Facebook is Rating and Punishing Advertisers Based on Customer Feedback

Facebook’s business plan is simple. Have a free platform where people sign up and in return, they harvest the data that is used as metadata for their advertiser's dashboard for the latter to serve you with ads. This has worked pretty well for them for the most part and it is quite a profitable company if you check their quarterly results. However, there has been a serious problem with this business plan. Last year, the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out where it was revealed that the company harvested data from millions of Facebook profiles without permission so that they could target US voters with ads based on their psychological profile.

Spotlight

Other News
Ad Tech and Martech

SugarCRM Announces 2024 Customer Breakthrough Award Winners

Business Wire | January 24, 2024

SugarCRM, provider of the award-winning AI-driven sales automation platform, today announced the global winners of the 2024 SugarCRM Customer Breakthrough Awards. Winners are: Customer Experience Breakthrough Award – Empresas ADOC, a Central American retail company, is recognized for using SugarCRM to drive business growth and improve customer engagement. Using SugarCRM, the company significantly improved customer service quality and customer retention, reduced customer churn while establishing its “Puntos ADOC” loyalty program that attracted over 600,000 members, representing more than 20 percent of total sales. ADOC has a rich history of using high-quality materials and specialized techniques to produce outstanding products that meet the needs of its customers. ADOC is a customer-driven business supported by a culture dedicated to enhancing customer satisfaction and building strong, lasting customer relationships. In addition to its own branded footwear, ADOC also has partnered with international brands, including Hush Puppies, The North Face, CAT, and Steve Madden, to create a complete shopping experience for its customers. Industry Excellence Breakthrough Award – Reusable Transport Packaging, a leader in sustainable transport packaging solutions, is recognized for using SugarCRM to improve its bottom line, unify customer data, streamline processes, and increase sales efficiency, resulting in a 20 percent revenue growth year over year. A key strategy in its growth is the use of Sugar Market for regular email communications, which keeps customers, distributors, and leads informed about new products, pricing updates, and other relevant industry news. Marketing Excellence Breakthrough Award – The Swedish Institute (SI), a Swedish government agency, is recognized for its innovative approach to data management and customer engagement. The Sugar Sell and Sugar Market platform integration centralizes data, segments audiences, and automates responses, significantly enhancing marketing efficiency and improving engagement with international students and alumni. The Swedish Institute saw an increase of over 31 percent in lead volume since implementing SugarCRM and boasts a best-in-class 40-to-50 percent open rate on marketing emails. Sales Excellence Breakthrough Award – J&J Ventures Gaming, LLC, a leader in gaming and amusements and one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., is recognized for implementing Sugar Sell to consolidate customer accounts and interactions into a centralized communication hub across sales, marketing, and account management. Streamlined sales processes have established a new model for sales excellence for the J&J team and its growth in the gaming industry. Service Excellence Breakthrough Award – Super General Company of the Albatha Group in the UAE is recognized for revolutionizing its service operations with Sugar Serve. Working with Sugar partner Ambit Software, Super General successfully implemented a repair and maintenance service platform, including a field management application for efficient case handling and simplified technician dispatching. Due to increased efficiency and workload management, the number of cases per technician has surged by up to 26 percent, alongside a 10 percent increase in first-time fix rates. Other notable achievements include a significant increase in call closure rates and substantial improvements in customer satisfaction scores. Customer of the Year Breakthrough Award (Asia Pacific) – zazen Water, a provider of alkaline water solutions in Australia, is recognized for its use of SugarCRM to support business growth and customer satisfaction. Through strategic integrations, zazen Water automated its business and customer service operations to streamline high-order volume processing. Notably, during its Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 campaign, zazen Water managed a significant order peak, accomplishing its same-day dispatch promise, which, prior to automation and integration projects, would have required 16 employees. Customer of the Year Breakthrough Award (EMEA) – FAMO GmbH & Co. KG, a German wholesaler of electrical and plumbing products, is recognized for its collaboration with Sugar partner Insignio to deploy SugarCRM for advanced customer data management and opportunity nurturing, the Sugar mobile app with enterprise resource planning (ERP) data integration for field sales support, and Sugar Market for automated newsletters and targeted communications. Customer of the Year Breakthrough Award (Latin America) – Mac Construtora e Incorporadora (MAC), a leader in construction and development in São Paulo, is recognized for the creative use of SugarCRM in the dynamic real estate market. Technology adoption significantly improved lead management and customer engagement, enhancing marketing approaches and project sales, resulting in a substantial increase in sales, ranging from 50 to 94 percent of its real estate agency. This has led to MAC substantially reducing its dependence on partnering with other real estate agencies. Customer of the Year Breakthrough Award (North America) – Alto-Shaam, providing foodservice equipment solutions to more than 90 countries globally, is recognized for use of SugarCRM to significantly enhance opportunity close rates by 61 percent while achieving up to 600 hours of time savings in marketing and sales efforts to forecast customer needs. The integration of Sugar Sell with Sugar Market has streamlined key processes, improved lead management, and enhanced operational efficiency and global communication. ISV Technology Partnership Breakthrough Award – FSIoffice, a leading independent office supply company, together with sales-i, are recognized for transforming FSIoffice’s CRM strategy from data repository to sales powerhouse, with 40 percent improved sales efficiency. Supported by Sugar partner CRM International, FSIoffice is driving remarkable revenue growth and enhancing customer engagement with Sugar Sell Premier and sales-i for predictive business-to-business sales intelligence. Reseller Technology Partnership Breakthrough Award – The Joint Corp., the nation’s largest provider of chiropractic care through The Joint Chiropractic® network, in partnership with Sugar partner Faye, are recognized for driving significant improvements in healthcare operations after transitioning to SugarCRM and Amazon Web Services, with a 40 percent increase in web transaction speed. This transformation allowed The Joint to focus on integrating AI to elevate SugarCRM from a functional tool to a strategic platform for competitive differentiation in the chiropractic care sector. Judges’ Choice Award – RTCR, the public transit provider in La Rochelle, France, operating under the Yélo brand, is recognized for significantly enhancing customer service with Sugar Serve, with implementation support by Sugar partner Synolia. The deployment has led to a minimum three percent increase in customer satisfaction and streamlined complaint management, saving agents’ time by 50 percent through improved response structuring. “We’re pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 SugarCRM Customer Breakthrough Awards,” said Chris Pennington, Chief Customer Officer, SugarCRM. “These customers and partners are recognized for excellence and innovation in letting Sugar’s AI-driven CRM platform do the work to make the hard things easier for sales, marketing and service professionals, and for driving breakthrough success and exceptional customer experiences.” About SugarCRM SugarCRM is a CRM software that helps marketing, sales, and service teams reach peak efficiency through better automation, data, and intelligence so they can achieve a real-time, reliable view of each customer. Sugar’s platform provides leading technology in the sales automation, marketing automation, and customer service fields with one goal in mind: to make the hard things easier. Thousands of companies in over 120 countries rely on Sugar by letting the platform do the work. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sugar is backed by Accel-KKR.

Read More

Ad Networks

Force Management Expands its Ascender Sales Acceleration Platform with Content and Curriculum for Revenue Teams

Business Wire | January 25, 2024

Force Management, provider of elite sales solutions, announced today the launch of Ascender® Plus, a significant expansion of the Ascender sales acceleration platform and community. The Ascender sales acceleration platform reinforces Force Management’s consulting and training services with content and curriculum that drive desired sales practices and improve execution for revenue teams. Teams using Force Management’s core methodologies can now leverage Ascender Plus to support team engagement, accelerate adoption, and drive long-term consistency and results. “Ascender provides our clients with a powerful tool to improve revenue team execution and foster a culture of continuous, consistent professional growth,” says Grant Wilson, CEO of Force Management. “Ascender now accelerates adoption of our Command Series offerings by providing customer-facing revenue teams, managers, and executives with 24-7 access to content, tools, and resources that support their engagement with Force Management and successful execution of sales methodologies.” Ascender subscribers can access content and curriculum on-demand in a variety of learning formats that are easily consumable by busy revenue teams. New content is published daily and designed to keep sales best practices top-of-mind. Ascender users also benefit from an active digital community of their peers, with live events and online learning opportunities led by Force Management SMEs and other industry professionals. “The way people learn and retain information is enhanced through modern delivery techniques such as digital learning, personalized curricula, and regular assessment and coaching,” says Paul Giaconia, Force Management Chief Product Officer. “Today’s revenue teams are looking for learning experiences that engage them in the ways they learn best. The Ascender platform includes on-demand access to video, podcast, and eLearning formats as well as a community of like-minded experts that help revenue teams advance their professional development and boost revenue performance.” The platform provides customized content to support Force Management’s methodology-based engagements such as Command of the Message® and the MEDDICC sales qualification approach. Learn more about Ascender Plus and Force Management methodologies at forcemanagement.com. Small teams and individual sellers can access content and curriculum offerings at ascender.co. About Force Management Force Management develops elite sales teams and tomorrow’s sales leaders. For 20 years, our team of veteran sales leaders has delivered cross-functional alignment and customized programs that enable companies to increase deal sizes, drive market recapitalizations, cut time-to-productivity in half, navigate challenging markets, and achieve higher valuations. Our proven methodologies are backed by our sales acceleration platform, Ascender, that enables sales performance for organizational revenue teams, as well as small teams and individuals. We stake our strong reputation on measurable results and return on investment and are poised for growth alongside our customers across B2B markets like Cybersecurity, FinTech, Business Intelligence and Analytics, and DevOps. Learn more at forcemanagement.com.

Read More

Brand Marketing, Advertiser Platforms

Gupshup brings Vertex AI-powered AI chatbots into RCS conversations

PR Newswire | February 26, 2024

Gupshup, the world's leading Conversation Cloud platform today announced that brands on its platform can now offer AI chatbots for RCS conversations, opening up a whole new advanced and interactive experience for their users. Gupshup's Conversational AI product suite, spanning Auto Bot Builder and ACE LLM, are now using Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform to bring the benefits of Google's large language models (LLMs) to Gupshup's customers globally. The integration will enable businesses to deliver more precise and human-like interactions with speed and scale and offer a more personalized and responsive experience. Further, AI assistants on RCS will be able to intelligently respond to unstructured queries, assisting customers across various stages–from product discovery, lead generation to troubleshooting and customer support. "Generative AI is transforming the RCS industry, and we're thrilled that Gupshup is utilizing our latest LLMs on Vertex AI to further personalize and enhance how businesses engage with customers through AI-driven conversations," said Warren Barkley, Senior Director of Product Management, Vertex AI at Google Cloud. "Vertex AI provides partners like Gupshup with a unified AI platform to leverage state-of-the-art foundational models, and we look forward to seeing the ways Gupshup continues to innovate with this technology." "We've always leveraged the latest cutting-edge AI technologies to offer a superior customer engagement platform to our brands. With our Auto Bot Builder and domain-specific ACE LLM now leveraging Google's LLMs, business messages on RCS are set to get a massive facelift, leading to better ROI for enterprises. We are excited to work with Google Cloud to help our brands bring intelligent conversations on RCS that will redefine customer engagement," said Beerud Sheth, Founder and CEO, Gupshup. Gupshup is a pioneer in leveraging domain-specific, fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) to automate the creation of enterprise-grade chatbots with appropriate guardrails. In January 2023, it launched Auto Bot Builder, a tool that leverages LLMs to automatically and effortlessly build advanced chatbots for enterprises. Gupshup's Conversational AI solutions are already live with several clients in India and abroad. The advanced chatbot for Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) - Dubai's largest utility, is powered by Gupshup. In India, several brands such as Tata Capital and Chaayos are using it for brand engagement, product discovery, employee training, and consultative selling.

Read More

Display Advertising, Social Media Advertising

MyTradeZone.com Joins Certified Trade Mission to Hong Kong to Explore Business Expansion Opportunities in Asia

MyTradeZone | November 28, 2023

MyTradeZone.com, a trade and Social Networking for businesses, is pleased to announce its upcoming visit to Hong Kong from December 4th to 8th, 2023. Bachir Kassir, founder of MyTradeZone, will join a delegation of American companies to Hong Kong as part of a U.S. Department of Commerce Certified Trade Mission organized by IBS Global Consulting with the support of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and the U.S. Commercial Service. The delegation, comprising a diverse group of American companies, aims to foster cross-border partnerships, explore export opportunities, and deepen economic ties between the United States and Hong Kong. The visit to Hong Kong presents an exciting opportunity for MyTradeZone.com to expand its global reach, tap into new markets, and establish key connections with Hong Kong's dynamic business community and trade associations. With Hong Kong's strategic location as a gateway to the Asia-Pacific region, robust financial services sector, and reputation as a major international trade hub, this visit holds immense promise for American enterprises looking to navigate the Asian market. Led by Tonya McNeal-Weary, Managing Director at IBS Global Consulting, the delegation will engage in a series of high-level meetings, networking events, and industry-specific forums during the five-day visit. These activities are designed to facilitate mutually beneficial partnerships between U.S. and Hong Kong businesses across various sectors. [MyTradeZone.com] is a disruptive business networking platform, and is like an always open trade show: • Businesses: Add company profile page. Showcase products & services. Network locally and around the world • Event Organizers, Trade Associations, & Networking Groups: Provide value-added offering to members & sponsors in a public or private setting • Creators & Group owners: Monetize your creations via peer-to-peer payment enablement • Advertisers and Marketers: MyTradeZone's B2B search engine offers highly targeted and cost-effective advertisements to both buyers and sellers • Business Professionals: Grow your professional network, chat, connect, follow, takes notes, share and collaborate As an official member of the delegation, MyTradeZone will have the opportunity to gain firsthand insights into Hong Kong's business landscape, explore regulatory frameworks, exchange best practices, and forge lasting relationships with key stakeholders. Additionally, the itinerary includes tailored site visits to cutting-edge facilities and industrial parks, showcasing Hong Kong's commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. The visit to Hong Kong aims to enhance trade cooperation and seeks to highlight the enduring friendship between the United States and Hong Kong. As both economies continue to recover from the challenges posed by the global pandemic, this visit becomes even more crucial in reinvigorating trade ties and promoting long-term economic growth. About MyTradeZone.com MyTradeZone is a social networking platform for businesses. We are working on the next thing to disrupt business networking. MyTradeZone is a forward-thinking B2B media technology company reshaping how businesses connect and network. MyTradeZone's B2B search engine offers highly targeted and cost-effective advertisements to both buyers and sellers. MyTradeZone is also a perfect companion offering to trade show organizers and networking groups offering value added benefits to both members and sponsors.

Read More