this new class of generative AI tools, but are concerned about the privacy of their code and the provenance of the code used to train the AI models. Tabnine’s partnership with DigitalOcean will give DigitalOcean customers an AI coding assistant that not only delivers world-class AI agents and code recommendations, but also prioritizes privacy and protection. Tabnine’s AI models are trained exclusively on permissively licensed open source code to ensure that the recommendations from Tabnine never expose customers to legal risks. In addition, Tabnine offers a variety of deployment options to satisfy customer privacy and has a zero data retention policy across its secure SaaS offerings. The combination of Tabnine’s capabilities and approach to security and compliance satisfies the needs of developers and engineering leadership alike.

"DigitalOcean and Tabnine are joining forces to unlock the power of AI-enabled software development for developers at startups and growing digital businesses worldwide,” said Fer Oliveira, VP of Partnerships at DigitalOcean. “This groundbreaking partnership makes generative AI technology accessible to everyone, accelerating innovation and leveling the playing field for businesses of all sizes.”

The Tabnine Pro plan is available now for purchase on the DigitalOcean Marketplace.

Education is fueling Canva’s growth as the platform evolves into an all-in-one classroom tool shaping the future of education technology 

• Doubles education users in a year, adds 10 million since launching safe AI and Classroom Lessons
• Colleges, universities, and schools rapidly adopt Canva as their preferred visual communication tool
• Accelerates mission to shape the future of edtech and become the go-to education platform

Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today announced that its worldwide K-12 and higher education user base has exceeded 60 million – a figure that has more than doubled in just the past year. This surge is a result of Canva's commitment to steering the future of edtech, with the company doubling down on investments in the education sector to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global educational landscape. 

“The rapid growth we’ve seen in our education product reflects the increasing demand for visual communication tools and visual literacy in the classroom. We’re offering a platform that both empowers teachers to engage with students today and helps students build the skills they’ll need to be competitive in the future,” said Jason Wilmot, Head of Education for Canva. “Today’s students will enter a workforce with jobs that look very different. We’re proud to be supporting our global education community with the essential tools for navigating this shift.”

As design becomes table stakes in the workplace – more than 1.2 million people now list Canva as a core skill on their LinkedIn profile, nearly doubling in the past 12 months – schools and colleges are on the frontlines for preparing students to be career-ready.

Equipping 60 million students and teachers with cutting-edge tools

Canva announced its biggest-ever education launch in October 2023, which included a new library of over 5,000 customizable curricular lessons – featuring classroom materials developed in collaboration with experts like NASA and The New York Times – advanced accessibility features, and a suite of AI tools to save teachers time and boost student creativity.

Since launching these products, Canva has welcomed over 10 million new education users to its platform in just three months, reaching 60 million users globally, and underscoring the demand for a comprehensive learning tool for students and educators.

Visual communication is now pivotal in both professional and educational contexts, with 94% of business leaders expecting employees to possess design skills as visual communication becomes required across every profession, according to Canva’s visual economy report. AI is being rapidly adopted in almost every profession, with teachers leveraging the technology to streamline tasks and increase student engagement. Canva’s AI in Education Study also revealed more than three-quarters of teachers are enthusiastic about integrating the technology into their classrooms.

Bringing visual communication to schools and colleges

Canva for Districts brings the power of Canva’s entire visual communication platform to K-12 students, teachers and administrators. In the United States, Canva has been made available to 24 million students and teachers in districts across the country like Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, Houston Independent School District in Texas, and Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky.

Wichita Public Schools, the largest and most diverse school district in Kansas, was the first district to partner with Canva starting in 2021. With 96 schools, over 5,000 teachers, and 47,000 students who speak over 100 languages, Canva empowers educators to save time and communicate with students on every level.

“Canva empowers our team to move faster while increasing engagement with our students,” said Robert Dickson, Chief Information Officer, Wichita Public Schools. “We have a beautifully diverse population of students with various learning differences. With Canva, our teachers save time by creating things with one tool that can easily be adapted to meet the needs of all students. Even more exciting, Canva is also giving agency to students who are becoming better communicators and collaborators, essential lifelong skills.”

Countries like the United States, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines and Brazil each have millions of users leveraging Canva as a learning tool. Over the past year, Canva launched partnerships with local schools across Europe, including Rocket School in France, I.E Business School in Spain, and has recently partnered with Poland's Ministry of Education where Canva will be providing its tools to over 5 million users across Polish schools.

The demand for visual communication tools is present at the collegiate level, with colleges and universities looking to equip students for an increasingly visual workforce. Launched just a year ago, Canva for Campus brings the power of Canva’s entire visual communication platform to college and universities. Canva is experiencing a surge of interest from new higher education partners, including the University of California (UC), the world’s leading public research university system, which recently brought the platform to more than 500,000 students and faculty across the university’s network. This agreement demonstrates UC's commitment to visual communication tools as a crucial factor in student success and an essential skill in today’s workplace.

Canva’s commitment to shaping the educational landscape

Since launching in 2019, Canva for Education has evolved into an end-to-end resource for students, educators, and educational administrators worldwide. Driven by Canva’s belief in leveling the playing field, it is ensuring that every classroom, regardless of its location or resources, has equal access to cutting-edge technology, completely free of charge.

Investing in the future of education has emerged as an integral component of Canva’s growth strategy – Canva’s mission to empower the world to design naturally extends into classrooms where educators can drive engagement, students can embrace creativity, and administrators can visually communicate.

The company's strategic investments span every step of the education journey, accelerating its vision to become the edtech platform of choice. With a presence in over 600,000 schools worldwide, Canva is at the forefront of a new era in education, democratizing advanced learning tools and making them more accessible and engaging than ever before.

Seasoned finance and operations leader to spearhead growth strategies and financial planning & analysis

UserTesting, a SaaS leader in experience research and insights, announced the appointment of Mark Chamberlain as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Mark, an esteemed veteran in the software industry, brings over two decades of specialized experience in finance and operations. His impressive track record is marked by significant achievements in senior executive roles, especially in companies bolstered by private equity. 

Prior to joining UserTesting, Mark served as CFO of Litera, where he played a pivotal role in reinforcing the firm’s financial foundations and expertly managed all facets of accounting, finance, and legal operations. He has a track record of guiding companies through periods of accelerated growth and has navigated several successful exits. He has previously held key executive leadership roles in finance and operations at companies such as Ivanti, Novell and Corda Technologies (now Domo). Mark has an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Brigham Young University.

“We are thrilled to welcome Mark Chamberlain to our team at UserTesting. His extensive experience and proven track record in guiding companies through growth and change make him the ideal person to lead our financial strategy,” said Andy MacMillan, CEO of UserTesting. “Mark’s strategic vision and financial acumen will be invaluable as we continue to scale our business and deliver outstanding value to our customers and stakeholders.”

“I am excited to join UserTesting, a company that is at the forefront of digital transformation–and reshaping how companies build products and experiences with and for their customers,” said Mark Chamberlain, CFO of UserTesting. “I look forward to contributing to UserTesting’s growth story and working alongside a talented team to drive financial strategies that enhance our market leadership and foster innovative solutions.”

DISH Media leans in on a data-driven approach in its latest collaboration with PubMatic, giving advertisers more optimization and better control of ad spend

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, today announced a partnership with DISH Media that allows SLING TV to tap into PubMatic’s supply path optimization partnerships to access premium demand via private marketplace deals.

SLING TV and PubMatic’s new partnership comes as more consumers seek ad supported streaming providers as a primary means for engaging with TV content. According to Insider Intelligence, virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) viewership is expected to rise by over 40% since 2020, reaching 42 million U.S. viewers in 2024, while traditional pay TV viewership declined by more than 30% over the same period. To enable brands to best engage this growing audience, DISH Media will pass valuable content signals in the bid stream, such as genre or network, enabling advertisers to improve targeting and campaign ROI.

The partnership enables DISH Media to access PubMatic’s growing list of supply path optimization partners, which collectively make up over 45% of all activity on the PubMatic platform. This is another avenue for advertisers to access premium ad inventory on SLING from a leading sell-side technology provider, including high-quality content and desirable audience segments that are often exclusive or restricted to select advertisers.

"We are strategically expanding our partnerships with SSPs to amplify scale and flexibility for our buyers,” said Andrew Tint, head of programmatic partnerships, DISH Media. “Transparency remains a core focus, and in this pursuit, we are excited to announce PubMatic as our newest partner. With an extended SSP footprint, we are providing buyers with unparalleled flexibility, empowering them to make purchasing decisions that align seamlessly with their strategic goals.”

Brad Stockton, senior vice president of video innovation at dentsu added, “DISH Media and PubMatic’s partnership will create more opportunities for advertisers to be in front of the right audiences during major seasonal advertising periods while accessing valuable targeting signals to improve ROI. We are excited to be partnering with them to bring more innovative solutions to clients and build on our advertising supply chain.”

PubMatic’s buyers will now have access to premium programming on SLING, plus a diverse range of live sports content with channels like ESPN, NFL Network, FS1, TBS and TNT. Major global sporting events including the Paris Summer Olympic Games and Copa America in the U.S., will account for a significant boost in ad spending in 2024. In search of performance amidst ongoing structural changes to the digital ad market, advertisers are expected to look towards programmatic CTV that combines the precision targeting of digital with the prestige user engagement of traditional TV.

“This year is shaping up to be a monumental year for CTV advertising as targeting signals disappear from other digital channels and the political season drives increased live TV viewership,” said Nicole Scaglione, VP, CTV/OTT and Online Video at PubMatic. “We are excited to partner with DISH Media to offer our advertisers access to the valuable inventory on SLING and enable them to tap into rich targeting signals to drive their campaign objectives.”

The enhancement empowers brands and advertisers with aggregated and scaled viewership insights

Nexxen, a global, unified advertising technology platform with deep expertise in video and Connected TV (“CTV”), today announced the augmentation of its TV Intelligence solution with exclusive aggregated and scaled premium streaming viewership data from platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Disney Plus. As streaming services continue to gain traction, a new partnership with PeerLogix, Inc. – the audience discovery platform recognized as the standard in tracking over-the-top (“OTT”) data across smart TV, desktop and mobile – further enables brands and advertisers leveraging Nexxen’s platform to reach as many as 50 million households, empowering them to effectively target a unified TV audience.

Using proprietary technology, PeerLogix captures and catalogues global consumer viewership data from various leading CTV platforms in real-time. Integrated with traditional television viewership data (to which Nexxen also has exclusive access), these comprehensive segments enhance Nexxen’s TV Intelligence solution – an expansive dataset inclusive of Set-Top Box (“STB”), Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) and cross-screen panel data – so advertisers can craft and reach personalized audiences based on a variety of factors, such as genre or viewing habits.

"The integration of PeerLogix's data into our TV Intelligence solution enhances our capacity to deliver unparalleled value to our clients through real-time, premium insights," said Jessica La Rosa, Vice President, TV Partnerships and Strategy at Nexxen. "We're thrilled to be expanding our already holistic and representative dataset with cutting edge streaming viewership data, allowing brands and advertisers to elevate the effectiveness of their campaigns in the fast-evolving CTV landscape."

“Our partnership with Nexxen represents a significant advancement in the evolution of advertising to streaming audiences, introducing a more holistic approach in today's complex media landscape by uniting PeerLogix's robust viewership data with Nexxen's market-leading platform," said William Gorfein, Chief Executive Officer at PeerLogix. "This strategic partnership is a pivotal step forward which offers clients unparalleled insights and enhanced precision in the targeting of streaming audiences, bridging the gap between linear and streaming channels via the Nexxen platform to engage diverse television audiences.”

Yellowbrick Chosen for Unrivaled Price-Performance, Scalability, Flexibility, and Rapid Analytics.

Yellowbrick Data, the leading Kubernetes-native data warehouse for private clouds, announced that Ushur, the leader in AI-powered Customer Experience Automation™ (CXA), has selected the Yellowbrick Cloud Data Warehouse to underpin their award-winning CXA platform. 

Customer experience automation harnesses technology to enhance business-customer interactions and drive productivity. Ushur's unique AI and comprehensive customer behavior analytics empower leading brands, including Irish Life, Unum, Cigna, and Aflac, to cultivate stronger customer relationships across all touchpoints and adapt to changing customer needs. As Ushur CXA gains rapid adoption, the demand for more data, intricate analytics, increased concurrency, and faster response times grows. To meet these demands, Ushur has selected the Yellowbrick Data Warehouse for its price-performance, scalability in addressing expanding data volumes, and rapid analytics capabilities. As a result, Yellowbrick will offload MongoDB and Sisense for analytics and compute.

Henry Peter, CTO and Co-Founder of Ushur: “AI and analytics are core to Ushur CXA. The promise of improved, expedited, and cost-efficient data analysis translates to better outcomes for our clients, which drives platform adoption. CXA thrives on a high-performance and dependable engine, and we were genuinely impressed by Yellowbrick Data's ability to deliver this capability at a price point that perfectly aligns with our ambitious goals.”

Neil Carson, CEO and Co-Founder of Yellowbrick Data: “Ushur provides business-critical services across high-contact industries like insurance, logistics, and financial services. We are excited to be the foundational data platform for a company setting the bar for customer experience management.”