Empowering the Future of Digital Broadcasting: CacheFly's Cutting-Edge CDN Technology Merges with Streaming Media Hosting's Expertise to Set New Standards in Video Quality, Accessibility, and Revenue Opportunities

In an exciting development that is set to revolutionize the streaming media industry, CacheFly, a pioneering content delivery network (CDN) services provider, and Streaming Media Hosting, a leading All-In-One Video Platform solution, are excited to announce a strategic partnership. This collaboration comes at a crucial time as Lumen CDN and StackPath CDN customers seek reliable alternatives following the announcement of their discontinuation of CDN services.

In the fast-paced digital landscape, the speed and efficiency of content delivery networks (CDNs) are crucial for distributing video content globally. This is particularly vital in the context of Over-the-Top TV (OTT TV), Online Video Platforms (OVP), Education Video Platforms (EdVP), and Enterprise Video Platforms (EVP), as well as VR platforms. These platforms, coupled with a fast CDN, are key to delivering high-quality video streaming and immersive VR experiences to diverse audiences, regardless of their location.

Edward Fitzgerald, VP of Sales for CacheFly stated, “In a digital era where speed and reliability are paramount, CacheFly remains committed to delivering the fastest CDN services. Our partnership with Streaming Media Hosting is a natural synergy, combining our robust global CDN network with their top-tier video hosting and streaming solutions.”

The partnership between CacheFly and Streaming Media Hosting represents a significant step forward in the world of streaming, as it combines cutting-edge technology and extensive industry expertise to offer an unparalleled streaming experience.


Key Highlights of the Partnership:

1. Sub-Second Speed Delivery: By harnessing the unmatched speed and efficiency of CacheFly’s Global CDN infrastructure, viewers can now enjoy content delivered in sub-second delivery, ensuring a seamless and immersive streaming experience.
   
   
2. Full Support for Monetization Models:

• FAST/CTV (Free Ad-Supported Television / Connected TV): The partnership fully supports FAST and CTV channel launches, enabling broadcasters, streamers and content creators to deliver high-quality, free-to-view content to audiences while monetizing through advertising.
• AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand): Innovative Streaming Media Hosting Service will offer comprehensive AVOD support, allowing content owners to generate revenue through targeted advertising.
• TVOD (Transactional Video on Demand): Content creators can now offer their viewers a pay-per-view model for premium content, making it convenient for audiences to access exclusive material.
• SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand): The partnership provides robust support for subscription-based streaming services, ensuring seamless access to premium content for subscribers.
  
  

1. Enhanced Content Delivery: The integration of CacheFly's fast CDN advanced content delivery solutions with Streaming Media Hosting's video hosting capabilities ensures high-quality, buffer-free streaming for viewers worldwide.
   
   
2. Global Reach: With a vast global network of servers and data centers, this partnership will enable content providers to reach audiences across the globe with low latency and high reliability.
   
   
3. Scalability and Reliability: CacheFly and Streaming Media Hosting are committed to providing scalable, reliable, and secure solutions that meet the growing demands of the streaming industry.

Commenting on this groundbreaking partnership, David Sanchez, CEO of Streaming Media Hosting added, “The partnership with CacheFly enhances our capability to provide premium video hosting services. CacheFly's renowned global CDN platform ensures that our clients enjoy not just high-quality video content but also the speed and efficiency that modern audiences demand.”

The partnership between CacheFly and Streaming Media Hosting is poised to redefine industry standards by delivering unparalleled efficiency, reliability, and quality in video streaming and content delivery.

The combined expertise will empower content creators and broadcasters to deliver content faster and more efficiently than ever before, while offering a wide range of monetization options to suit their business models.

With a strong commitment to customer satisfaction and technological advancement, CacheFly and Streaming Media Hosting are leading the way in providing cutting-edge solutions that are essential in today’s digital world, where speed, quality, and reliability are imperative for success.

Global Identity Verification Platform adds key new customers including Frasers Group and Lufthansa, wins multiple industry innovation awards, joins MACH Alliance, and continues international expansion in the new year.

SheerID, the global leader in identity verification for commerce, is celebrating record-breaking revenue growth of 273% in EMEA, signing significant new customers, building new partnerships, and winning multiple industry awards, as it heads into another period of increased momentum in 2024. 

“2023 was a banner year for SheerID, and we’re just getting started,” said Francois Rychlewski, VP Sales, EMEA, SheerID. “In 2024, we plan to double down on our efforts to serve clients in additional EMEA markets. We’re also excited about our recent expansion in several industries like fashion, grocery, and airlines, to name a few, and we look forward to continued growth in multiple new sectors.”

EMEA Momentum Highlights

Customers

In 2023, SheerID added large European customers such as Frasers Group and Lufthansa.

Frasers Group

In October, Frasers Group - a collection of some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Sports Direct, House of Fraser, Flannels, Jack Wills, USC, and Cruise - began partnering with SheerID to provide exclusive offers to students.

“We’re excited to partner with SheerID to provide exclusive offers to students,” said Ross Pepper, Head of Performance Marketing at Frasers Group. “Students are working hard to complete their education and build a future for themselves, and we want to make that a little easier for them while growing our student base. SheerID has been incredible to work with and we’re looking forward to continued growth in the student sector.”

Lufthansa

In June, German Airline Lufthansa also began working with SheerID to grow its student market.

“Right now we’re specifically focusing on students,” said Matthew Donaldson, Digital Sales Manager, Asia Pacific, of Lufthansa. “SheerID has helped us provide a competitive offer that students often share with their peers which allows us to grow our student market while ensuring that only students redeem these offers.”

To access these exclusive offers, students must verify their eligibility through SheerID, the identity verification platform used by hundreds of leading brands to launch exclusive gated offers for students, teachers, healthcare professionals, military members, first responders, seniors, and more in multiple countries. Online verification is instant and once completed, eligible students can take advantage of the savings.

Partners

MACH Alliance

In May, SheerID officially became a member of the MACH Alliance, an international, not-for-profit industry body dedicated to advocating for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems. SheerID was accepted into the MACH Alliance because its platform meets the needs of developers who are using MACH principles to build composable digital experience ecosystems that are agile, easy to integrate, and allow for ongoing updates to meet changing consumer expectations and business needs.

Awards

SheerID was shortlisted and won several awards in 2023, including:

• A Silver Award at the Ecommerce Awards London 2023 in the category Best Use of Personalisation
• A Campaign Convrt Award celebrating innovation in retail within the Customer Experience Initiative category due to its work with customer, ASICS.
• A Shortlist for the Ecommerce Awards London 2023 in the category Best Crossborder Campaign.
• A Shortlist for the UK Ecommerce Awards 2023 in the category Ecommerce Software or Extension of the Year.
• A Shortlist for the EU Ecommerce Award 2023 in the category Ecommerce Software or Extension of the Year for its work with customer Back Market.

The SheerID Verification Platform allows brands of all sizes to easily build high-converting exclusive gated offers for valuable consumer communities around the world. Brands can build an offer for multiple communities in 34 languages – the most comprehensive solution in the industry – and launch offers for students, teachers, healthcare professionals, military members, first responders, seniors, and more in multiple countries. 

Pipedrive, the easy and effective sales CRM for small businesses, has appointed Marc Waxman as VP of Demand Growth. With vast B2B and B2C demand growth experience, Waxman will lead Pipedrive’s paid and organic marketing teams and will be responsible for the development and execution of driving growth strategies, bringing more quality sign-ups at a good return on marketing investments and enhancing their conversion into strong new paying customers.

“Marc joins Pipedrive at an exciting time in our journey as Pipedrive continues to grow globally. He brings on board B2B and B2C demand growth experience and has built his through-the-funnel paid and organic advertising tool kit across a number of industries known to be right on the latest demand growth trends. I’m excited to have him on the team as his impressive background in amplifying market presence and global growth will help fuel Pipedrive’s transformative impact on driving small business growth,” said Heidrun Luyt, CMO at Pipedrive.

“What excites me most about joining Pipedrive is the opportunity to bring my brand of accountable and innovative marketing techniques to a business that looks primed to explode over the next few years. I love to identify new approaches, new channels, different ways of thinking and I particularly love working with passionate people who are challenging and happy to be challenged. I’m intrigued by the opportunity to join an already stellar team to unlock new opportunities and reach new heights,” said Marc Waxman, VP of Demand Growth at Pipedrive.

As VP of Demand Growth, Waxman will play a pivotal role in driving the strategic direction of Pipedrive’s paid and organic marketing teams. With a strong emphasis on customer, team and data, he has a highly creative approach to applying the demand growth toolbox to amplify the impact of marketing strategies and efforts. Besides technical skills, Waxman sets a high focus on collaboration and mentorship.

Waxman’s career stretches over different B2B and B2C demand growth roles across industries, including gaming, travel, tech, and media, with brands such as Ladbrokes, Lastminute.com, Telegraph Media Group, and Rakuten. He spent the last 5 years at B2B SaaS business GoCardless, making him well-trained and knowledgeable in the SMB space.

CMP enables enterprises to prove global compliance, deliver cross-domain integrations that honor user privacy preferences at scale 

Today Cassie, the consent and preference management platform serving Fortune 500 companies globally, announced the launch of Cross-Domain Consent. This solution is the first that offers legitimate cross-domain consent sharing at root domain level across completely unique domains so only one banner needs to be shown per user to hit the market.

Oftentimes, global brands use multiple root domains within the same user journey – such as a checkout page, a login page or a third-party vendor – which disrupts the buyer experience. When a consent banner pops up on each new domain, users could be met with up to 3+ cookie banners in just one transaction. And when customers are forced to deal with multiple cookie banners through their user experience coupled with privacy browsers deleting stored preferences, it often leads to consent fatigue in the buyer journey, especially as 57% of Americans don't fully understand cookies*.  

This is where Cross-Domain Consent comes in. The product was designed to provide global brands with a competitive advantage by ensuring the buyer journey is both compliant and uninterrupted by multiple banners. Other provider solutions have only been able to provide this service on a subdomain level, but Cassie's Cross-Domain Consent does it on an individual root domain level.  

"Cassie is committed to delivering compliant consent solutions for global businesses without compromise," said Nicky Watson, Chief Architect and Founder of Cassie. "We actively review our product offering by listening to the market and the needs of our customers to ensure they are provided with a solution that will evolve and become more powerful to meet the needs of data privacy."  

Additionally, global enterprises are currently struggling with bloated tech stacks across every area of the business - including sales, marketing, service and call center teams - each of which collects a high volume of consent data. This creates inconsistencies and lack of visibility internally, as well as poor user experiences. And with constantly evolving global data privacy regulations, businesses risk exorbitant fines and reputational damage if they fail to demonstrate compliance – especially when transacting globally, where legislation requires different approaches.

"Cassie has the strongest enterprise-level cookie solution in the market able to handle millions of data sets and consent preferences in real time," said Glenn Jackson, CEO of Cassie. "We are proud to bring to market a new solution that will fulfill the needs of customers inquiring about how to solve the problem of going through the consent process repeatedly by streamlining the user journey." 

Led by FTV Capital, with participation from NVIDIA and existing investors, funding will further solidify Kore.ai's leading position in explosive advanced AI market 

Kore.ai, a leader in enterprise conversational and generative AI platform technology, today announced $150 million in funding. The strategic growth investment was led by FTV Capital, a sector-focused growth equity investor with a successful 25+ year track record investing across enterprise technology, along with participation from NVIDIA and existing investors such as Vistara Growth, Sweetwater PE, NextEquity, Nicola and Beedie. The new funding will accelerate Kore.ai's market expansion and continuous innovation in AI to deliver tangible business and human value at scale.

Poised to seize market momentum around putting AI to work

The AI market has seen rapid growth and disruption driven by advancements in technology and shifting user expectations. Gartner estimates the conversational AI market to reach $377 billion in revenue by 2032, up from $66 billion in 2023. This reflects an exponential demand for enhanced customer experiences, streamlined business operations and innovative GenAI applications addressing specific business tasks.

Kore.ai provides an enterprise-grade no-code platform to help companies of all sizes power business interactions with AI safely and responsibly while driving significant revenue and cost savings. From conversational virtual assistants to generative AI (Gen AI) applications, Kore.ai's differentiated platform offers purpose-built workflows, highly configurable tools and a flexible, open architecture that are recognized as the leading approach by customers and analysts. This gives teams the ability to craft custom solutions or deploy pre-built, domain-trained virtual assistants across multiple industries such as banking, healthcare and retail and across a variety of functional roles such as IT, HR and others, to accelerate time-to-value.

"We have been working with advanced AI for a decade now – our deep technology expertise and market understanding put us in a prime position to take advantage of the momentum and to do AI right in order to meet growing customer needs," said Raj Koneru, founder and CEO of Kore.ai. "Sitting above the infrastructure layer and LLM chaos, our open approach grants businesses freedom of choice with built-in guardrails for effective AI implementation. As we look to enhance our Gen AI-powered innovations and drive wider adoption across a variety of market segments, we are pleased to have the backing of FTV Capital, a firm that has significant experience in our space and invaluable connections across the enterprise to augment our exciting growth trajectory."

"We've spent significant time examining the landscape and evaluating advanced-AI platforms, and Kore.ai clearly stood out with its proven enterprise-grade platform capabilities, visionary leadership, strong R&D focus, established global customer base and clear path to profitability," said Kapil Venkatachalam, partner at FTV Capital. "We're excited to partner with such an experienced and high-caliber team that consistently delivers world-class innovations, and we look forward to leveraging our deep knowledge and network to catalyze Kore.ai's success."

Market understanding and expertise across diverse use cases

Today, several Fortune 2000 companies across a variety of industry verticals leverage Kore.ai to enhance their customer, employee and contact center agent experiences and drive measurable ROI. Customers include leading financial institutions, such as PNC Bank and large global banks, as well as major brands such as AT&T, Cigna, Coca-Cola, Airbus and Roche.

Over the past several years Kore.ai has consistently demonstrated triple-digit year-over-year growth in revenues. The company automates 450 million interactions a day for about 200 million consumers and two million enterprise users worldwide. In addition to domestic growth, Kore.ai's growth has been fueled by rising demand from emerging markets in Asia Pacific, Europe, LatAm and the Middle East. As a result, Kore.ai has added new Global 2000 enterprise customers across major verticals.

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, today announced that Robin Steinberg, formerly Vice President, Advertiser Solutions, has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President of Advertiser Solutions, with a key focus on agency demand and CTV publisher partnerships.

Steinberg joined PubMatic in September 2022 to evolve PubMatic’s key relationships with large agencies. She has also developed innovative marketplace strategies to connect buyers and sellers, a crucial component of PubMatic’s revenue growth and brand recognition. Her leadership directly contributed to the company closing 10 supply path optimization (SPO) deals across the United States in 2023, driving SPO share of total activity on the PubMatic platform to over 45% by the end of the year. Additionally, Steinberg was a critical contributor to the 2023 launch of Activate, PubMatic’s end-to-end SPO solution.

In her new role, Steinberg has been tasked with direct management of the agency team in North America as well as continued support of the company’s growing connected TV (CTV) publisher relationships, ensuring that PubMatic is the premier connection point between those publishers and the agencies. PubMatic closed 2023 boasting a 27% year-over-year increase in its CTV publisher customer base over 2022 to over 270 streaming content providers. Steinberg will aid in driving CTV performance across programmatic guaranteed (PG) and private marketplaces (PMP) deals by bringing publishers and buyers more closely together.

“In this dynamic marketplace, I couldn't be more thrilled to support our clients, partners and the overall ecosystem as the advertising industry continues to innovate and grow,” said Steinberg. In 2024, PubMatic will continue to lead the programmatic supply chain's evolution, particularly in high-growth areas such as CTV and retail media.”

Prior to PubMatic, Steinberg served as Head of Agency & Client Partnerships at video technology company Connatix, where she oversaw commercial deals, relationships and partnerships with agency holding companies. She also spent over two decades on the agency-side, building, running, and transforming publishing investment teams at MediaVest and Carat, evolving the business practices to lead with a digital-first and innovative approach.

In her new role, Steinberg will continue reporting to PubMatic’s Chief Revenue Officer, Americas, Kyle Dozeman.

“Robin has had a tremendous impact on the business and I’m excited to see her in this elevated role,” said Dozeman. “Under her leadership, PubMatic has become an important connection point between our buy side clients and CTV publisher partners.”

Global research offers insights into how consumers engage with and experience brands. 

Merkle, dentsu's leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, has unveiled the first installment of its 2024 Customer Experience Imperatives research series, titled "Engagement to Empowerment: Winning in Today's Experience Economy."

Merkle has released its CX Imperatives report for the past 12 years, and this is the first year its forward-looking flagship piece is based on proprietary research. This report, which is the first of several to be published in 2024, focuses on insights from a consumer survey conducted in Q4 of 2023. Merkle surveyed 2,100 consumers and 820 brands across 18 countries and three continents. This initial installment is focused on consumers, who were asked questions on topics such as AI in marketing, preferences on customer data usage, and adoption of emerging tech. The brand responses will be the basis of the second report, to be released this spring.

Technology advancements have continually accelerated over the years, which has elevated and evolved consumers' expectations, giving them greater control and influence over the way brands market to them. Merkle's research shows that on average, only 2.5 sources of information influence a consumer's brand decision. Brands don't have the same margin of error they once did, so it's critical that they embrace and support this new wave of empowered consumers and make it clear how the experiences they deliver improve their customers' lives.

To excel in an increasingly crowded field, Merkle urges brands to focus on responding to consumers' stated preferences about their brand experiences in an effort to increase trust and build long-term relationships.

"With this research, we wanted to give CX practitioners real insight into how consumers experience brands today," said Pete Stein, global president of Merkle. "Brands that wish to excel in the experience economy must keep pace with customer's evolving expectations."

The study's findings reveal six critical imperatives for brands who seek to deliver exemplary customer experiences:

1. Understand CX fundamentals from the customer's point of view.
2. Use customer data for the customer's benefit.
3. Use ethical AI to create convenience and build trust.
4. Meet the customer's need for live human interaction.
5. Focus on the post-purchase experience.
6. Experiment with emerging tech to invent new forms of customer empowerment.

Stein adds: "At a time when consumers have more control and buying options, it's critical for brands to not just chase trends but get to the root of what a 'great' customer experience entails. True customer empowerment requires more than just personalization; it demands authentic connections and experiences that resonate deeply."

Octoparse, a no-coding solution for web scraping to turn pages into structured data within clicks, makes bulk-extracting of data further accessible. With no required coding, the software is a great fit for both expert and novice users. Last month, it launched its advanced template of lead generation, Contact Details Scraper.

Contact Details Scraper is a game-changing solution to simplify the lead generation process. It covers most mainstream platforms, allowing users to collect customer information, including names, contact details, company names, job titles, etc. In short, it can prove useful to professionals in sales, marketing, and other industries that rely on lead discovery. Meanwhile, Contact Details Scraper extends its capability beyond just emails and phone numbers. It can capture social media profiles linked directly from web pages, including YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.

The preset Task Template is one of the most powerful and popular features of Octoparse. Hundreds of Templates cover the most popular websites, like Amazon, Twitter, Google Maps, etc., making web scraping even more time-saving and effortless. They can cater to various scraping requirements and allow users to extract data in bulk by entering only a few parameters.

However, different users might have particular needs in scraping data. If you face difficulties in using preset templates to pull data from complex web pages, you can create a Custom Task and build a scraper with the powerful tools offered by Octoparse! It allows you to grab data from any website through an effortless point-and-click interface. It also provides users with RegEx Tool, XPath Tool, API, Database Auto-export Tool, etc., that aim at boosting the user experience.

Octoparse provides both free and paid plans, tailoring the extraction experience to their specific needs. The free plan provides a basic extraction framework for individuals embarking on their data extraction journey. For users seeking to leverage the full potential of the software, the paid plans offer a robust suite of advanced features, including access to Cloud Extraction, 24/7 services, and more. With the flexibility of these plans, users can select the option that best fits their data extraction requirements.

Many clients utilize Octoparse Cloud Service for large-scale extractions, making it feasible to extract and store significant amounts of data. This is especially beneficial for businesses handling large data volumes or under tight schedules. Auto-saved to the cloud, the 24/7 continuous operating feature of the cloud service allows the unbroken extraction of copious amounts of data at any time of the day or night.

Websites increasingly use CAPTCHAs to restrict web scraping, making the traditional way of manual solving or delaying scraping tasks troublesome and time-consuming. To simplify the process and accelerate data scaling, Octoparse has incorporated an automatic CAPTCHA solver into the system. This will auto-solve CAPTCHAs, enhancing your workflow efficiency.

To curb potential IP restrictions from frequent data scraping, Octoparse enables IP rotation using anonymous HTTP proxy servers, making it safe and secure for the user.

Equally compatible with static and dynamic websites, Octoparse can smoothly navigate and interact with pages that use Ajax.