Press Release
RainFocus Launches AI Agent Connectivity for Event Data with MCP Profiles
RainFocus™, provider of the next-generation event marketing platform, today announced the availability of Model Context Protocol (MCP) Profiles as part of RainFocus Nexus, an intelligent collaboration system for event marketing operations, designed for the agentic web. What This Means for the Market The first native MCP with an enterprise-grade OAuth security layer provides fast, accurate answers from live event data during high-stakes event execution windows. Event teams have always held rich data, but access is often bottlenecked by manual exports, pivot tables, or waiting on data teams. RainFocus MCP Profiles deliver live event intelligence directly to event strategists in real time, so they can move at the speed of their events. Teams can manage events with fewer service tickets, less dependency on technical resources, and greater confidence that every decision is backed by accurate, real-time data. More than an efficiency builder, MCP Profiles makes event planners and strategists more effective and visible within their organizations by empowering them to surface insights and act on data in real time. They view live session capacity, resolve last-minute speaker changes across hundreds of records, respond to an executive's question on-site, and more. RainFocus' single, unified global attendee profile ensures every piece of data is clean, connected, and trustworthy. Key Capabilities and Differentiators Per-Event Scoping: Planners activate and control tool access event by event, setting exactly who can see and do what. OAuth-Secured Authentication: Every MCP action is tied to an administrator's identity with enterprise-grade governance, including per-user authentication, role-based access control, and full audit logging. Bidirectional Actions: Agents can read data and write changes such as pulling live session capacity, closing registration for a sold-out track, or updating speaker details in natural language. Democratized Event Control: Non-technical admins and partners can query and manage complex event settings without touching a setup menu. Potential Use Cases Incomplete Profile Flagging: Find attendees or speakers with missing required fields such as bio, headshot, or contact information before event deadlines. Exhibitor Data Completeness: Surface exhibitor profiles with missing booth descriptions, logos, or contact assignments before the event guide publishes. Session Data Validation: Check session records for missing abstracts, unassigned rooms, or speakers without confirmed status. Room Capacity vs. Registration: Compare session registrations against room capacity and flag over-subscribed sessions that may require room changes or waitlists. On-Site Check-In Status: During the event, query how many registered attendees have checked in by session, track, or time block. About RainFocus Nexus MCP Profiles is the latest addition to RainFocus Nexus, a growing system of specialized AI agents built to act as teammates to event marketing teams. RainFocus continues to expand and deepen the capabilities across the Nexus platform, with ongoing updates to its core agents: The Configuration Agent automates the complex, repetitive workflow setup that consumes hours of event operations time, translating instructions into platform configuration so teams can move faster from planning to execution. Live RainFocus event data gives teams instant, accurate answers from their own system of record without exports, tickets, or technical intermediaries. Concierge agents deliver real-time attendee guidance before and during events, reducing inbound support volume and enabling a personalized experience at scale. Learn how AI-powered marketing solutions improve campaign performance and ROI.
artificial intelligence 8 Jul 2026
Surreal Hotel Arts and Eudora Unveil Groundbreaking AI-Driven Film Campaign Starring Valentina Ferrer
SÃO PAULO, July 6, 2026 – Surreal Hotel Arts, the Brazilian creative production company with offices in São Paulo and New York, today announces the launch of a new film campaign for leading beauty brand Eudora, part of the O Boticário group. Starring international model, actress, and former Miss Argentina, Valentina Ferrer, the campaign, which was developed by AlmapBBDO and produced by Surreal, connects the precision of science with the elegance of fashion, blending advertising, art, and technology. Created by Surreal’s lauded director Brendo, the film uses AI-integrated techniques to tell the story of Eudora Siàge Nutri Diamond, Eudora's new “diamond shielding” hair technology for the Siàge product line, a proprietary formula that delivers a protective, high-gloss finish for up to 100 hours. To bring this microscopic science to life, Surreal’s creative production team built an immersive custom installation of LED screens and mirrors, engineered to mirror the precise geometry of a diamond, transforming a laboratory concept into a cinematic, high-fashion environment. “Nutri Diamond has always had a very strong connection with consumers, and its return represents an important step in Eudora Siàge’s strategy. The campaign uses fashion as a language to convey the product’s attributes in an inspiring way, translating hair protection into a narrative of desire and high performance. Working with Surreal Hotel Arts and Brendo, we found a team that understood this ambition and helped us create a film that reinforces our commitment to meeting consumers' real needs through innovation, beauty, and visible results.” Giovana Orlandeli, Communications Director, Eudora, O Boticário group From the beginning, the production was designed around the science behind the product. Director Brendo and the Surreal team used AI, robotic camera systems, and digital design to reflect the precision of Eudora’s Nutri Diamond formula. AI was used early in the process to create complex backgrounds and shape the film’s distinctive aesthetic. Most significantly, it was deployed to visualize the diamond shielding effect by simulating how micro-diamonds protect individual hair strands against heat and moisture in a way that conventional cameras cannot capture, and in a fraction of the time required by traditional CGI. The LED panels provided the diamond light, while the robotic camera choreography simulated the technical accuracy of a laboratory environment. “This project gave us the opportunity to ask: what does science look like when it becomes beautiful? We used AI not as a gimmick, but as a genuine bridge between the microscopic world inside the product and the cinematic world we were building. The robotic camera, the LED geometry, the AI visualizations – every element was in service of making the science feel real, and felt. By combining these techniques, we’ve created visuals that feel simultaneously luxurious, scientific, and otherworldly.” Brendo, Director, Surreal Hotel Arts Brendo, a film director working across advertising, music videos, and immersive projects, blends a vibrant visual aesthetic with strong influences from fashion, beauty, and technology. With a focus on innovative, creative solutions and AI-integrated production, he crafts visual experiences that expand the boundaries of digital storytelling. “Our work with Eudora represents the latest evolution of a creative approach that has consistently placed Surreal Hotel Arts at the forefront of visually ambitious, technically advanced filmmaking in South America.” Brendo, Director, Surreal Hotel Arts ABOUT SURREAL HOTEL ARTS Surreal Hotel Arts is a Brazilian audiovisual production company with offices in São Paulo and New York. We operate in both national and international markets, creating content for advertising, entertainment, and branded media. Since January 2021, our mission has been to tell stories with relevance, creative freedom, and sensitive listening. We believe in the power of imagining, creating, and building solutions that reflect the diverse voices of the world, always in dialogue with agencies, brands, distributors, platforms, and other industry partners. As signatories of the UN Global Compact, we remain committed to the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, aligning our projects with a more diverse, responsible, and people-connected future. Follow Surreal Hotel Arts on LinkedIn, Instagram. and YouTube. Website: https://www.surrealhotelarts.com/ ABOUT EUDORA Launched in 2011, Eudora is a Brazilian cosmetics brand. It is a subsidiary of Boticário, Brazil’s most-loved beauty brand. With over 3,600 locations across Brazil and collections sold in over 600 countries, Boticário places conversation and sustainability at the heart of its products and brands. Follow Eudora on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Website: www.eudora.com.br Stay ahead with insights on AI-powered marketing, data-driven strategies, and digital transformation.
business 6 Jul 2026
Genesys Acquires Pinkfish to Accelerate the Future of Autonomous Customer Experiences
SYDNEY, July 1, 2026 — Genesys®, a global cloud leader in AI-Powered Experience Orchestration, today announced it has acquired Pinkfish, a leading agentic orchestration workflow company. This acquisition will expand Genesys Cloud™ AI with MCP-based tool integration and workflow automation capabilities, helping organisations connect customer intent to governed actions across enterprise systems and accelerate the adoption of trusted autonomous experiences that drive business outcomes. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “Agentic AI is moving customer experience from assisted engagement to governed execution,” said Glenn Nethercutt, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Genesys. “With Pinkfish, we’re advancing agentic orchestration by connecting customer intent to enterprise data, business workflows and governed actions through Genesys Cloud AI, so organisations can resolve more complex customer needs with greater autonomy, control and speed.” Accelerating Agentic Orchestration Through Enterprise Execution As organisations increasingly look to move from static workflows to autonomous AI, they need to bridge the gap between customer engagement and enterprise execution. Pinkfish advances the ability of Genesys Cloud Agentic Virtual Agent and Genesys Cloud Copilots to securely access data and execute actions across enterprise systems. With more than 500 integrations supporting 25,000 MCP tools spanning CRM, ERP, IT, HR, order management, billing and other business applications, Pinkfish brings one of the customer experience (CX) industry’s most extensive MCP ecosystems to Genesys Cloud. These capabilities will help organisations overcome some of the biggest barriers to agentic AI adoption: fragmented systems, disconnected workflows and operational complexity that often prevent them from achieving more autonomous and outcome-driven customer experiences. The acquisition will further the abilities of Genesys Cloud Agentic Virtual Agent to autonomously orchestrate and complete customer work within trusted business guardrails. As a result, Agentic Virtual Agent will be able to resolve more complex customer needs end-to-end, improving self-service experiences while reducing customer effort and operational handoffs. “We founded Pinkfish because we believe AI reaches its full potential only when it can securely operate across the enterprise,” said Charanya Kannan, chief executive officer and co-founder of Pinkfish. “Every great customer experience combines meaningful conversations with meaningful action that spans CRM, ERP, billing and the rest of the enterprise. By bringing together the AI orchestration leadership of Genesys with the AI-powered workflow automation capabilities of Pinkfish, we will help organisations move toward AI that securely takes action, completes customer work across the enterprise and delivers exceptional customer experiences.” Advancing AI-Powered Workflow Automation Genesys Cloud AI with the natural language-driven workflow automation of Pinkfish will enable organisations to build and deploy sophisticated AI-powered CX workflows, making agentic orchestration more accessible to business users and accelerating time to value. For example, when a customer contacts a retailer about a delayed order, an Agentic Virtual Agent could verify order status, review shipping information, apply a service credit, upgrade the shipment and notify the customer, all by coordinating actions across systems without requiring human intervention. Rather than routing the request across multiple teams and systems, the Agentic Virtual Agent can help complete the process end-to-end in a single interaction. These capabilities can also combine with Genesys Cloud Case Management to support workflow-intensive processes such as customer onboarding, insurance claims processing, return merchandise authorisations, loan servicing requests, warranty management and other business processes that span front-office and back-office operations. “The autonomous enterprise depends on the ability to coordinate actions across complex business environments while maintaining governance and control,” said Rebecca Wettemann, CEO and principal analyst of Valoir. “With the addition of Pinkfish, Genesys Cloud is poised to gain the workflow automation and enterprise connectivity needed to help organisations scale agentic orchestration.” To learn more about how the acquisition of Pinkfish will advance Genesys Cloud, visit Genesys.com. Availability Genesys expects Pinkfish capabilities to become available to Genesys Cloud customers through the Genesys AppFoundry® Marketplace by the end of the second quarter of the company’s fiscal year 2027 (May 1–July 31, 2026). The company expects to begin introducing Pinkfish capabilities natively within Genesys Cloud by the end of this fiscal year (Feb. 1, 2026–Jan. 31, 2027). Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this press release that are not historical or current facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Unless required by law, Genesys undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events after the date of this press release. About Genesys Genesys® empowers more than 8,000 organisations worldwide to create the best customer and employee experiences. With agentic AI at its core, Genesys Cloud™ is the AI-Powered Experience Orchestration platform that connects people, systems, data and AI across the enterprise. As a result, organisations can drive customer loyalty, growth and retention while increasing operational efficiency and teamwork across human and AI workforces. Stay ahead with insights on AI-powered marketing, data-driven strategies, and digital transformation.
business intelligence 1 Jul 2026
KnowBe4 Earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2026 Global Customer Value Leadership Recognition in the Email Security Industry
Sydney, Australia (24th June 2026) — KnowBe4, the global leader in digital workforce security, securing both AI agents and humans, today announced it has been awarded ‘2026 Global Customer Value Leadership’ in the email security industry as part of Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices recognition. Best Practices awards companies for their superior leadership and innovation. Frost & Sullivan recognised KnowBe4 for: · Its continued protection of the human element of email security while also addressing the evolving threat landscape, characterised by AI-generated phishing campaigns, impersonation attacks, and compromised legitimate accounts. · Tightly integrating technical protection with behavioral risk management into a single platform that continuously correlates user activity, threat intelligence, and policy enforcement. This unified approach enables customers to identify threats more effectively and respond faster, while reinforcing secure user behaviour through contextual guidance and personalised training. · Its advanced AI-driven capabilities, which deliver strong price–performance value by reducing false positives while maintaining high detection accuracy. Organisations benefit from reliable protection against phishing and social engineering attacks without overwhelming users or security teams with excessive alerts. · Use of contextual prompts and behavioural nudges to influence user decisions during risky interactions. This approach improves long-term security outcomes by transforming every detection event into an opportunity for user education. Over time, organisations see measurable improvements in their Risk Score. · Seamless integration with existing security ecosystems, such as Microsoft 365. By aligning closely with existing productivity platforms, KnowBe4 minimises deployment complexity and accelerates time to value for customers. In addition, Frost & Sullivan acknowledged KnowBe4’s simplified procurement and platform consolidation, its strong customer support, its expanding global adoption, and its continuous innovation and future growth potential. “This recognition highlights our commitment to delivering genuine, measurable value for our customers by combining technical sophistication with behavioural insight,” said Greg Kras, chief product officer at KnowBe4. “By embedding innovation at the heart of our strategy, we’re redefining digital workforce security - harnessing the power of AI to help organisations effectively defend against the modern threat landscape and reduce unnecessary operational complexity.” Best Practices criteria for world-class performance Frost & Sullivan applies a rigorous analytical process to evaluate multiple organisations for each recognition category before determining the final recognition recipient. The process involves a detailed evaluation of best practices criteria across two dimensions (business impact and customer impact) for each nominated company. KnowBe4 excels in many of the criteria in the Email Security space. “KnowBe4 continues to invest in innovation to address emerging cybersecurity challenges. Future platform enhancements focus on expanding protection beyond email into collaboration platforms and messaging environments where phishing and impersonation attacks increasingly originate.” - Claudio Stahnke, Senior Industry Analyst, Frost & Sullivan About KnowBe4 KnowBe4 empowers the modern workforce to make smarter security decisions every day. Trusted by more than 70,000 organisations worldwide, KnowBe4 is the pioneer of digital workforce security, securing both AI agents and humans. The KnowBe4 Platform provides attack simulation and training, collaboration security, and agent security powered by AIDA (Artificial Intelligence Defense Agents) and a proprietary Risk Score. The platform leverages 15 years of behavioural data to combat advanced threats including social engineering, prompt injection, and shadow AI. By securing humans and agents, KnowBe4 leads the industry in workforce trust and defence. Explore MarTech innovations helping brands optimize campaigns, improve customer experiences, and boost ROI.
business 25 Jun 2026
73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity opens Monday
International Jurors have gathered in Cannes, with 10 shortlists now released Brands and Indies continue to grow their presence across the Lions 20 June 2026 - With the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity due to commence in France on Monday, over 300 global Jurors have now gathered in Cannes to judge this year’s 20,050 awards submissions, which have come from 92 countries. For 2026, Cannes Lions introduced new Awards Integrity Standards across all categories, ensuring that as the industry continues to evolve and creativity continues to break new ground, entry credibility, results legitimacy and judging integrity remain non-negotiable pillars for recognising creative excellence. In their first year, the additional rigour these Standards have introduced has supported the overall quality of award entries, while driving a more focused approach to award submissions as a whole. Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS said: “We have been working closely with our international community over the last year on what are considered and significant steps, and thank everyone for their support, cooperation and leadership. Together, we understand that these strengthened standards are not designed to restrict creativity, but to fortify it – ensuring breakthrough work gets the recognition it deserves, while preserving the integrity that makes the recognition meaningful and enduring.” Today, shortlists have been released for the Health & Wellness, Outdoor, Creative B2B, Pharma, Print & Publishing and Audio & Radio Lions. Additionally, 10 pieces of work have been shortlisted for the inaugural Creative Brand Lions, which recognises the use of systems, cultures, and capabilities available to brand marketers that make world-class creative work inevitable. The presence and influence of Brands continues to grow across Cannes Lions, including within the Awards, with 10% of all work submitted by Brands this year, up from 8% in 2025. Approximately 400 brands will be in Cannes, with presence across the dedicated Brand Village, B2B Summit, LIONS Creators, and the first LIONS Sport. Cannes Lions also recently announced that industry pioneer Jim Stengel will be honoured as the inaugural Lions Laureate for Marketing. Independents – including Indie Networks – are playing an increasingly significant role too. This year, Independents make up almost a third of all entries and there are more Jury Presidents representing Indie agencies than ever before. The continuing growth of Indies is reflected across the broader Festival too, with the introduction of a Challenger Pass giving independently-owned businesses full Classic pass access – providing greater access for independent voices to be part of the conversations that define what comes next. For 2026, the Festival has expanded its leadership forums, serving the growing number of leading CEOs and CMOs who recognise the deep connection between creative marketing and the boardroom growth agenda. This year sees the return of the CEO Forum, which takes place on the first day of the Festival and welcomes 50 global CEOs to a confidential space to learn, exchange ideas and connect. New for this year is the LIONS Global CMO Forum, launching as a closed door, peer-level format, where the world’s leading global marketers can speak candidly, learn from and challenge each other, and engage with the real issues they’re navigating across growth, capital allocation, and influence at board level. Elsewhere in the Lions, the Craft Lions continue to see sustained engagement. This year, Cannes Lions introduced new AI Craft subcategories across the craft-led Lions, to recognise work where human creativity and artificial intelligence come together to create ideas that neither could achieve alone. The focus is on recognising genuine craft, artistry and intent, where AI works in service of the idea. About the Awards, Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS said: “Our industry is constantly shifting, adapting and innovating, and 2026 feels like it will be remembered as a transformative year for many reasons. We know from our 73-year history that the Awards reflect industry disruption, but also opportunity; and we can see that through greater engagement from Brand marketers and Independents. Given the shifts we’re witnessing in the industry right now, coming together to navigate those, and celebrate the work that sets the standard for creativity, feels more essential than ever.” Cannes Lions takes place from 22-26 June in Cannes, France. A breadth of pass opportunities are available and the full programme – including for the sector specific LIONS Sport, LIONS Creators and LIONS B2B – is available at www.canneslions.com. Discover how our team helps businesses leverage AI-driven marketing, automation, and customer engagement strategies to improve campaign performance and drive measurable growth.
business 22 Jun 2026
Shopify Spring ‘26 Edition: Commerce everywhere for Australian merchants
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, 18 June 2026 – Shopify, provider of essential internet infrastructure for commerce, has unveiled its Spring ‘26 Edition, Everywhere, the ninth showcase of its latest products and innovations that will power the future of commerce, redefining the shopping experience, and helping merchants’ products show up everywhere. Shopify’s Spring ‘26 Edition introduces a new wave of business-ready AI-powered innovations that will expand upon how much merchants, developers, and partners build and grow. Featuring more than 150 updates, this Edition includes more agentic commerce solutions, further improvements to Sidekick and makes it easier for merchants to get the insights they need to drive conversions. “Australian businesses are embracing new technologies faster than ever to meet changing customer expectations,” says Shaun Broughton, Managing Director, APAC & Japan, Shopify. “Today, customers discover products everywhere - from online stores and social channels to AI-powered shopping assistants and emerging digital experiences. With this Edition, we are helping merchants of every size prepare for the next era of commerce by making it easier for their products and brands to show up wherever customers are discovering and buying. From AI powered shopping assistants and agentic storefronts to new tools that simplify marketing, analytics and cross channel selling, we are giving Australian businesses the infrastructure they need to grow with confidence in today’s retail landscape.” "We called this the “Everywhere” Edition because we wanted to make sure every merchant knows that if you are on Shopify, your products reach your customers everywhere they are shopping,” says Vanessa Lee, VP, Product, Shopify. “Agentic Storefronts and UCP are coming together to give merchants actionable insights and control over which channels they appear in. And this Edition includes a big relaunch of the Catalog API which now includes billions of products, paid placements and works with Shop Login to personalise search results. From new agentic applications to the wave of commerce that has yet to be developed, this Edition is a big step forward in ensuring our merchants are everywhere by default.” Managing Agentic Storefronts and Insights in Shopify Admin As AI becomes central to commerce, merchants need visibility into how it drives business outcomes. For the first time, merchants now have one place to manage their Agentic Storefronts and insights in the Shopify Admin, giving them insight into what’s working, tools to address gaps, and one place to manage their AI presence across channels. The upgraded Admin experience allows merchants to: See orders, sales and conversions from at a glance across AI channels. Search intelligence shows the top AI queries in a merchant’s category, including which ones they’re ranking for, and where they’re not showing up paired with actionable insights. When products show up in AI conversations but buyers aren't converting, Shopify Sidekick tells merchants exactly what to fix, like adding model numbers and specs to product titles to rank higher Knowledge Base shows merchants which questions AI agents are asking about their brand that haven't been answered yet (like retail locations, bulk orders, and customer service) and lets them fill those answers in directly from the Admin. Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts allows merchants to manage and sell products across AI platforms including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Gemini as well as the Shop app. Extending Sidekick Sidekick is the AI built for commerce. Now it’s being embedded within the Shopify Admin to deliver greater personalisation and faster activation for merchants: Merchant Admin: Within the Shopify Admin Home, Sidekick Pulse powers personalised recommendation cards, and analyses store and user data via an offline pipeline to help identify each merchant’s next best actions. Sidekick App Extensions: Merchants and Shopify partners can now connect their third-party apps to Sidekick, creating the ability to pull data and route to the correct place in the app to take action. At launch Sidekick App Extensions will work with over 15 partner apps including Loop, Klaviyo, Judge.me, Matrixify, Avia, and Seguno. Going forward, any app developer can build an app extension integration. Campaign Autopilot Campaign Autopilot levels the playing field for small merchants by building the capabilities of a digital marketing agency into the Shopify Admin. Merchants can run paid and organic campaigns within the budgets and guardrails they set, creating a built-in growth partner, with no expertise required. Multi-channel from day one, Campaign Autopilot has the capability to sell via campaigns on Meta, on the Shop app and via email marketing automations. It also runs always-on in the background, testing and tuning campaigns to optimise results. More channels coming soon include Microsoft Advertising, ChatGPT Ads, and Snapchat. Storefront Agent Finding answers on products, orders, and personalised recommendations can be challenging for shoppers but now, Storefront Agent can optimise the shopping experience. As an AI-powered storefront shopping assistant, it can give buyers the answers they’re looking for when signed in. The agent knows each store’s full catalog, policies, and brand voice, helping shoppers find the right products and complete purchases with confidence. Merchants just need to turn it on from the Admin, no app install required. Analytics To help merchants turn insights in action, a series of updates have been made to Shopify Analytics, including: Merchants can use custom data (metafields) as dimensions in Shopify Analytics (and in ShopifyQL queries) to filter and break down reports by attributes they already store on products, orders, and customers. Shopify Flow can query sales, traffic, and inventory with ShopifyQL to power follow-up actions, with expanded Shopify Admin data access for targeted changes across Shopify. Shopify Collective in Australia Shopify Collective is now available to merchants in Australia. With this update, Australian retailers can partner with Australian suppliers to sell their products directly through their storefronts. This benefits both retailers and suppliers, as retailers can expand their catalog without holding inventory or upfront cost, and suppliers can reach new customers by selling through retailers that match their brand. Rebuilt POS core selling flow Brands seeing the biggest gains do not run single item transactions, they’re adding customers to carts, stacking discounts, and managing multiple line items. That’s what the updated POS core selling flow was built for. The more complex the workflow, the more time saved, with transactions for complex carts up to 73 seconds faster than before. The cart stays on the screen throughout the entire transaction, simplifying checkout for staff. Multi-select line items, faster customer search, and quick access to recently used discount codes cut the backtracking that compounds over a full day on the sales floor. The updated flow features an improved inline number pad, which means fewer taps to total, and the customer-facing receipt screen is clear enough that customers can make their selection without staff intervention. Multi-entity selling from the same country The launch of multi-entity selling allows merchants who have multiple legal entities within the same country (e.g. multiple retail locations or a retail store and an online store managed under different legal entities) to umbrella both under a single Shopify store using different Shopify Payment accounts. This removes the need to run separate expansion stores to manage each legal entity. Quick sale in more markets To help merchants start selling quickly, Shopify has made Quick Sale available in all countries where Shopify is available. A mobile-only feature in the Shopify app, Quick Sale gives merchants a simple cart builder to make sales early, especially for in-person and social selling scenarios, enabling them to make their first sale from their phone quickly. Enhancing cross-border commerce Duty calculation breakdown: Merchants can now see a detailed breakdown of duties on every order, making it easier to verify calculations and provide transparency to customers. Local currency gift cards: Consumers who shop internationally want to be able to buy gift cards for their favourite stores, no matter where they are. Shopify is expanding gift cards globally, allowing merchants to sell them in local currencies across multiple markets from a single store and redeem them in any supported currency. Local currency billing on shipping labels: Merchants can face unnecessary costs from double currency conversions on shipping label purchase. In response, label charges will now be submitted directly to Shopify Billing in the original currency. About Shopify Shopify provides essential internet infrastructure for commerce. Shopify’s all-in-one platform makes it easier to start, run, and grow a business, powering sales online, in store, and everywhere in between. Millions of businesses in 175+ countries use Shopify—from entrepreneurs to brands like JB HiFi, July, Culture Kings, Meta, On Running, SKIMS, HiSmile, and Supreme. Stay ahead with actionable MarTech intelligence for modern marketing leaders.
business 18 Jun 2026
Databricks Enters the Marketing Industry with CustomerLake: Agentic Customer Data Platform (CDP)
Sydney, Australia – June 17, 2026 – Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced CustomerLake, a new agentic Customer Data Platform (CDP). CustomerLake equips marketers and data teams with a workforce of agents that continuously analyse behaviour, decide, and act, delivering always-on personalised customer experiences a billion times a day. CustomerLake brings the CDP natively into Databricks, where customer data, AI models, and agents already reside. Built on the lakehouse and governed by Unity Catalog, this new offering consolidates customer data, identity resolution, audience building, campaign automation, and activation into a single AI-native foundation. This launch marks Databricks’ continued expansion into major enterprise software categories, following Lakewatch, a security lakehouse. CustomerLake is now available in Private Preview, with current customers including HP, Circle K, AB InBev, and Getnet by Santander. Rebuilding Marketing for Agents Marketing teams are facing two simultaneous shifts. They are now marketing to agents that consumers deploy on their behalf to research, evaluate, and transact, and they are rebuilding their own marketing stack to be run by agents. Traditional martech wasn't built for either. Legacy CDPs follow a waterfall model: campaigns are planned and executed across dozens of disconnected systems, take weeks to ship, and leave customer data siloed outside the company's core AI platform. That fractures identity and makes true personalisation impossible at scale. Agents need something different: real-time access to context, data, and execution in one place. CustomerLake delivers this by bringing the CDP natively into the Databricks platform, so the same models that generate insight can drive activation directly. “Marketers need to reimagine their entire foundation — not just the campaigns they run, but the customers they run them for, which now include agents,” said Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO of Databricks. “With CustomerLake, customer data, AI models, and agents live in one governed platform. Marketing stops being a series of campaigns and becomes a continuous loop — agents that constantly analyse, decide, and act on every customer in real time. For the first time, enterprises can deliver infinity campaigns and 1:1 personalisation at scale.” Defining the Agentic CDP The agentic CDP is a new category of marketing infrastructure built for a world where buyer behaviour is dramatically changing. Humans are deploying AI agents to compare and buy on their behalf, and marketers are deploying agents to engage with them. Unlike legacy CDPs, an agentic CDP puts governed customer context, AI models, and execution capability in a single environment. The result is a system that doesn't wait for a marketer to trigger a campaign. It continuously analyses, decides, and acts. With CustomerLake, the models that generate customer insights are the same models that drive activation, with no data copies, no pipeline lag, and no governance tradeoffs. Marketing at Enterprise Scale with CustomerLake · Always-on “infinity campaigns”: Replace one-off campaigns with continuous, agent-driven engagement so every customer can receive a truly 1:1 experience. · Campaign agents: Enable marketers to build audiences, automate campaigns, and personalise experiences directly from your data foundation – regardless of where it’s stored. · Profile agents: Turn raw customer data into business-ready records for marketing and customer teams through an end-to-end agentic loop. · Open partner ecosystem: Ingest and activate data across leading platforms and partners, including Adobe, Meta (audience and Conversions API), Acxiom, Epsilon, LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, Braze, Bloomreach, Iterable, Snapchat, Magnite, TransUnion, Adstra, Twilio, Integral Ad Science (IAS), and Unity. · Native integrations and reverse ETL: Connect Databricks with bi-directional pipelines to the entire marketing and advertising technology stack. · Agentic identity resolution: Combine rules and agents to unify disconnected records into richer, more accurate customer profiles. · Built-in identity marketplace: Enrich profiles with third-party identity graphs and partner data from providers such as Acxiom, Epsilon, LiveRamp, TransUnion and Adstra. CustomerLake Momentum “At HP, we believe the future of AI-driven customer engagement depends on moving beyond fragmented customer data toward governed customer context. Databricks CustomerLake brings that vision to life, enabling HP to build customer intelligence, personalisation, and activation on the data foundation we already trust, rather than creating another place where data must be copied, reconciled, and secured. With CustomerLake, marketing can move faster, operate smarter, and transform with AI using the same trusted customer context as finance, product, sales, and operations.” — Kumar Ram, Global Head of Marketing Technology and AI Enablement, HP “At Circle K, our loyalty and marketing teams rely extensively on Databricks to drive customer engagement. CustomerLake is proving to be a major unlock for our architecture because it allows us to build targeted audiences natively in Databricks, activate them seamlessly in Adobe and measure downstream campaign impact without moving our entire data lake into another platform. This gives our teams a faster, more governed path from customer data to campaign execution and fundamentally changes our speed to market.” — Jay Malepati, Global Director, Customer & Marketing Data Science, Circle K "At Getnet by Santander, strong merchant relationships are at the core of how we grow. As a global payments business operating across multiple markets, channels, and customer needs, CRM is a strategic growth engine: helping us understand our clients better, engage them more meaningfully, and create more consistent experiences at scale. Databricks CustomerLake will help us advance this ambition by enabling a trusted, actionable Customer 360, bringing together customer intelligence, data, and AI in a governed and interoperable way with our CRM and activation ecosystem. This will empower our business and marketing teams to move faster from insight to action, strengthen customer and merchant relationships, personalise at scale, and build a more connected, data-driven CRM model for the future of Getnet." – Ainhoa Alonso, Chief Data and AI Officer, Getnet By Santander “As a launch partner for Databricks CustomerLake, The Trade Desk is helping marketers make their data more actionable across the open internet. Together, we’re enabling marketers to connect trusted, deterministic data and agentic AI with media execution, giving brands a faster path from customer insights to action so they can reach the right audiences, improve relevance, and drive measurable outcomes with greater control over their data.”— Jay Goebel, VP of Data Partnerships, The Trade Desk "Unity's mobile ecosystem includes 256M monthly active users in the US and 2.85B globally, offering one of the most unique first-party engagement signals for brands to reach consumers in the state of play. By integrating with Databricks CustomerLake, brand marketers can activate their trusted customer intelligence directly within Unity's high-attention, brand-safe mobile video inventory. This connection makes Unity inventory addressable from the data foundation brands already manage in Databricks, with performance measurement flowing back to the same place." — Chris Feo, SVP Sales and Partnerships, Unity Availability CustomerLake is now available in Private Preview. CustomerLake pricing will be designed around a specialised, value-aligned consumption model rather than a traditional software license, providing a highly cost effective alternative for enterprise brands looking to consolidate the martech stack and reduce technology spend. About Databricks Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organisations worldwide — including adidas, AT&T, Bayer, Block, Mastercard, Rivian, Unilever, and 70% of the Fortune 500 — rely on Databricks to build and scale data and AI apps, analytics and agents. Headquartered in San Francisco with 30+ offices around the globe, Databricks offers a unified platform that includes Lakebase, Genie, Agent Bricks, Lakeflow, Lakehouse, and Unity Catalog. Explore emerging technologies transforming customer experiences and marketing operations.
business 17 Jun 2026
Cannes Lions announces Jim Stengel as the inaugural Lions Laureate for Marketing
16 June 2026 - Cannes Lions has named Jim Stengel as the inaugural Lions Laureate for Marketing; a new honour recognising individuals whose vision, influence, and contribution have left an enduring mark on the marketing profession and advanced the role of creative marketing as a driver of business growth.Throughout a distinguished career spanning more than three decades, including seven years as Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble, Stengel has helped shape modern marketing leadership.In 2003, Stengel brought the first major client-side marketing delegation to Cannes Lions, helping accelerate the Festival's evolution into a global meeting place for marketers, brand builders and business leaders.Beyond his corporate achievements, Stengel has dedicated much of the last two decades to developing the next generation of marketers through teaching, writing, and mentorship. In 2011, Stengel served as the Dean for the inaugural Cannes Lions Creative Academy for Marketers before establishing and pioneering the CMO Accelerator Programme in 2013, which continues to develop senior marketing leaders to this day.Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS, said: "Jim's influence extends far beyond the marketing functions and organisations he has led. Through his leadership, mentorship, and unwavering belief in the power of creative marketing, he has shaped the thinking and careers of marketers across generations. His impact on our industry is both profound and enduring, not only through the brands and businesses he has helped build, but through the leaders he has inspired and developed along the way. We are delighted to recognise Jim as the inaugural Lions Laureate - for Marketing. I can think of no one more deserving of this honour, nor anyone who better embodies what it stands for."On being made aware of this honour, Jim Stengel said: "I am deeply honoured. Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to learn from extraordinary colleagues, partners, and friends, and this recognition is really a reflection of those relationships. I have always believed that creativity is one of the most powerful forces for growth in business and positive impact in the world. If I have contributed anything along the way, I hope it has been encouraging marketers to think a little bigger about the role they can play, the value they can create, and the difference they can make. For that, and for the many people who have shaped my journey, I am profoundly grateful.”Jim Stengel will deliver the inaugural Lions Laureate Seminar in the Debussy Theatre on Thursday 25 June, ahead of receiving the award at the Cannes Lions Awards Show that evening. Learn how AI-powered marketing solutions improve campaign performance and ROI.
marketing 16 Jun 2026
DeepIntent Launches Helix AI, Bringing Agentic AI and Cross-Platform Activation to Healthcare Marketers
NEW YORK — June 15, 2026 — DeepIntent, the leading healthcare demand-side platform (DSP), today launched Helix AI, the first agentic AI platform purpose-built for healthcare marketers. Helix AI unlocks market insights buried within the industry’s most trusted and comprehensive health datasets, enabling marketers to strategize and engage key audiences with unprecedented precision across DeepIntent’s DSP as well as other channels, such as social platforms. These tasks, which previously took days or weeks and often required complex workflows, can now be completed in minutes or less using natural language. With life sciences companies under more pressure than ever to drive commercial success as rapidly and efficiently as possible, marketers need new tools that accelerate their ability to understand and reach key audiences with more confidence and speed. This insight and velocity become pivotal in determining the success of new product launches or accelerating growth for existing treatments. Helix AI transforms this process, giving marketers an agentic interface to explore advertising and healthcare data together in one platform, generating market and audience insights on demand and pushing audience activation faster and more successfully than ever before. Within Helix AI, marketers can analyze both patient and healthcare provider audiences simultaneously, providing an integrated and unified view of patient and provider journeys, as well as the market dynamics shaping treatment adoption. Additionally, they can use agentic tools and conversational language to build highly relevant audiences and activate those audiences across both DeepIntent’s DSP and non-programmatic channels, such as social media platforms. Helix AI also enables marketers to evaluate campaign performance through natural-language querying and optimize those campaigns in real-time. “From my own experience working in healthcare, the speed at which information reaches patients and providers has a significant impact on improving patient outcomes and quality of life. Agentic AI presents us with the technology to finally democratize access to critical insights buried deep within varying types of health and media data,” said Chris Paquette, Founder and CEO of DeepIntent. “Helix AI shrinks both the time-to-insight and time-to-action from weeks to minutes, representing a major advance in how healthcare marketers can use AI and data to optimize the commercial success of their therapeutic products.” With Helix AI, healthcare marketers can use natural language to: Explore HCP & DTC Audience Intelligence: Query the full prescriber universe and consumer populations using natural language to uncover audience size, geographic opportunities, specialty composition, and prescribing behavior. Analyze Market & Competitive Trends: Analyze prescriber overlap, competitive market dynamics, and longitudinal prescribing trends to identify growth opportunities and support launch planning. Integrate HCP & DTC Insights: Explore HCP and consumer populations together in a single conversation, connecting insights across the healthcare ecosystem. Build & Activate Audiences: Create HealthFirst™ HCP and DTC audiences using natural language and activate them across DeepIntent’s DSP and social platforms. Optimize Media Performance: Access cross-channel forecasts, reach estimates, and AI-powered recommendations to inform campaign strategy and optimize performance. Evaluate Campaign Outcomes: Query campaign performance in-flight using natural language and surface media and healthcare-specific KPIs, including Audience Quality (AQ), verified HCP reach, doctor visitation, and new patient starts. DeepIntent clients will have full access to Helix AI starting today. Agencies will be able to customize Helix AI with their own proprietary solutions and assets such as first-party analytics, data and media. In beta testing, agencies have been at the forefront of Helix AI adoption, using it as a game-changing resource for planning, with a 50% improvement in planning cycle time. "DeepIntent has long been a trusted partner in helping us unlock the full potential of health data,” said Sharona Sankar-King, Chief Data and Product Officer of Havas Media Network North America. “Helix AI represents a meaningful leap forward in how quickly we can understand market dynamics, identify opportunities, and bring stronger recommendations to clients. The speed at which we can now surface actionable insights has fundamentally changed how we approach strategy and new business.” "Helix AI provides a strategic edge by putting advanced, purpose-built data capabilities directly into the hands of our strategists,” said Liz Mansell SVP, Media Strategy, Fingerpaint Marketing. “Analysis that once took days, and often wasn't feasible at this depth, now takes minutes. We're operating at a level of intelligence that sets a new standard for what nimble agencies committed to pioneering AI innovation can deliver." Built on the Foundation of DeepIntent Helix™ Helix AI follows the launch of DeepIntent Helix™, the purpose-built healthcare marketing cloud announced in March 2026. Built on DeepIntent's decade-long investment in healthcare data infrastructure, Helix provides marketers and their partners with access to granular insights across nearly 4 million healthcare providers and 250+ million patient lives. Designed for the realities of regulated health data, DeepIntent Helix™ delivers seamless, HIPAA-compliant access to the tools, technology, and AI-ready data needed to build and activate differentiated healthcare marketing solutions. That foundation is what makes Helix AI possible. While AI tools are becoming increasingly accessible, their value depends on the quality, organization, and accessibility of the data behind them. Helix AI brings a conversational intelligence layer to DeepIntent's healthcare marketing cloud, making it easier for marketers to explore, analyze, and act on trusted health and media data through the AI tools and workflows they already use. Together, Helix and Helix AI help healthcare marketers move from data to intelligence to activation, all within an infrastructure purpose-built for the complexity, compliance, and precision healthcare marketing demands. Explore emerging technologies transforming customer experiences and marketing operations.
artificial intelligence 15 Jun 2026
Azerion Achieves PRIVO COPPA Certification for its Kids Marketplace
Amsterdam, 10 June 2026: Azerion, one of Europe's leading digital advertising and entertainment media platforms, today announced that its Kids Marketplace has achieved COPPA certification through PRIVO a globally recognized FTC approved COPPA Safe Harbor certification authority, providing independent third-party validation that the platform operates according to globally recognized standards for child-directed advertising and privacy protection. The certification represents an important milestone for Azerion's Kids Marketplace, independently confirming the robust privacy, safety and compliance standards that have been embedded within the platform since its inception. Rather than introducing a new compliance framework, the certification serves as external validation of the privacy-first architecture that has long underpinned Azerion's approach to children's digital media and advertising. A Timely Validation in a Rapidly Evolving Regulatory Landscape The announcement comes at a pivotal moment for the industry. As regulators around the world continue to strengthen children's privacy protections and increase enforcement of standards governing data collection from minors, advertisers face growing pressure to ensure their media investments align with evolving regulatory requirements. At the same time, children's digital media consumption has fundamentally shifted toward highly immersive and interactive environments, with gaming emerging as the dominant form of entertainment for younger audiences. These developments have heightened the responsibility of media owners and advertising platforms to provide safe, transparent and compliant environments where brands can engage young audiences without compromising privacy. A Premium, Secure Destination for Brands Engaging the Family Unit Azerion's certified Kids Marketplace enables advertisers to reach children and families within highly engaging, contextually relevant environments while operating in a privacy-first framework that minimizes data-related risks. The certification provides brands, agencies and media buyers with independent assurance that compliance, child safety and brand protection are built directly into the platform's technology and operations. Kim vanTeunenbroek, Global Commercial Director Kids & Gaming at Azerion, commented: "The future of Kids & Family advertising is built on trust, transparency and a privacy first environment. We see this as more than just a compliance milestone; this independently validates the strict safety and privacy standards we have built into our Kids Marketplace from day one. Compliance is not new to Azerion, this certification simply gives advertisers external validation and total confidence that they are entering an ecosystem designed with privacy and kids safety at its core. As regulations and expectations continue to evolve, we believe trusted, child-appropriate media environments will become increasingly important for brands looking to engage kids and families responsibly. Keeping young audiences safe is a non-negotiable priority and this validation ensures brands can continue to engage kids and families responsibly within trusted, future-proof media environments." “We applaud Azerion for taking the steps to build a privacy safe ad solution for child directed and family services. It’s important for online services to be able to monetize as without revenue generation many children’s experiences would not survive. It is even more important to engage children without exploiting their data and this Kid safe marketplace does just that,” said Claire Quinn, Chief Privacy Office, PRIVO. By achieving PRIVO COPPA Safe Harbor certification, Azerion further strengthens its position as a premium destination for brands seeking responsible, privacy-conscious engagement with kids and family audiences. The certification reinforces the company's commitment to delivering trusted advertising solutions that balance effective audience engagement with the highest standards of child safety, privacy and regulatory compliance. About Azerion Founded in 2014, Azerion (EURONEXT: AZRN) is one of Europe’s largest digital advertising and entertainment media platforms. Azerion brings global scaled audiences to advertisers in an easy and cost-effective way, delivered through their proprietary technology, in a safe, engaging, and high-quality environment, utilizing our strategic portfolio of owned and operated content with entertainment and other digital publishing partners. Having its roots in Europe with its headquarters in Amsterdam, Azerion has commercial teams based in over 26 cities around the world to closely support our clients and partners to find and execute creative ways to really make an impact through advertising. For more information visit: www.azerion.com Explore expert insights on marketing automation, personalization, and digital growth.
business 11 Jun 2026
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