Google made some product announcements at its Google Marketing Live conference this week.
YouTube Shorts Adds Video Action Campaigns
Marketers can leverage Video action campaigns and App campaigns in the YouTube Shorts platform globally. Further, product feeds connected to campaigns will also start showing up on YouTube Shorts.
Display & Video 360 to Be Added to TV Campaigns
Display & Video 360 will soon include connected TV campaigns to reach affinity, in-market and demographic audiences across YouTube and most other ad-supported connected TV apps.
Updates for Performance Max
Google’s Performance Max saw some updates, too. They include:
- More tools for experimentation, like A/B tests
- Expanded campaign management support in Search Ads 360 and the Google Ads mobile app
- Support for store sales goals
- New insights and explanations, including attribution, audience and auction insights
- Optimization score and recommendations
Google Insights Adds Features
Google on its Insights page introduced three new reports:
- Attribution insights show how ads work together across Google surfaces — like Search, Display and YouTube
- Budget insights find new opportunities for budget optimization
- Audience insights for first-party data show how customer segments, like those created with Customer Match, drive campaign performance
In other customer experience and digital marketing software news…
Firework Closes $150M SoftBank Vision Fund 2-Led Series B
Firework, a livestreaming commerce and digital transformation platform, has secured $150 million in Series B financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Firework officials said they will use the money to accelerate growth, leveraging its decentralized infrastructure. It will hire talent in engineering, product and marketing and update its platform.
“This investment will trigger accelerated growth across markets and particularly India,” Firework Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Lucas said in a press release. “Over the last 24 months we have built a robust platform and business model and they have contributed to the customer successes we have had. The capital will not only help us continue building these success stories but also ensure that Firework, as a platform never loses step with the bleeding edge of next-generation customer experience.”
Linda Yu has also joined Firework’s Board of Directors.
Related Article: Tableau Introduces Tableau Cloud, Oracle Updates Oracle Service, More CX News
TikTok and Sprinklr Expand Partnership
Sprinklr, which provides customer experience management, has announced an expanded partnership with TikTok. The company is now an official partner in its all-new TikTok Content Marketing Specialty, part of the TikTok Marketing Partner Program.
Through this integration, Sprinklr users can:
- Organize, schedule and publish content on TikTok
- Access and track customer profile and video metrics in real-time for organic and paid content
- Monitor and engage with comments
“At TikTok, we are always building and looking for new opportunities to make it simpler for brands to be more creative and to meaningfully engage with our community,” Melissa Yang, head of ecosystem partnerships at TikTok, said in a press release.
“We are excited to welcome our new content marketing partners and collaborate with some of the most strategic and trusted leaders in the advertising industry. These partners will provide marketers with simple, effective tools to engage with their audiences, store and schedule their content and understand their performance in real time.”
Amplitude Launches Customer Data Platform
Amplitude has announced the launch of Amplitude CDP, or customer data platform.
Amplitude’s new CDP is fully integrated with its analytics solution, Amplitude Analytics. Officials said users will be able to leverage:
- Connections: Offers both the pipelines for data sources to ingest data and data destinations to sync data.
- Governance: Identity resolution that builds and maintains customer profiles.
- Audience Management: Create customer segments without SQL and sync them to various marketing and advertising platforms to run targeted campaigns.
- Integration With Amplitude Analytics: Streamlines the flow from data to insights and allows for audience discovery.
Customers streaming fewer than 10 million events per month to destinations get Amplitude CDP for free. The full CDP solution is in early access now with select customers. It will be opening to more customers throughout the summer starting with North America.
Contentstack Launches No-Code Automation Hub
Contentstack, a content management system provider, has debuted Contentstack Automation Hub. Company officials said this will make composable architectures easy.
Contentstack’s Automation Hub includes no-code business logic as a front-end to the composable stack.
“Using best-in-breed technologies is the only way to stay competitive, but enterprises often end up bogged down in integration (challenges),” Conor Egan, VP of product and engineering at Contentstack, said in a press release.
Automation Hub allows users to build cross-vendor connections visually without code. Contentstack Automation Hub is available today as part of Contentstack’s Platform Beta Program with general availability scheduled for late summer.
Related Article: TRAK Data Launches Marketing Data Platform, ON24 Releases Updates, More
Lob Unveils Direct Mail Automation Platform
Lob, a direct mail automation platform, has announced the launch of the company’s flagship product. It is a direct mail automation platform that is designed to enable intelligent mail.
The SaaS solution aims to help marketers’ direct mail efforts and makes direct mail intelligent with hyper-personalization, measurable ROI and campaign analytics and automated workflows for omnichannel campaigns, according to company officials.
“We are disrupting the old way of executing direct mail campaigns and making it a tech-enabled function for the modern marketer,” Ritu Kapoor, chief marketing officer of Lob, said in a press release.
“We are empowering businesses to reach millions of homes and offices each day and connect with their customers on a deeply personalized level, all while learning from those interactions. We are connecting marketers’ digital and physical approaches, synchronizing traditionally disparate functions at a massive scale and enabling marketers to send millions of unique pieces of direct mail within one campaign.”
