After years of suggesting and delaying end-dates of third-party cookies, Google has made a U-turn on the technology for its web browser Chrome.

Third-party cookies track users’ web browsing activity in order to collect data for advertising and analytics purposes.

This enables advertisers to personalise ads for targeted audiences. However, due to privacy concerns, users can now opt out of third-party cookies on sites.

While competing web browsers Safari and Firefox currently have third-party cookies turned off as a default, Google Chrome will now indefinitely offer it as a choice to users.

The search engine giant says that it is doing this as it acknowledges the marketing industry was not ready for the change, and it believes it can bring greater choice to users.

“Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time,” wrote Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, an initiative created by Google to focus on user privacy.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority had scrutinised Google over its plans to scrap third-party cookies, claiming it would impede competition in digital advertising.

Chavez added to the blog post that Google will “continue to consult with the CMA, Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and other regulators globally.”

The move has proved to be bittersweet to those in the industry, as many firms have been making adjustments to prepare for a cookie-less Google since it first announced plans in 2020.

“All that time and money and resource invested by many organisations will essentially be money down the drain,” said Matthew Holman, privacy lawyer at Cripps.

“Google has not endeared itself. However, the likely response from most organisations will be a sigh of relief because, despite all of the investment, most businesses were still not ready,” Holman added.

Communication API firm, Twilio, recently found that over half (53%) of brands said their marketing strategies still rely on third-party data, and only two in three brands claimed to be prepared for a cookie-less future.

He also suggested: “A cynical view would argue that Google didn’t want to upset its massive customer base for advertising, which makes up 80% of its revenue.”

For users, Tony Preedy, managing director at online marketplace Fruugo said: “Web users will still demand their privacy expectations are met.”

“Expressing consent through cookie settings will continue to be the primary mechanism for gathering consent and website owners need to ensure they are meeting the privacy expectations of users through elegant and granular capture of consent as to how their data will be used.”

Adding to this, Peter Bell, VP of marketing EMEA at Twilio, said there is still good reason to move to first-party data – data given directly to brands by customers.

“It’s worth remembering that Chrome represents only about half of the browser market. Other popular browsers such as Safari and Firefox have already eliminated third-party cookies, so building a business strategy centred around third-party cookies is challenging.”

“[Firsty-party data] provides the most valuable, relevant, and accurate insights when building engaging, personalised experiences,” said Bell. “Third-party cookies often suffer from low match rates (40% and 60%) and have a short shelf life.”

The post Google ditches plan to phase out third-party cookies appeared first on TechInformed.

“AI will not replace marketers but instead will amplify their abilities, enabling them to be more dynamic, targeted and expedient with their efforts to market in the digital era.

“Generative AI will enable a new era of dynamic digital ads that adjust each viewer’s copy, style, and content in real time. This hyper personalised approach will lead to higher engagement as the ad resonates better with the individual’s needs and interests. Companies that implement AI into their marketing strategy will drive a 30% increase in pipeline because of their ability to interact with customers with more personalised, targeted marketing materials.

“With AI becoming more accurate, digital marketers will also rely more on chatbots to drive consumers to their products, answer questions and guide consumers with information they need about particular products.”

Einat Weiss, CMO, NICE 

“Businesses must prioritise customer engagement through personalisation. Understanding an audience is the crucial first step to this, as businesses risk missing opportunities without a deep grasp of their customer base. The next step is to use AI-powered tools to scale up customer communications and establish themselves in a competitive marketplace. AI will massively augment the existing capabilities of businesses to communicate and engage at scale, thereby driving down the cost of marketing processes and improving ROI.

“From our recent Holiday Report, we know that 73% of customers feel more valued when they receive personalised emails, and 87% are more likely to engage with tailored content. But personalisation must be balanced with privacy, and trust and transparency will become even more important in 2024.

“The synergy of message timing, personalised communications, technology integration, and adaptive strategies will directly influence the success of businesses of all sizes.”

Jim Rudall, GM, EMEA, Intuit Mailchimp 

2: 2024 will be a make-or-break year for CMOs and their digital tools

“CMOs across the board are eager to find ways to add value and create loyalty with smaller teams and fewer resources. Vendors who can provide digital tools that help them achieve that, at the right price and with a proven rapid ROI, will win the day.

“One of the primary battlegrounds will be customer data and deciding who owns it. Some businesses will attempt to own the entirety of the customer journey and all their touchpoints. These companies will undoubtedly benefit from first-hand access to all their customer data and the ability to finely control the customer journey. However, they risk over-extending their internal resources, providing a sub-par experience, and alienating their customers.

“Other businesses will lean heavily on third-party platforms to interact with customers and facilitate purchases. These businesses will benefit from a wider reach across a variety of platforms and pre-built commerce tools to streamline the purchase process. On the flipside, they face a significant risk in removing themselves from the decision-making process and losing access to their customer data.”

3: The shift to video commerce is no longer if, but when 

“Video will continue to grow as the primary platform for engaging consumers, making up 65% of all consumer traffic last year. Brands that aren’t constantly focused on creating interactive, customer-centric content will undoubtedly fall behind.

“As consumers grow more digitally savvy, they’re becoming less patient, and have even higher expectations. When it comes to video, they no longer have patience for content that doesn’t suit their needs. In 2024, businesses will either succeed in creating content that meets their customers’ online and omnichannel experience standards, or lose market share to those that do.”

Sophie Abrahamsson, head of Americas, Bambuser

4: Big Tech splits from adtech

Big Tech’s relationship with adtech could see a real shake-up in 2024 following tectonic shifts in the regulatory landscape and other macroeconomic conditions.

“Amazon has already announced its decision to withdraw from the third-party ad serving market, and some level of ad tech divestment looks to be a likely outcome from Google’s anti-trust issues in the US. Meanwhile, Meta is adjusting EU services following a ruling over data collection policies, and the Digital Markets Act poses additional threats to the way Big Tech companies operate in the region.

“In the big picture, this is win for marketers who will be less reliant on walled gardens to perform the critical functions of ad serving and optimisation across channels. A rising tide of independent ad tech platforms that can offer a more comprehensive and transparent approach to advertising will lift all boats in 2024.”

Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer, Mediaocean

…but grapples with regulations will continue

“As we move into 2024, the ad industry will continue to grapple with regulations relating to personal data such as GDPR and PECR, while the UK is updating its privacy laws and the EU’s Digital Markets Act will place restrictions on the biggest online platforms. While the writing’s been on the wall for some time, the advertising industry needs to take action now to select identity solutions with reach and scale. But it’s a fragmented market with multiple identifier replacements, which means we can expect to see a battle for supremacy over the next 12 months.”

Daniel Landsman, global director of Ad Tech Solutions, Aerospike

5: Web3 loyalty systems will replace outdated points-based programs

“This could be a truly meaningful and exciting deployment of Web3. The technology can be used as the backbone for these new loyalty systems. Loyalty ‘points’ would be ditched in favour of loyalty tokens. Loyalty tokens are more versatile, they can offer users specific product discounts, ways to display their top shopper status online, or unlock early access to new products, just as easily as they can be a store of points to be exchanged for money off a purchase.

“But as well as improving the reward value, loyalty tokens can be exchanged between customers, incentivising referral, creating clear maps of how and where users interact, and providing real value for loyal customers that makes them more likely to return.

“Such a system will also help secure revenue for businesses by building a clearer image of who their customers are and where they interact with the brand. Potential sponsors can be reassured by the immutable, transparent nature of blockchain-backed loyalty programs that the audience size they intend to reach, and the level of engagement they wish to see, are real and not the result of double-counting across platforms.”

Lars Rensing, CEO, Protokol

6: Replacing cookies: identity resolution

“The challenge of replacing cookies with other behavioural targeting mechanisms has been growing for the past three years, and it will come to a head in 2024. We’ve seen heavy use of consent management platforms, but how can these help tie identity across all the channels? The only way through is by becoming identity agnostic, and that means using several identity providers. If advertising organisations are to be effective moving forward, they will need to make identity resolution part of their data strategy, and the first step is to build a first-party identity graph. Once the success parameters are in place, it can be expanded. This doesn’t remove the difficulties of identity resolution, but it will certainly make them less unwieldy to manage and help companies prepare for the future.”

Daniel Landsman, global director of Ad Tech Solutions, Aerospike

To read next year’s healthtech predictions click here

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In what was surely a highly considered decision, Tomlinson sent the letters ‘QWERTYUIOP’ across a network. In doing so, he would ignite the spark of a communication revolution called email.

As we fast forward to the present, emails have become the backbone of global communication. The exhibition ‘E-mail is Dead‘ at the Design Museum in London takes visitors on a nostalgic journey through the past 50 years of email.

The exhibition showcases a timeline of powerful stories, from the birth of email to its current widespread use, each one highlighting the enduring relevance of this form of communication.

Is email dead?

With 4.3 billion global users and over 347 billion emails sent and received every day, the notion that email might be dead is perhaps hyperbolic. But with the rise of instant messaging and more convenient forms of communication now available, is it fair to say email is dying?

Not according to Michelle Taite, CMO of Intuit Mailchimp, who collaborated with the Design Museum to deliver the exhibition. Taite says email usage has increased 4% year on year. She argues that, unlike the fleeting nature of texts, email allows for thoughtful communication that leads to personalised experiences.

“We often think about it as an either/or, versus an and,” says Taite. “People are using it in a more considered way. Email allows you to get a message, think about it, consider your response, or maybe keep it in your draft folder for a little bit. Really think about the message that you want to send.”

The exhibition is divided into three parts: the origins of email, its commercial impact, and a glimpse into its future.

The first part led us through a timeline of email, including notable events like Queen Elizabeth II’s first email, and when a schoolgirl was accidentally added to the Pentagon’s mailing list — for four years.

It continues to a section that highlights the impact of email on people’s lives. It showcases a moving collection of personal stories, including heart-warming reunions with birth parents and the strategic beginnings of well-known brands such as Air B’n’B.

We’re all familiar with the dread and disappointment that you feel when you get rejected for a job, or the excitement when you receive an offer letter. I remember the anxiety I had in college on results day, waiting for an email to see if I had been accepted into university or not.

There’s no denying that email has been there through our high and lows, like an old friend. But have we grown apart?

Generational divide

Whilst you’re considering that, the exhibition offers a fun distraction: a personality test to determine your email style.

The questions provoked reflection upon how email habits have changed over time. Does the prevalence of instant messaging affect the way we utilise email now? Has email adapted to cater to younger generations’ preference for faster communication?

I often find myself asking if it’s necessary to include formalities like ‘sincerely’ and ‘best regards’ in every email. A simple ‘Thanks’ should suffice in today’s digital age, surely.

The test even asked how I would express laughter in an email. I was torn between ‘haha’ and ‘lol’ — in the end, I opted for ‘haha’, which highlighted the subtler distinctions between the two platforms. But these nuances could be an indication of generational differences.

Taite says, “It’s hard to just broadly speak about a whole generation. But people use e-mails in a different way. The older generation took it as a literal letter. So, you see the politeness of it, the structure, but also the length. It also depends on personality; some people love writing.”

Taite insists that younger generations are not moving away from email altogether, but rather prefer brevity, directness, and personalisation in their emails.

“We’re seeing them use email just as frequently. Because it’s a more controlled vehicle of communication,” she said. “The more personalised it is with brands, the more usage we’re seeing. It’s about what their relationships with brands are, and how they want to be communicated with.”

She suggests that sending mail that corresponds with their buying patterns, hobbies, and online habits is the most effective way of reaching them.

“This meeting could have been an email”

In any case, young people still have jobs, and email remains the most prevalent form of communication in the workplace. It’s safe to say that email’s importance in today’s professional world can’t be overstated.

Email is an essential tool that provides a digital record of communications, ensuring transparency in business operations. Each exchange can serve as evidence in professional situations. We can all relate to being asked “Do you have email confirmation?” in some form.

In contrast, conversations on instant messaging platforms can be edited or deleted, leading to inconsistencies or misunderstandings. This supports Taite’s statement that email is a more deliberate form of communication. I remember a previous employer insisted that we didn’t communicate via WhatsApp groups as messages could be misinterpreted, and the business had no way to monitor them.

Furthermore, the rise of instant communication platforms has made us too accessible outside of office hours. This constant communication pressures employees to always be available and responsive, which can lead to burnout and encroach on personal time.

Whereas emails still maintain a respectful distance between professional and personal life — unless you’re checking them over dinner…

Where does it all go?

One aspect of digital communication that’s often overlooked is its environmental impact. My inbox has thousands of unread emails, including junk mail, ads, old subscriptions, and the odd phishing scam. But where is all this data stored, and what is the cost of preserving these digital records?

“What many don’t realize,” Taite explained, “is that even though email is more environmentally friendly than physical mail and requires less physical space, it does have a digital footprint.”

Though not massive, this footprint contributes to our individual carbon emissions. According to Taite, “The average consumer’s email usage equates roughly to driving a small petrol car for about 200km per year.”

This raises an important point about the unseen implications of our online habits. Even as we shift away from activities that we know cause environmental harm; we need to be aware of the less obvious impacts of the digital alternatives.

Taite claims that Intuit has been carbon neutral since 2015. “We take sustainability very seriously and have implemented various measures to minimize our environmental impact.”

There are steps we can take as consumers too. “Being thoughtful about how we use email can make a difference,” Taite suggests. “That means keeping our inboxes manageable — around 1000 emails maximum; avoiding unnecessary ‘reply-all’ emails; and being conscious about what we send and why”, says Taite.

AI for good?

Interestingly, Taite mentioned the role of technology in making email more sustainable. “Artificial Intelligence can be used to drive efficiency and personalisation, reducing the need for unnecessary emails,” she explained. “Therefore, it can play a key part in shrinking our digital footprint.”

“We’re working on a lot of AI and ML tools that will revolutionise email as we know it.” In the coming decade, we can expect much greater personalisation in our emails, thanks to advanced data processing.

“At Mailchimp, we’re using real-time behavioural data to trigger automated emails to customers based on their recent activities. This way, brands can provide value whenever it’s needed,” says Taite.

The integration of AI technology in email marketing doesn’t mean that the human will be replaced. Instead, it allows us to shift our focus towards the “why” and “what” of communication, while AI handles the “how”.

“We currently have 15-20 AI models in use and are launching an auto-content-generator in the UK very soon,” says Taite. These AI tools are designed to analyse data and create specific email segments. In turn, helping marketers make informed decisions in a timely and efficient manner.

This vision implies that email won’t become obsolete, but instead, will experience a transformation with the help of AI and machine learning. It will become a more personalised, responsive, and dynamic tool, bringing significant changes to the way businesses communicate with their customers.

This aligns with Mailchimp’s  announcement of a strategic alliance with web developer Wix, and the launch of enhanced generative AI features, which were announced this week.

Aimed at improving targeting, personalisation, and automation for UK marketers, it offers advanced segmentation, automations, and email build and text generation tools.

The future of email

The exhibition culminates in a soothing ‘cloud room’ — a serene space with mirrored ceilings and plush white sofas, designed for reflection. Here, surrounded by a portrayal of the digital cloud, you’re encouraged to consider: With what we know today, what does the future hold for email?

The answer, given through tongue-in-cheek concept art and mock-up prototypes of potential future inventions, challenges the notion that email is a waning platform. Instead, the exhibition presents the idea that email may yet again reinvent itself in our ever-evolving digital communication landscape.

Taite addressed the heart of this quandary, explaining, “We’re seeing so many forms of communication that it’s sometimes hard to keep up with, like what should I communicate where? And if I’m using text all the time, or WhatsApp, to communicate as frequently with friends, am I really using other forms as effectively?”

‘E-mail is Dead‘ leads its audience through the past, present, and future of email, proving its pervasive and enduring relevance despite the flood of contemporary communication platforms.

I kept my final question simple and concise, which Taite reciprocated: Is email dead?

“4 billion users, 300 billion emails a day, four out of five customers say they’d rather be communicated to via email. Not even close.”

The ‘Email is Dead’ exhibit is free to view at the London Design Museum until 22^nd October.

To read more articles like this, visit TechInformed’s MarTech page here.

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UK software company Brandwatch has released a consumer report offering insights into the industries, tech, and brands such as Tesla currently trending on social media. 

The company explored a comprehensive analysis of 347 global brands across eight industries from January to June this year.   

Some of the industries included were automotive, CPG, consumer tech, energy, entertainment, retail, food services, and finance. 

According to the study, The State of Social Report, electric vehicles (EVs) dominate the discourse in the automotive industry. Topics like charging infrastructure and the importance of standardisation made up the lion’s share of discussions.  

The top five automotive brands mentioned were Tesla, Ford, Toyota, BMW, and Porsche. 

In terms of hashtags, #Bitcoin and #crypto were amont the top five most popular. This is due to consumers discussing car brands that now (or used to) accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, such as Tesla and a Porsche and Maserati dealer in El Salvador. 

Exactly two years ago, Elon Musk @elonmusk and Tesla started accepting #Bitcoin as a form of payment

Join #Avive Now, And Start Your Referral To Earn #BTC

Install App: https://t.co/TjDKiGR5Nl pic.twitter.com/MJZSgwlMRF

— Avive APP (@AviveAPP) March 23, 2023

In the consumer tech cateogory Artificial Intelligence unsurprisingly garnered the most attention, with emphases on significant breakthroughs in the field. This included health-oriented technologies like Apple’s AI health coach and Google’s life coach as well as those targeting the creative domain. 

Nikon = Control = Art = Awesome Photography! https://t.co/0ScQKxKmKc

— Matthew Smart (@matthew_smart_) March 15, 2023

Meanwhile, in the energy sector, two main themes stood out: climate change and greenwashing. People also discussed emissions and brands that launched eco-friendly initiatives. These included Indian Oil’s indoor solar cooking stove and Petronas’ Race2Decarbonise, a crowdsourcing and open innovation for decarbonisation solutions. 

Some consumers pointed out instances of greenwashing and inconsistencies between energy brands’ climate goals and their actions. Brandwatch noted over 28k mentions of greenwashing in the first six months of 2023. 

The first half of 2023 saw finance brands mentioned 14% more than during the previous six-month period. Users discussed flexibility and requesting more payment options. Some were concerned about control and security with Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal. 

Broken trust was also a big topic. State Farm Insurance gathered 720.44k mentions in the first half of 2023 (a 60% increase compared to the previous six months.) But the sentiment in those conversations deteriorated due to the company’s decision to end offering home insurance in California due to wildfires. It was perceived as prioritising profits over customers. 

Consumers also voiced concerns about encountering technical issues when using debit and credit cards online. 

Sandra Busch, editorial and content director at Brandwatch, said the ‘State of Social 2024’ report “candidly” reveals a fundamental truth: consumers, not brands, are the architects of brand narratives in the digital space.  

“As such, it emphasises the need for brands to listen and learn from their consumers, and that by understanding when and how these conversations occur, as well as the emotions and sentiments they elicit, brands can tailor their strategies for maximum impact,” she explained.

To read more stories like this, check out TechInformed’s Martech reporting here.

The post What consumer tech conversations are trending on social? appeared first on TechInformed.

One of Smith’s career constants is as a European marketing hire for US head quartered tech companies, including MuleSoft, Tibco and Fujitsu.

What’s your zone of genius?

Knowing how to scale tech and enterprise companies. If you boil it down, that’s the ultimate purpose of marketing. It starts with a focus on the company’s leadership’s plans. As a marketer, you must know where your north star is. Mapping priorities is key to success, and understanding what people need to achieve in the business, where and when.

It helps if you are someone who really gets people. It’s easy when you’re in an enterprise company to over index the tech. Clearly that’s mission critical – but so are your people.

What are the biggest mistakes companies make with digital marketing?

An overreliance on digital marketing to nurture and expand business relationships. This was accelerated during the pandemic. But now that’s thankfully behind us, we need to reassess the role of digital in creating new business relationships.

People buy from people even when it’s technology they are buying. As a marketer who’s seen seismic changes in the way companies go-to-market and the pendulum swing this way and that way, I believe what’s needed now is reinvestment in the customer journey and customer relationship. That includes creating opportunities to meet your customer or your prospect face-to-face.

In-person interaction is powerful, and it’s core to what makes us human. It informs decisions. It creates trust and loyalty. I worry that early and mid-career marketers might not know marketing’s potential to create real human connections and how that can drive business.

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a European VP of marketing for big, US-based tech firms?

A culture disconnect. As a native New Yorker (albeit one who’s adopted London for the last thirty years), I know how easy it is to forget when you’re on that side of the Atlantic that Europe is not ‘one’ market. There are 44 countries in Europe, and each of them have different requirements to go-to-market. Different languages. Different cultures. Different industries and ways of doing business.

Many US-based tech firms and enterprises need specific support services for those regions, such as PR, because media channels are unique to each different region. They might also need to leverage local company voices because media in many regions don’t exactly warm to the big-titled US executive who’s parachuting in with little knowledge of the local lie of the land.

Do you think that the advent of hybrid working is a help or a hindrance to women’s tech careers?

One of the benefits of hybrid that’s not discussed enough is that it creates a more level playing field. Childcare and caring responsibilities are more equally shared, partly because hybrid has allowed male colleagues to be at home more.

We all have a little Zoom window into each other’s homes these days – ten years ago, even five, that really wasn’t the case. In this way, hybrid working has normalised that there is life outside of work and that it equally applies to both men and women. Now a man will say, “Right, I’ve got to go and pick up the kids.” It’s normalised – and that’s made balancing work and life more acceptable for their female colleagues too.

What achievement are you most proud of?

Probably moving across the world to live and work in a different country and making a success of it. Raising a family here too and seeing my kids grow up to be successful and happy. Being as happy as you can, that is fundamental for me.

If you had to choose a side, Team Musk or Team Bezos?

Team Musk – his vision of a world not one hundred percent powered by fossil fuels has without doubt turbo-charged the sustainability trend and demand for greener products.

Besides caffeine, how do you recharge your batteries during the working day?

Going to the gym or a walk with my dog Monty. Feel those endorphins!

Read TI’s coffee with Lenovo’s Graham Thomas to find out about the challenges of working remotely and the senior technologist’s love for 3D printers!  

The post A coffee with… Deb Smith, VP marketing, Jitterbit appeared first on TechInformed.

The company now claims to send out around one billion emails a day on behalf of its 14 million customers and has enjoyed “double digit growth” in the UK over the last 18 months, according to its newly appointed EMEA general manager, Jim Rudall.

Rudall recently joined the firm two years after the boot-strapped company was acquired by tax software platform Intuit for a reported $12bn in cash and stock. After this acquisition, Intuit officially changed the name of the platform to Intuit Mailchimp.

TechInformed caught up with Rudall – a former head of revenue at e-commerce platform Shopify – as well as Intuit Mailchimp’s chief product and design officer Jon Fasoli, who had flown over from the US for a customer event in London’s Strand, where we met.

At the event, the firm announced the release of more than 150 new and updated features to its platform. Key developments included a new email and audience analytics dashboard; the addition of more generative AI-powered tools; updates to Campaign Manager; and more ecommerce automations.

The firm’s standard plan has also been expanded to include many features that were previously only available to premium customers, including increased customer support and access to Multivariate Testing, Comparative Reporting, and Advanced Segmentation.

Why have you decided to focus on Intuit Mailchimp’s EMEA customer base?

JR: There are loads of reasons to invest in UK – particularly because of what’s going on in the market. Whenever economic conditions get challenging people go back to trying to understand their customers and communicating with them and we’re able to provide them to do the tools for that, at scale.

You were at Shopify before – what lessons were you able to take from there?

JR: They both have that same mission of wanting small businesses to thrive. I was a small business owner myself years ago, running an outsourced sales consultancy. I’ve got a lot of empathy for this community. SMBs power a significant percentage of the economy here, and right now they need all the support they can get

In terms of Generative AI, how is Mailchimp incorporating this technology into its platform?

JF: We’ve been baking AI into the product for a long time but until recently it’s been invisible in terms of the customer experience.

Now with ChatGPT the exciting thing is to bring a lot of things from behind the curtain to the front of the stage. We’ve been learning a lot from our customers using our generative AI capabilities which are in beta right now.

These features include the ability to generate an email in its entirety so you can tell us who you want to talk to, the tone, set the parameters and the platform will generate the content for the email.

Can the platform generate images from scratch yet?

JF: Image-wise there are a lot of exciting partners and tools that we’re leveraging but are not able to talk about right now. Things we already have in the market are a creative assistant that will take in an image that you’ve uploaded and will frame it up with content and optimise it across all social media channels.

The actual generation the DALL-E type stuff from scratch… that’s what we’re playing with right now, but we haven’t released anything yet. It’s a complex space and we want to get it right.

During the event today professor Hannah Fry made the differentiation between generative AI and predictive AI. Do you think it’s a combination of the two that will be the game changer for marketers?

JF: What makes AI effective from a marketing perspective is personalisation: addressing who it is that it should be speaking as; whom is it speaking to; and what is it speaking about.

And when you think about those ingredients, one of the things we’re really excited about at Mailchimp is the ‘speaking as’, as it is something that we understand well because we have customers who have been with us for 20 years.

We understand about tone, brand and how to best represent our customers to their customers. In terms of the ‘speaking to’ aspect – we have 8bn email addresses – so there’s a deep understanding as to whom the small business is talking to, so we can personalise that message.

Do you think that knowledge-based jobs will disappear because AI can automate so many tasks?

JF: I have a positive outlook. I see the evolution of a marketer’s job and everyone’s’ jobs as being like a manager. You have the power to deploy a team of AI agents to do the thing that you are setting out to accomplish but whatever the core motivation, the missions, where to direct that team still sits with the marketers. They have the vision. AI has the whole corpus of the internet to learn from. But it’s looking backwards, it still requires that creative pioneer.

The platform has suffered data breaches in the last year – what precautions are you taking to ensure these are less likely to happen in future?

JF: I get told off by our security team when I go into too much detail, as that might compromise us, but transparency is one of our core values. Trust means being clear when things happen. We take a tremendous amount of pride in the security standards we have but whenever things come up, we communicate the breach to the relevant parties and adjust quickly.

What feedback have you got from your customers about today’s event?

JR:  Customers are already visualising how they can remove huge amounts of process from their marketing workflows to create more time in their day. They are also looking at ways they can create more one-to-one relationships with their customers.

You’re also offering your UK customers more personalised, one-to-one customer support… won’t that require more staff?

JR: We’re staffing up in this region. We have an award-winning customer team and plan to growing that team extensively over the next year.

What customers would you say are using the Mailchimp platform to its full advantage?

JF: Club Soda stands out because it sells beverages to two very different segments of customer. Some of their customers want alcohol others are in programmes looking for alcohol alternatives. So, they focus on these two distinct segments using Mailchimp with a high degree of intention to ensure that the messages are personalised for those two audiences. The in-store products are the same, but the way you bring that product to two different customers is completely different. I love how intentional they are.

The post Q&A with Intuit Mailchimp’s Jim Rudall & Jon Fasoli appeared first on TechInformed.

Last year, Talking Medicines released AI platform Patient MetRx, which scrapes data from millions of online social media conversations to find out what patients are saying about drugs they’ve taken.

The platform uses machine learning and natural language processing with the goal of providing useful KPIs for health marketing agencies and pharmaceutical firms.

Now, the firm – which started life in 2013 as a consultancy for a pharma – has just released a new version of the platform with new ‘Drug-GPT’ tool that claims to produce fully rounded curated reports on drugs based on patient and health care professional (HCP) data “within seconds”.

The firm also claims that these insights are “fully compliant with health sector regulations and backed by a suite of quality control processes”.

The GPT models are licenced from Microsoft, the firm claims, to ensure that the ecosystem around Drug-GPT is closed.

The insights gathered by the tool, claimed Talking Medicines, “helps agencies inform new business pitches, develop winning strategies, create creative content and monitor the impact of critical market events on customer behaviour”.

Other new Patient MetRx features include a curated health care practitioner option that complements the patient option as well as a new natural language search feature that promises “fast, data-led questioning of curated data”.

According to Talking Medicines, feedback from current users suggests that the platform is 80% more effective than conventional methods at producing structured and actionable insights.

The firm’s CEO Jo Halliday claimed that the tool would transform the way that healthcare advertising agencies analyse insights on complex patient and HCP social data.

“With structured and actionable insights delivered within seconds, it provides our customers with the edge to win business, create amazing content, and deliver successful campaigns,” she added.

Last year Talking Medicines secured a £1.5m funding round to support its expansion into the US and it now has a New Jersey office.

The post What do patients really think about their meds? Ask Drug-GPT appeared first on TechInformed.

Clubhouse offers listeners a series of audio rooms where they can listen to and participate in conversations about different topics.

The app flourished at time when people were home-bound during the pandemic as users tuned in to discussions on music, films, media, business and technology.

At the height of its popularity the app was valued at $4bn and is currently backed by more than $100m of venture capital.

However, in a statement on its site the cofounders acknowledged that a ‘reset’ was required, to serve the way people consume live audio now.

“The world has opened post-Covid, it’s become harder for many people to find their friends on Clubhouse and to fit long conversations into their daily lives. To find its role in the world, the product needs to evolve. This requires a period of change,” the owners stated.

The founders also hinted that expanding its team, then trying to manage it remotely, was challenging.

“It’s difficult for us to communicate the strategy to cross-functional teams when it’s evolving by 1% each day, or to make quick changes when each surface is owned by a different product squad.

“Being remote has made this especially challenging for us. The result is that its hard for teams to coordinate, people feel blocked by us, and brilliant, creative people are left underutilized”

To fix this, the founders concluded, there needed to be a “reset” to take it down to a smaller, product focussed team.

The world still needs live audio conversations, they claimed, as an antidote to “remote living, empty scrolling and Zoom meetings” and, with a smaller focussed product team, they added that they would be working on “Clubhouse 2.0”.

Clubhouse did not state the number of employees impacted by the layoffs, though it was reported that the company had around 100 employees as of last October.

Davison has admitted in the past that Clubhouse “grew way, way too fast” and, following its success, inevitable copycat features by larger platforms followed: Twitter Spaces, Facebook Live Audio Rooms, Spotify Greenroom and Amazon’s Project Mic.

Whether the social audio is worthy of its own app or whether it will go the way of other lockdown chat apps such as Houseparty remains to be seen.

Houseparty’s owner Epic Games has said that former Houseparty team is now working on a social interaction app for the metaverse – so it will be interesting to see what Davison and Seth’s app can offer users of Clubhouse’s next iteration.

The post Clubhouse joins tech giants in jobs cull as part of a ‘reset’ appeared first on TechInformed.

Looking at the digital word primarily through a martech lens, management and technology consulting firm BearingPoint’s Digital Leaders Survey based on 2022 data, judges the most successful digital firms across four areas: digital marketing, digital product experience, ecommerce and E-CRM (customer relationship management).

The UK study assessed 77 companies across a range of verticals that include banking, energy, insurance, retail (which is split into food, non-food and fashion) as well as telcos.

According to BearingPoint UK practice leader Tony Farnfield, key success factors that companies are graded on included putting the customers first; generating positive emotional responses from customers; delivering value with technology stacks that leverage data; technical innovation as well as strong ethical and sustainability practices.

Out of a possible score of 5, telcos achieved a score of 3.11 behind Non-Food Retail (3.43), Food (3.32), and Fashion (3.28). In terms of individual company rankings, Telefonica UK (O2) scored 3.68 while Hutchinson 3G UK (Three) scored 3.52 and Vodafone scored 3.51. The top ranked company was online electronics retailer AO retail – just ahead of 02 with 3.70.

According to the survey, the UK telco industry performed particularly well in the areas of digital marketing and digital product experience – especially their ability to leverage SEO and search engines as well as to draw customer attention to new promotions through impactful marketing campaigns.

O2 scored top markets in affiliate marketing and search engine as well as its high use of social media platform Instagram as a channel to engage consumers.

Vodafone, meanwhile, gained praise for its strength in display advertising, scoring high in placement, traffic generation and volume.

John Ward, director at BearingPoint praised telcos smart use of CX technologies: “UK telcos performed well in this year’s study, helping take the UK to second in our overall annual digital global rankings.

“Telcos are showcasing a comprehensive and balanced approach to digital strategy, focusing on providing prompt assistance to customer queries by leveraging technologies such as live chat, digital contact forms, and ability to call customer service directly from the mobile app,” he added.

The post Telco sector rivals retail for digital leadership, survey finds appeared first on TechInformed.

As the future Web 3.0 will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide users with the catered content they ask for, the use of third-party cookies will be seen as obsolete.

Why? Third-party cookies currently come in handy for marketing and advertising teams to track and collect a small amount of data on users and thus provide relevant ads to them. In advance of this, Web 3.0’s artificial intelligence and machine learning will theoretically adapt to the user’s patterns in order to provide relevant information, and in a private environment without third-party cookies.

On top of that, while Web 3.0 is a work in progress, a cookie-less future is fairly imminent, if not already happening.

Google has stated that by the end of 2024, it will phase out cross-site monitoring through third-party cookies in Chrome, as many browsers have already done, in order to test out its Privacy Sandbox – its solution to provide more targeted, private digital advertising.

“This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting,” Anthony Chavez, vice president at Privacy Sandbox said.

Again, privacy is a big win for users who have long felt uncomfortable seeing website ads following them after an internet browse. Already, users are using ad-blocking plug-ins on their browsers to stop ads from harvesting their data.

But, for publishers who want to keep on providing free content, having ads on their websites helps to bring in the cash, and advertisers are still keen to reach their target audience. So what if we could all come to a compromise?

Conscious advertising

Ad-filtering, which can be used as a browser plug-in, for example, aims to create an equal middle ground between users who want privacy, advertising firms, and publishers.

Rather than completing blocking adverts, it offers relevant, non-intrusive ads based on information offered and approved by the user.

For German-based ad filtering firm eyeo, a cookie-less future is “a great opportunity to rebuild the infrastructure of adtech and martech more purposefully, with users’ rights and interests at the centre of its design,” says its vice president of innovation Rotem Dar.

Eyeo sees the market reacting to a cookie-less internet in a few different ways: “On one side, there are solutions that attempt to replicate the full functionality of third-party cookies, including its invasive aspects.

“On the other side, and more interestingly, other solutions aim at serving similar market use cases in a more user-centric and privacy-preserving manner,” enthuses Dar.

For eyeo, its approach is more in line with the latter: “It’s a trade-off between users’ expectations, privacy regulations, platform restriction and the clear need to monetise content so that free information would prosper.”

Hence, eyeo is naming 2023 as the year of conscious advertising.

“If 1994 signalled the introduction of digital advertising, 2008 signalled the introduction of Real-Time Bidding, then we see 2023 as the breakthrough year for the age of conscious advertising,” he adds

To demonstrate future intentions, alongside its take on conscious advertising, eyeo created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that simulates the internet in a cookie-less reality, called Crumbs.

“From a user perspective, it’s a state-of-the-art free privacy protection tool”, whilst at the same time allowing for “interest-based targeting”.

It also claims to have pioneered the use of machine learning technology in its ad-filtering. The ML addition, announced last year, will help its tool detect intrusive ads automatically, creating a more robust and automated process.

At the moment, if a website wants to show ads to ad-filtering users, they must manually apply to be on eyeo’s allow list and meet criteria determined by the independent Acceptable Ads Committee (AAC) – such as keeping the ad to a certain size and being non-disruptive and easy on the eye for the user.

Moving past the cookie

With even more regulations coming our way, how can advertising departments move beyond the cookie? Currently, the ad filtering firm is working on “privacy protection solutions to give users control and preserve addressability”.

“As the cookie becomes irrelevant, other methods of tracking are popping up that are harder to control and regulate, like digital fingerprinting,” which is something eyeo would like to help protect users from, Dar explains.

So, eyeo plans to manage the uncertainty surrounding data privacy by creating products to cater for the privacy-conscious.

As it stands, eyeo provides ad-filtering capabilities, but it soon hopes to aim for tracking and targeting in the same vein. This way, “we can help users gain transparency and control over their data, but at the same time preserve addressability so that publishers can monetise their content effectively, and advertisers need to know they reach the right audience with the right message.”

So, in a sense, the eyeo’s technology is a solution that allows all of the members of the online ecosystem to “benefit and prosper equally”, enthuses Dar.

“We’ve always remained committed to enabling sustainable and fair value exchange to keep the internet free and open as we believe that there is a way to ensure that content creators are fairly compensated for their work and users have access to an enjoyable browsing experience.”

Whilst keeping ads online through ad-filtering enables user privacy, eyeo also believes that ad-filtering “is a more carbon-friendly form of advertising form of advertising as the permitted formats within Acceptable Ads have a lower carbon footprint than regular advertising”.

This is because the advertising formats “require less bandwidth than rich media and the act of ad filtering can significantly reduce ad footprint”.

The post How ad-filtering can help marketers in the cookie-less future appeared first on TechInformed.