About three years ago, the paid TV channel AMC, known for shows like “The Walking Dead,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” realized it needed a B2C strategy. President Charlie Collier hired a business intelligence guru from Disney ABC named Vitaly Tsivin to head up a similar organization. As AMC’s SVP of business intelligence, Tsivin built a data […]
This is the second of three stories in a mini-series on how artificial intelligence is affecting the work that agencies do. The next installment will publish on Friday. Read the first story about Xaxis. As marketer interest in artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, Publicis.Sapient sees opportunity to provide guidance. It has a dedicated unit that provides AI-related advice […]
Think of IBM and you’re likely imagining heavy technologies managed by an expensive services division. But IBM Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord emphasizes that’s the old company. He’s here to help IBM reinvent itself and, most importantly, its way of doing business. “What I’ve loved doing throughout my career is helping a company pivot,” Lord […]
For the first time since 2009, H&R Block has bought a 60-second Super Bowl spot – just in time for tax prep. The big buy follows a soft 2016 tax season when tax returns filed using H&R Block’s service declined 4.5% due to competitors like Intuit’s TurboTax, which “took share from all major branded competitors,” […]
Data management is like dental hygiene: No one enjoys doing it or even thinking about it, but you’ve got to stay on top of it or else the situation will get really messy really quickly. Joanna O’Connell, CMO of MediaMath, on Thursday moderated a panel about data management that felt like a good cleanse. […]
Like its competitors, IBM is acquiring and building a video stack. Instead of focusing on media execution, however, IBM is using Watson and data analytics to improve the relevancy of video content, ads and delivery models. “In ad-supported video, how do you make ultra-targeted ads tailored down to the individual for customer acquisition?” said David Mowrey, […]
Video ad platform Innovid will integrate with marketing clouds from IBM, Adobe and Oracle, the companies said Tuesday, allowing video and TV planners to use CRM data to inform video ads served by Innovid. Conversely, those marketing cloud customers can apply intent data from their mobile, desktop and OTT video campaigns to their broader marketing […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is surging in ad/mar tech land. Or resurging, depending on how good your memory is. IBM continues to push Watson, and, in the run-up to their respective conferences, Salesforce and Oracle talked up their own AI initiatives. Also, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon banded together to create best practices around […]
The Weather Co. is no novice at linking weather patterns to consumer actions like in-store purchases, but IBM is giving it some more juice. The Weather Co. rolled out a tool called Journey FX on Thursday. The platform aims to help marketers move beyond one-off media buys to target more predictively against weather attributes and […]
After many years in leadership roles at media agencies, Jordan Bitterman will move to the brand and media side as chief marketing officer of The Weather Co., the IBM-owned company said Wednesday. Bitterman brings extensive knowledge of how media companies can drive efficiencies in the data-driven milieu. He said The Weather Co. is in a […]
By Kelly Liyakasa and Alison Weissbrot Agencies are becoming more consultative. Consultants are buying creative agencies. And systems integrators are dabbling in client strategy. “Everyone talks about online vs. offline media or creative vs. media, but when a marketer wants to change the consumer journey, we’re talking new operating models and governance,” said Glen Hartman, […]
Despite its tax and auditing acumen, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has 3,000 creatives, engineers, strategists and technologists dedicated to experience design and digital services that span ecom to cybersecurity. Like competing consultancies Deloitte Digital and Accenture Interactive, PwC Digital has grown both organically and through acquisition via its 2013 purchase of digital and creative consultancy, BGT, and […]
After decades of specializing in hardware and on-premise servers, IBM is emphasizing its new-wave agency IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX), a mashup of design, systems integration, analytics and the Internet of Things, with billings in the billions. IBM iX made three digital, design and brand agency acquisitions in a single week this winter when it snapped […]
As some industry insiders speculated, IBM is starting to merge its Weather Co. asset with its cognitive supercomputer Watson, a move that will benefit its marketing cloud and commerce businesses. “Everyone wondered why an IT company like IBM would make such an acquisition, a company that produces forecasts for 2.2 billion locations every 15 minutes,” […]
Randy Wootton will speak about advertiser perceptions on April 14 at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC.IO conference in San Francisco. The past couple of years have been a tumultuous adolescence for ad tech, and perhaps no single company embodies the growing pains as neatly as Rocket Fuel, with its near-solo public spotlight, its dispute over margin transparency and the rough […]
1-800-Flowers.com announced on Friday that it will deploy IBM Commerce on Cloud to begin integrating its supply chain from inventory to fulfillment and delivery. “The IBM Cloud will reduce complexity, provide the proper focus and enhance the ability to provide wonderful services to the customer,” said the CIO of 1-800-Flowers, Arnie Leap. The tech-savvy retailer […]
IBM’s hire of AOL’s former president Bob Lord as its chief digital officer naturally begs the question: What will it mean for IBM’s collection of marketing applications? After all, Lord helped architect AOL’s transition into an ad tech platform – which eventually led to its acquisition by Verizon. But while Lord’s duties at IBM will […]
IBM has nabbed Bob Lord, who formerly served as president of AOL and global CEO at Publicis-owned Razorfish, as its chief digital officer. Lord is one of the few executives with experience running companies in both marketing services and advertising technology, a nexus where IBM has been making large bets lately. An IBM spokesperson said […]
IBM’s purchase of three agencies in six days on behalf of its in-house agency Interactive Experience (iX) is uncharacteristic since iX hasn’t been acquisitive in its almost two-decade history. The first purchase, last Thursday, was Resource/Ammirati, known for brand building. IBM then acquired digital agency Aperto on Tuesday and design agency Ecx.io on Wednesday; both […]
When IBM revealed Friday it had closed its deal (financial terms weren’t disclosed) for The Weather Co.’s product and tech business, it began setting expectations on how those assets will be used. There are two things to consider. First, The Weather Co. has digital publications that sell advertising. Second, it sits on a massive front […]
To date, IBM’s internal digital agency Interactive Experience (iX) has flown under the radar, through quiet, organic growth – reaching a global headcount of 10,000 employees. That changed Thursday when IBM iX – not to be confused with IBM’s consulting unit Global Services – revealed its first-ever acquisition: the digital/creative agency Resource/Ammirati, which has 300 […]
Christopher Wong is VP of strategy and product management for IBM Commerce Marketing Solutions. He will discuss IBM’s digital marketing strategy at the upcoming Industry Preview 2016 conference in January. The old adage of “If you build it, they will come” has been replaced with newer notions around “empathy mapping” and anticipating customer needs prior […]
IBM’s agreement to acquire The Weather Company’s B2B, mobile and cloud-based web properties – including WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand, but not The Weather Channel – is likely more about data assets and less about a grand entrance into the media world. Read the release. IBM was mum on its long-term strategy, saying through a spokesperson that […]
IBM is pushing deeper into the cloud and paid media. Big Blue on Thursday launched the IBM Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX), a platform that unifies marketing tech acquisitions including Unica campaign management, Silverpop marketing automation, Coremetrics analytics and Xtify mobile personalization. It also named 25 UBX partners, including a handful of ad tech players like […]
IBM has big digital marketing dreams. Last spring, those dreams warranted a $100 million commitment to future marketing investments. Wednesday saw the latest development, when IBM hooked its own marketing solutions into various Facebook ad products including the CRM matching program Custom Audiences to enable things like lookalike modeling. IBM also is expanding its Digital […]
Forrester Research crowned Adobe Marketing Cloud in its first-ever ranking of enterprise marketing software suites – informally called “marketing clouds.” The report, compiled by analysts Cory Munchbach and Rusty Warner and released Tuesday, encompassed eight vendors (Adobe, Salesforce.com, SAS, Teradata, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Marketo). Munchbach and Warner interviewed three clients from each vendor and tallied […]
A recent article by New York Times media columnist David Carr revealed a radical publishing technology catching on in news media companies everywhere: email newsletters. Carr wrote that email is a marketing tool many people tend to forget about. But, he argued, email is the most consistent and useful medium for advertising. Email and search drive […]
Just a few years ago, brands needed to be educated around the messaging and measurement technologies available in the digital age. That imperative has since shifted as marketing departments try to figure out how they take that technology and maximize results. As a side effect, the line between data and marketing services providers like Experian […]
The line between enterprise software and digital agencies is blurring. As the merger between Publicis and Omnicom came to a screeching halt last week, the growing demand for data and tech prowess within the agency environment was all too apparent. In the case of computing giant IBM, developing an in-house agency has been a (lesser-known) […]
When IBM acquired email and marketing automation platform Silverpop, industry watchers wondered if this meant IBM, too, was building its own marketing cloud. What integration plans did IBM have for Silverpop? What technological gap, specifically, did the acquired company fill? Bill Nussey, Silverpop’s president and CEO, who has since joined IBM, spoke with AdExchanger at the […]
