The use of AI by educators is not always a positive thing. This week a Maryland high school teacher was arrested for allegedly creating a phony audio recording of his boss saying very offensive things. Sadly, the fake audio went viral and the high school’s principal was “widely admonished,” according to one carefully worded news report. Eventually, investigators linked the email used to send the audio to an ISP registered to the teacher’s grandmother. An FBI forensic analyst found the recording “contained traces of AI-generated content with human editing after the fact,” according to the arre ..read more

U.S. digital video ad spend is expected to hit $63 billion in 2024, a 16% increase from the previous year, according to projections from IAB’s “2024 Digital Ad Spend & Strategy Report.” For the first time, digital video — which includes CTV, social video and online video — will claim a higher share of budgets than linear TV. Why we care. CTV and other digital video channels have long promised better addressability and measurement than traditional linear TV. However, the number of cable subscribers remained sizable enough for digital video to remain in a supporting role for ad budgets. Tha ..read more

What do you do if the vendor of one of your martech solutions gets bought? An acquisition can change many things, including price, customer service, contract enforcement and more. Here are 10 things that will prepare you to be proactive in the case of an acquisition. 1. Know what you need and why. The most important thing is to understand why you are using the solution in the first place. What are the use cases for it? Will it continue to fulfill those needs?  “It’s always use-case driven and we all need that reminder, even if we know it,” said Milton Hwang, a strategic consultant and pr ..read more

Marketers short on time and/or resources have developed shortcuts to produce emails and the most common of those can seriously hurt performance. Fortunately, there’s an alternative that can help you with this. Also, you can improve performance by modifying your approach based on whether your company is CPG, ecommerce or B2B. Common email shortcuts that hinder performance First, let’s look at what you might be doing wrong. Mistake: Image-based emails The single biggest shortcut we see is that brands will resort to sending image-based emails, which means they don’t incorporate live text, dynami ..read more

Weeks before his 70th birthday, my colleague quipped, “I still don’t like being called a ‘senior.’ Unless there’s a good discount attached.” The joke leans on an aging, coupon-clipping stereotype that should be retired. My boomer colleague is part of an adaptable, active, tech-forward cohort who cannot be overlooked, largely because they also hold more than half of America’s wealth. Ogilvy’s 2030 Forecast asserts 60+ is the fastest-growing and wealthiest consumer class, representing a lucrative “silver economy” for product and service brands. This is especially true in large urban centers. So ..read more

The new law to ban or force the sale of TikTok creates a problem for marketers beyond the loss of a popular advertising channel. The law aims to protect the social media app’s 170 million American users from having their personal data exploited by the Chinese government. That’s a problem, but not the problem.  The problem — and what’s driving marketers crazy — is the absence of a national law protecting Americans from having their data exploited by any entity. Instead, we have a patchwork of local laws that leave most of the population without protection.  On Friday, Nebraska became ..read more

Providing genuinely outstanding customer experiences is the ultimate goal of marketers today. Customers have come to expect seamless, personalized brand interactions across all touchpoints. However, meeting these heightened expectations is no easy feat. Fortunately, marketers now have powerful new tools to help them understand and predict customer behaviors at scale — artificial intelligence (AI) and agile ways of working. This guide provides a roadmap for leveraging AI and agile marketing practices to craft unforgettable customer experiences.  Step 1: Establish your data foundation The ..read more

When Gartner surveyed CMOs in 2023 about the state of their marketing technology stack, most admitted to using only one-third of their martech stack. This percentage has been decreasing in the past few years, even though the purchase of new marketing technology platforms has increased in the same period.  CMOs also admit this is a big problem and seemingly without easy solutions. The survey highlights four main obstacles to boosting marketing technology usage:  The complexity of the current martech landscape. Insufficient customer groundwork to amplify technology’s business value ..read more

Consumers inundated with marketing messages are receptive when the message is about a high-priority item they’ve purchased. U.S. apparel brand True Classic has leveraged this to improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue. The company discovered this when they began sending messages to customers post-purchase with accurate shipping and delivery details. Not only are the messages welcomed by customers as a key part of the customer service experience, but they drive revenue by encouraging repeat purchases. It’s all part of a virtuous cycle that begins with better, more accurate communica ..read more

Predictive analytics is the use of data and modeling to predict the likelihood of future outcomes based on the historical record. Machine learning algorithms can be used to analyze large quantities of data and predict outcomes at speed. Predictive analytics can be used in almost any field, from climate change to sports. In marketing, they are typically used to predict things like customer behavior, propensity to convert, propensity to churn and campaign performance. The data analyzed can include website and app engagement, customer sentiment and social media activity, as well as contextual da ..read more