Response to Google's latest updates boosts responsiveness score for LSAs, increasing rankings for Scorpion's clients

Scorpion, the leading provider of digital marketing technology for local services businesses, today announced new functionality that allows for the activation of message leads within local services ads (LSA) for Scorpion clients. These updates come on the heels of Google's latest updates to the way LSAs are displayed and ranked, helping Scorpion's clients maintain a competitive edge in the new LSA landscape and have an advantage in responding to prospects and customers promptly.

Scorpion's clients now benefit from faster response times as the recent updates consolidate all communication threads within the platform, ensuring a unified view for each customer or lead.  Scorpion's new solution also boosts responsiveness scores for clients by sending an auto-response to any message leads a client receives. This helps to increase LSA exposure since users searching on Google will be able to see average response times displayed as part of the ad. Once the initial response is shared, incoming leads are then directed to Scorpion's Communications Suite, where Scorpion clients can continue the conversation with quality leads.

Google's LSA updates prioritize companies leveraging message leads and encourages consumers to reach out to multiple businesses. These latest changes are geared towards elevating more quality LSAs and make ranking more important than ever, especially as the immersive LSA view has dropped from 50 results to 20. The competition for a top spot has also increased with only the top two search providers displayed on the search engine result page (SERP) instead of three. Google is aiming to bring even more attention to the top listings, helping those businesses secure higher quality leads.

"Scorpion is committed to delivering exceptional value to our clients and with our new LSA message leads integration, we ensure that our clients stay ahead in the competitive landscape of Local Services Ads," said Rustin Kretz, CEO and founder at Scorpion. "By consolidating communication threads and automating responses, we enable our clients to deliver prompt, high-quality interactions, securing a prominent position in Google's prioritized listings. Our focus is on providing our clients with a distinct advantage in reaching and engaging with valuable prospects and customers." 

"We're seeing the benefit already from Scorpion's latest updates to support Google's new ranking and display for LSAs," said Sabrina Kozora, Zar Electric. "Everyone uses Google, so this is a truly valuable addition to our existing contact methods. Scorpion provides everything all in one platform making new leads easy to find and communicate with. The color coding is a personal favorite as it is incredibly useful to easily differentiate what leads are coming in from Google."

GoSecure, a renowned provider of managed detection and response solutions complemented by its expert professional services, is elated to announce the promotion of Anne-Marie Faber to the position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). With over 15 years of specialized experience in the IT industry, Anne-Marie's focused expertise makes this promotion an embodiment of GoSecure's vision for a future defined by strategic innovation and unparalleled market leadership.

Anne-Marie Faber, now embracing the title of GoSecure's CMO, has a rich history that stands as a testament to her prowess in the marketing realm. She has diligently overseen all aspects of GoSecure's marketing strategy, from corporate messaging, branding, and communications to digital demand generation, field, and revenue marketing. Anne-Marie's indomitable spirit and relentless drive have been instrumental in guiding multiple companies toward becoming market leaders, achieving double-digit revenue growth. Her core philosophy places immense value on forging strong partnerships across all sales channels—both direct and indirect—and emphasizes the significance of ceaseless creativity, along with the capability to differentiate from competitors.

Having earned both her Bachelor's degree in Marketing Business Administration and a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) from Laval University in Québec City, Anne-Marie's academic credentials are further enriched by a Master's Certificate in Project Management from York University. Her holistic understanding of marketing and an innate ability to strategize and execute has positioned her uniquely in the industry, enabling GoSecure to benefit from her innovative vision and actionable insights.

"Anne-Marie brings to the table not just immense knowledge, but also an enthusiasm and a pragmatic approach that aligns seamlessly with GoSecure's mission," stated Neal Creighton, CEO of GoSecure. "Her ascension to the CMO role stands as a reflection of our commitment to continuously evolving, staying ahead of the curve, and delivering unparalleled value to our stakeholders and clients."

In a dynamic environment characterized by ever-changing digital landscapes, Anne-Marie Faber's appointment underlines GoSecure's unwavering focus on staying at the forefront of industry trends. As CMO, she will be instrumental in shaping the company's marketing endeavors, ensuring GoSecure remains synonymous with excellence in the realm of cybersecurity. Her leadership promises an era where GoSecure's brand voice resonates even more powerfully, fostering deeper connections and building trust with audiences worldwide.

Optimizely, the leading digital experience platform (DXP), has announced that Zoom is using Optimizely One to build a robust digital foundation to power the organization's next wave of growth. As laid out on the Opticon mainstage in San Diego, the relationship will continue to be carried out in collaboration with Hero Digital, a transformative customer experience company that has won the Optimizely Partner of the Year for the past two years.

Zoom will leverage Optimizely's expanded stack of tools, now enriched with a single, unified workflow accelerated by AI. As Zoom continues to roll out new capabilities, the company has adopted Optimizely's best-in-class Content Management System (CMS) and Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP) – unlocking new velocity and personalization. Hero Digital will work with Zoom and Optimizely to realize this shared vision by helping with the content migration, implementing new multilingual functionality, and enabling personalization with deeper audience insights.

"Zoom has long been one of our most trusted collaborators," said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. "We are proud to have grown alongside them as digital innovators and to see our solutions keep pace with the needs of a significant player in our rapidly evolving landscape."

"Optimizely's enhanced capabilities will help us further improve the experience for our growing user base, as well as the internal experience for the dozens of teams that are responsible for content across our digital ecosystem," said Alex London, Head of Digital at Zoom. "Having one integrated platform has proven to provide significant value."

"When working with an industry-leading company like Zoom, there are enormous opportunities to solve complex problems and create exceptional customer experiences.," said Jay Dettling, CEO of Hero Digital. "It's great to be able to collaborate with Zoom and Optimizely to bring the vision for the next phase of their digital journey to life."

IntouchCX, a global leader in contact center and technology solutions, has announced the appointment of Mitul Kotecha and Shane Kozlowich as its new Co-Chief Executive Officers. Kotecha and Kozlowich, who have both been with the company for over a decade, bring a wealth of experience to the role.

This leadership change follows Greg Fettes' immediate transition from Chief Executive Officer to  his new role as Executive Chairman of IntouchCX and Laivly, where he will continue to advise on both companies strategic vision.

"Over the last 23 years, I have been fortunate to lead IntouchCX as we've pushed the boundaries through meaningful engagement and industry-leading innovations," said Fettes. "Mitul and Shane are proven leaders who have been instrumental in our growth and success, and I am excited for their new roles and for what's next in our company's evolution as a disruptive market leader."

Kotecha has held roles with IntouchCX as Chief Financial Officer, and most recently, President and Chief Operations Officer. He has spearheaded major growth, operational, and service delivery strategies across the company's products and solutions offerings.

Kozlowich has also held the roles of President, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer with IntouchCX, leading strategic initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions for the Company and its global corporate development, finance, accounting, HR, real estate, and technology offerings.

"As IntouchCX's new Co-CEOs, we are eager to share our excitement in driving further success with the company through exceptional performance, innovation and creativity." said Kotecha. Kozlowich added "We understand the importance of growth with continuity especially for our client partners, and we are committed to building on that to drive positive change."

• Nearly half of consumers are undecided, one in three do not trust AI at all

• A comparatively higher 31% of consumers under the age of 45 trust AI

Only 20% of American consumers ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust Artificial Intelligence (AI) according to the fifth wave of the dunnhumby Consumer Trends Tracker (CTT) released today. Americans’ trust in AI is higher than other markets such as the UK, where the figure is 14%. The quarterly study – now completing its fifth quarter – found that the level of trust Americans have in AI is largely dependent on age. While younger consumers — under the age of 45 — have a higher level of trust in AI (31% ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust AI), just 8% of those aged 55 and over ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust AI.

The demographic groups that are more likely to trust AI are males (29%) versus females (14%), families with kids at home (29%), households earning more than $100k (37%) and those living in urban areas (32%) the CTT study found. In addition, respondents under 45 were the age group most enthusiastic about using AI based technology for budgeting, personalization, and sustainability which would thereby prove a genuine competitive advantage for grocers. The CTT is part of The dunnhumby Quarterly, an ongoing strategic market analysis of prominent retail themes. The fifth wave of this report is the first wave to address consumers’ feelings about AI. Two thousand consumers were surveyed for the fifth wave of the report.

“What many Americans may not realize is that they have been interacting with AI for years whether it is through Netflix recommending what they should watch next or a retailer serving up personalized offers based on consumers’ past purchases,” said Matt O’Grady, President of Americas for dunnhumby. “The potential of Artificial Intelligence in grocery is tremendous and has been at the foundation of our own data science here at dunnhumby for over 20 years. Although the trust in AI is far from widespread, grocers should bear in mind it only took ChatGPT two months to hit 100 million users, making it one of the fastest growing computer applications ever.”

Key findings from the study:

• The top five concerns respondents have about AI are 1) loss of jobs, 2) security and privacy, 3) loss of human touch, 4) technology 'in the wrong hands’ and 5) misinformation.
• Security (46%), personalized rewards and recommendations (45%), and budgeting (42%) are the three most popular grocery use cases for AI according to the survey respondents. For consumers under 45, a group that is struggling the most with food insecurity, the most appealing use of AI was for personalized rewards and recommendations (58%), followed by budgeting (57%).
• For older consumers, 55 and over —an age group that is otherwise distrusting or disinterested in AI— security (e.g. store surveillance, theft prevention, fraud detection) is the most appealing use (40%).
• When asked about the potential benefits of AI, respondents talked broadly about its potential to ‘help’ people (1). Respondents also ranked healthcare and medical (2), saving time (3), improvements and convenience (4), and research, knowledge and information (5) as potential benefits of AI.
• The increasing willingness of consumers to engage with loyalty programs signals an opportunity for grocers to use AI to deliver more advanced personalization. With 52% of consumers now identifying themselves in order to redeem rewards, and 56% saying its very or extremely important that a retailer rewards them for shopping there signals the time is now right for retailers to step up their personalization efforts.
• Mounting food insecurity (30% of 18-34 year-olds ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ do not have enough to eat), and fiscal conservatism, underpin the appeal of AI to help shoppers budget for groceries. Over half of younger consumers – under the age of 45 – shop around at different stores to find the best value (52%) and check prices online before/during a shop (51%).
• For consumers under 45, 51% reported the use of AI for forecasting, stock and waste management as very or extremely appealing. Reducing out-of-stocks and excess inventory is a positive use of AI, especially for the 56% of consumers that say it’s very or extremely important that a retailer cares about food waste and has sustainable products and packaging.

Enables Third-Party Vendors to Build Integrations on Fivetran’s Robust Infrastructure, Unlocking Extensive Compatibility with Data Sources and Integrations

Fivetran, the global leader in automated data movement, today announced the launch of two new software developer kits (SDKs) for data source connectors and target destinations. These new SDKs enable third-party vendors to easily develop new connectors and destinations on Fivetran’s powerful platform – unlocking compatibility with their product and Fivetran’s expansive network of 400+ connectors, 14 destinations and 45,000+ users across the globe. The SDK program opens the door for third-party vendors to amplify their platform extensibility and reach Fivetran’s robust and growing data movement ecosystem, with a single, easy-to-use implementation.

Fivetran is building hundreds of connectors via our By Request program. More complex databases and API-enabled software vendors can become Fivetran source partners by writing their own integration on the Connector SDK. Fivetran connectors add value by providing customers with an easy, automated and reliable way to move their data to their destination of choice, efficiently and in an analytic-ready format, for analysis and enrichment with other data.

Data warehouse, data lake and storage vendors can leverage the destination SDK for Fivetran to easily allow joint customers to load their critical business data from any of Fivetran’s 400+ connectors to their destination platform. Centralizing data into a single destination empowers customers to access analytical and transactional data for reporting, efficiencies and predictive analytics.

"Companies that need to unlock data for their customers can leverage Fivetran's infrastructure to build highly secure and scalable connectors and destinations that operate no differently than our native builds," said Fraser Harris, VP of Product at Fivetran. "This is a huge value-add for data source and destination vendors, allowing source vendors to take advantage of the Fivetran network and all its destinations, and destination vendors to activate their product with Fivetran’s extensive and ever-growing list of connectors.”

Key Features and Benefits

• Language agnostic: The gRPC-based SDK allows connectors and destinations to be written in any supported programming language, offering enormous flexibility for developers to reuse existing code or write new code in their language of choice.
• Reduced complexity: The SDK provides templates and a mock environment, allowing third-party vendors to test and deploy connectors with minimum hassle.
• The Connector SDK gives vendors an easy way to provide their customers with a user-friendly solution to sync data between their platform to any Fivetran destination, such as OLAP databases, to power their analytic use cases.
• The Destination SDK offers data warehouse, data lake and storage companies new channels for product activation, giving their customers easy access to 400+ compatible connectors on the Fivetran platform.

What Vendors Are Saying

“Fivetran's gRPC connector interface is well-designed and a joy to implement. The team is great to work with and very receptive to our feedback. We're really excited to offer our customers a robust, easy-to-use ETL pipeline for analyzing data from their PlanetScale database in their tool of choice,” said Phani Raju, Senior Engineer at PlanetScale.

“Writing a connector for Fivetran was a great experience. It’s easy to do and the interface is clearly thought through, especially when it comes to schema changes and transactional data syncs. The gRPC service definitions let you re-use your existing code in whatever language you use. The quick responsiveness from the Fivetran team has been really refreshing as well after our experience with other data sync connector vendors,” said Nipunn Koorapati, Senior Engineer at Convex.

“MotherDuck and Fivetran share the same value of making data analytics easy and accessible to businesses of all sizes," said Elena Felder, Software Engineer at MotherDuck. “We are excited to integrate with Fivetran's new Destination SDK as an official destination in the Fivetran platform, and have loved the collaboration thus far.”

Playground xyz, the leading attention measurement and optimisation platform, today announced its partnership with TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement. With this first-to-market partnership, advertisers can now accurately and scalably measure attention on YouTube CTV in real-time.

Playground xyz, the leading attention measurement and optimisation platform, today announced its partnership with TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement. With this first-to-market partnership, advertisers can now accurately and scalably measure attention on YouTube CTV in real time.

Data from TVision's panel shows that 17.3% of all time spent watching CTV is spent on YouTube, which means that viewers spend more time with YouTube than any other app. YouTube is a pivotal resource for brands to reach consumers. However, captivating and measuring whether an ad actively captured a consumer's attention continues to be a challenge for brands across all digital environments, including YouTube. Playground xyz has been at the forefront of the attention industry, making substantial investments in measuring attention across digital environments, including walled gardens, at scale.

The first-of-its-kind partnership sees Playground xyz and TVision combine datasets to accurately score YouTube across CTV, which now represents an estimated 38.1% of all YouTube viewing. TVision data shows viewers are 74% more likely to co-view CTV content than linear content, they are also 14% more attentive to CTV content than linear. Playground xyz research shows consumers are more likely to actively multitask on an additional device or not be present in the room while content is playing. This results in formats such as Bumper and Non-Skippable ads receiving around 25% less attention than on other devices. The vast differences in the way CTV viewers consume content as compared to mobile and linear require a smarter and more optimised approach to advertising to ensure brands capture the attention they seek.

"At Playground xyz, we are committed to providing our clients with the most advanced solutions to measure attention in real-time with the goal to ultimately help drive their outcomes," stated Rob Hall, CEO of Playground xyz. "Partnering with TVision allows us to expand our attention measurement capabilities into YouTube across Connected TV, enabling advertisers to gain deep insights into their YouTube campaigns across screens.

Without this CTV component, advertisers are missing out on a large and quickly growing part of YouTube viewing, so we're thrilled to be working with TVision as the first companies to close that gap."

This partnership with TVision is a significant milestone for Playground xyz as it adds YouTube CTV to their existing impressive lineup of attention measurement across Display, Video, Facebook, Instagram and more. This comprehensive solution is delivered in an automated and scalable manner, empowering advertisers to make informed decisions around their advertising spends.

Of the partnership, Yan Liu, CEO of TVision, says, "Playground xyz is at the forefront of leveraging attention metrics to improve the value of CTV advertising. We are excited to combine our industry-leading data sets to ensure advertisers are able to better capitalize on the significant advertising opportunities available on YouTube."

AIP is the world's first tech stack built to make attention actionable. Trained and verified by real eye-tracking data from an opt-in panel, it supercharges that data via advanced AI models to measure attention at scale. AIP is directly integrated into the buyers workflows whether that be programmatic ecosystem via partnerships with the world's largest SSPs and DSPs or APIs into walled gardens.

Transaction combines complementary services to empower media sellers, brands, and agencies with broad market intelligence for confident decision-making

MediaRadar, the award-winning advertising intelligence and sales enablement platform backed by Thompson Street Capital Partners and Endicott Capital, today announced the acquisition of Kantar Group’s (“Kantar”) North American Advertising Intelligence unit, Vivvix (the “Transaction”) Vivvix offers competitive advertising intelligence across both digital and traditional media channels, such as mobile apps, streaming services, and social media. This transformative deal positions MediaRadar as the definitive source of advertising data and insights, serving the entire industry ecosystem from media owners to agencies and brands.

“By combining Vivvix and MediaRadar, we offer a complete view of the entire advertising industry,” said Todd Krizelman, CEO and co-founder of MediaRadar. “Together, our unparalleled market intelligence will enable strategic decision-making, allowing media sellers, brands, and agencies to navigate the dynamic advertising landscape with even greater confidence.”

As the ad industry continues to innovate and evolve with new formats across traditional channels and emerging platforms, the need for transparent, trusted, and high-quality data has never been more critical. These insights allow media companies, brands, and agencies to navigate the growing fragmentation and complexity, informing decisions in ad sales, brand strategy, and media planning and buying. The acquisition of Vivvix, with its complementary channel coverage, bolsters MediaRadar’s data capabilities, introducing new areas such as local TV, radio, and search, while also extending its reach into out of home advertising and the Canadian market. Unified as one platform, MediaRadar will deliver the most comprehensive near real-time advertising intelligence available.

“When we launched Vivvix earlier this year, our mission was to become the world’s leading ad intelligence company,” said Andrew Feigenson, CEO of Vivvix. “In joining forces with MediaRadar, we take a significant step toward that goal. We are incredibly excited to work with Todd and his team to achieve a common vision and deliver a complete view of the market to media companies, marketers, and agencies.”

“Today’s transaction brings Vivvix together with a highly complementary business that goes a long way to delivering on their vision of building the most future-facing advertising intelligence business in North America,” added Chris Jansen, Chief Executive, Kantar. “We’re excited about the possibilities that emerge from the combined entity and wish the Vivvix and MediaRadar team well on the next phase of their growth journey.”

Today, more than 20,000 users rely on MediaRadar’s extensive database that tracks more than $200 billion of annual media spend across more than four million brands. Vivvix’s advertising intelligence footprint spans $250 billion-plus in media spend. Together these platforms are relied on by brands, agencies, and media sellers to provide advertising intelligence integral to their core business decisions.

MediaRadar and Vivvix are both AI-powered platforms, with AI used to track and collect advertising insights across media channels, as well as to power sales recommendations and prospecting tools. Following the Transaction, MediaRadar’s expanded resources and capital will allow it to further invest in cutting-edge data and tech capabilities, building next-gen solutions that drive maximum value for its customers and cementing its position as the industry’s analytics leader.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett served as legal advisor and Solomon Partners served as financial advisor to MediaRadar.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges served as legal advisor and Barclays Bank PLC, acting through its Investment Bank (“Barclays”) served as financial advisor to Kantar.