NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – December 06, 2016) – Innovid, the world’s leading video marketing platform for advertisers to engage consumers across all screens and channels, today announced the launch of its Marketing Cloud Suite. The new suite enables marketers, for the first time, to include video throughout the customer journey through its integrations with Adobe, IBM, and Oracle marketing clouds.

Innovid’s new Marketing Cloud Suite breaks the silos between video and other marketing channels and allows marketers to develop more meaningful relationships with consumers by using first and third-party data from other marketing channels such as web, email, search, display, social, mobile, and commerce to drive more consumer engagement with richly personalized and relevant video ads. By using data to deliver more effective video creative, and now integrating video throughout the customer journey, marketers can provide powerful one-to-one marketing which could not previously be achieved.

Innovid is also now passing back user intent data to marketing clouds and data management platforms based on video interactions, which will help marketers improve existing customer segmentation and drive marketing automation, simplifying the complexity of today’s multi-channel world and increasing the overall effectiveness of every channel.

Conagra Brands is one of the first brands to explore data-driven video across all channels with Innovid.

« We believe it’s more important than ever to develop ongoing customer journeys through data-driven cross-channel marketing experiences, » said Heather Dumford, marketing director at Conagra Brands. « We’re excited to put Innovid’s new marketing capabilities into action so we can more creatively incorporate video into the customer journey equation. »

Since the company’s inception in 2007, Innovid has developed a comprehensive, media-agnostic video marketing platform that is purpose-built for video, reaching every device across more screens and more channels with richly personalized and data-driven creative. The integrations with marketing cloud companies further strengthen Innovid’s position as a leader in video advertising and marketing technology, and provides marketers with the most seamless and effective way possible to engage consumers everywhere they consume content, while providing real-time analytics.

« On the other side of every screen is a unique individual, and we have an incredible opportunity to help marketers engage each consumer in a more personal way, » said Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder at Innovid. « With the new Marketing Cloud Suite, Innovid is empowering marketers to convert existing TV ads into video that can be tailored for all digital environments and customized for specific consumers, based on past exposure and interactions across all channels. »

In addition to Innovid’s Marketing Cloud Suite, the platform also includes:

• Video Delivery Suite – Built for the future of TV, Innovid’s video delivery capabilities allow for unprecedented reach including all paid media channels, social platforms, website, desktop, mobile, and over 25 different connected TV devices, including OTT enabled boxes, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and Blu-ray streaming players, and over 1,000 different TV and video apps.
• Analytics Suite – Developed specifically for video, Innovid gives marketers an unbiased, holistic view of video ad spend through unified reporting across publishers, partners, channels, and devices. The consolidated dashboard tracks and reports on in-depth metrics such as delivery, reach, engagement, performance, and waste. Innovid is MRC accredited for impression counting and video viewability.
• Video Experience Suite – Innovid’s scalable advanced creative solutions allow marketers to create more relevant and engaging experiences for target audiences through interactive, localized, and dynamic video features. Marketers benefit from production cost savings as a single video asset is used to automatically create additional creatives in real-time.
• Optimization Suite – Innovid improves campaign performance and ensures that custom KPIs are met through real-time analysis of media quality, including viewability, fraud, and brand safety, as well as performance. This is accomplished through triggering notifications, suspending delivery or performing real-time video ad blocking when campaigns do not meet desired thresholds.

About Innovid

Innovid is the world’s leading video marketing platform, empowering advertisers to engage consumers across all screens and channels with more effective video creative, improved campaign performance, and video integrated throughout the customer journey. Providing a holistic, cross-device, data-driven solution that is purpose-built for video to meet the demands of audience fragmentation, Innovid’s patented, best-in-market technology and advanced measurement capabilities allow marketers to thrive in an ever-changing digital television landscape and engage viewers at scale via richly personalized creative and immersive, interactive storytelling. Innovid powers cross-channel video marketing efforts for some of the largest brands in over 28 countries including Bank of America, Best Buy, Citi, Comcast, Kraft, L’Oréal, Microsoft, PG, Walmart, Samsung, Sprint, and Toyota.

Headquartered in New York City, Innovid also has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, London, Sydney, and Tel Aviv. Innovid is backed by investors Sequoia Capital, Genesis Partners, T-Venture, Vintage Investment Partners, Cisco Investments, and NewSpring Capital. Innovid’s numerous awards include IAB Mixx Awards, Digiday Video Awards, Inc. Magazine’s Top 50 Best Places To Work, AdAge Best Places to Work, and Crain’s Best Places To Work. For more information, please visit www.innovid.com.

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Sometimes humans simply aren’t the best choice to star in an ad campaign: only an animated character will do. Cute cartoons can strum viewers’ heartstrings (U.K. retailer John Lewis has used them in its Christmas ads four times in the past five years), as well as tackle difficult subjects (Melbourne’s « Dumb ways to die » animated safety campaign won five Cannes Grand Prix in 2013).

New research now aims to identify the brands that best use animation in their advertising, taking into account their design, execution, narrative idea, memorability and brand consistency. The Awesome Animation study by film (and admittedly, animation) company Gorilla Gorilla! assessed more than 220 brands from the FTSE100, Superbrands and Business Superbrands lists.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — The Detroit Pistons are the latest professional U.S. sports team to leverage gamification in order to further engage fans.

On Monday, the team officially rolled out a new game experience, dubbed “One-On-One with the Detroit Pistons,” becoming the first professional sports franchise to engage fans through interactive video technology.

According to Charlie Metzger, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, being “first-ever” when it comes to new technology integrations and other innovative ways of thinking is a consistent mindset for team executives, which he reiterated to SportTechie.

In partnership with video developer Interlude, which recently unveiled its new interactive platform Eko, fans can go head-to-head versus Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Marcus Morris, Tobias Harris and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope as they try to block, steal, dribble and score against their favorite players. Fans also have the opportunity to share results across social media and the ability to win prizes and promotional giveaways.

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“The Detroit Pistons are at the forefront of sports franchises in their approach to innovative technology and entertainment as new generations of sports fans continually seeking ways to connect with their favorite players and teams,” Yoni Bloch, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Interlude, said in a statement. “Our goal with ‘One-On-One’ is to give participants and basketball fanatics a digital, yet very true to life one-on-one experience on the court.”

The technology uses video of the players which was captured over a 12-hour filming session earlier this summer. Interlude’s new Eko platform streams the video in real-time and allows participants to play One-On-One on whatever platform they’re currently on, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, mobile or desktop. Not needing to download an app or switch platforms to participate was key for the Pistons exploring the new fan engagement initiative, according to Metzger.

“As you look at the game of basketball, and specifically if you look at the NBA, fans are connected to our game not only when they come to The Palace to watch our guys, but they’re being connected throughout all of the different ways they engage with media,” he said. “So, this is an opportunity whether you’re in New York, Chicago or Shanghai, you’re going to be connected and sharpen your skills against the Detroit Pistons.

“The opportunity is really to connect with people on their terms. If they’re not at a game, what else can we do to connect with them? This really sparked our interest, and the fact that there’s no console and you can play it on your phone, laptop or desktop, that made it even more interesting to us.”

Added Pistons forward Tobias Harris: “Who knows, maybe this is the next technology that goes into making Xbox games and you eliminate the graphics altogether? This is definitely a cool concept.”

Beyond Detroit, another similar example came from the NFL, with the Jacksonville Jaguars doubling down on its commitment to gamification as a lead marketing strategy and way to gain additional fan insight. It re-introduced JaguarsArcade.com this season along with a new pinball video game called “Bud Light presents River City Rollers.”

Like the Pistons, the Jaguars are hoping its branded content initiative will attract current and new fans to engage with the team online.

“The old adage was content was king. It’s now, native content is king,” said Steve Ziff, Vice President of Marketing and Digital Media at the Jaguars. “We’re taking it a step further. If it’s not integrated in a native environment, it’s less important to people.

“For us, we moved into this format that, if we’re going to make branded content as the Jaguars and we’re going to sell that branded content to people, we only want to sell it in ways that are native to our audience. We really believe in the new model of right content for the right audience through the right distribution channels will lead us to the right opportunities.”

While not every part of Googles plans for Chrome 55 have been set in stone, the plan to set HTML5 as the default haven’t changes since May. In addition, Flash has been completely phased out with HTML5 as the primary technology for playing multimedia content in Chrome. Keeping with their promise earlier this year, starting with Q4 2016, Chrome would be set to leverage HTML5 by default as well as block all Adobe Flash content. Read the full details here.

KITCHENER, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Video remains the hottest and most effective form of marketing content, but many marketers are missing out on returns because they aren’t adequately measuring video performance, according to a new survey from Demand Metric.

For the third consecutive year, Demand Metric partnered with Vidyard, the video platform for business, to produce “The State of Video Marketing Benchmark Study Report” with the goal of understanding how video performs as a content type. It also investigates new trends around video personalization and use of video with account-based marketing strategy, as well as examining video’s spread beyond marketing departments.

The return on investment of video marketing has remained consistent over the last three years that Demand Metric has asked about it. Nearly half of participants report ROI is improving but a quarter say they don’t know what the returns are. Determining the ROI of video is a direct result of tracking metrics on video performance. Respondents who use advanced analytics are twice as likely to say their ROI is better and more likely to increase their video budgets year over year. Just 14% use advanced analytics, and that percentage has been constant for each year of the study.

“The use of advanced metrics has become imperative for organizations that produce higher volumes of videos annually, as these metrics enable optimizing performance and understanding the true ROI of their investment,” the report said.

Viewing data is important for ROI because it also gives marketers insights about their audience and where they are in the buying journey. Integrating viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems leads to deeper understanding of a viewer’s interest in making a purchase, but those integrations continue to lag. Just 13% of respondents reported they have integrated their data and are taking advantage of it.

Other key findings:

• More than 90% of the study’s participants said video marketing content is becoming more important, a consistent three-year trend.
• More than half of participants produce 11 or more videos per year. Large companies produce the most videos.
• The average number of participants saying that conversion performance for video has stayed the same or gotten better is 96%, which is consistent with previous years.
• The use of advanced analytics remains at 14 percent, unchanged from previous years.
• Using video to support account-based marketing is just emerging with fewer than 10% using it.
• Nearly half of respondents said they use internal staff and resources to produce videos, up from 38% a year ago.
• 50% said they plan to use a third-party video hosting or video marketing platform vs. YouTube or Vimeo, up from 38% last year.

“While many brands continue to chase the viral video hype, this report makes it clear that videos don’t need to go viral to be successful,” said Michael Litt, CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, which sponsored the survey. “In fact, it’s becoming clear that personalized, targeted videos used throughout the sales funnel are more engaging and more effective at turning viewers into customers.”

Video, Personalization and ABM

This year’s survey explored the relationship between video, personalization and ABM for the first time. Amplifying the effectiveness of video through personalization and ABM is a natural progression, Demand Metric found. More than half of the study’s participants indicated they use personalized video content, which is believed to have an impact on content effectiveness and ROI. In fact, 58% of those using personalized video reported improvement in ROI compared to 43% of those who don’t use personalized video.

Demand Metric found that video has a growing role in ABM, a strategy for targeting prospective customers at the account level rather than the individual lead level. Just 8% of respondents this year reported using video with their ABM strategy, but another 6% say they plan to add video to ABM. Similar to the tie between analytics and ROI, the survey also found that inclusion of video with ABM is facilitated by integration of video viewing data with marketing automation and CRM systems.

Video Going Beyond Marketing

The power of video as an influential medium has helped it move beyond the marketing department to nearly every other function in an organization. However, marketing remains the primary user at 86%, followed by internal communications (19%), sales teams (15%), executive teams (11%), support teams (11%), human resources (8%) and others (11%).

This year’s survey was administered online during the period of October 5 through October 28, 2016 and includes responses from 289 people, primarily in marketing and sales departments at B2B companies, but B2C companies were also included.

To view the full survey report, click here: https://www.vidyard.com/resources/state-of-video-marketing-2016/

About Vidyard

Vidyard (Twitter: @Vidyard) is the video intelligence platform that helps businesses drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Cision, TD Ameritrade, Citibank, MongoDB and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers.

About Demand Metric

Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership community of over 40,000 marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries. Offering consulting methodologies, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing tools and templates, Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing community plan more efficiently and effectively, answer the difficult questions about their work with authority and conviction and complete marketing projects more quickly and with greater confidence, boosting the respect of the marketing team and making it easier to justify resources the team needs to succeed. To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit: www.demandmetric.com.

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Luckhoff High School in Stellenbosch became a viral sensation last Friday – albeit for all the wrong reasons – after a harrowing bullying incident emerged online.

Mirencia Williams posted a video of the bullying to her Facebook page, which has since caused public outcry and quickly got the attention of education authorities in the province.

“We are concerned by the aggressive nature of the video. We have zero tolerance for bullying in our schools and the perpetrator will face disciplinary action in line with the schools code of conduct,” the Western Cape Education Department’s Jessica Shelver said in a statement.

“Counseling and support will be provided for the victim. We were only made aware of the video late on Friday. Our officials will visit the school tomorrow(Monday).

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Google Chrome has replaced Adobe Flash with HTML5 in its latest version, according to an Engadget report by Billy Steele.

“Google proposed making HTML5 the default over Flash in its Chrome browser back in May,” Steele writes. “With the latest release, Chrome 55, the company has nearly completed the transition. Chrome now defaults to HTML5 except when a site is Flash-only or if its [sic] one of the top 10 sites on the web.”

For sites that are not Flash-only or among the top 10 sites on the internet, users will be prompted to enable Flash upon their first visit.

The switch from Adobe Flash to HTML5 in the Google Chrome browser has been in the works for some time. Flash that runs “behind the scenes” on websites was blocked in Chrome in the two previous versions, according to Steele.

Google Chrome now defaults to HTML5 for most sites https://t.co/RUGIfgQ8ha pic.twitter.com/EQXbaNoDFf

— Rick King (@RickKing16) December 3, 2016

Converting to HTML5 is expected to result in generally better performance, particularly in terms of increased security and faster load times for web pages. Google Chrome 55 also allows for CSS automatic hyphenation that should “help with the look of text blocks and line wrapping,” Steele says.

Security issues and other bugs have been a problem for Adobe Flash in the past.

In December of 2015, Computerworld’s Michael Horowitz penned an article titled “When it comes to bugs, the Adobe Flash Players [sic] cup runneth over.”

“The Adobe Flash Player just closed out the year with another clump of bug fixes; nineteen were released today,” Horowitz begins.

According to Horowitz, “Flash averaged 6.1 bug fixes per week” in 2015.

“There was a flood of fixes at the end of the year,” he explains. “From mid-October on, Adobe fixed 113 bugs, roughly 1.5 per day. The final tally for 2015 is 316 Flash Player bugs.”

Horowitz threw in an emphatic acknowledgment of Flash’s advanced age, exclaiming, “This, for software that is over 18 years old.”

That’s ancient in software years.

More improved Google chrome coming up in December – Chrome 55 https://t.co/AGvy5mr7qB

— Krishnan Sriram (@krishnan_sriram) November 25, 2016

In June, Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin reported on a “critical Adobe Flash bug” that was under active attack by a group of hackers dubbed “ScarCruft” by researchers with the antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab. The researchers said the group was “relatively new” at the time.

“ScarCruft is a relatively new APT group; victims have been observed in several countries, including Russia, Nepal, South Korea, China, India, Kuwait, and Romania,” Costin Raiu wrote in a June 14th blog post for Kaspersky Lab. “The group has several ongoing operations utilizing multiple exploits — two for Adobe Flash and one for Microsoft Internet Explorer.”

Raiu cited two “major operations” the group was engaged in at the time, Operation Daybreak and Operation Erebus.

“Operation Daybreak, appears to have been launched by ScarCruft in March 2016 and employs a previously unknown (0-day) Adobe Flash Player exploit, focusing on high-profile victims,” Raiu wrote. “The other one, Operation Erebus, employs an older exploit, for CVE-2016-4117 and leverages watering holes.”

Raiu noted that Kaspersky researchers had identified the zero-day Adobe Flash Player bug “earlier this month.”

Adobe released a security advisory for the bug on June 14th as well, labeling the bug a “critical vulnerability” and promising to issue a security update to address the issue “as early as June 16.”

The security advisory acknowledged and thanked Anton Ivanov and Costin Raiu of Kaspersky Lab for identifying the vulnerability and bringing it to Adobe’s attention.

Google Chrome 55 is available now for Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop operating systems. There is no word yet on when Chrome 55 will be available for smartphones. When it is released, Steele says it will provide expanded download options that will better facilitate viewing web pages, images, and videos offline.

Google Chrome phasing out Adobe Flash doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end for the multimedia platform. It does, however, deal a blow to its prominence among internet browsers.

[Featured Image by Scott Barbour/Getty Images]