Salesforce announced new innovations across marketing, commerce and service enabling brands worldwide to deliver smarter, more personalized and connected customer experiences. In addition, Salesforce and Google continued to deliver on their strategic partnership with new integrations between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360 becoming available. Salesforce is showcasing these innovations and more at Connections, where top brands gather to learn how they can deliver next-generation customer engagement.

Google Voice Search doesn’t seem to be a dream of the future anymore, although it is clearly still in its infancy. In a few years, however, experts predict voice-based search will have revolutionized online user behavior fundamentally. So, seize your chance to ensure your presence in the ‘market of the future’ by taking appropriate SEO measures now. Get a head start, since there are still only a few retailers aligning their marketing strategy in this area.

Mobility is gaining traction worldwide. By 2022, more than 4 in 10 employees around the world are expected to be mobile, according to Strategy Analytics and IDC reported that global spending on mobility-related hardware, software, and services – such as smartphones, enterprise mobility management software and mobile connectivity services will reach US$1.72 trillion by 2021, up by 8.5% compared to last year.

The Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) is an XML-based predictive model interchange format that provides a way for analytic applications to describe and exchange predictive models produced by data mining and machine learning algorithms. Version 1.0 was published in 1999 and Version 4.0 ten years later.

The trending topic in IT, Blockchain, keeps the tech industry currently on its toes, as the distributed, decentralized database of blocks is considered impossible to get hacked: Many different servers verify algorithms for storing and uploading information, besides allowing all users of the network to see all the histories of changes or adjustments to a file or a block. Due to the security of decentralized storage and the elimination of third-party verification of transactions, processes can be automated.

In the age of digitization, the consumption of content across different channels often changes quickly. Anyway, the search for content itself has remained relatively constant, since search engines are dominant for many years - with Google taking the lead and being far ahead of all competitors. At least, we see as well more and more digital assistants with speech recognition entering the market, like Apple Siri, Samsung Viv, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana, Facebook M, SoundHound Hound and Google's own product Google Home.

Ooyala, a provider of software and solutions that optimize the production, distribution and monetization of media, just presented its Q1 2018 Global Video Index Report. For more than 10 years the company is at the forefront of shaping the OTT and media workflow revolutions as a leading expert in its field.

Just last week, the GDPR came into force, but privacy advocates immediately got down to work to put the law to the test by getting granular on Facebook, including its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp.

AllRites just announced the launch of a global B2B marketplace for Asian film, tv, and sports broadcast content, providing an online platform to discover, negotiate and purchase content rights.

PHD announced the launch of Engine, a specialist unit built for automotive brand Volkswagen, which has been designed to capitalize on the volume of anonymous data being generated by consumers researching cars online. The new approach, which will roll out globally in Q4 this year, will ensure Volkswagen can deliver relevant content to consumers as they move through their digital journey to purchasing a vehicle.

MediaMath announced the launch of new creative management offerings and supply partnerships that fully integrate native advertising into its omnichannel DSP, empowering clients to leverage a single platform to manage a larger share of their media spend using a creative format that has proven to be more engaging to consumers.

Ralph Echemendia, better known by his alter ego “The Ethical Hacker,” just announced at Money 20/20, Europe’s largest FinTech event in Amsterdam, the launch of SEGURU, an application created to provide the most secure approach towards a safer digital experience for individuals across the world.

Simply having predictive models that suggest what might be done won’t be enough to stay ahead of the competition, Bill Frank states in his article “Let algorithms decide – and act – for your company”, part of the Harvard Business Review “Predictive Analytics in Practice”.

As commonly known, personas are the basis for the right classification of customers in online shops to consequently deliver appropriate campaigns and offers. Generally, five to ten archetypes of buyers must be profiled and the communication, product presentation and possibly also the prices must be adapted to them accordingly. The surfing and click behavior, length of stay, main topics, products that are put into the shopping cart and - in the case of a log-in - also historical transaction data can be used as parameters for the classification.