Gen Z values the ad-supported internet nearly twice as much as Boomers 

Today IAB, the digital media and marketing trade association, released its first-ever, comprehensive Consumer Privacy Study titled "The Free and Open Ad-Supported Internet: Consumers, Content, and Assessing the Data Value Exchange."

The research aimed to gain insights into consumer thoughts, preferences, and concerns regarding their personal data and digital advertising overall.

The study found that 80% of consumers agree the free and open internet is a social good; 79% feel that it would be unfair to lower-income consumers if websites/apps were not "free and open."

• A significant majority (80%) of consumers agree that websites/apps are free because of advertising.
• Almost 70% agree that it's fair to receive ads in exchange for free services.
• Nearly 80% of consumers would prefer to get more ads in turn for having to pay nothing for websites/apps.
• Nearly all (91%) of consumers would react negatively, including being frustrated, disappointed, angry, confused, or sad, if they had to start paying for the websites/apps they currently use for free. When it comes to personalized ads, the study found that almost 90% of consumers prefer them and 87% are more likely to click on ads for products they're interested in or shopping for.

While about 85% feel it's important when websites/apps tell them the specific data they share, allow them to see and delete that data, and provide choices regarding the types and levels of tracking they will allow, few realize that most of those protections already exist in some form or other. The study found that 74% of consumers are unaware of data privacy laws in some of the U.S. states (California, Connecticut, Colorado, Virginia, Utah, and others) and Europe (GDPR). 

"Contrary to what some believe, this research unequivocally shows that consumers are aware of the value exchange between their data and personalized content and ad experiences," said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. "The ad-supported internet is good for consumers, it's good for society, and it democratizes access to information and entertainment."

Still, nearly half (49%) think websites/apps do not give enough information regarding how their data is used. "The ad industry must reinforce to consumers that sharing their data is both safe and beneficial to them," continued Cohen, "including the fact that by default, advertising is not selling consumers' data."

Overall, when asked what someone would have to pay them to stop using it, consumers said they value the total internet at $38,000 a year: for perspective, that's more than half of the real median U.S. household income.

But while Boomers value the internet at $29,000/year, the value to Gen Z was nearly double, at $54,000 a year.

"As an industry, we need to speak together with one voice," continued Cohen. "We need to make it clear that consumers — especially Gen Z — understand the value of the ad-supported internet and wouldn't want to live without it. We're committed to giving consumers the free and open internet experiences they want while protecting their privacy."

Intellicheck, Inc., an industry-leading identity company delivering on-demand digital and physical identification validation solutions, today announced it has successfully completed intensive third-party surveillance audits to retain certification status for another year from the International Standards Organization for ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 certification.

Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis said the recertifications underscore the company’s dedication to the most rigorous standards for securing both customers’ and company data. “This achievement is one more validation of the strength of our commitment to our clients, partners, and stakeholders. Intellicheck remains a world-class company at the forefront in providing market leading on-demand digital and physical validation solutions that accelerate customer onboarding and enhance trust with a secure, frictionless experience while assuring the utmost standards in data security and privacy.”

ISO/IEC 27001:2013 is an information security management system standard published in October 2013 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Achieving ISO/IEC 27001:2013 recertification validates the strength and effectiveness of Intellicheck’s information security management system (ISMS\InfoSec) and Privacy Information Management System (PIMS) and signifies the company’s commitment to securing both company and customer data.

ISO/IEC 27701:2019 is a privacy extension to the ISO/IEDC 27001:2013 Information security standard that is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards, and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The recertification is based on the meticulous review that found Intellicheck has implemented several security measures and countermeasures that protect it from unauthorized access or compromise PII and IT personnel were found to be conscientious and knowledgeable in best practices.

Intellicheck provides both digital and physical identity verification solutions to industries where speed and certainty is crucial. These include financial services, social media, automotive, insurance, law enforcement and identity access management. Intellicheck’s services are used by many of the top 12 banks and credit card issuers, at more than 30,000 retail locations, two of the major social media companies, and more than half of the state-level law enforcement agencies in the U.S.

Today, Skai unveils Skai Decision Pro — the first solution purpose-built for media executives to oversee and orchestrate advertising programs across any channel and publisher. Whether utilized alongside Skai's activation solutions or independently, marketers can tap into the power of AI for data-backed decision-making and predictive media planning, enhancing visibility, trust and control over investment decisions.

A surge in ad formats, channels, and data sources now provides more opportunities for brands to engage with consumers. However, the resulting fragmentation poses challenges for marketing leaders who require a holistic understanding of media performance and its impact on success goals. According to a recent Skai survey, only 11% of marketing executives expressed satisfaction with how data is organized within their business, and 90% reported the need to review data from multiple systems to make decisions.

Skai Decision Pro addresses the data fragmentation challenge with AI capabilities that consolidate and organize all media data on one platform to surface insights crucial for understanding the how and why of a media program's overall performance. Media executives can now effortlessly access data to strategize actions such as allocating extra funds or accommodating a budget reduction with minimal impact, implementing budget pacing checks across channels, and pinpointing the causes of performance trends within large brand portfolios.

Skai Decision Pro capabilities include:

• Executive HQ: Overarching view that visualizes media performance and spend across all channels– not just those activated in the Skai platform.
• Spotlights: AI-powered alerts that uncover anomalies and other significant spend and performance changes to highlight potential opportunities or threats, accelerating smart decision making.
• Media Forecasting: A predictive, AI-driven analysis tool for data-backed decisions. Users can quickly visualize and understand the impact of budget changes on media performance, identify growth opportunities and risks to current plans, and view budget allocation recommendations to better allocate spend across channels for maximum impact.
• Media Plans: Powering other Skai Decision Pro capabilities, Media Plans is a tool to organize, centralize, and visualize monthly and multi-month budgets in one place. Once budgets are input, it serves as a foundation to monitor plans' budget pacing, set up and access activity alerts, simulate different budget scenarios, and forecast revenue.

"Skai Decision Pro gives me a birds-eye view of what's happening in our media program," explained Ainara Sancho, Head of Retail Media EMEA at HP. "Now, when a stakeholder throws a question my way, I can answer with confidence and speed, no more hunting through endless reports or having to speak to retailers. It's like having a decision-making assistant right there! With the addition of Media Forecasting we're expecting to uncover new opportunities and really understand the impact of our efforts in a whole new way."

"As the media landscape expands and becomes more complex, our teams are investing more time exploring and analyzing data to find valuable insights," shared Jason Omenn, VP Ecommerce and Digital Strategy at Marketing Performance Group. "Skai Decision Pro brings together spend and performance data, helping us identify priorities and discover insights that deliver great outcomes and ongoing opportunities."

"At Skai, we believe in empowering brands to realize their true potential through data they can really trust," said Yoav Izhar-Prato, Co-Founder and CEO at Skai. "Skai Decision Pro has been a vision for several years. Now, after close collaboration with select clients and partners, we are revolutionizing how marketers make decisions to achieve business goals. This involves democratizing data access, surfacing insights, and enabling the exploration of scenarios that can be activated and optimized. Having worked closely with top global brands, I can attest that this represents a significant leap forward for the industry as we continue to unlock the promise of omnichannel."

WorkRamp, the pioneer of the Learning Cloud [in the Learning Management System (LMS)] category, announces the availability of its latest innovation, the WorkRamp Content Management System (CMS) for Go-To-Market (GTM) Readiness. This addition to the Learning Cloud enhances the way organizations can deliver seamless enablement and training experiences and learning content to Revenue teams by combining the power of LMS + CMS on one platform.

Key benefits and features of WorkRamp CMS:

Save time with centralized and searchable assets. Store and manage sales-related content in a centralized repository so teams waste no time finding and utilizing relevant materials such as product information, presentations, brochures, and sales collateral.

Boost efficiency with ready-to-share content. Streamline the GTM process when teams house ready-to-share content in WorkRamp’s CMS, giving reps the path to least resistance when pitching to customers, addressing objections, and answering inquiries.

Empower reps with on-brand resources. Never worry about incorrect or outdated information being shared again. With all approved assets in one place, reps are well-equipped to deliver consistent messaging that elevates a brand’s strengths and gets deals over the line.

“At WorkRamp, we’re committed to building the best, purpose-built products to meet the needs of our customers’ different use cases. With the latest enhancement to our Learning Cloud, we’re improving the way organizations deliver enablement and training experiences to their Revenue teams by integrating the power of LMS and CMS on a single platform,” says Ted Blosser, CEO & Co-founder of WorkRamp.

“We look forward to seeing our customers adopt our new solution to help them create the best and most impactful learning experiences for their organizations.”

Why WorkRamp CMS?

WorkRamp addresses the evolving needs of organizations by offering a unified LMS and CMS experience for employee learning. The platform's CMS introduction aligns with WorkRamp's commitment to delivering solutions that help customers:

Consolidate the Learning Tech Stack: Organizations grappling with managing separate LMS and CMS platforms can now simplify their learning tech stack. WorkRamp LMS + CMS enables cost savings, reduces complexity for admins and learners alike, and accelerates faster time-to-value for learning programs.

Enhance Learner Experiences: By eliminating the need for learners to switch between platforms to access training and ready-to-go Sales Assets, WorkRamp now provides Revenue teams with a more seamless learning experience that helps boost rep productivity.

Scale Learning Across the Organization: Administrators, team managers, course creators, and content editors can collaboratively, asynchronously, and transparently operate from a shared command center. WorkRamp's integrated LMS + CMS for GTM readiness enables the entire revenue organization to align and operate cohesively.

“I was desperately on the hunt to try and find a CMS solution when I was brought into a conversation about WorkRamp building their own CMS, and it was just like magic. This is really important for the rollout within the business because trying to get reps on an LMS regardless, to complete learning modules, is really difficult. So to even try and introduce a different CMS platform would have just been a nightmare,” says Dannii Mathers, Global Revenue Enablement Manager at JobAdder.

“Whereas at the moment, they love using WorkRamp. It's really easy, really intuitive to use. It's a safe place for them to navigate now because they're so used to finding what they need in there and completing the modules. That transition over into a CMS is going to be so much more seamless. It's an enabler's dream because there isn't that worry of deploying a new tech stack and the worry of what the adoption is going to be like if there's another bit of technology somebody needs to learn. It solves so many problems in one solution.”

WorkRamp CMS represents the next major milestone in the evolution of the Learning Cloud. As WorkRamp continues to launch innovative products, organizations can transform the way employees learn and grow.

The Act-On Data Lake allows for seamless data sharing across platforms, helping marketers master targeted audience segmentation with the help of AI and marketing automation.

Act-On Software is helping marketers harness the power of data and improve customer engagement with a robust Data Lake, functioning as a private Customer Data Platform (CDP) within Act-On’s customer-beloved marketing automation (MA) solution.

As martech stacks become increasingly complex, data extensibility is critical. Act-On’s Data Lake allows for bidirectional sharing of information for deeper understanding of the customer journey and more effective personalized marketing campaigns based on additional data. Act-On users can import custom first-party data, supplemental second party data, and account data enrichment to improve campaign performance, while also incorporating third-party intent signal data.

Act-On streamlines the experience to make marketers’ work more efficient and effective with a comprehensive platform fulfilling all marketing needs. In addition to advanced AI audience segmentation, marketers have access to Act-On Advanced Analytics, a feature that assesses data and campaign performance without the need for IT and data analysts. Flexible filtering, data visualization, and exportable reports give marketers the power of a business intelligence (BI) tool built directly within their MA. Analytics with AI further helps marketers make data-driven improvements to campaigns to better appeal to specific audiences.

All of this is achieved through Act-On’s two-data structure approach. First, Act-On Contacts provides a more traditional marketing account and contact database, which syncs with a CRM to include lead and account behavioral data. Second is the Act-On Data Lake, which helps integrate smart data sharing between platforms through the power of AI and machine learning (ML).

Act-On Data Lake integrates with Snowflake and Snowflake’s Data Marketplace to provide seamless data sharing within the Snowflake ecosystem. Snowflake customers can simply elect to share data across Snowflake instances to bring data into Act-On to drive more effective marketing campaigns. 

“The Act-On Data Lake operates like your own private CDP built into the platform, tracking all customer and visitor information and powering Act-On Analytics and AI,” said Act-On SVP of Marketing Jeff Day. “Act-On’s robust analytics engine and data segmentation features make marketers’ jobs easier on every level, simultaneously enhancing performance, efficiency, funnel, and ROI. When marketers own direct customer engagement across email, web pages, social media, SMS, and direct mail, they can elevate their brands and improve their campaign efficacy.”

SEO Toolbox.io, Inc. is thrilled to announce their new monthly subscription service designed to make SEO simple for C Suite marketing professionals, media agencies and independent business owners.

SEO Toolbox provides keyword rank tracking, backlink analysis, task management, connectivity to third-party systems such as Google analytics and competitor tracking. The service also offers other essential data gathering and reporting features businesses of all sizes need to fully analyze the effectiveness of their website and the interactions of potential clients. CEO and Founder Samuel Sylvander says he developed SEO Toolbox after years of top-level management positions in Sweden where he oversaw accounts for clients and partners throughout Europe and the United States. “What I’ve come to understand, is that while many larger companies prefer to supervise their SEO in house, many companies still prefer to utilize agencies,” explains Sylvander. “These marketing experts and media managers need thorough reports to provide their clients with a comprehensive picture of what is being accomplished through measurable results.”

SEO Toolbox is also the ideal solution for small business owners who want to track and analyze their online activity. Sylvander continues, “Our company makes SEO simple. Most SEO tracking systems are developed by techies for techies; so, they are not understandable for a CMO or entrepreneur who realizes they need to do some SEO to get new clients. We not only provide them with the tools for success, but SEO Toolbox regularly crawls our customers’ websites looking for anything that needs to be adjusted and provides constructive ideas on how to improve performance.”

From daily rank reports and notifications of rank increases and decreases to tracking tasks assigned to individual team members and the ability to monitor hundreds of projects simultaneously, SEO Toolbox is the one-stop shop for maximum search engine optimization management. “This is the service I wish I had when I was working as a media and marketing executive,” concludes Sylvander. “The man hours and bottom-line costs we would have saved would have been tremendous.” SEO Toolbox is available now to marketing specialists, media agencies and entrepreneurs who are ready to start understanding and tracking their SEO and grow their business by improving their rankings on the world’s top search engines.

Ahead of new Gmail and Yahoo email regulations this week, GetResponse, a leading global email marketing platform, has released new internal research on email deliverability to explore the potential impact for those who comply.

The email deliverability statistics highlight that emails sent from a company's own domain and not a free domain like Gmail, significantly outperform those sent from free domains in terms of global open rates (OR): 41.76% for custom domains compared to 32.32% for free domains.  The study also reveals a significant increase in click-through rates (CTR), from 2.83% for free domains to over 4% for custom domains. This research further underlines both the importance of custom domain use to inbox providers, and the positive impact they have for businesses, with them leading to more web traffic, increased brand engagement, and a higher email marketing ROI overall.

Moreover, authenticated custom domains are crucial in strengthening a company's brand reputation by aligning the sender's email-sending reputation with the organization itself. 

Michael Leszczynski, Head of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse, comments: "These industry changes will impact everyone. Those individuals and businesses not educated on the new regulations face the risk of falling behind. However, I still feel it will be a positive step forward for the industry. It ensures that the email marketing and deliverability practices advocated by GetResponse are now enforced by leading inbox providers. This means better deliverability for our customers and better emails for their subscribers. At GetResponse, we've taken care of that by enabling our customers to purchase a custom domain for email marketing campaigns directly through our platform, as we aim to make these new regulations less cumbersome for our customers. They can even get a free custom domain for a year if they sign up for a discounted annual plan".

Enterprise-grade POS and Mobile-First Ordering Platform Transforming the Way Fans Shop, Order and Pay

Cantaloupe, Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end technology solutions for self-service commerce, announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Cheq Lifestyle Technology, Inc.. This strategic investment positions Cantaloupe for expansion into the large and rapidly growing sports, entertainment, and restaurant sectors with a comprehensive suite of self-service solutions. 

By leveraging mobile ordering, socially connected payments, real-time reporting, and remote support, CHEQ empowers customers to streamline venue operations, increase efficiency, and boost revenue.

“The acquisition of CHEQ expands Cantaloupe's addressable market into a new and rapidly growing sector,” said Ravi Venkatesan, CEO of Cantaloupe, Inc. “There is tremendous synergy between both of our product lines and solutions that will grow our footprint across our combined customer base. We are excited to welcome the CHEQ team to the Cantaloupe family.”

Founded in 2021, CHEQ powers payments for numerous professional sports teams, entertainment venues and festival operators including the Washington Commanders (NFL), Florida Panthers (NHL), Philadelphia Union (MLS), Miami Marlins (MLB), CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore (Oak View Group) and Loud & Live (Festivals). CHEQ technology increases food and beverage sales, speeds up transaction times and drives new customer traffic and engagement.

“We are thrilled with the success we’ve seen since implementing CHEQ’s solutions at Amerant Bank Arena,” said Florida Panthers Chief Revenue Officer Shawn Thornton. “CHEQ’s suite of payment options has enhanced the food and beverage experience for our fans and increased our backend operational efficiency.”

Acquisition Highlights:

• Expands Cantaloupe’s addressable market into solutions for sport stadiums, entertainment venues, festivals, hospitality, theme parks, full-service & fast-casual restaurants and more.
• Provides a comprehensive line of offerings including:
  • Enterprise-grade POS platform: real-time reporting, remote support, and back-end analytics for high-volume venues and complex transactions.
  • Omnichannel Solution: mobile payments (native app, QR codes, NFC, in-seat delivery, pick up with live wait times), POS kiosks and handheld devices.
  • Socially Connected: enables real-time gifting and fosters a sense of community, enhancing fan engagement.
  • Team and Venue Customizations: including key integrations with leading loyalty and team mobile applications.

“We are looking forward to joining Cantaloupe and continuing our mission of delighting guests with a best-in-class on-premise payments experience. Joining forces will allow us to bring their market-leading innovation to our current customer base, and to expand our technology offering through Cantaloupe’s national and international distribution network,” said Thomas Lapham, CEO of CHEQ