Anchored in robust algorithmic and identity capabilities, Yahoo Blueprint offers campaign forecasting and optimization, AI-powered audience insights and recommendations, and more

Yahoo Advertising today launched Yahoo Blueprint, a central AI suite that powers performance-based solutions within the Yahoo DSP. Fueled by over 335 million logged in Yahoo users globally, Yahoo Blueprint enhances decisioning, makes AI more accessible, and serves as a results-driven guide throughout the campaign lifecycle to deliver better outcomes for advertisers. This new AI suite has launched with Fortune 500 brand partners and agencies, including Keurig Dr Pepper and Novus Media.

"What sets our AI suite apart is the vast scale of proprietary data we tap into before considering third-party or customer first-party data," said Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer at Yahoo. “In introducing Yahoo Blueprint, we are now allowing advertisers to capitalize on Yahoo’s extensive history of machine learning and data-driven decision-making in a new and accessible way.”

Yahoo Blueprint benefits Yahoo DSP clients by delivering:

• Stronger Results: Robust performance that leverages years of AI to bid on the right impressions, at the right time, at the right price.
• Confidence in Optimization: AI co-pilot that provides recommendations for campaign improvements and auto-optimizes to meet advertiser goals.
• Simplicity and Efficiency: A simple and enhanced UI that guides advertisers and offers more efficiency.

"Yahoo Blueprint makes AI tangible, actionable, and accessible, and delivers real-world impact,” said Pat Fitzell, Director of Platform Investment at Novus Media. “It allows us to quickly identify which components need adjustment and optimize in real-time. From campaign planning to reporting, Yahoo Blueprint truly empowers us to stay ahead and maximize our ad performance.”

Yahoo Blueprint is an evolving AI ecosystem that will continue to be enhanced in future phases. Phase one of AI capabilities include:

• New Data Visualizations: The new homepage of the Yahoo DSP now centralizes AI-driven insights and recommendations into one easy-to-use hub, enabling advertisers to clearly extract insights and take action quickly.
• Bidding & Forecasting Precision: Omniscope, an algorithmic forecasting tool, allows advertisers to plan and compare the projected reach and performance of different targeting parameters (ex: audience segment, day parting, inventory type, etc.) across channels, formats, and exchanges. Omniscope aims to enhance omnichannel buying, and with today’s release, equips CTV advertisers with the ability to forecast incremental reach of CTV audiences against linear audiences.
• Audience Insights: AI-powered insights tool designed to be highly intuitive with easy-to-read charts that leverage Yahoo proprietary data, third-party data, and advertiser first-party data to reveal actionable insights pre-, mid-, and post-campaign.
• Predictive Audiences: Algorithmic audiences that leverage over one million dimensions like interests, demographics and more - determining the purchase probability of each user to more accurately reach and find advertisers’ next most likely customer.
• Customer Value Optimization: An optimization algorithm that maximizes the value of advertisers’ first-party data to find new customers that share the same predicted value of their most prized customers.

“With Yahoo Blueprint, advertisers always hold the reins,” added Herbst-Brady. “Yahoo Blueprint not only focuses on enhancing performance, but also aims to reduce friction and maintain transparency, ensuring both ease of use and advertiser control.”

Ability makes a strategic move towards creating a more inclusive digital world by announcing its industry-leading accessibility toolbar, "Max Access," will now be available for free, forever.

Ability, a trailblazer in digital accessibility solutions, has taken a monumental step towards inclusivity by announcing that the latest version of its industry-leading accessibility toolbar, "Max Access," will now be available for free, forever. This strategic decision aligns with Ability's core mission of making the digital world universally accessible.

Key Features of Max Access:

Seamless Web Accessibility: Max Access empowers users to navigate the web with ease, providing customizable features that cater to individual needs. From adjustable font sizes to text-to-speech translations in over 20 languages, Max Access ensures a personalized and inclusive online experience for everyone.

Smart Contrast and Color Adjustments: Enhancing readability for users with visual impairments including hyperopia and color blindness, Max Access offers intelligent contrast and color adjustments. This feature ensures that content remains clear and legible, regardless of individual visual preferences.

Intuitive Navigation Tools: Max Access introduces user-friendly navigation tools, simplifying the online experience for individuals with various abilities. With easy-to-use controls, users can tailor their browsing experience to suit their unique requirements.

Enhanced Keyboard Shortcuts: To streamline accessibility, Max Access incorporates enhanced keyboard shortcuts, allowing users to navigate and interact with websites effortlessly with keyboards or alternative inputs. This feature is designed to empower users with mobility challenges.

Compatibility Across Devices: Whether browsing on desktop, tablet, or mobile, Max Access seamlessly integrates with various platforms and browsers. Its adaptability ensures a consistent accessibility experience across devices.

Compatibility Across Web Platforms: It doesn't matter if your website is custom coded or built on a platform like WordPress, Wix, or Shopify. Max Access integrates in just minutes to any website.

Why Free Forever?

Breaking Barriers: Ability believes that accessibility is a fundamental right, not a privilege. By making Max Access free forever, the company aims to break down financial barriers and make inclusive digital experiences accessible to all.

Community Impact: This move reflects Ability's commitment to creating a positive impact on the digital community. By offering Max Access for free, Ability hopes to encourage widespread adoption of accessibility features and contribute to a more inclusive online environment.

Empowering Organizations: Organizations committed to accessibility now have an invaluable tool at their disposal. Max Access, with its advanced features, can be seamlessly integrated into websites, assisting in compliance with accessibility standards and enhancing user experience.

Quotes:

Shaylor Murray, CEO at Ability, expressed the company's vision, stating, "Our decision to make Max Access free is a strategic move towards creating a more inclusive digital world. We believe that accessibility is not a privilege but a necessity, and Max Access is a great contribution to that vision."

Borg, Known for Transformative Leadership at Global Connect and Telenor, to Steer Company's Growth

Varnish Software, a leader in caching, streaming, and content delivery software solutions, today has announced the appointment of Fredrik Borg as its new Chief Executive Officer. In his new role, Borg will build upon Varnish Software’s latest achievements while driving continued expansion across the global content delivery market.

The new appointment underscores Borg’s remarkable accomplishments and expertise leading operations across the telecom industry, where he has driven significant growth and innovation for more than 15 years.

Notably, at the large Nordic telecom infrastructure provider, Global Connect, Borg led a pivotal scale up effort. Guiding a team of more than 550 professionals over four years, he tripled revenues, quadrupled earnings, and spearheaded one of the top five largest total infrastructure projects in the Nordics. He was also instrumental at the multinational telecom firm, Telenor, where he led its multi-million-dollar operations for mobile networks, broadband and TV.

As CEO, Borg succeeds Lars Larsson, who led Varnish Software for over 10 years and transformed the company from a project at Redpill Linpro, founded on a strong open-source community, to a globally utilized enterprise software platform relied upon by countless top brands. Today, Varnish’s customers include Hulu, Emirates, Tesla, Sky, Migros, CBC, Future and many more.

“I am very excited to join Varnish Software and am deeply impressed with what Lars and the team have achieved so far,” said Borg. “Given the unique position that Varnish fills as a leader in caching and content delivery, I am convinced we will continue to grow the business profitably. More importantly, we will continue to focus on listening closely to our customers and evolving to meet their diverse needs.”

“I am thrilled to see Fredrik joining Varnish Software and believe he is the ideal choice to take the company forward,” commented Larsson. “Under his leadership, Varnish is set to become a leader in the emerging content delivery and edge compute sector.”

Fredrik Borg will collaborate closely with Larsson, who will transition to a new role with Varnish Software focused on customer acquisition and strategic partnerships, vital for its ongoing expansion. Larsson will also be pivotal in new ventures anticipated to launch in 2024 that will innovate and help transform content delivery.

Varnish Software’s caching and content delivery solutions combine open-source flexibility with robust enterprise capabilities to help organizations of all sizes and across industries deliver web and streaming content. Its growing portfolio of products include Varnish Enterprise 6, Varnish Controller and the new Varnish Traffic Router, which provide unbeatable content delivery and resilience at scale.

In 2023, Varnish Software made headlines by setting a new world record for content delivery speed, performance and efficiency.

New Offering Reaches Premium iOS User Base and Improves CTV Campaign Performance

Strategus, the technology company creating innovative solutions for programmatic CTV advertising campaigns today announced a new collaboration with Intent IQ and PubMatic to support retargeting of iOS users who have been exposed to CTV advertisements. The new cookieless audience activation solution allows advertisers to reach valuable iOS audiences, resulting in improved outcomes for CTV campaigns.

According to research from Statista, 54% of North American mobile phone customers are iOS users as of June 2023. Owners of Apple iPhones represent a coveted, younger high income audience that is typically difficult to target in digital advertising campaigns. The new solution from Strategus, powered by the integration of Intent IQ’s cookieless audience activation tool and Connect, PubMatic’s fully integrated and comprehensive audience platform, brings together each company’s leading expertise in cookieless and CTV advertising to effectively retarget iOS users:

• Intent IQ curates and enriches data signals from more than 80,000 sites on behalf of its publisher partners, creating a cookieless audience including 180 million North American users for privacy-safe audience targeting and retargeting on their iPhone, Safari and other cookieless browsers
• The addressable cookieless audience is integrated into PubMatic Connect and can be seamlessly activated by joint PubMatic-Intent IQ advertising partners via a Deal ID targeted to a custom audience of iOS users defined by first-party or 3^rd-party data
• Strategus, a leading CTV managed service provider, uses the combined PubMatic-Intent IQ integration to improve campaign performance for CTV brand clients by allowing them to identify viewers of CTV ads and retarget them directly on their iOS devices.

“This new technology solution is a significant breakthrough, as CTV advertisers can now retarget iOS users for the first time,” said Joel Cox, co-founder and senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Strategus. “The cookieless, privacy-safe approach to retargeting makes it possible for our CTV customers to improve the performance and maximize the ROI of their advertising campaigns.”

“By combining our patented distributed identity technology with PubMatic’s programmatic infrastructure and Strategus’ CTV expertise, we can help marketers deliver immediate and improved value for their CTV advertising while also targeting the coveted iOS audiences,” said Fabrice Beer-Gabel, Vice President of Strategy at Intent IQ. “The new solution, powered by our cookieless universal ID and audience activation suite, will enable both better ROI for marketers and improved monetization for publishers.”,

“Buyers are increasingly looking for solutions that combine consumer privacy and advertiser ROI across channels and formats at scale. We are excited to be part of this collaborative effort to enable our clients to activate iOS audiences for CTV campaigns,” said Peter Barry, VP of Addressability and Commerce at PubMatic. “Through innovative solutions like this, we look forward to helping publishers and buyers move beyond the limitations of anonymous targeting solutions to drive superior outcomes.”

Mintegral, a Mobvista subsidiary, has recently been recognized as a supported advertising SDK for Amazon Fire tablet apps. This integration is targeted towards amplifying opportunities for developers by offering advanced tools for user acquisition and app monetization.

Integrating Mintegral's SDK allows developers to access a range of ad resources including various ad formats, from banner ads to rewarded videos and native ads. This ensures an enhanced user experience while also optimizing ad revenue for developers. With Mintegral's flexible bidding options like CPI, CPM, and oCPI (Optimized CPI), developers can efficiently reach their desired audience and significantly expand their user base.

Benefits for Developers

Reach and Ad Opportunities: By partnering with Mintegral, developers have the opportunity to expand their user base across Fire tablet apps and access premium traffic from the Amazon Appstore, available across countries and regions such as the US, UK, Europe, Japan, and more, presenting a broad inventory complementing the app marketplace.

Premium User Base: The Amazon Appstore attracts users from top-tier markets, including the USA, Europe, and Japan. These users, renowned for their strong in-app purchase capabilities and high retention rates, mark the Amazon Appstore as a standout marketplace.

Simplified App Integration: Built on the Android-based Fire OS, the Amazon Appstore offers straightforward integration for Android developers, eliminating the need for complex adaptations.

"We are delighted to witness a significant increase in eCPM and users since partnering with Mintegral on Amazon apps. Our collaborative exploration of the Amazon Appstore market has proven fruitful, enabling us to capitalize on the opportunity for incremental revenue growth," said Alena Herasimchyk, Lead UA Manager at Saygames.

"Integrating the Mintegral SDK to monetize our Amazon Appstore apps has significantly enhanced our ad revenue. With Mintegral's competitive in-app bidding win rate and eCPM performance, we have achieved an impressive ad revenue increase of 15% to 20%, a very welcomed development for our team. In this rapidly growing and thriving Android market, we firmly believe that our partnership with Mintegral will lead to continuous incremental growth in users and monetization revenue," said Dragon Long, the Global Operations Lead of Cute Fun Games.

"The Amazon Appstore represents a vital opportunity for developers aiming for global expansion," said Erick Fang, CPO of Mobvista. "With an approved advertising SDK, Mintegral empowers developers to grow globally and bolsters Mobvista's worldwide traffic. Ultimately, having Mintegral in the Amazon Appstore will strengthen our comprehensive solutions for developers worldwide."

Yotta launches Shakti Cloud: India's Largest Supercomputer of 16 Exaflops AI computing power with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs to drive mass-scale AI innovation in India

Yotta Data Services today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver cutting-edge GPU computing infrastructure and platforms for its Shakti Cloud platform. The collaboration will advance the development of AI solutions in India by bringing state-of-the-art AI capabilities within reach of numerous organizations, businesses, AI researchers, and a multitude of startups across the country. With this offering, Yotta customers will be able to train large language models (LLMs) and other AI workloads serving the growing needs of Indian, Asian, and broader global markets.

Yotta has already placed a large order for NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, a powerful GPU for AI and HPC workloads, and plans to go operational with 4096 GPUs by January 2024 and 16,384 GPUs by June 2024. With complete support from NVIDIA and a shared vision to develop India's sovereign AI landscape, Yotta also plans to massively scale up its GPU stable to 32,768 by the end of 2025. This will directly address the huge demand for high-performance GPUs by research labs, enterprises, and startups for HPC and AI workloads.

With this collaboration, Yotta becomes the first NVIDIA Partner Network cloud partner (NCP) in India and joins the global NCP list as an Elite Partner.

Further, Yotta is deploying an NVIDIA-powered reference architecture with NVIDIA InfiniBand networking that will allow GPU clusters to deliver great performance at scale for large AI training and inferencing workloads, as well as HPC workloads.

Yotta's Shakti Cloud AI platform will include various PaaS services from day one, including foundational AI models and applications that will help Indian enterprises create powerful AI tools and products.

Yotta will deploy the first cluster of 16,384 GPUs at NM1, Yotta's highly acclaimed and Asia's largest Uptime Tier-IV data center, located in Navi Mumbai. Next, Yotta will deploy a similar-sized cluster at D1, Yotta's newest and largest hyperscale data center in Greater Noida, near Delhi.

This collaboration comes at a moment of phenomenal growth in India's AI adoption efforts, with the country becoming a hub for research, online gaming, and digital content creation. AI adoption in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 20% to reach US$14 billion by 2030. The Indian gaming industry is similarly expected to furiously grow to reach US$5 billion by 2025. All these industries rely heavily on GPU computing to meet expected customer demands.

Darshan Hiranandani, Co-founder & Chairman of Yotta, and Sunil Gupta, Co-founder & CEO of Yotta, share the excitement. "Yotta is proud to join forces with NVIDIA, a global leader in GPU technology, in India to launch our Shakti Cloud platform to usher in a new era of computing innovation in line with the vision of the Hon'ble Prime Minister for a digital Bharat. We're excited to embark on this journey, leveraging our scalable cloud and data center infrastructure and NVIDIA's cutting-edge GPU technology to empower Indian businesses, governments, startups, and researchers with unparalleled GPU-as-a-Service solutions to catalyze advancements in AI, machine learning, gaming, content creation, and scientific research. Yotta aims to accelerate innovation and transform industries across India, delivering the power of NVIDIA GPUs as a service to drive growth, efficiency, and excellence. This collaborative work represents a significant milestone in our journey, and we are excited about the endless possibilities it holds for our customers and India as a whole. We are also thankful for the continuing support of the Ministry of Information Technology and the governments of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh for making this a reality."

Commenting on this development, Jay Puri, executive vice president of Worldwide Field Operations at NVIDIA, said, "India has emerged as a vibrant hub for technological innovation and digital transformation. Our collaboration with Yotta will help open up access to the specialized infrastructure that makes AI possible at scale and bring GPU capabilities to customers in India, accelerating advancements in AI and fostering innovation across industries."

Key Highlights of the Collaboration:

• Accelerating AI compute in India: With NVIDIA GPU hardware, Yotta will help Indian enterprises significantly accelerate their ability to build powerful AI tools and services for the global market.
• Democratizing GPU power: Yotta will empower Indian businesses of all sizes to access GPU resources on demand, transforming the way they operate and innovate.
• Boosting innovation: Through GPUaaS, Yotta aims to catalyze breakthroughs in AI, gaming, scientific research, data analytics, and more, positioning India as a global technology leader.
• Robust, world-class infrastructure & technology: Yotta's world-class data centers and cloud services will provide a secure and scalable environment for businesses to use NVIDIA GPUs.
• Market disruption & expansion: With NVIDIA technology, Yotta will disrupt the traditional ways enterprises have accessed GPU computing with the availability of on demand and scalable GPU resources, opening access up to new customer segments and sectors.

Yotta aims to democratize access to GPU resources, fostering innovation and competitiveness across various sectors. Yotta's Shakti Cloud will deliver GPUs and various associated AI and PaaS services in a highly cost-effective manner on a per hour usage model, with options for long-term reservations.

Yotta's commitment to technological excellence and innovation aligns perfectly with its mission to accelerate digital transformation across India.

JK Tech a global provider of next-generation Digital and Business Consulting Services, announces its inclusion in the most recent Everest Group PEAK Matrix® Report. Prominent for its inventive solutions, catalysts, and strong advisory services, JK Tech has become a key player assisting businesses in navigating the ever-changing Data & Analytics (D&A) environment. The Everest Group PEAK Matrix® Report is a testament to JK Tech's dedication to providing innovative solutions that cater to the changing demands of companies in the Data & Analytics space.

Data forms the foundation of JK Tech's pursuit to deliver unparalleled, insightful data services such as prescriptive and predictive analytics. By harnessing the power of data, JK Tech endeavors to unlock invaluable insights, enabling clients to anticipate trends, optimize strategies, and make proactive, data-driven choices.

Commenting on this achievement, Aloke Paskar, President & CEO, of JK Tech, expressed, "We are honored to be recognized in the Everest Group PEAK Matrix® Report. This acknowledgment underscores our commitment to empowering businesses with transformative Data & Analytics solutions that drive success in an increasingly data-driven world. JK Tech operates as a data-centric organization, prioritizing the strategic use and management of data assets across its operations. We assist clients in creating scalable architectures that accommodate evolving data needs, ensuring agility and flexibility in handling large volumes of information. This allows their clients to adapt to market changes swiftly and efficiently."

JK Tech has established a robust presence across geographies, such as the US, UK, and Europe. The team, particularly adept in Data & Analytics, is serving industries such as Healthcare, Retail, CPG, and Insurance. Their commitment to leveraging data insights ensures tailored solutions that drive innovation and exceed client expectations across various sectors and regions.

IFS, the global cloud enterprise software company, today announced that it has made two senior appointments with Max Roberts and Belinda Finch joining the company's executive leadership team as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer respectively. The appointments underpin the company's consistent performance trajectory as well as its longer-term plans for growth. 

Max Roberts joins IFS from Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, where he was CEO of the UK business and latterly led the EMEA organization through significant growth. His career spans over 25 years in the technology sector and specifically the enterprise software space where he held a wide variety of leadership positions at Oracle, Salesforce, and Stripe. He has also been a non-executive director of UK Finance.

As he steps into his new COO role, Roberts will work with the executive and wider leadership teams to develop IFS's longer-term strategic products and services portfolios and develop the company's strategic alliances and partnerships. Priorities will be aligned to continuing to drive innovation that not only meets customers' needs, but also anticipates and responds to market demand, and delivers sustained revenue and margin growth for IFS. Roberts will take responsibility for IFS's Industry, Service Management and Enterprise Asset Management business units, and support IFS global sales and customer success teams in customer engagements.

Belinda Finch joins IFS from mobile giant Three, where, as CIO, she led Three's digital transformation program and worked closely with their product teams to drive system developments that would enhance customer experience. Finch's previous experience includes senior leadership roles at Centrica and Vodafone as well as at Accenture and KPMG.

Belinda's leadership values have been recognized with accolades such as Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2022, CIO of the Year Finalist and MVNO's World Congress Woman of the Year Awards 2023.

In her role as IFS CIO, Finch will oversee the continuation of the company's digital transformation journey and work with the executive leadership team to maximize the adoption of AI across the entire organization, driving productivity and effectiveness as the company strives to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

IFS CEO Darren Roos commented: "I am delighted to welcome Max and Belinda to IFS. They are joining at a very exciting time, and I am confident that their energy and perspectives will have a very positive impact as we enter our next phase of growth." Roos continued: "They both bring strong expertise and a proven track record that is well aligned to our space and, in Belinda's case, to one of our core industries." He concluded: "I am proud that the brand awareness IFS has achieved over the last few years and our consistent performance are attracting such incredible talent. I know that their combined experience and vision will be hugely instrumental as we accelerate our growth journey."  

The company also shared that Michael Ouissi and Sal Laher will move to IGT1, the Holding Group for IFS, as COO and CDIO respectively, and take more central roles in ensuring long-term value creation from recent and future M&A activities.