The leading AI-powered social media marketing platform Socialbakers released a comprehensive report at the end of 2018 a comprehensive report that offers detailed information about the state of social media engagement and advertising, as well as emerging themes for the year ahead. The trend report dives into demographics and brand trends, advertising effectiveness, engagement best practices, and emerging trends involving influencer marketing and privacy and security.

2019 promises to deliver incredible new developments in the way designers approach customer experience. Improvements in personalization and artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling independent designers and marketing professionals alike to create experiences that truly delight their customers.

Pegasystems Inc., a provider of strategic software solutions for sales, marketing, service and operations, points out the stumbling blocks the customer journey is facing commonplace in practice:

What do autonomous taxis in Singapore, the "da Vinci" robotic surgical system, and the application of virtual reality in worlds of experience have in common with the latest technology trends? All these innovations are based on artificial intelligence (AI).

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.

When it comes to customer-centricity, Customer Journeys are the melting pot of all disciplines and perspectives. Evidently, the enterprise around the customer journey in the daily business routine is initiated and managed by individual departments, such as marketing, sales, IT or service. As a result, despite considerable initial success, the creation of positive customer experiences, or winning of more new customers, often falter due to insufficient internal support of such projects. So, how can that be prevented?

In today’s connected world, businesses are prime targets for cyberattacks, and unintentional missteps can result in critical exposure of consumers’ sensitive personal information.

The Account Based Marketing (ABM) automation provider, Engagio, announced the launch of its Sales Activation Tools, a powerful and scalable set of capabilities that provide customized and relevant real-time account insights to marketing and sales teams.

Many 16 to 23-year-olds don’t seem to be driven to stand out as a personality from the masses in the context of their social media appearances. On the contrary, the so-called "Generation Z" seems to be surprisingly homogeneous: as far as aesthetics and poses are concerned, they are more likely to submit to the valid norms and rules that receive the most approval from the social media community.

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.

It is a predicament: consumers' expectations towards businesses are higher than ever, as they demand an experience when buying a product, not just the feeling of a mere necessity. Hence, personalization is the keyword here, so that offers, product recommendations and discounts are available on the right channel at the right time and in line with the customer's current expectations and needs. All this is possible and only needs as prerequisites data-based 360-degree customer views, but that's exactly where the problems start. For fear of abuse, consumers are more reluctant in giving their data to businesses.

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

Nearly all current research underpins a worrying trend, namely an increase in cyber-attacks, data leaks and data protection hacks. Not to mention that security breaches nowadays cause much more damage than just a few years ago due to more connectivity and a growing number of digital devices.

As the number of financially independent women around the world increases, so, too, is their optimism about the future, along with their focus on health and wellness, according to new gender-focused analysis undertaken by global measurement company, Nielsen.