Considering that digitization was still smiled at a few years ago, two-thirds of retailers look at it today as an opportunity to thrive, aware of the fact that shop systems will be much more than just additional distribution channels in the future. The boundaries between online, offline and mobile will continue to merge and the distribution channels no longer coexist but used in combination the way consumers want them to. Hence, the cross-channel shopping experience is at the top of every merchant’s list when it comes to customer expectations.

Broadband Forum has launched a new project – Broadband Quality Experience Delivered (Broadband QED) – which will be led by Vodafone and Predictable Network Solutions (PNSol).

The way large online platforms, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon (GAFAs), restrict advertisers from using their data on the platforms is called “walled gardens”. In lieu thereof, around two-thirds of marketing executives complain that walled gardens do not provide enough information to measure campaigns effectively.

Zendesk, Inc. just released its Benchmark Guide for Enterprise, research reports featuring insights and best practices for two different types of large companies: Digital Natives that have been considered digital since their founding, and Digital Transformers, more traditional companies that are in the process of modernizing their approach to customer support.

Social media stars, so-called influencers, show us how easy it is to create content and distribute it through social media today. With hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, these people have a larger community than most newspaper publishers. Therefore, it is understandable that the advertising industry sees in it a potential to reach a specific target group, especially since the usage behavior of teens plays a key role here.

The immense reach, the widely propagated ease of ad booking, and the ability to accurately define target audiences are just a few of the factors that persuade many advertisers to bet their marketing budgets on social media.

The problem with this is that big names, such as Facebook and Google, are quickly entrusted with the dissemination of ads without much reflection and thus with the integrity of brand safety. They benefit from the fact that the online advertising ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex and advertisers use the strong fragmentation and confusion as an excuse to snatch simpler social media advertising or playing out Google AdSense.

We are surfing, chatting, posting and commenting virtually on a regular basis: in fact, the amount of time users spend daily on social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Co. is growing faster than the rest of online usage. Around 60% of people visit social media every day, one third of them even 5 times a day, proving that social media marketing can achieve a high reach. But what do social media channels really accomplish for marketing?

Against a global backdrop of persistent social, economic and cultural change, Zeno Group’s new global study on “Barriers to Employee Engagement” looks closely at employees’ concerns about their workplace and how those issues, left unchecked, are standing in the way of effective engagement. The study revealed widespread concern among employees on current business topics like job loss due to automation and generational differences on issues such as work-life balance, with the overall findings pointing to a clear call to action for communicators and management.

If you know your customer well it is certainly easier to send relevant content in the right context and level of language. Therefore, get to know your target group amply since only personalized, type-appropriate communication has nowadays a chance to be considered as relevant by the audience.

The concept of the customer journey is very demanding, since it requires a consistent orientation to the digital transformation, both in terms of the processes depicted and the organizational structures. Furthermore, a powerful technical foundation is essential, or if the solution is to run in the cloud, the alignment of IT to cloud computing – e.g. with integrated virtualization.

Customer Experience (CX) is in vogue, as Google hits for CX confirm, which have risen from 80 million in 2011 to over a billion in 2018, apart from the fact that CX has been mentioned in many studies as a top management issue, even though companies are still struggling with it. Nowadays, it is obviously not the price-performance ratio that is decisive, but the best price-experience ratio in a price range, and people no longer speak of digital transformation, but digitization in the sense of optimal integration of the digital and analog worlds.

From a consumer perspective, companies have what it takes to save social media from the crisis of confidence. They see companies in a position to leverage their influence by compulsory heckling with the big social media platforms.

A year ago, MediaMath Founder and CEO Joe Zawadzki and IBM Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord partnered and laid out their vision of how to help unlocking the full potential of brand engagement to deliver marketing that customers would truly love. Both companies were committed to join forces to reshape the advertising industry by connecting paid and owned media into a single view of the end-to-end customer journey using AI-powered marketing technology and they just presented the result – the IBM Media Optimizer, powered by MediaMath.

Zendesk, Inc. released The Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2019, showing that companies of all sizes across industries and geographies lack the capabilities needed to keep up with ever-increasing customer expectations.