IBM Launches Digital Marketing Network in the Cloud to Help Companies Improve Marketing Performance in Real-Time

SOURCE: IBM

Armonk, N.Y. – September 12, 2013: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM), joined by more than 100 business partners, launched the IBM Digital Marketing Network in the cloud to help chief marketing officers (CMOs) and their teams more quickly and easily integrate new marketing services to measure and improve their effectiveness in real-time.

Part of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, the IBM Digital Marketing Network can syndicate real-time analytics to any marketing service such as Google Display Network, Doubleclick Search and Badgeville, to help marketers create a more consistent and compelling customer experience based on individual buyer behaviors. Creating a relevant experience is critical; the IBM 2013 State of Marketing Survey cites $83 billion in sales is lost each year due to poor, inconsistent customer experiences.

This new network helps marketers improve customer engagement and responses. Clients can now monitor real-time activity throughout the network in customized dashboards for e-commerce and mobile, giving digital marketers the ability to view how their campaigns are performing across paid, earned and owned channels. This is particularly critical at a time when companies are driving double-digit growth in online ad sales for the past three consecutive years, topping $36.6 billion last year (Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report, 2012.)

Myron.com, a provider of promotional business gifts, is using the IBM Digital Marketing Network service to manage real-time re-marketing campaigns to automatically re-engage customers with more relevant display ads and gain deeper insights to onsite behaviors.

According to Mark Pepin, Vice President, Global eCommerce, Myron,com, “IBM Digital Marketing Network gives Myron.com the ability to have our business community independently implement and manage our digital marketing campaigns and has greatly empowered us to own the complete campaign experience from creation, implementation, monitoring and analysis,”  He continued, “This is essential for us when managing the many complex layers across our marketing channels and reduces the dependency on aligning multiple partners. It also improves the implementation time-lines of our digital efforts and we see the immediate impact and results.”

The network uses a single “gold tag” approach to relay digital data across the cloud in real time to all relevant partner technologies. The IBM Digital Marketing Network is powered by IBM Digital Marketing Optimization, part of IBM’s Cloud Suite for CMOs. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface tightly links these services together in as little as two clicks. This approach also eliminates the need to custom integrate each service and eases the burden of managing redundant tags that slow sites down.

IBM Digital Marketing Network customers now have integrated access to more than 100 solutions from certified partners in digital marketing areas such as:

– Ad Networks for making easier to buy targeted ad inventory from numerous sources. IBM Digital Digital Marketing Network partners include:  Google, Advertising.com

– Data Management Platforms for enabling the collection of audience intelligence towards better ad relevancy.  IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include: BlueKai, x+1

– Demand Side Platforms for buying digital advertising by managing multiple ad exchanges. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include: The Trade Desk, Turn

– Gamification, for engaging customers with game style sets of rewards. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include:  Badgeville

– Privacy Management for helping companies and consumers manage data privacy preferences. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include: Evidon

– Search Marketing for marketing promotion via paid and organic search channels. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include:  Doubleclick Search, Marin Software

– Social Engagement/Loyalty for managing customer engagement via social media or crowd sourced means. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include: Bazaarvoice, CrowdTwist

– Social Media Marketing for executing marketing via social media channels. IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include:  Shoutlet

– Voice of Customer for insight into customer experiences, wants and needs.  IBM Digital Marketing Network partners include: OpinionLab

For a complete list of partners, click here.

“We continuously look for opportunities to enhance the digital marketing experience for our customers,” said Craig Hayman, General Manager, Industry Solutions, IBM. “The IBM Digital Marketing Network eliminates the complexity and difficulty involved in placing third-party tags, enabling our clients to improve results, and personalize the digital customer experience in real-time.”

More information on the IBM Marketing Network can be found at

www.ibm.com/software/marketing-solutions/digital-analytics-partners/

More information on IBM Digital Marketing Optimization and the Digital Data Exchange (DDX) API powering the Marketing Network in real-time can be found at

http://www.ibm.com/software/marketing-solutions/digital-data-exchange/

IBM Spearheads New Marketing Standards Effort

In a related effort, IBM is chairing the drive to establish a new digital marketing industry standard for streamlined tag data management with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Joined by more than 80 participants from 45 industry leading companies such as Google and Adobe, the W3C issued a draft specification in July and plans to publish the final specification later this year. The specification will rally the industry around a single data model for data collection, resulting in accelerated on-boarding of new, relevant services, reduced IT burden in managing existing services and superior site performance.

“The W3C has progressed this specification very quickly, and the IBM Marketing Network and Digital Marketing Optimization solution are set to embrace this emerging standard”, said Todd Moore, Director of Interoperability and Partnerships at IBM , “By chairing this committee, IBM joined with other companies who understand that digital marketers desire flexibility, that only open standards can provide, to break through information silos and increase ROI from their marketing efforts.”

More information on the W3C Customer Experience Digital Data Community Group can be found at http://www.w3.org/community/custexpdata/

IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative features software and services that help companies transform their business processes to more quickly respond to shifting customer demands in today’s digitally-transformed marketplace. The initiative is driven by CMOs and other C-suite executives who are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of automation to marketing, sales and fulfillment to secure greater customer loyalty and improve the customer experience. More information on Smarter Commerce can be found at www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_commerce/overview/

IBM Cloud Solutions Deployment

In the cloud, IBM clients can start small, deploy departmental solutions, or pursue enterprise wide projects. They have the flexibility to move from one delivery model to another, integration technologies to manage hybrid environments connecting on-premise and cloud solutions, and a full complement of high-value infrastructure and platform services to support the CIO’s comprehensive cloud strategy. In the business-to-consumer industry, more than 60,000 users of IBM’s online digital marketing tools sent more than 130 million emails per month to engage customers. For more information on IBM’s cloud suites for the C-suite, please visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/saas-solutions-by-role.html