Press Release
Braze Signs Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS to Advance AI-Powered Customer Engagement
SYDNEY, 30 September, 2026 – Braze (Nasdaq: BRZE), the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™, today announced at Forge, its annual customer conference taking place September 28-30 at Fontainebleau Las Vegas, that it has signed a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help brands accelerate innovation and deliver more relevant, personalised customer experiences at scale. Through the SCA, Braze is deepening its collaboration with AWS across generative AI and industry solutions. The companies will focus on helping customers bring emerging technology into everyday marketing workflows, with the flexibility of global infrastructure and AWS Marketplace making it easier for organisations to adopt and scale their customer engagement technology. “Customer engagement is becoming increasingly connected to the technology decisions being made across the entire business, and marketers need those investments to translate into better experiences and stronger results,” said Ed McDonnell, Chief Revenue Officer, Braze. “By deepening our collaboration with AWS, we bring together Braze’s customer engagement expertise with the AI capabilities on AWS in ways that make innovation easier to put into practice. Ultimately, this agreement is about helping our customers move faster from possibility to measurable value.” Powering the Next Generation of Agentic Marketing As part of the SCA, Braze integrates Amazon Bedrock into BrazeAI Agent Console™, its AI agent orchestration offering. The integration gives brands greater flexibility in how they build and scale AI-powered customer engagement experiences using AWS generative AI services, helping marketing and technology teams turn advances in AI into revenue-driving customer experiences. Supporting global scale coupled with regional and vertical specialisation The agreement builds on Braze’s continued global expansion using AWS infrastructure, including recent availability on AWS in the AWS Asia Pacific Regions (Japan and South Korea), which extends Braze’s ability to support customers’ regional data residency and performance requirements. That infrastructure supports customer engagement on a significant global scale. During calendar year 2025, the Braze platform processed 25.8 trillion data points and 10.2 trillion API calls, averaging approximately 19 million API calls per minute, while supporting more than 7.8 billion monthly active users and maintaining 99.99%+ uptime. This collaboration is also grounded in industry expertise, as Braze has achieved AWS Competency designations in Retail, Media & Entertainment, Advertising & Marketing Technology, and Travel & Hospitality - where Braze was recognised as a Competency Partner and named a Global Travel and Hospitality Technology Partner of the Year by AWS. Under the agreement, the companies will build on these proven credentials, working together on customer engagement use cases across these and additional verticals, including consumer packaged goods and financial services - helping brands adopt solutions shaped by the specific dynamics of their industry. Meeting customers at their preferred procurement channel Braze will also continue to expand in AWS Marketplace, giving eligible customers the ability to procure Braze using existing AWS commitments. Customer procurement of Braze in AWS Marketplace grew more than 80% year-over-year in fiscal 2026, and the momentum has accelerated: Braze just posted its largest AWS Marketplace quarter and largest first half on record, transacting more AWS Marketplace business in the first six months of this fiscal year than in the entirety of fiscal 2025. The agreement builds on this trajectory, reflecting growing customer preference for streamlined procurement on AWS. For Germany’s Bundesliga, the expanded collaboration will create new opportunities to build on its existing technology investments while delivering more sophisticated customer experiences. By bringing customer engagement and AWS Cloud innovation closer together, the agreement helps the German Football League accelerate experimentation and turn customer insights into more relevant interactions. “Bundesliga fans expect every interaction with us to feel relevant and personal,” said Uwe Vocks, Senior CRM Manager, Bundesliga Media GmbH. “Delivering that consistently requires the right technology working seamlessly behind the scenes. We see opportunity in AWS and Braze working more closely together. It can help our teams move faster, create better fan experiences and deliver more value to fans around the world.” “We’re excited to deepen our collaboration with Braze as they help organisations bring technology and marketing teams closer together around the customer,” said Sean Cataldo, Director, NAMER Partner Sales, AWS. “By expanding the ways Braze can use AWS generative AI services and building on our work together through AWS Marketplace, we can help customers innovate faster and turn new capabilities into meaningful business outcomes.” Announced at Forge 2026 Braze announced the SCA at Forge 2026, its annual customer conference taking place September 28-30 at Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Forge brings together marketers, technology leaders and customer engagement practitioners to learn from peers, explore emerging technologies and put new ideas into practice. The agreement reflects the focus of this year’s Forge theme, Made for this, which recognises that marketers have spent years adapting to new technologies and changing customer expectations and are uniquely equipped to take advantage of what comes next. Across more than 75 keynotes, breakout sessions, demos, masterclasses and other experiences, Forge attendees are hearing from leading brands, participating in hands-on learning and training, and exploring the technologies and strategies shaping the future of customer engagement. Learn how modern marketing technologies are reshaping customer acquisition, retention, and engagement.
marketing 30 Sep 2026
Braze Accelerates AI Innovation, Empowering Marketers to Treat Every Customer Like Their Only Customer
SYDNEY, September 30, 2026 – Braze (Nasdaq: BRZE), the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™, today unveiled three major additions to its AI portfolio, alongside new conversational AI capabilities across messaging channels. Together, they help marketers bring 1:1 decisioning to more customer journeys, automate critical campaign quality assurance, and work with Braze directly from the AI tools they already use, all while engaging customers with interactive messaging and product experiences. Last year at Forge, Braze introduced BrazeAI Operator™, BrazeAI Agent Console™, and BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™. Today, Braze is building on those launches with BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ Go, a self-service offering that brings AI decisioning to more customer journeys; Agentic Standards, which automates critical campaign quality assurance; and BrazeAI Operator™ Connect, providing near-universal support across the Braze product for headless workflows. Through Operator Connect, marketers and developers can bring Braze intelligence and capabilities directly into the AI tools where they already work. Braze is also introducing Conversational Agents to help brands engage customers through responsive, context-aware conversations across messaging channels. These launches build on a year of BrazeAI™ releases and ongoing product improvements. All capabilities are available in beta and being actively tested by customers now, with Decisioning Studio Go and Agentic Standards expected to become generally available in October. “With today’s launches, BrazeAI™ handles the experimentation, verification, and execution, so the world’s most sophisticated marketers can focus on creativity, ambition, and judgment,” said Bill Magnuson, co-founder and CEO of Braze. “Decisioning Studio Go brings 1:1 decisioning to far more customer journeys, Agentic Standards tackles the operational risk that slows teams down, and Operator Connect puts the intelligence of Braze inside Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and more. Our job is to put that power in their hands and close the gap between a great idea and the customers waiting to experience it. Marketers were made for this moment, and so was Braze.” Bringing 1:1 AI decisioning to every customer journey For years,1:1 personalisation has been one of marketing’s biggest ambitions and one of its hardest promises to deliver. Marketers know that each customer should receive individualised experiences, but the legacy approach of manually testing combinations of messages, timing, and frequency neither performs nor scales across an entire customer base. A year ago, Braze announced BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ Pro, providing fully customisable AI decisioning agents that make 1:1 decisions to maximise any business metric. Today, BrazeAI Decisioning Studio Go unleashes this frontier AI approach in a self-serve packaging with rapid time to value. Decisioning Studio Go gives marketers access to self-service AI decisioning agents. Within guardrails set by marketers, these agents experiment to determine the message variant, time of day, day of the week, and frequency most likely to engage each recipient. A Decisioning Studio Go agent can test more than one billion combinations simultaneously, learning from and making personalised choices across massive consumer-scale audiences. Marketers can deploy an agent in minutes, replacing static rules and manual A/B testing with continuous 1:1 decisioning. As a self-service offering, Decisioning Studio Go extends AI decisioning capabilities to more marketing teams, eliminating the need to engage technical teams or professional services to build and deploy personalised 1:1 journeys. The result is that teams can apply continuous 1:1 optimisation across more customer journeys, improving relevance and engagement without multiplying tests, rules, or operational work. Decisioning Studio Go: Puts 1:1 decisioning directly into marketers’ hands: Set up and deploy an AI decisioning agent in minutes without relying on technical teams or services. Moves beyond traditional A/B testing: Continuously experiment rather than manually testing a limited number of predefined options. Makes decisions at the individual level: Optimise message variants, including subject lines, creative, and calls to action, alongside timing, day, and frequency for each customer. Decisioning Studio Go is currently in beta and is expected to become generally available on October 14, 2026. Giving marketers the confidence to move faster BrazeAI™ is dramatically speeding up how marketers design, build, and deploy marketing programs. To keep the entire process moving, quality assurance must move just as fast. A manual review at the final checkpoint can hold back a campaign built in minutes. Braze has long focused on the speed and performance of message delivery. Now it is bringing that same focus to the marketer’s workflow. Agentic Standards introduces a new approach to quality assurance: An AI-powered review that can reason across campaign setup, copy, links, personalisation logic, and compliance requirements before messages reach customers. Agentic Standards gives marketers the confidence to move faster and build more sophisticated programs. The most comprehensive system on the market for checking campaigns against a brand’s requirements, it evaluates every campaign and Canvas for issues across setup, copy, links, personalisation, compliance, brand guidelines, and more, using rules marketers set once in Braze. It flags issues with pass, warning, or fail reporting, and working with BrazeAI Operator™, it can implement the fixes, with human sign-off wherever a brand wants it. Each check and fix is logged for audit. For brands managing high-volume campaigns, multiple markets, or complex governance, it’s a new way of working, with review and correction built into how every campaign gets made. Agentic standards will help brands: Automate campaign and Canvas QA: Identify naming, tagging, copy, personalization, and compliance issues without relying solely on line-by-line manual review. Create consistency at scale: Apply the same organisational standards across all campaigns and reviewers. Resolve issues faster: Surface potential problems and provide direct correction suggestions before launch. Protect customer trust: Give marketers another layer of confidence as the speed and volume of customer engagement increase. Agentic Standards is currently in beta and is expected to become generally available in October. “In a highly regulated industry like ours, QA is one of the most important things we do,” said Josh Jones, Senior Manager, CRM AI Enablement at Sportsbet. “Agentic Standards has already closed some of our biggest gaps, like catching missing unsubscribe links or eligibility segments, and it’s given us real confidence around consistency and compliance at scale.” Bringing Braze to wherever marketers work Braze has long focused on making customer engagement faster. Now it is bringing that same performance mindset to the tools marketers and developers use to get work done. Operator Connect makes Braze headless, delivering its intelligence and capabilities directly into AI tools so teams can move from idea to execution without breaking the flow of work. Operator Connect extends BrazeAI Operator into the agentic tools marketers already use, including Claude, ChatGPT, Snowflake Cortex Code and Microsoft Copilot, and other MCP-compatible tools. Marketers can develop campaigns, generate content, troubleshoot issues, and build AI agents that take action in Braze without switching platforms. For example, marketers can ask Operator from within an LLM-based tool to analyze recent email performance and develop the next campaign plan using context from their Braze workspace. Braze partners can also build Operator-powered capabilities into their own products. Importantly, the actions are authenticated under the individual user’s identity and governed by that user’s Braze permissions. Operator Connect is designed to enable: Braze intelligence wherever work happens: Access workspace-aware Braze answers and actions from agentic tools and existing workflows. Programmatic control of Braze: Allows developers and technical marketers to connect their own agents and internal platforms to Braze. Continuity between thinking and execution: Move from an idea, analysis, or brief inside an AI environment toward action in Braze without repeatedly switching tools. Permission-aware agentic work: Authenticate actions as the individual user so existing Braze permissions continue to govern what an agent can access and do. BrazeAI Operator Connect is available in beta today. "Leveraging Operator Connect using Braze MCP has already proven to be an exciting development for our customers,” said Jon Acosta, Head of Solution Delivery at Stitch. “By accelerating workflows, we see it increasing speed-to-market by up to 90%, enabling even more experimentation and innovation.”Empowering marketers to respond with conversational AI As customer expectations shift toward immediate, interactive experiences, modern engagement requires more than static broadcast messaging. Introduced today, Conversational Agents enable brands to have responsive, context-aware conversations with customers across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, and web. By answering questions, clarifying intent, and recommending relevant products, agents guide customers from discovery to conversion. Conversational Agents empower marketers to: Have on-brand conversations at scale: Equip agents with brand-specific guidelines, guardrails, and knowledge sources like product catalogs and FAQs so every response is accurate and on-brand. Turn customer intent into action: Go beyond pre-scripted messaging by interpreting natural language alongside live customer context to recommend the exact right next step. Provide always-on, multi-channel engagement: Respond 24/7 across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, and web, ensuring customer messages are answered in the moment. Conversational Agents are available in beta today. Together, these capabilities build on the BrazeAI products introduced last year at Forge — BrazeAI Operator,, BrazeAI Agent Console, and BrazeAI Decisioning Studio — and continue the momentum with greater intelligence, automation, and flexibility in the Braze Customer Engagement Platform. Braze helps brands create personalised experiences across email, mobile, web, messaging, and other channels, while its composable architecture connects existing data and technology investments with customer engagement workflows. This helps teams respond to customer behavior in real time, without replacing the systems they already rely on. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
marketing 30 Sep 2026
AI Gives Australian Marketers the Edge in the Holiday Shopping Rush, New Intuit Mailchimp Data Reveals
Analysis of more than 44 billion emails and 83 million text messages globally reveals how intelligent marketing helps brands make the most of peak season, with targeted emails driving 11% higher average order value Mailchimp’s Australian customers added 18.8 million new email contacts and 1.2 million SMS contacts during the 2025 peak season Australian emails using generative AI recorded a 19% higher order rate and 21% higher conversion rate during peak season First-time buyers dominated Black Friday and Cyber Monday, accounting for nearly 69% of email orders and more than 73% of SMS orders in Australia The holiday season creates some of the biggest opportunities of the year for Australian businesses, as brands vie for attention across increasingly crowded inboxes and channels. A new report from Intuit Mailchimp, Breaking Through Peak Season Noise, shows how intelligent marketing, or using data with AI and automation, can help Australian businesses make more informed decisions about what opportunities to pursue. Developed by Intuit Mailchimp and Datalily, the report analysed more than 44 billion emails and 83 million text messages sent globally with Mailchimp in 2025 during peak season, which spans Halloween through New Year’s Eve and includes some of the biggest shopping days of the year. During the period, Mailchimp’s Australian customers added 18.8 million email contacts and 1.2 million SMS contacts*. The findings reveal opportunities to engage customers throughout the season and help build relationships that extend beyond the holidays. “Peak season is an opportunity to deepen customer connections,” says Jack Tam, SVP of Product and Engineering at Mailchimp. “The businesses that thrive use their own customer data to understand when people are ready to act, which messages matter, and where to focus next. This research helps marketers make those decisions with confidence and build customer relationships that endure long after the season ends.” Intelligent marketing capitalises on peak season engagement The research highlights how breaking through peak season noise comes down to making smarter choices around targeting, timing, and channel strategy, helping brands find an edge during the most competitive marketing season of the year. More targeted messages saw higher order values. During Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) weekend, Australian marketing emails using personalisation (dynamic content) drove 3% higher average order value than those that didn’t. Globally, campaigns using abandoned cart content blocks also saw 36% higher open rates and 28% higher click rates, showing the potential of using customer data and automation to reach shoppers with more relevant messages. Australian travel company TravelOnline has seen the impact of a more targeted approach firsthand. After moving away from high-frequency, one-size-fits-all email campaigns and working with Mailchimp to segment customers based on engagement, the company recorded a 66% lift in open rates, 38% fewer unsubscribes and a 13% improvement in email ROI within two months. “The biggest shift for us has been moving away from using automation simply as a way to save time and towards making every customer interaction more relevant,” says Sheri Adamson, Marketing Manager at TravelOnline. “Instead of sending the same message to hundreds of thousands of people, we're sending fewer, more relevant communications based on how customers are interacting with our brand.” Email and SMS played different but complementary roles. Email sustained communication and drove more revenue overall, while SMS captured attention during high-intent, time-sensitive moments. At peak, SMS delivered up to 6x higher order rates than email and 3x higher revenue per message worldwide. Among Mailchimp customers using both channels during BFCM, SMS drove nearly 20% of their total combined ecommerce revenue. Generative AI emails saw stronger performance. During peak season, 450 million emails globally used generative AI. Emails in Australia using the feature saw a19% higher order rate and 21% higher conversion rate than those sent without it, pointing to the potential of AI to help marketers create content that performs. Lower-volume days revealed overlooked opportunities worldwide. Weekend order rates were 2x higher than weekday rates, even though brands sent roughly 60% fewer messages on weekends. Around BFCM, shoulder days also drove stronger engagement, while the Sunday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw 59% fewer emails and 82% fewer text messages than Black Friday. Opportunities extend beyond the holidays Mailchimp customers added more than 500 million contacts to their audiences during peak season. Email contact additions increased heading into Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend, while SMS opt-ins rose sharply immediately before Black Friday. First-time buyers represented 68.6% of email orders and 73.4% of SMS orders during BFCM in Australia. Some of those first-time buyers returned after the holiday season. Among customers who made their first purchase during peak season, 16.6% globally purchased again in the first quarter of 2026. Those who returned took a median of 26 days to make their next purchase. The findings show why businesses should treat holiday acquisition as the start of the customer relationship and prepare retention campaigns before demand peaks to turn seasonal shoppers into longer-term customers. Download Breaking Through Peak Season Noise for interactive charts, practical recommendations, and full methodology. *Based on internal aggregate Mailchimp data in countries where SMS was available. Individual results vary. About Intuit: Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities we serve. With approximately 100 million customers worldwide using products such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, Mailchimp and Intuit Enterprise Suite, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop working to find new, innovative ways to make that possible. Please visit Intuit.com and find us on social for the latest information about Intuit and our products and services. Methodology: This report was created in collaboration with Datalily. Unless otherwise noted, metrics presented in this report are based on internal aggregate global data of active Mailchimp free and paid plan users evaluated across two primary observation windows: Peak Season 2025 (October 31, 2025, to December 31, 2025) and Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2025 (November 28, 2025, to December 1, 2025). All revenue, gross order value, Average Order Value (AOV), order rate, and conversion rate metrics apply specifically to Mailchimp users with a connected e-commerce store. Revenue metrics reflect gross e-commerce sales synced to Mailchimp and attributable to email and/or SMS campaigns (excluding orders synced via the QuickBooks integration). SMS metrics reflect markets where Mailchimp SMS was commercially available during the observation period. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Individual results and regional feature availability vary. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
artificial intelligence 25 Sep 2026
Trilliad Unveils Industry-First AI-Powered Marketing System Built for Modern B2B Growth
ANNAPOLIS, MD – September 22, 2026 – Trilliad, the market-leading, full-service B2B Growth Services Provider, today announced the launch of its Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) operating model, an agentic intelligence engine paired with a team of marketing specialists built to accelerate delivery. With MaaS, organizations gain a single partner responsible for planning, executing, and optimizing marketing performance. MaaS executions save clients an average of 40% compared to those relying on multiple partners. Most marketing organizations are still operating outdated models that haven’t kept pace with modern B2B buying. Marketers must contend with larger decision-making units, heightened buyer expectations, and mounting pressure to demonstrate marketing-attributed revenue. MaaS delivers the solution: a flexible and intelligent model that responds in real time to buying committees within both target accounts and accounts likely to convert, with success relying on the delivery of pipeline and revenue outcomes. The core of MaaS is an agentic-enabled intelligence layer. A combination of market, account, buyer, messaging, performance, and activation intelligence, this system equips Trilliad’s strategists with deep insights for accelerated decision-making and execution. MaaS delivers the following to organizations of all sizes and levels of marketing maturity: Accelerated revenue generation: MaaS turns marketing into measurable pipeline, revenue, and business growth. Smarter decision making: Real-time insights and buying signals allow for faster decision making and higher marketer confidence. Increased marketing efficiency: Routine work becomes automated and execution accelerated with AI-powered workflows. Maximized marketing investment: MaaS continuously optimizes campaigns to improve performance and ROI. Scale without added headcount: Clients get access to an enterprise team of B2B experts without the cost of building an internal team. Smarter marketing engine: An always-on engine that learns, adapts, and improves performance over time. "For years, organizations have been forced to choose between building large internal teams or managing a growing network of agencies and technology vendors," said Craig Dempster, CEO of Trilliad. "We believe the future is different. It is connected, intelligence-driven, and outcome-focused. MaaS gives organizations a fundamentally new way to build, operate, and scale marketing." MaaS’s engagement models are flexible enough to address a variety of marketing needs for teams. For SMB organizations looking to launch an ABM program, MaaS builds the foundation that enables it. Mid-market companies looking for scale employ MaaS to expand their reach and orchestration. Enterprise organizations benefit from the operating system, too – MaaS matures marketing programs through enhanced personalization to complex buying committees. These applications extend to multiple languages and markets across the globe. MaaS sits within Trilliad's Marketing Growth Solutions (MGS) portfolio. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
business 25 Sep 2026
The North Face expands SAMY remit with influencer management brief
LONDON, 24 September 2026: The North Face has appointed global social-first agency SAMY to lead its influencer management strategy and execution as the outdoor brand increases its investment in creator-led marketing and culturally relevant storytelling. The remit builds on a partnership that saw SAMY refresh The North Face’s social media strategy in December 2024. As The North Face’s social agency of record, SAMY’s expanded remit now includes leading the brand’s European influencer strategy and execution, uniting social and influencer activity under one agency partner, with a focus on the UK, Germany, France and Italy. As The North Face continues to invest in social and digital channels, creator partnerships are playing an increasingly important role in how the brand brings its ‘Never Stop Exploring’ story to life across different markets. SAMY will help the brand build more authentic relationships with audiences through athletes, creators and everyday adventurers, while ensuring campaigns remain locally relevant and globally consistent. SAMY will combine its global network with proprietary AI-powered technology to identify the right creator partnerships for each market. Using its Maia platform and Global Discovery Network, the agency will draw on millions of creator profiles, audience signals and performance data to match talent with campaigns, alongside human editorial judgement to ensure every partnership aligns with The North Face’s brand and values. As well as creator identification and management, SAMY will provide local cultural intelligence to inform campaign planning, content development and talent activation. The agency will also develop governance frameworks and measurement models needed to evaluate performance consistently across markets, using Maia to track results on an ongoing monthly basis. Paul Hickey, managing director at SAMY UK, said: “We’ve worked with The North Face for nearly a decade, and this appointment extends our partnership into influencer strategy and execution. “As the brand’s social agency of record, we already understand its audience, values and ambitions, and this appointment reflects both the strength of the relationship we’ve built and The North Face’s confidence in our integrated approach to social and influencer marketing. “Being appointed to lead The North Face’s influencer management strategy across Europe reflects the strength of the relationship we’ve already built with the brand and the confidence they’ve placed in our approach. “We know that the best influencer programmes don’t simply identify creators with reach or engagement; they identify people with genuine credibility in the communities that matter most to a brand. For a business like The North Face, that means balancing global consistency with local cultural understanding across a series of audiences that live and breathe the brand in different ways. “Our role is to bring that local expertise into European markets, helping The North Face build meaningful, long-term creator relationships that feel authentic because they’re rooted in the communities they’re designed to reach.”Stephanie Zogg, senior manager, brand communications EMEA at The North Face, added: “The North Face has always told its story through the people who live it. As creator partnerships become an increasingly important part of how we engage our communities, we wanted a partner that combines strategic thinking with the local insight needed to make those relationships meaningful. “SAMY gives us the intelligence, technology and market expertise to build creator partnerships that are relevant to local audiences while staying true to our global brand.” Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
business 25 Sep 2026
Swayable Names Jenny Wall Chief Growth Officer and Brian Lawrence Chief Revenue Officer as AI Reshapes Creative Effectiveness
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Swayable, the causal AI platform used by the world’s leading brands to predict creative impact before campaigns launch, today announced two senior executive appointments: Jenny Wall as Chief Growth Officer and Brian Lawrence as Chief Revenue Officer. Their appointments mark a new phase for Swayable as it shifts from early adoption by data-savvy marketing and campaign teams toward broader adoption by the marketers directly responsible for creative, media investment and business outcomes. Together with the scientific expertise of Founder CEO James Slezak, Wall’s marketing leadership and Lawrence’s commercial experience give Swayable a complementary leadership team spanning science, brand and growth as the company works to establish its creative pre-testing metrics as the industry standard. Global marketing teams from Airbnb, Amazon, DoorDash, Influential, JPMorgan Chase, L.L. Bean, Meta, The New York Times, PetSmart, and the top frontier LLM labs rely on Swayable to understand which creative will drive measurable lift, before investing media dollars. With over $20 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and brand revenues up approximately 60 percent year-on-year, the company has made over $50 million of investments in the build-out of its AI-native platform since 2023, funded exclusively by customer revenues. That growth comes as generative AI dramatically increases the volume and speed of creative production. Marketers can now produce more concepts and assets than ever before, creating a new challenge: determining which ideas will actually change consumer attitudes and behavior before significant production and media dollars are committed. Swayable gives marketers direct causal evidence of how creative affects brand perception, purchase intent and consideration. Helping marketers navigate a new era of accountability As AI accelerates creative production and marketing budgets face greater scrutiny, brands increasingly need a rigorous way to determine which ideas will actually move consumers. Swayable’s AI native platform provides rigorous, experiment?based causal evidence that helps marketers optimize creative concepts, messaging, and campaigns with confidence. Wall and Lawrence join Swayable to expand the company’s ability to bring that capability directly to marketers. Their appointments represent a deliberate combination of marketing, commercial and scientific expertise as creative effectiveness measurement moves beyond specialist research teams and becomes a broader requirement for brands. Widely regarded as one of the industry’s top CMOs, Wall brings more than three decades of experience shaping brand and content strategy at the most influential media and technology companies. She has led marketing at Hulu, Gimlet (acquired by Spotify), Nickelodeon, and VideoAmp, and previously held senior creative and marketing leadership roles at Netflix, HBO, and DDB Needham. Across these roles, she has helped define the marketing strategies behind culturally iconic titles including The Handmaid’s Tale, House of Cards, and Orange Is the New Black. “Marketers are being asked to do more with less, and I’ve been on the other side of that table — accountable to CFOs and boards for proving what marketing actually delivered,” said Wall. “I’ve also spent my career at companies that were ahead of the curve in reshaping their industries, and I see that same opportunity here. Swayable gives brands proof of what works—and I’m excited to help marketers turn that evidence into growth.” Lawrence brings more than 20 years of experience building and scaling sales, customer success, partnerships, and solutions engineering functions at high?growth technology platform companies including HelloSign (acquired by Dropbox), airSlate, Clazar, and Webmetrics (acquired by NeuStar). He began his enterprise software career at Oracle and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Swayable solves one of marketing’s oldest unsolved problems: knowing which half of your budget is working before you spend it,” said Lawrence. “Brands need evidence of what will actually move consumers, not just more data after the fact. I’m excited to help bring that capability to more marketers.” Leadership aligned to marketer needs “Jenny and Brian bring exactly the caliber of leadership Swayable needs as we continue to scale,” said James Slezak, CEO and Founder of Swayable. “Jenny has repeatedly led marketing organizations through industry?defining shifts, and Brian has built go?to?market engines that help customers adopt new technology with confidence. Together, they are exactly the leaders we need as we continue scaling adoption to serve the growing community of marketers who recognize that they need to know—with real causal evidence—which stories will truly move people.” The leadership trio reflects a deliberate merging of disciplines for this moment: Slezak's scientific rigor as founder, Wall's experience disrupting how top brands connect with audiences, and Lawrence's track record scaling enterprise sales. Together, they give Swayable the leadership it needs to carry causal creative measurement from early adoption to industry standard. About Swayable Swayable is the industry gold standard for creative pre-testing. The causal AI platform is used by the world's leading marketing organizations to measure the impact of their content and messaging. Global brands including Airbnb, Amazon, DoorDash, Influential, JPMorgan Chase, L.L. Bean, Meta, The New York Times, PetSmart and top frontier LLM labs use the platform to measure the impact of their messages on real consumers. Brands that use the platform unlock 2–10x more campaign ROI by applying lift measurement insights across all stages of campaign development. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
marketing 24 Sep 2026
Azerion Unifies Its Publisher Supply Business Under Improve Digital, Launching a Full-Circle Solution for Publishers
Amsterdam, UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 8AM BST, Wednesday 23 September 2026: Azerion, one of Europe's largest digital advertising and entertainment media platforms, today announced the launch of its unified publisher suite under the Improve Digital brand. The move brings together Azerion's supply-side technology and monetization services into a single, full-circle solution for publishers, replacing what were previously separate offerings with one connected stack, one point of contact, and one name in the market. The new platform is available through two complementary products: ? Improve Digital SSP: a supply-side platform for publishers who run their own ad stack and want direct access to programmatic demand. ? Improve Digital Yield: a header bidding and yield optimization solution for publishers who prefer to hand monetization over to a dedicated team. Together, they connect publisher inventory to more than 50 demand-side platforms (DSPs) and 50 supply-side platforms (SSPs) in real time, across every ad format, channel, and device from web and app to CTV, audio, DOOH, and in-game.“With the launch of the unified publisher proposition we send a clear signal to the market, Azerion is the place to be as a publisher. With all solutions under one umbrella, including SSP, yield optimization and other publishing services like multi cloud, we offer a unique and competitive proposition designed to make the lives of publishers better and more profitable,” said Jurriaan van Teunenbroek, Chief Publishing Officer. Why Improve Digital "Digital publishers and app developers are under more pressure than ever to grow revenue without growing their ad ops burden. That's exactly the problem we built Improve Digital Yield to solve. Whether a publisher wants a fully managed team optimizing every auction on their behalf, or wants granular, bid-level control over their own stack, they're running on the same infrastructure, the same demand relationships, and the same AI-powered price floor optimization. Add in support across display, video, and high-impact formats, a proprietary video player and content solution, plus SDKs for in-app monetization, and publishers get one platform instead of a patchwork of vendors. That's the difference between chasing incremental gains and building a real, durable revenue strategy,” said Damian Hartmann, Product Director, Improve Digital Yield. "Publishers have never had a shortage of options, they've had a shortage of clarity. Working out what a partner actually offers, and how it fits the stack you already run, is harder than it should be. Improve Digital is now the single name from Azerion covering all our supply-side solutions, so publishers get one commercial relationship, a set of products they can integrate wherever they need them, and one consolidated path for buyers to find their inventory. Managed and self-service monetization, plus our curation platform, give them scale and reach across web, app, CTV, audio and DOOH," said Harry Francis, Product Director, Improve Digital SSP. A Full-Circle Solution for Publishers The unified platform is built around a simple idea: every demand source, format, and data signal should run through a single, connected hub, so publisher inventory is always working as hard as it can. Its "360° Solution" positioning reflects that ambition, a full-stack advertising business, with Improve Digital as the supply layer at its centre. Publishers choose the level of the stack that fits their needs: ? Those with in-house ad ops teams running Prebid, oRTB, or their own wrapper can plug directly into Improve Digital SSP for self-service supply and demand, curated Marketplace data, and Azerion's direct demand, all also available through open APIs. ? Those without a dedicated ad ops team can handle monetization entirely to Improve Digital Yield, which combines proprietary monetization technologies, including a header bidding wrapper, mobile SDKs and a video player with an AI-based optimization engine and dedicated account management to monetize inventory end-to-end. Because Azerion owns the full advertising value chain, demand, data, and infrastructure, Improve Digital sits at the centre of it, rather than simply connecting publishers to third-party demand. That structure is designed to give publishers exclusive deal access, unique demand, and fewer intermediaries taking a share of revenue. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
marketing 24 Sep 2026
UTS partners with Nexon Asia Pacific on $20 Million-Plus Network Modernisation
Sydney: The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has partnered with Nexon Asia Pacific (Nexon) on a $20 million-plus refresh of the network and Wi-Fi across every UTS campus. The multi-year engagement will support UTS 2030 and position the university for the AI-native generation of students arriving through the end of the decade. Nexon was selected following a competitive open tender featuring some of Australia’s technology leaders. The partnership brings together Nexon’s 25-year track record across Australian higher education with Extreme Platform ONE™, an all-in-one AI-powered networking platform that unifies networking, security and AI which Nexon has deployed across higher education and other sectors. The modernisation covers UTS’s full network and Wi-Fi environment across every campus, including wired and wireless, core and edge, data centre connectivity and security controls. The latest wireless standard, Wi-Fi 7, is being rolled out to meet the bandwidth and density demands of a modern campus. AI-native capabilities are being built into the network itself, supported by zero-trust security principles. Following the design and proof of concept, the partnership moves into an 18-month build phase, with ongoing managed services, strategic advisory and support continuing across a multi-year term. “The students arriving at UTS by the end of the decade will be the first to have grown up with AI woven through their everyday lives,” said David Reeve, Chief Information Officer at UTS. “They’ll expect learning environments that match their digital fluency and research facilities built for the data volumes ahead. Our network has to be ready for them.” “UTS has a clear view of what it wants to deliver for its students, academics and researchers, and the network is central to making that possible,” said Leon Slattery, Head of Network and Security Pre-sales at Nexon. “Our role is to build a modern, AI-ready, automated foundation that lets UTS’s teams launch new services, support new research and respond to what comes next.” “Universities are among the most demanding network environments, with tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff relying on secure, consistent connectivity across multiple buildings. We’re proud to work with Nexon to deliver the necessary network foundation so UTS can focus on modernizing and improving experiences for everyone on campus,” said Trevor Boal, Regional Director, Australia and New Zealand, Extreme Networks. “We chose Nexon because of their engagement, their experience in higher education and their ability to deliver at this scale,” said Reeve. “The work starts now, and we’re excited about what it enables for our students, staff and research.” The partnership is part of a UTS modernisation agenda spanning platforms, AI and data, core systems and the physical campus, underpinning a digital-first student experience through UTS 2030 and beyond. About Nexon Asia Pacific Nexon is an award-winning digital and IT services partner for mid-market, enterprise and government organisations across Australia. We offer clients a uniquely broad suite of solutions requiring end-to-end capabilities coupled with specialist expertise in security, cloud and digital solutions. As a certified and accredited local and state government provider, CREST and ISO-certified, Nexon partners with world-class technology vendors to deliver innovative and integrated solutions. About the University of Technology Sydney As Australia's #1 young university, we thrive in the heart of vibrant central Sydney. Here, creativity and collaboration with award-winning researchers fuel innovation across disciplines, empowering you to push boundaries, shape new ideas and build a career that transforms the future. Recognised globally for our commitment to positive social impact, UTS ranks among the world's top 100 universities and stands out as a leading partner in building a sustainable future. We work with our partners across the globe to create meaningful change, connecting you with subject matter experts and cutting-edge facilities so together we can tackle the world's big challenges. At UTS, we're not just a university – we're a community of changemakers Stay ahead with insights on AI-powered marketing, data-driven strategies, and digital transformation.
marketing 18 Sep 2026
Chalice AI and PurpleLab Partner to Bring Predictive Intelligence to Healthcare Media
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chalice AI, the platform-independent AI media decisioning company, and PurpleLab, a healthcare analytics company powering real-world data across 330 million+ U.S. patient lives and more than 3 million HCPs, today announced a partnership that will enable healthcare marketers to turn trusted healthcare intelligence into custom predictive models built around their specific business and patient outcomes. Healthcare marketers have access to increasingly sophisticated clinical and claims intelligence, but translating those signals into scalable media decisions remains difficult, particularly in a highly regulated category where privacy, security and compliance considerations shape how data can be used. Campaigns often begin with a predefined audience or broad proxy for intent, leaving marketers to optimize against assumptions rather than the outcome they ultimately want to drive. Chalice AI and PurpleLab are bringing a different approach to healthcare media. The partnership combines PurpleLab’s longitudinal medical and pharmacy claims data with Chalice’s custom AI modeling and optimization capabilities. Together, the companies will create bespoke, brand-specific predictive models designed to identify new audience members likely to be interested in specific drugs or therapeutic areas, uncover prescriber opportunities, predict adoption and attrition, and drive incremental growth. Rather than relying solely on static audience segments, Chalice creates audiences based on their predicted likelihood of an advertiser-defined outcome. PurpleLab’s healthcare intelligence provides the underlying signals needed to understand patient trends and healthcare professional behaviors, while Chalice translates those signals into predictive insights that can inform media decisioning and activation. The result is a more adaptive approach to healthcare media. Models can be refreshed as new healthcare signals and campaign performance data become available, helping marketers make more responsive decisions and more closely connect media investment to business outcomes. “Healthcare marketers don’t need another off-the-shelf audience. They need the ability to start with the business or patient outcome they’re trying to achieve and build an AI strategy specifically around that objective,” said Adam Heimlich, CEO of Chalice AI. “The opportunity is to turn trusted healthcare intelligence into a predictive advantage unique to each brand, then put that intelligence to work wherever media is bought. PurpleLab gives us the foundation to do exactly that.” Transparency, security and data provenance are central to the partnership. Models are developed in privacy-first, secure environments, with marketers retaining visibility into the data categories and provenance informing their models and the methodology used to translate those signals into media decisions. This approach enables healthcare marketers to apply custom predictive modeling while addressing the privacy, security and compliance considerations inherent to healthcare data. “AI is only as valuable as the data powering it and the confidence marketers have in how that data is being used,” said Kyle Armstrong, VP, Agency and Platform Sales at PurpleLab. “By bringing PurpleLab’s real-world healthcare intelligence together with Chalice’s custom predictive decisioning, we’re giving marketers a more transparent and actionable way to connect healthcare signals to the outcomes they are ultimately trying to drive.” Designed to support a growing range of patient and HCP use cases, the collaboration can help marketers identify likely new patients and prescribers, model adoption and attrition, and connect predictive insights to media and creative strategy. Models can be activated through Chalice across connected television, social platforms and the open internet, allowing healthcare marketers to apply the same custom intelligence across channels. About PurpleLab PurpleLab® is a health-tech company driven by one clear philosophy: outcomes matter most. As your trusted partner for real-world data, we help organizations drive decisive action based on precise insights – with the ultimate goal of giving everyone a fighting chance at the best possible health outcome. About Chalice AI Chalice AI (www.chalice.ai) is the leading AI platform for advertising growth. Advertisers’ custom models can be deployed in all major DSPs/SSPs, as well as Meta and YouTube. In 2024, Chalice pioneered the first containerized bidding agent in an SSP, enabling advertisers to optimize supply around their goals—bringing quality, context, and performance together in a single buying strategy. Discover the latest marketing technology, automation, and customer engagement strategies driving business growth.
marketing 18 Sep 2026
DeepIntent Launches Cora, the First Fully Agentic Marketing Platform for Healthcare
NEW YORK - As pharmaceutical companies develop increasingly specialized treatments, marketers face a growing challenge: successfully reaching more precisely defined patient populations while navigating increasingly complex and competitive markets. Today, DeepIntent announced DeepIntent Cora™, the first fully agentic marketing platform built specifically for healthcare, designed to fundamentally transform how pharma companies strategize, collaborate and activate omnichannel marketing campaigns.DeepIntent Cora brings agentic AI to healthcare marketing, enabling marketers to move rapidly from market intelligence to strategy with simple conversational language. Rather than requiring marketers to navigate multiple complex tools, data sets, and disconnected workflows, Cora brings these capabilities together in a single, simple, collaborative environment.The need for a new approach is becoming increasingly urgent. More than 60% of drug treatments fail to meet their forecasted commercial goals, underscoring the difficulty of developing a clear path to commercial success. As pharma innovation increasingly shifts toward treatments for more specialized patient populations, the ability to identify, understand, and engage the right audiences with greater precision will become even more critical.From fragmented hand-offs to an agentic marketing workflowDeepIntent Cora is designed to transform the traditional pharma marketing workflow by bringing intelligence, data and execution together in a simple, agentic interface. Cora's capabilities include: Conversational, agentic planning and execution. With Cora, marketers direct purpose-built agents with natural language to interrogate complex healthcare data, develop precise patient and healthcare provider audiences, and move from insight to activation without requiring advanced technical or programmatic expertise. In beta testing, Cora cut marketing planning time cycles by 50% with over 95% of customers reporting drastically faster workflows. Omnichannel planning, audience building, and activation. For the first time, healthcare marketers will be able to forecast, plan, and activate audiences across channels within one platform – not just programmatic. New integrations, including VideoAmp for linear TV planning and forecasting, extend Cora's capabilities well beyond a traditional demand-side platform (DSP). Real-time AI-driven intelligence. Cora continuously surfaces personalized, actionable insights across campaigns, competitors, clinical developments, market conditions, and media signals – helping to optimize campaigns more rapidly. An expanded healthcare marketing cloud. Cora draws on DeepIntent Helix™, the industry's richest and most trusted healthcare marketing cloud. With this launch, Helix expands to incorporate new types of data, including payer and formulary signals, and richer diagnostic data, providing a broader foundation for planning, decision-making, and audience-building. Collaborative human-and-AI workspaces. Cora introduces live, project-based workspaces that bring marketers, agencies, and AI agents together around a shared view of planning, activation, and optimization. Teams collaborate across brands and agencies and manage approvals and workflows, eliminating disconnected silos and handoffs. "For over a decade, DeepIntent has built a platform with a singular focus on healthcare. With Cora, we are expanding beyond programmatic advertising and unlocking the value of agentic AI for strategy, planning, and activation across channels," said Chris Paquette, Founder and CEO, DeepIntent. "Just as drug development becomes more precise, Cora will break down siloes, helping our clients understand markets, collaborate more efficiently, and ultimately engage with patients and providers with unprecedented speed and confidence. In doing so, Cora will help pharma brands and their agencies bring more treatments to market successfully, while improving the quality of life for the patients they serve."Cora is available today for all DeepIntent clients in an open beta. In a survey of 275 customers in a closed beta earlier this year, 95% reported drastically faster times conducting research, planning, and activating campaigns, with reported reductions of 50% or more in time.Clients comment on Cora:EVERSANA INTOUCH"It takes an incredible amount of time, resources and data to launch a new treatment or therapy into the market. We're constantly looking for solutions that can help maximize our resources and deliver for customers," said Dave Leitner, EVP, Head of Media, EVERSANA INTOUCH. "We've found DeepIntent's Cora platform extremely beneficial in helping provide data- and AI-driven views that enable us to make smarter media investment decisions from day one, a clearer picture of realistic launch outcomes, and a sharper focus on driving maximum return on investment for clients, all measures that we value as a media partner."Deerfield Group"Navigating the healthcare ecosystem with disconnected data sets, fragmented channels and measurement tools can be complex. We've seen clients get stuck on connecting insights to action," said Bill Veltre, Chief Media Officer, Deerfield Group. "Our partnership with DeepIntent has enabled our teams to build marketing strategies that create value for our clients' businesses. And now with innovations like Cora, we're taking it further by connecting data to real decisions in a meaningful way. We're excited for what this means for the brands we work with."Klick Health"Our team deals with billions of programmatic media impressions every day for our healthcare clients, said Kristy Quagliariello, VP, Programmatic Media, Klick Health. "So being able to easily aggregate and quickly analyze all that data using DeepIntent's Cora agentic platform delivers a lot of value."About DeepIntentDeepIntent is the leading healthcare marketing platform, purpose-built to help marketers plan, activate, and optimize data-driven campaigns with speed and precision. Trusted by the world's top healthcare brands and their agencies, DeepIntent uniquely unites media, identity, and real-world clinical data to power privacy-safe, omnichannel marketing across every screen. Backed by patented technology and proven outcomes, DeepIntent's platform delivers measurable audience quality and script lift at scale. Stay ahead with insights on AI-powered marketing, data-driven strategies, and digital transformation.
marketing 16 Sep 2026
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