Barry Levine says, “There is no doubt the search industry has evolved. Just one look at how search engine results pages are currently laid out shows how things have changed. We have come a long way from 10 blue links. But have we gone far enough? At SXSW earlier this month, information access was a hot topic. People no longer head to Google’s search bar as their only way of accessing content. How we access information is changing Search engines used to be the primary (or sole) place a consumer would turn to when they needed an immediate answer. You entered in a phrase, clicked a link... [...]

Barry Levine says, “A rebranded startup is today launching an AI-powered social marketing tool that it says can boost engagement, and even write the post. Post Intelligence, based in San Francisco, was founded in 2015 as MyLikes by ex-Google execs Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan. The company is launching today under the new name, as it unveils a beta of its new intelligent social marketing app for Web and Android, called Pi. Pi tracks social trends and a user’s history of social posts to predict engagement (e.g., likes and shares), recommend content, learn what works, and even generate... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Artificial intelligence has been making headlines over the last 12 months in domains like health care, finance, face recognition and more. Marketing, however, doesn’t seem to be getting the same kind of coverage, despite major developments in the application of AI to marketing analytics and business intelligence. Five or 10 years ago, only the world’s savviest, most heavily funded companies had a serious foothold in artificial intelligence marketing tech. As we enter 2017, there are hundreds of AI marketing companies all over the world (including some that have gone... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is out today with its second major update to its Sales Navigator tool, which helps salespeople mine the data-rich professional social network. There’s now a new Enterprise Edition, complementing the existing Professional Edition for individuals and Team Edition for groups of salespeople. Enterprise increases InMails and introduces Single Sign-On. InMails are in-network messages, which are unlimited as long as the recipients respond. The Enterprise version increases the monthly allotment of InMails that do not get responses from 30 to 50. A new... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Adobe is gathering its clouds and making more. Today, the company unpacked a truckload of announcements at the Adobe Summit digital marketing conference, currently taking place in Las Vegas. In light of these announcements, it looks as if Adobe has decided that the real game is not just marketing or sales but customer experience, something that also extends across product development, customer service and other departments. At the top, it’s announcing a new Experience Cloud. It’s actually what you might call an uber-cloud, since it is comprised of the existing Marketing... [...]

Daniel Faggella says, “Artificial intelligence has been making headlines over the last 12 months in domains like health care, finance, face recognition and more. Marketing, however, doesn’t seem to be getting the same kind of coverage, despite major developments in the application of AI to marketing analytics and business intelligence. Five or 10 years ago, only the world’s savviest, most heavily funded companies had a serious foothold in artificial intelligence marketing tech. As we enter 2017, there are hundreds of AI marketing companies all over the world (including some that have... [...]

Len Shneyder says, “Email has proven to be a solid investment; over the past few years, it’s seen over $365 million in investment across a broad range of email-centric companies. In 2016, we saw a flurry of funding events, exits, consolidation and divestments. This series of events begs the question: Which way are the winds blowing for companies in the digital communications space? The “marketing clouds” appear to be getting bigger, but that hasn’t stopped the industry from growing new, highly specialized point solutions that address new channels, consumer behaviors and the swelling... [...]

Barry Levine says, “You know that any report on bad bots is not going to be optimistic when it starts with a comparison to Pearl Harbor. In fact, the fourth annual “Bad Bot Report” from anti-bot service Distil Networks is downright depressing. It continues to document the onslaught of hostile bots that are swarming over websites, login pages and anything else that pokes up its head online. Pearl Harbor is mentioned because, early on the morning of December 7, 1941, a young radar operator saw a huge blip coming toward the naval base. But, because the tech was new and it was difficult to... [...]

Len Shneyder says, “Email has proven to be a solid investment; over the past few years, it’s seen over $365 million in investment across a broad range of email-centric companies. In 2016, we saw a flurry of funding events, exits, consolidation and divestments. This series of events begs the question: Which way are the winds blowing for companies in the digital communications space? The “marketing clouds” appear to be getting bigger, but that hasn’t stopped the industry from growing new, highly specialized point solutions that address new channels, consumer behaviors and the swelling... [...]

Barry Levine says, “In the world of digital advertising, header bidding has hit superstar status in the last year or so. But a new report from New York City-based ad tech firm GetIntent — out today — indicates that header bidding is not as popular among one group of leading publishers as you might think. And it shows that the open source Prebid.js is not the leading solution among those sites. Header bidding places some code in a website’s page header to offer site inventory to advertising bidders at the same time. The winning bid then competes with the site’s own direct-sold ads,... [...]