And with one bound, Spredfast reinvented itself.
Okay, it’s not quite that simple. Spredfast, the social media management platform we’ve written about a number of times over the past few years merged last September with Lithium. It was a move which made sense. Spredfast helped brands manage their social media programs across all obvious channels, and had begun to move into the conversational space — which then CEO Rod Favaron told me was viewed as part of a continuum with social media. Lithium, in addition to providing a social media management solution, was already immersed in digital customer care, through messaging, mobile apps, and online communities.
Privately held by Vista Equity Partners, the combined force of Spredfast and Lithium announced itself as “the future of customer engagement.”
Yesterday, it got a new name and a new logo. Khoros, which is the Greek for — guess what? — “chorus,” maintains the mission announced in last September’s merger, with one platform, unified performance analytics, and the potential for enterprise scale. We just have to get used to the new name.
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Knotch, the content intelligence platform, just released their second annual State of Content Marketing report (reasonably called “Volume 2”). It’s not just a survey of the space; it’s also a resource for advice on content strategy. You can download it here or just digest these highlights:
- Consumers are looking for real, personal connections with brands, and not just ads. Live video is an important option to fulfill that need
- The growing significance of voice search may give rise to a new function: the “Voice Marketer”
- AI-driven chatbots have a role to play in answering routine service inquiries fast, and can gather data while doing so’
- Micro-influencers now constitute a valid content marketing channel
- Customers love purpose-driven brands, and
- A calendar is not a content strategy.
Knotch also reports, based on third party data, that the value of the content marketing industry will soar to over $400 billion by 2021, and that spend on marketing performance measurement will double by 2023.
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Marketers look to standardization as one key method to gain an edge outside of “walled gardens.” A leading global ad exchange, Rubicon Project, announced this week that it implemented a unified ID solution from The Trade Desk, benefiting advertisers and consumers alike with more relevant ads and faster load times. Using this solution, match rates and identity resolution can improve across all points in the supply chain, from SSPs to DSPs.
Says Garrett McGrath, Vice President of Product Management, Data Services at Rubicon Project, “Advertising Exchanges need standards that ultimately create a better experience for all platform and consumers; this is another important milestone for our industry.”
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Cold where you are? It’s icy in New York, so it’s with a light heart that some of the team will be headed to the Bay Area over the next week. If you see us at Webinar World or the ABM Innovation Summit, say hello.
