Businesses and organizations can now connect with Deaf users in real time, directly in Teams and Zoom with Sorenson Express for VRI 

Sorenson, the leading provider of inclusive communication services for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard-of-hearing communities around the world, today launched Sorenson Express, integrations for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Video Communications, Inc.  Sorenson Express is an on-demand American Sign Language (ASL), Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) service for businesses that use Microsoft Teams or Zoom in their enterprises. Sorenson Express for VRI seamlessly integrates interpreters as active video participants into Microsoft Teams or Zoom video meetings and can integrate an ASL interpreter into video meetings on-demand.

Sorenson Express is the first B2B, ASL interpreting service to provide an integrated app experience with Teams and Zoom. The costs associated with Sorenson Express for VRI are undertaken by the business, not for the employee or consumer. This demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and workplace parity for Deaf, hard-of-hearing employees and customers on behalf of employers and businesses. Sorenson remains focused on advancing technology that advances workplace and market parity.

"At Sorenson, we are dedicated to delivering innovative, accessible and inclusive language services that give people the option to communicate in their preferred language and to form genuine connections," said Jorge Rodriguez, CEO of Sorenson, which connects some 140 million conversations each year. "We are excited to extend our mission to make video calls more accessible to Deaf and hard-of-hearing professionals with our innovative products and services. As a leading global language services provider, we are proud to drive this important effort and anticipate further collaboration with Microsoft, Zoom and other video communications platforms that will find Sorenson Express critical for their organizations."

Sorenson Express for VRI helps businesses facilitate smoother remote meetings for Deaf professionals, enhance communication between Deaf and hearing colleagues, and support stronger relationship-building within diverse teams. Key benefits of using Sorenson Express include:

• Convenience: Hassle-free way to access interpreters at a moment's notice
• Inclusivity: Expands communication opportunities between signed and spoken languages
• Accessibility: Sorenson Express can bridge gaps whenever there's a sudden need for an interpreter that wasn't possible to schedule.
• Cost Efficiency: On-demand ASL interpreters provide greater workplace parity for Deaf employees and greater market parity for Deaf consumers.
• Compliance: Sorenson Express meets federal compliance guidelines and provide greater workplace parity for Deaf employees.
• Multilingual Capabilities: Sorenson Express provides interpreting between ASL and both English and Spanish.
• Diversified Workforce & Suppliers: The integration of Sorenson Express with Microsoft Teams and Zoom supports businesses in their efforts to promote inclusivity and embrace the diverse skills and perspectives that Deaf employees bring to the workplace.

impact.com, the world’s standard, leading partnership management platform, announced today the appointment of Dale Lynch as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective February 1. Lynch will oversee the company’s worldwide financial planning, accounting, legal, and corporate development.

Lynch brings more than 34 years of executive-level financial and strategic leadership expertise from multinational publicly traded companies. The lead behind two significant initial public offerings (IPOs) at MarketWise and U.S. Silica Holdings, Lynch will lead impact.com’s global finance operations and strategic initiatives as a key member of impact.com’s executive team.

“Dale is an incredibly talented and seasoned CFO with a proven track record of financial and operational success in the SaaS technology and services industry. We are excited to welcome him to impact.com,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO of impact.com. “I am confident he’ll be instrumental in helping impact.com achieve its goals as we focus on the next phases of growth and cement our market leadership as the global standard platform that creates, manages, and scales organizational partnerships of every type.”

Prior to joining impact.com, Lynch served as CFO of the leading SaaS digital marketplace ShiftMed. There he scaled the fast-growing startup in preparation for its IPO while establishing the company’s executive financial leadership team and leading its financial planning and analysis (FP&A), data analytics, capital markets and investor communications, and finance and revenue management operations.

Prior to ShiftMed, Lynch served as CFO for MarketWise, a SaaS software and technology-enabled digital subscription company. In his role, Lynch rebuilt the company’s financial and business operations and drove its enterprise value which ultimately led the company to a $2.9 billion IPO in 2021.

During his tenure, Lynch also served as Executive Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer for Farmer Mac and led U.S. Silica Holdings through its $850 million IPO in 2012. Earlier in his career, Lynch served in a variety of roles that included Allied Capital Corporation, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.

“impact.com is an incredibly vibrant company where I see raw economic potential and market horsepower. I am honored to join impact.com as it continues to take bold action to meet its next chapter of transformation and growth,” said Lynch. “This is an incredible opportunity and a critical time where, as a part of the collective impact.com leadership team, I look forward to helping drive superior financial and operational support that will enable the company to further scale and grow.”

Lynch graduated magna cum laude from The Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting. He also holds an MBA magna cum laude from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Impact PMPs allow advertisers to easily activate deals to support minority-owned publishers and their communities during Black History Month and beyond.

OpenX Technologies, Inc., one of the world’s leading omnichannel supply-side platforms, today announced the launch of Impact PMPs, turnkey deals that integrate donations to nonprofits at no additional cost to the brand. Powered by Givsly, the leading purpose-driven marketing solution, OpenX’s Impact PMPs allow advertisers to easily activate deals while supporting charitable causes of their choice. 

As the importance of social responsibility for brands continues to rise, 90 percent of consumers report that values are important when choosing a brand, and 81 percent of millennials expect companies they purchase from to make charitable contributions.

Through OpenX’s partnership with Givsly, deals activated through an Impact PMP will automatically include a five-percent donation of gross media spend to associated nonprofits of the buyer’s choice. Buyers can select pre-built deals timed to moments such as Black History Month or traditional advertising events that are less commonly associated with charitable causes, such as Sunday’s big game.

How it works:

• Simple execution: Target pre-built audiences with relevance around different interests, events, behavior, and more.
• Greater control: Select from pre-built auction packages from the library or activate custom IDs and automatically donate to one or more of 400 directly integrated nonprofits.
• Higher quality inventory: Execute these pre-built packages on TAG-certified, premium, omnichannel inventory across publishers.
• Elevated social impact: Give back to people and planet with no additional investment.
• Meaningful measurement: Track not only campaign results but also the specific impact to the community.

"We have partnered with Givsly on several of their Responsible Media solutions and have seen promising signs that these solutions increase campaign performance without disrupting our current way of doing business,” said Ed McElvain, EVP, P3 at Mediahub. “This latest announcement of the Impact PMPs with OpenX only amplifies our ability to make sure we are positively impacting our media buying while also reinforcing values that are important to our clients."

In addition to the Impact PMPs, Givsly offers creative formats that incorporate a donation when people take certain actions to engage with advertising. Creative adjustments can be made to the Impact PMPs to drive higher performance in campaigns, with such creative achieving double the click-through rate, an 18 percent higher video completion rate, and a nine percent increase in CTV engagement.

“Across the business, OpenX is invested in delivering outcome-based solutions. When it comes to media responsibility, too much of what we see in tech and media is virtue signaling, and provides little monetary support to important issues,” said Amanda Forrester, VP, Marketing at OpenX. “Programs like OpenX’s Impact PMPs will allow advertisers to direct funds toward organizations that support minority publishers, women, LGBTQ communities, and underrepresented communities — in an effort to make a real change.”

Advanced Email Protection Helps Stop the Latest Malware, Phishing Scams and Malicious Links Across Gmail and Outlook Webmail Services

Bitdefender, a global cybersecurity leader, today launched Email Protection, a powerful new feature that scans and identifies potentially dangerous content such as phishing attempts and online scams, in webmail accessed from any device. Email Protection allows users to extend one of the world’s best endpoint protection technologies to webmail services and currently supports Gmail and Outlook. 

Email continues to be the top attack vector for cybercriminals. According to Statista, unique phishing sites increased from 147 thousand in 2020 to over 1.35 million in 2022; and the FBI’s 2022 Internet Crime Report stated that phishing was the top complaint filed in the U.S. - 80% higher than personal data breach, the second most filed complaint. Following suit, Bitdefender Labs reported that one in five (23%) financial and bank themed spam emails analyzed were phishing attempts.

Initial access is gained by users clicking on malicious links or attachments. Once a system is compromised, threat actors gain control to steal personal information, finances, extort, or demand a ransom.

As consumers continue to access email across multiple devices, providing full protection from threats has become increasingly difficult - often requiring manual configuration and updating email security solutions on every device that accesses each inbox.

Email Protection safeguards consumers’ inboxes as malware and phishing scams continue to rapidly evolve. Set-up for each webmail account takes a few moments and is incredibly easy to use. Once activated, Bitdefender scans all incoming email and clearly marks each safe or unsafe, helping users from falling victim to malware or scams.

“Cybercriminals always look for the path of least resistance and opportunities for user error when compromising devices; that’s why initial attacks through email remains the preferred method,” said Ciprian Istrate, senior vice president of operations, Consumer Solutions Group at Bitdefender. “Our new Email Protection feature extends Bitdefender’s world-class cybersecurity to popular webmail services helping secure inboxes that can be accessed from anywhere using any device. A true game changer for the always-on digital lifestyle.”

Key Features and Benefits

• Powerful email protection – After set-up, scan for malicious emails in real-time over Gmail and Outlook webmail services across any device used to access the accounts.

• Clear tagging of suspicious content – Emails are immediately tagged with distinct labels (Safe or Dangerous) reducing the risk of accidentally clicking malicious content.

• Simple email management and reporting – Manage inboxes (including pausing and removing protection) and reporting (number of emails scanned, clean vs malicious over last 30 days) directly from the Bitdefender user interface.

• Easy set up – Set up email protection just once to secure your mailbox in about a minute or less, with just a few clicks.

Availability

Bitdefender Email Protection is available now at no additional cost for new and existing Bitdefender Premium Security, Premium Security Plus, Ultimate Security, and Ultimate Security Plus plan holders.

A new Verint study reveals only 10 percent of contact center leaders believe telephony will have an impact on CX automation over the next 12 months while 53 percent indicated artificial intelligence (AI) and 23 percent said digital channels will be the driving forces behind their CX automation efforts.

The survey of 300 contact center leaders in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was conducted by Verint^® and sheds light on current and emerging contact center challenges. The report specifically looks at the critical role of openness, automation and AI in addressing how brands need to do more with less while simultaneously elevating CX. It evaluates the use of Contact Center as a Service (CaaS) solutions and their effectiveness in an era where AI is playing a starring role in customer engagement transformation.

The survey shows that first-generation, telephony centric CCaaS solutions are failing to create a more efficient contact center and under perform in three ways: 1) poor support for omnichannel engagement; 2) no effective mechanism for reducing administrative burdens on the contact center; and 3) engagement data isn’t leveraged or optimized.

In addition, 75 percent of survey respondents said they leverage CCaaS solutions for customer engagement. However, the survey results show that many leaders are not satisfied with the performance of their CCaaS solutions. For example, 80 percent of those surveyed felt that using AI, automation and bots for self-service and agent-assisted tasks are important features but less than half (41%) are satisfied with their current solutions. Along the same lines, 82 percent feel easy integration into third-party systems is important, but only 46 percent are satisfied with this capability in their organization.

“Our research underscores the imperative for contact centers to embrace openness in their technology platforms,” says Verint’s Jenni Palocsik, vice president, marketing insights, experience and enablement. “The shift from telephony-first to AI-driven solutions is evident, and organizations that prioritize flexibility and innovation will lead the way in delivering exceptional customer experiences now and in the future.”

Verint delivers an open CX automation platform for agile, scalable omnichannel customer engagement with data and AI at its core. The platform enables businesses to choose applications based on their needs, access comprehensive engagement data, and augment their human workforce with specialized AI-powered bots. This approach enhances agent and customer experiences by unifying engagement data, ensuring continuous AI training, and augmenting the human workforce with specialized AI-powered bots.

Ahead of The Big Game kick-off on Sunday, February 11, Discover will unveil a new commercial from the “Especially for Everyone” brand campaign starring award-winning actress Jennifer Coolidge. In the ad, titled “Robots,” Coolidge finds herself in a relatable situation, calling customer service and expecting to only interact with a robot.

“Robots” uses Coolidge’s comedic performance to highlight what can be an irritating expectation consumers have when calling customer service. According to a recent Discover and Dynata survey, 95% of Americans prefer engaging with a live customer service agent instead of a customer service bot.

See the full 30 second “Robots” ad here.

“It might have been a lucky coincidence that this commercial subject happens to be the bane of my existence,” said Jennifer Coolidge. “I don't remember telling anyone at Discover about my daily battles with technology--the day starts with my phone and purchasing things online; airline tickets, clothing, and anything else I need quickly. When I need quick, customer-service help with something I will make it to a certain point working with a robot and then I get caught in this maze unable to get out. And then I get sent back to the beginning which makes me crazy. It’s usually something a human being could fix in two seconds.”

“Great customer service is becoming increasingly hard to find, but Discover customers can talk to a live US-based agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” said Discover Chief Marketing Officer, Jennifer Murillo. “Jennifer Coolidge brings her comic genius to our latest ad, this time to bring to life a refreshingly great experience we create every day for our customers.”

“We were able to tap into a human truth that an overwhelming majority of people crave to be recognized and valued, which includes talking to real people when trying to reach customer service,” said Kirsten Rutherford, Executive Creative Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA. “Jennifer Coolidge brought this truth to life in a way only her comedic experience could. The ‘Especially for Everyone’ brand platform is all about how Discover products and services ensure all customers feel valued and challenges the old notion that the best experiences are reserved for a select few.”

Updated digital watermarks deliver greater security, adaptability, imperceptibility, performance, and control

Digimarc Corporation, the pioneer and global leader in digital watermarking technologies, today announced the availability of its next-generation digital watermarks featuring more advanced security and greater access control. Digimarc’s next-generation digital watermarks have also been optimized to efficiently address multiple use cases while simultaneously delivering pronounced improvements in both imperceptibility and performance. 

“Drawing on Digimarc’s three decades of expertise and intellectual property, our next-generation digital watermarks deliver dramatic improvements across multiple key areas critical to our core use cases – the identification and the authentication of physical and digital items,” said Ken Sickles, Chief Product Officer at Digimarc. “Our latest digital watermarks are the most sophisticated we have developed and represent a step change in state-of-the-art digital watermarking.”

The latest improvements include:

Advanced Security

Digimarc digital watermarks leverage enhanced encryption techniques requiring an authorized private key to detect and decode, strengthening data security by ensuring information is protected in transit to and from the Digimarc Illuminate platform (cloud or edge server).

Greater Control

Powerful new data access controls allow companies to provide different audiences with different information for different purposes. Access to the data associated with the digital watermarks can also be limited, revoked, or changed at any point and in real time.

In addition to greater control of data, companies can also limit detection of the digital watermark to specific devices or individuals (e.g., authorized brand inspectors), enabling product authentication without revealing to counterfeiters or the public that the item is protected.

With this greater control, companies can now deploy digital watermarks well ahead of activation, unlike other data carriers, making it easier to benefit from packaging refreshes, regional rollouts, and future product digitization initiatives.

Improved Adaptability

Digimarc digital watermarks retrieve dynamic data from the Digimarc Illuminate platform (cloud or edge server), unlocking the power to deliver specific information based on context, purpose, and permissions. This adaptability also allows the same digital watermark to support all identifiers or data structures and seamlessly power multiple use cases.

Increased Imperceptibility

Our latest advancements in digital watermarking technology deliver increased covertness and more robust reading performance without sacrificing the power of unlimited data granularity.

Extended Distance Detection

Digimarc digital watermarks are optimized to leverage improvements in machine vision and inspection camera technology to dramatically increase distance reading. Recent testing by Digimarc shows the ability to read digital watermarks consistently and accurately up to 10 feet away with widely-available cameras, an important milestone that enables next-generation checkout and inventory management, in-store and throughout the supply chain.

Importantly, these improvements do not impact Digimarc digital watermarks’ unique applicability to both physical and digital assets, delivering the same capabilities whether used on products and packaging or digital images and multimedia. Digimarc’s ability to traverse both physical and digital domains unlocks unrivaled capabilities and reveals never-before-seen data critical in today’s omnichannel world.

Digimarc digital watermarks also continue to deliver incomparable reliability and accuracy under harsh or unfavorable conditions (including high-speed motion, occlusion, and damaged or manipulated items), ensuring the robustness and redundancy of Digimarc’s digital watermarks remain unmatched by other data carriers.

In a strategic move that marks a significant milestone in the product management landscape, Beamer has announced a merger with Userflow. This partnership reinforces both companies' positions as leading providers of no-code product adoption and engagement platforms and expands their combined capabilities by offering a consolidated toolkit for leading product-led growth (PLG) teams across the world. The combined company intends to be a major player in the Digital Adoption Platform space.

The combined company provides Product teams focused on driving product-led growth (PLG) with a robust toolkit that enables product adoption and engagement. Beamer's best-in-class product communication and feedback tools complement Userflow's innovative no-code flow user onboarding and product adoption tools, and with both companies being product-led themselves, Beamer and Userflow remain easy to adopt, easy to purchase, and easy to scale. 

Satya Ganni, CEO of Beamer, adds "User onboarding, in-app communication and more tooling to drive product adoption are highly sought-after features among Beamer customers and prospects, making up almost 40% of asks. Merging with Userflow is a huge win for our customer base and will give them access to a truly all-in-one growth toolkit."

Beamer is a leading platform for PLG teams looking to build better products and improve user engagement. The company's Changelog, NPS, and Feedback products serve as intuitive tools that facilitate direct communication and feedback between product teams and their end-users, ultimately helping to increase engagement and reduce churn.

Userflow has distinguished itself in the global SaaS community with its innovative no-code guide builder, enabling businesses to be more product-led. Founded in 2019, the company has reached significant scale without any external funding by implementing PLG best practices themselves.

Satya Ganni, CEO of Beamer, expressed his excitement about the merger, "We are thrilled to welcome Userflow to the Beamer team. The talent and innovation that Sebastian and Esben have displayed in building Userflow is tremendous, and their no-code builder for in-app onboarding experiences complements Beamer's mission to help companies build better products. We are also deeply grateful for the support and partnership from Camber Partners and Arsenal Growth, who have been instrumental in this journey."

The newly combined company services thousands of growing SaaS businesses across the globe and totals more than 200M monthly active users with a shared vision to offer a two-way communication channel between product teams and their end-users. Profitable and growing, the company intends to add key headcount and build additional product lines to supplement both platforms and reinforce value to customers.

Esben Friis-Jensen, Co-founder and CGO of Userflow, reflected on the journey, "Joining forces with Beamer heralds a new era for product teams worldwide. We're impressed with Beamer's comprehensive toolkit and excited about the combined potential to serve our global customer base even better."

Beamer's merger with Userflow is timely, as many analysts have proclaimed that we are in a Golden Age of Product Management. The accelerated pace of technology development and adoption, the increase in digital transformation initiatives, consumer-like expectations for software products, and data-driven decision-making are all key trends that have resulted in the rise of the product function, as well as the demand for best-in-class software tools that serve these teams' needs. The markets for Digital Adoption and Product Engagement suites are forecasted to grow from $700M to $3.7B by 2030 according to Dataintelo.