Veteran Executive to Lead All Communications for the Global Leader in Audience Measurement

Nielsen, the global leader in currency measurement, data and analytics, announced today that Carole Robinson has been named Chief Communications Officer, effective immediately. The announcement was made by Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao, to whom she will report.

Robinson will be responsible for all of Nielsen's global communications, including external media relations, internal communications, corporate philanthropy, and executive communications for Rao and the Nielsen management team.

"As we look to take Nielsen into the future of currency measurement at a time when there is so much change, both for us and for the industry, it has never been more important for us to be very clear about our mission and our message," said Rao. "Carole is the right executive with decades of experience across all aspects of media who can bring that to life, for all of our key stakeholders both internally and externally. I am thrilled she is joining us at Nielsen, I look forward to working closely with her as she helps both the company, and me, navigate all of it."

Robinson most recently served as Chief Communications Officer at Buzzfeed Inc., where she led communications efforts including building the digital media company's business narrative, and developing strategic plans for BuzzFeed's new and existing brands and businesses, revenue diversification strategy, product lines, commerce business, M&A, AI content development, and much more. She was responsible for the company's media and public relations teams, as well as internal communications.

"I'm so excited to be joining Nielsen. There's never been a more interesting moment to measure and contextualize engagement, and Nielsen is at the convergence of every platform and audience. Karthik and his leadership team are totally committed to innovation and customer service. I can't wait to join the mix, learn from them, and bring my experience from previous companies where change was the norm," said Robinson.

Prior to her role at BuzzFeed, Robinson spent more than 30 years at Viacom, where she rose through the ranks at the global media conglomerate to ultimately serve as its EVP of Corporate Marketing and Communications from 2011-2015. Her tenure at Viacom also included a variety of communications and executive advisory roles with some of the industry's most respected brands, including at MTV Networks where she oversaw communications for much of her time there. Her responsibilities throughout her career at Viacom included communications, research, creative services, special events, corporate philanthropy and standards and practices.

Robinson serves on Colgate University's Alumni Council and served on The Public Theater's Brand Identity and Marketing Committee and the Leadership Committee for the Brooklyn Museum's Sackler Center for Feminist Art. She received a Gracies Leadership Award from the Alliance for Women in Media in 2019. The award recognizes outstanding accomplishments of female executives paving the way as change-agents and ceiling-breakers across the media industry. Robinson graduated from Colgate University, and resides in New York.

 As a veteran leader in the customer engagement space, Hecht brings cross-industry experience in marketing, sales, and operations combined with a deep understanding of digital marketing and eCommerce

Emplifi, a leading customer engagement platform, today announced Ohad Hecht as its new CEO. Hecht takes over the top leadership position during a pivotal time for Emplifi as the company transitions from “build-mode” into an accelerated growth phase. As CEO, Hecht will be focused on three primary pillars: cultivating a winning culture that fosters performance, respect, innovation, teamwork, and passion; embracing a customer-centric strategy that places customers at the core of every decision; and, continuing to build a best-in-class, innovative customer engagement solution that is easy-to-use while delivering a quick time to value.

During the last few years, Emplifi has achieved multiple significant milestones. It acquired and integrated four industry-leading martech platforms into a single, comprehensive suite of customer engagement solutions. As part of its “build-mode” phase, the company rebranded and relaunched as Emplifi, evolving from point solutions to a multi-cloud enterprise offering across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

With Hecht’s laser-focus on culture, product, customer retention and pipeline growth, Emplifi is strategically positioned to move swiftly into its next phase of growth.

“Emplifi has been on a remarkable journey over the past four years, accomplishing the near-impossible task of optimizing its structure and fortifying its foundation as a sustainable, high-growth business during an extremely tumultuous economic climate,” said Hecht. “Emplifi’s unique positioning—and shared belief that genuine, empathetic communication is central to building loyalty and trust between brands and consumers—is the reason I’m here.”

“This team’s achievements include securing top-tier clients such as Benefit Cosmetics, Currys plc, Domino’s, Mercedes-Benz, Miele and Shoppee. As well as building products that have received stellar G2 and TrustRadius reviews, and recognition from analysts at Forrester and IDC,” added Hecht. “I look forward to leading Emplifi into its next stage of accelerated growth, further embracing AI in our products to drive efficiencies, continually enhancing features with automation and integrations, and supporting the end-to-end customer experience. Emplifi is reshaping the way brands connect with the modern consumer in today's dynamic digital landscape – with bold strides to unify marketing, commerce, and care.”

“Emplifi has been part of a journey that has seen the British Red Cross significantly increase our engagement with supporters across all major social media channels. This has helped the organization raise millions of pounds for people in crisis in the UK and around the world. We couldn't have done it without the Emplifi team, and look forward to working with them again in 2024,” said Alice Buckle, Social Media Manager, British Red Cross.

Prior to taking over the top leadership role at Emplifi, Hecht was the co-founder and CEO for Prodport, a personalization solution for eCommerce brands that automates the development of personalized product pages. In addition to leading Prodport, Hecht served first as COO and then CEO for Emarsys, an omnichannel customer engagement SaaS platform with 13 global offices, 850 employees, and more than 4,000 clients. Under his leadership, Emarsys developed cutting-edge technology solutions that led to the company’s 2020 acquisition by SAP.

“Ohad is the perfect leader at this time in Emplifi’s evolution as a leading customer engagement solution for global brands. His wealth of experience leading teams across three different continents while building inclusive workforce cultures that attract top talent from all over the world is just what Emplifi needs to move smoothly from build-mode into growth-mode,” said Iveshu Bhatia, Managing Director, Audax Group.

Hecht’s tenure as Emplifi CEO began on January 1, 2024. With a Bachelor of Arts in Management and Marketing from The Open University of Israel and an M.B.A. from Northern Iowa University, Hecht has vast professional experience in the Asian-Pacific region, Israel, Europe, and North America.

Added In-flight metrics will further enhance campaign performance

AdTheorent Holding Company, Inc., a machine-learning pioneer and industry leader using privacy-forward solutions to deliver measurable value for programmatic advertisers, and Adelaide, the leader in attention-based media quality measurement, today announced a partnership enabling AdTheorent to utilize Adelaide's attention-based metrics for campaign optimization and to quantify digital advertising campaign impact.

Adelaide's omnichannel AU metric is used for attention-based quality measurement across digital advertising campaigns.  The AU score goes beyond viewability, using modeling to evaluate various qualifiers, including ad placement context, position, duration, business outcomes, and eye tracking. With access to Adelaide data, AdTheorent can use top attention-driving tactics to drive campaign performance across multiple formats and channels including display, online video, and connected television (CTV).  In addition to AU scores, AdTheorent advertisers can gain insight into metrics such as Cost Per AU and Performance by Feature (i.e., creative, device, etc.). Additionally, AdTheorent can utilize Adelaide measurement in conjunction with other studies, such as sales lift, brand awareness, and visitation, to determine the impact of attention-based metrics on business outcomes.

"AdTheorent's ML-powered DSP puts advertisers first by executing highly successful campaigns that are free from waste and inefficiency, and by driving tangible business outcomes across a variety of advertiser-specified KPIs," said Jim Lawson, CEO, AdTheorent. "We are excited about our partnership with Adelaide which allows us to optimize and measure campaigns utilizing insightful attention-based metrics."

"AU offers predictive insights into campaign performance with unmatched precision. Its integration into AdTheorent's DSP means advertisers can easily secure higher-quality media and drive better outcomes at scale," said Marc Guldimann, CEO & Co-founder, Adelaide. "We're excited to collaborate with AdTheorent to make attention data actionable, steering advertisers towards smarter investment decisions and an understanding of true media quality."

Algolia, the world’s only end-to-end AI Search and Discovery platform, today announced its strategic initiative aimed at advancing its Generative AI capabilities tailored specifically to deliver unparalleled search and discovery experiences for merchants and shoppers. This forward-thinking approach underscores Algolia's commitment to creating innovative, customer-centric solutions that align with the dynamic needs of today's online shoppers.

Economic Impact and Growth Potential
According to McKinsey, the potential economic impact of Generative AI is staggering, with annual estimates ranging from $2.6 to $4.4 trillion globally. In the retail and consumer packaged goods sector alone, anticipated growth is projected to reach $400-660 billion. This growth will largely be driven by efficient content creation, optimized data use, enhanced product discovery, AI-infused search functionalities, and greater personalized shopping experiences.

Generative Shopping Experiences
Algolia is announcing a new suite of Generative Shopping Experiences products. With Generative Shopping Experiences, retailers will have the unprecedented ability to reimagine their search and discovery experiences and to create entirely unique and captivating revenue-generating interactions.

Algolia’s Chief Product Officer, Bharat Guruprakash, noted that the first place Generative AI will be used is in the search bar. “Shoppers are becoming more expressive when telling the search bar what they want. Generative AI in search uses Large Language Models and can understand what customers are asking for and then match items inside the product catalog much more accurately. However, to more fully enable e-commerce companies, we are packaging these capabilities into Generative Shopping Experiences to enrich and personalize a shopper’s journey.”

Generative Shopping Experiences provides a dynamic platform upon which retailers can experiment and seamlessly deploy new Generative AI use cases. Moreover, armed with a comprehensive array of APIs, user experience (UX) libraries, and merchandising tools, retailers can navigate the evolving landscape of e-commerce with confidence and creativity. Algolia's Generative Shopping Experiences promises to be a game-changer, which sets a new standard for personalized and immersive online shopping experiences, will initially include the following five solutions:

• Product Comparisons: Generative product comparisons that summarize and present the differences between different products enabling the shopper to more quickly and easily choose the one most suitable to satisfy their needs.
• Product Reviews: Enhanced and personalized product review experiences shared by owners or users of the product, who provide their opinions on the pros and cons of a specific product.
• Buyers Guides: AI-powered personalized guidance for a seamless shopping experience.
• Query Refinement: Proactive and respectful AI chat agents to assist throughout the shopping journey and narrow down the choices.
• Conversational Interface: A shopper-friendly, conversational agent that uses the breadth of Generative AI to provide a rich and engaging chat experience.

Shaping the Future of Generative AI
Bharat Guruprakash acknowledges that the Generative AI transformation is in its early stages, anticipating continued and rapid development, “we’re particularly interested in exploring the potential of Foundational Models to take over more application logic. The goal is to shift from content generation to completing complex tasks, enabling more intelligent applications that can react to users' needs in real-time.”

Driving Efficiencies and Enhancing Experiences
The core challenge for every e-commerce business remains the same: increase product selection, decrease costs, and improve conversions. The introduction of Generative AI presents a transformative opportunity to achieve more with less. Algolia's Generative AI principles serve as the guiding force behind its product development, ensuring a strategic and customer-focused approach to addressing the evolving landscape of e-commerce:

• Generational Technology: Algolia believes that Generative AI is a generational technology, akin to the transformative impact of mobile and the cloud. Rapid and uneven change calls for a long-term approach.
• UX and AI working harmony: Algolia will emphasize the importance of a user-centric approach, asserting that successful AI deployment requires seamless integration with the shopper’s user experience (UX) – ensuring a harmonious relationship between the UX and AI.
• Ensemble of Models: Algolia advocates for the use of multiple AI models in an ensemble, providing superior results and greater flexibility.
• Continuous Experimentation: Acknowledging the uncharted territory of Generative AI capabilities, Algolia expects there will be continuous experimentation to discover the full extent of possibilities.
• Dynamic Applications: As reasoning capabilities and performance improve, Algolia envisions more dynamic applications that can adapt to shoppers' needs in real-time.

• Three-quarters of respondents expect Generative AI (Gen AI) to transform their organizations within three years

• Only a quarter of leaders believe their organizations are "highly" or "very highly" prepared to address governance and risk issues related to Gen AI adoption

• Only 47% agree that their organizations are sufficiently educating employees on the capabilities, benefits, and value of Gen AI

• More than half are concerned that the widespread use of Gen AI will increase economic inequality (51%)

Building on its annual State of AI in the Enterprise report, today the Deloitte AI Institute™ is unveiling at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, the first wave of a quarterly survey, which explores how actions taken now will guide how Gen AI adoption unfolds and if its benefits are fully realized. The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise: Now decides next is based on a survey of more than 2,800 Director to C-suite level respondents across six industries and 16 countries. While respondents have a range of self-reported levels of Gen AI expertise, all are experienced with AI and are piloting or implementing Gen AI in their organizations.

"We're in the early days of a major technological transformation with Gen AI beginning to drive a wave of innovation across industries," says Joe Ucuzoglu, Deloitte Global CEO. "The speed, scale, and use cases of Gen AI are breathtaking. Business leaders are under an immense amount of pressure to act, while ensuring appropriate governance and risk mitigation guardrails are in place." 

How early Gen AI experts are driving value

Three-quarters (79%) of respondents expect Gen AI to drive substantial organizational transformation in less than three years. Yet, at the moment, the majority report a strong focus on more tactical benefits, like improving efficiency and cost reduction, rather than things like growth and improving innovation. Like with many new technologies, improving efficiency and productivity was the leading benefit organizations said they were seeking (56%). Areas considered more strategic, like encouraging innovation (29%) and uncovering new ideas and insights (19%) are currently a lower priority.

More than four in 10 (44%) respondents believe they have "high" or "very high" expertise in Gen AI. Among this group, the 9% who report "very high" expertise levels (referred to as early Gen AI experts) reveal how leaders are thinking about and treating Gen AI differently. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of these early Gen AI experts say they are already integrating Gen AI into their product development and research and development, suggesting that they are beginning to use Gen AI for innovation and growth-related purposes. They are also more likely to use Gen AI at a higher rate across business functions.

The early Gen AI experts feel more trust and less uncertainty about the technology and appear to be the most prepared for the changes Gen AI will bring—but they also see greater potential for disruption. For example, compared to respondents with "some level of expertise," early Gen AI experts are twice as likely to feel that their business or operating model is threatened by the widespread adoption of Gen AI.

Managing talent, governance, and risk are top challenges with Gen AI adoption

Respondents report feeling generally prepared when it comes to strategy and technology infrastructure, but they have lower confidence related to talent, governance, and risk, which are seen as significant barriers to AI adoption.

In fact, respondents cite lack of technical talent and skills as the single biggest barrier to Gen AI adoption. Only 22% of respondents believe their organizations are "highly" or "very highly" prepared to address talent-related issues related to Gen AI adoption. And many are not yet focused on education and reskilling—only 47% of organizations agree that they are sufficiently educating their employees on the capabilities, benefits, and value of Gen AI. The early Gen AI experts, however, are much more likely to focus on educating and reskilling their workforce, and to focus on recruiting and hiring technical talent to drive Gen AI initiatives. For example, 74% of respondents with "very high" Gen AI expertise say they are educating their workforce versus 27% of respondents with "some" expertise.

Similarly, governance and risk are barriers to Gen AI adoption. Only a quarter (25%) of leaders believe their organizations are "highly" or "very highly" prepared to address governance and risk issues related to Gen AI adoption. Respondents' biggest concerns related to governance are: lack of confidence in results (36%); intellectual property concerns (35%); misuse of client or customer data (34%); ability to comply with regulations (33%); and lack of explainability/ transparency (31%).

Leaders worry that Gen AI will drive greater economic inequality

Although the leaders surveyed are generally excited and enthusiastic about Gen AI's potential business benefits, they are less optimistic about its broader societal impacts. More than half of respondents expect widespread use of Gen AI to centralize power in the global economy (52%) and increase economic inequality (51%). Additionally, 49% of respondents believe the rise of Gen AI tools/applications will erode the overall level of trust in national and global institutions.

To help address these concerns, the majority of respondents agree there is a need for more global regulation (78%) and collaboration (72%) to manage the responsible widespread adoption of Gen AI.  

"Today, Gen AI is at an inflection point where organizations are just beginning to recognize its potential but are yet to see it as a growth catalyst for business. Organizations need to consider Gen AI in conjunction with other AI and technology tools to drive business growth," says Deborshi Dutt, Artificial Intelligence Strategic Growth Offering lead and principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "To help accelerate their path to Gen AI value, organizations should start to reimagine and reinvent how they conduct business to stay ahead in this transformative landscape, while managing risks appropriately. This will require increased collaboration across organizations to foster trust in the responsible and widespread adoption of Gen AI, and a strong focus on education and reskilling people for how this technology is expected to alter how we each work, learn, and collaborate."

Leading composable commerce platform accepted into prestigious MACH Alliance, showcasing commitment to modern commerce technology.

AnalytixInsight Inc., a data analytics and enterprise software solutions provider, announces today that Prakash Hariharan has resigned as president, chief executive officer, and chair of the Company, effective January 12, 2024. Mr. Hariharan will continue to support the Company as a member of its board and will act as a special advisor to aid in the management transition.

Vince Kadar, a current director, has been appointed as chair of the board, and Natalie Hirsch, the current chief operating officer, has been appointed as the interim president and chief executive officer.

Natalie is an operational leader with significant experience managing complex projects and scaling businesses, teams, and processes with over 15+ years of work experience in enterprise software and fintech companies. More recently, she served as Vice President of Operations for Coinsquare Ltd., one of Canada’s largest crypto trading platforms. She also retains an active designation as a Chartered Professional Accountant in Ontario.

"I am excited to step into the role of Interim President and CEO," stated Natalie Hirsch. "I look forward to working with both the board and the rest of the team to develop and execute business strategies that capitalize on the Company’s suite of fintech products and services. I believe that there are a number of interesting opportunities for the Company in 2024, and I am excited to work with the team to explore these opportunities while building shareholder value."

In addition, the board of directors of the Company approved an amendment (the “Amendment”) to its By-law No. A-1. Effective immediately, the Amendment provides for a majority voting standard in uncontested director elections. The majority voting standard provision provides that where there is only one candidate nominated for each position available on the board, each nominee director must receive a majority of “for” votes to be elected. The Company intends to submit the Amendment to its shareholders at the next annual meeting of shareholders, at which such shareholders may, by ordinary resolution, confirm, reject or amend the Amendment.

New partnership lets suppliers collect and display authentic reviews efficiently, while helping Walmart shoppers make better purchasing decisions.

Wholescale is pleased to announce its partnership with Walmart Inc. to syndicate authentic ratings & reviews to the world’s largest retailer. The official partnership comes amidst record growth for Wholescale in 2023.

Wholescale’s proprietary technology prioritizes authentic reviews for shoppers, while offering advanced solutions for suppliers. The syndication partnership demonstrates Walmart’s commitment to enriching customers’ shopping experiences and offering cutting-edge technologies and platform-choice to suppliers.

“Suppliers and sellers can now serve shoppers and Walmart merchants in the most efficient manner,” said David Rapps, President of Wholescale. "Suppliers spend exorbitant fees on incentivized and sampled reviews that shoppers tend to distrust, so Wholescale and Walmart naturally aligned to execute this partnership. Suppliers and sellers are excited about how seamlessly Wholescale’s authentic reviews platform integrates into Walmart’s ecosystem. I applaud the Walmart and Wholescale teams for their excellent collaboration and execution.”

Wholescale’s vast experience building successful consumer brands through authentic reviews epitomizes the profound impact reviews have on shoppers’ brand loyalty and purchase behavior. Wholescale’s technology has been adopted by multiple Walmart Supplier of the Year award winners as well as leading brands and suppliers across the retail landscape.