Mediaocean to Acquire Flashtalking, Adding Complementary Solutions to Power $200 Billion in Annualized Media Spend

Combined companies will establish the most trusted, independent technology platform for omnichannel advertising with emphasis on cross-channel video and dynamic creative

NEW YORK, July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mediaocean, the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising, and Flashtalking, the leading independent ad management platform, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement in which Mediaocean will acquire Flashtalking. The combined entity will infuse Flashtalking’s best-in-class solutions for primary ad serving, creative personalization, identity management, and verification with Mediaocean’s modern system of record used by the world’s leading brands and agencies.

The announcement comes at a critical inflection point for the advertising industry as marketers seek trusted, independent solutions to manage the rise of big tech. Mediaocean and Flashtalking customers will benefit from comprehensive and future-forward solutions for global strategic planning, omnichannel media management, closed ecosystems optimization, and financial reconciliation across traditional media, open web, closed ecosystems, and connected TV.

“Bringing together Mediaocean and Flashtalking is an incredible opportunity for our customers, employees, and the industry at large,” said Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean. “Flashtalking is the source of truth for digital and CTV ads and Mediaocean is the system of record for all media. Combined, we will deliver comprehensive and future-forward solutions for omnichannel advertising. Most importantly, our platform is not compromised by media ownership so we can focus solely on driving outcomes for marketers and their agency partners.”

“Our mission of enabling marketers to move consumers to action is a perfect fit for Mediaocean’s vision of a world where marketers market the way consumers consume,” said John Nardone, CEO at Flashtalking. “Over the years, we’ve built the most trusted, independent platform for driving advertising relevance and improving campaign performance. Together, our teams and complementary tech will help brands succeed in a future dominated by converged media and anchored on cookieless identity resolution.”

“As we continue to innovate, it’s crucial to have technology that enables us to meet the moment for consumers,” said Deborah Wahl, CMO of General Motors. “It’s encouraging to see companies like Mediaocean and Flashtalking come together to deliver on the omnichannel advertising imperative. The industry needs a neutral and independent player in the ecosystem to enable media convergence.”

“The combination of Mediaocean and Flashtalking signals a critical milestone as the industry moves towards open and interoperable solutions,” said Paul Gelb, Head of Digital Activation and Investment at Bayer. “One of the biggest opportunities in modern media is connecting technology across planning, buying, ad serving, and creative optimization. With Flashtalking, Mediaocean has improved its potential value proposition for omnichannel advertising.”

The acquisition of Flashtalking by Mediaocean builds on a partnership the companies launched in 2018 to incorporate ad serving data into media buyer workflow. The combined entity will represent an advertising technology platform with over $200 billion in annualized media spend and over 1 trillion monthly ad impressions. Earlier this year, Mediaocean announced its new product paradigm that unifies solutions across media intelligence, management, and finance. The company’s product transformation and emphasis on culture have been recognized with Customer’s Choice designation from Gartner Peer Insights1 and Best Places to Work by Ad Age.

The global advertising industry is a $700 billion market2 undergoing major transformation due to changing consumer habits and privacy expectations. This has led to the rise of CTV and closed ecosystems in which Mediaocean made a large investment via the acquisition of 4C in July 2020 and, now with Flashtalking, will enhance its best-in-class solutions. The combined companies will enable a number of innovative value propositions for advertisers and agencies:

  • Unified planning and measurement of traditional and digital media including cross-channel video
  • In-flight campaign optimization through AI-driven recommendations and automation
  • Data-driven creative personalization across open web and closed ecosystems
  • Flexible identity resolution to enable omnichannel reach in a cookie-less world as well as privacy compliance with CCPA and GDPR
  • Advanced brand insights and analytics for media impact on sales conversions

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to Flashtalking and Travers Smith LLP and Goodwin Procter LLP as its legal counsel.

About Mediaocean
Mediaocean is the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising. With more than $200 billion in annualized media spend managed through its software, Mediaocean connects brands, agencies, media, technology, and data. Using AI and machine learning technology to control marketing investments and optimize business outcomes, Mediaocean powers campaigns from planning, buying, and selling to analysis, invoices, and payments. Mediaocean employs 1,200 people across 20 global offices and is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio. Visit www.mediaocean.com for more information.

About Flashtalking
Flashtalking is the leading global independent primary ad server and analytics technology company. The company uses data to personalize advertising in real-time, independently analyze its effectiveness and enable optimization that drives better engagement and return on spend for sophisticated global brands. Flashtalking’s platform leads the market with innovative products and services to ensure creative relevance and actionable insights across channels and formats, powered by unique cookieless tracking, data orchestration and advanced analytics. Flashtalking supports clients at the crossroads where data, personalized creative and unbiased measurement intersect with expertise, service and a deep partner ecosystem to drive successful digital marketing. The company is part of the TA Associates portfolio.

Media Contact
Aaron Goldman
CMO, Mediaocean
Press@mediaocean.com

1 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice constitute the subjective opinions of individual end-user reviews, ratings, and data applied against a documented methodology; they neither represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
2 Source: eMarketer Worldwide Total Media Advertising Spending, 2021

Zoho Advances BI and Analytics Market with New Self-Service Platform; Transforms Relationships Between Businesses and Their Data

Platform delivers new AI-powered data preparation and management capabilities, deeper augmented analytics, improved data visualization and analysis to create actionable, industry-leading business insights

Austin, Texas, July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, today announced its new Business Intelligence (BI) Platform — an AI-driven data analytics solution empowering businesses to surface precise and actionable insights through self-service data preparation and augmented analytics. Combining newly launched Zoho DataPrep with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics, Zoho’s end-to-end self-service BI Platform enables organizations to cleanse, unify, and analyze cross-departmental data, obtain an encyclopedic view of the company, and ultimately move toward a more competitive business strategy based on real-time insights.

Zoho’s BI Platform brings together pre-built, visual dashboards, comprehensive data integrations, data preparation, augmented and embedded BI, security and privacy capabilities, flexible deployment models (cloud or on-premise), and scalability. Below are four standout pillars of this platform, which allow businesses to perform better and remain competitive in their industries:

1) Augmented Data Prep and Management – Zoho DataPrep, a new application, is an AI and machine learning-driven self-service data preparation tool. The addition of Zoho DataPrep to the BI Platform allows business users to easily create and manage data pipelines that enable them to integrate, model, cleanse, transform, enrich, and catalogue data before making it ready for analysis.

2) Data Stories – Zoho’s BI Platform now offers an integrated enterprise portal builder (Zoho Sites) and presentation software (Zoho Show). Embedding live reports and dashboards into a website or presentation allows administrators to wrap additional context around data and foster more immersive discussion on business matters. Data Stories reduces friction within an organization, so that businesses can be data-driven without needing to learn new tools.

3) Augmented Analytics – Ask Zia, Zoho’s conversational AI, enables business users — with or without technical know-how — to surface data through natural language querying. Additionally, the all-new Zia Insights provides textual narration of key insights from reports and dashboards, which significantly reduces the time and effort required to explore data and glean insights. Zia Insights also includes what-if capability, enabling scenario analysis for effective decision-making.

4) Marketplace – Through Zoho Marketplace, an apps marketplace, Zoho is enabling partners to develop and publish analytical apps and integrations to complement Zoho Analytics users, thereby strengthening the BI and Analytics platform. Another dimension is the launch of deep native analytical apps, with domain-specific advanced analytics, in third-party marketplaces such as Shopify, ServiceNow and Atlassian.

The new Zoho BI Platform is built for scale and is extensible to more than 250 data sources—including Zendesk, HubSpot, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Stripe and Google—allowing businesses to integrate and analyze data sourced from diverse third-party systems. Blending with outside data sources has always been one of the key strengths of Zoho Analytics, and a value demonstrated by the fact that 60% of existing users have chosen it as their BI tool while solely running on non-Zoho applications and data sources.

The BI platform gives users on-demand insight into operational data to inform critical business decisions with the support of Zia, Zoho’s AI tool. Zia augments data preparation and visualization by using natural language querying and generation, text narration of key insights from reports and dashboards, and cognitive and advanced analytics. These self-service and real-time capabilities make it possible to capture actionable data insights to boost operational efficiency and productivity.

With more than 50,000 organizations already using it, Zoho Analytics has consistently been one of the company’s fastest growing products. Within the last two years, Zoho Analytics has grown by 30% YoY with a 40% YoY increase in the enterprise segment. The application has seen a 10% jump in customers switching from competitive platforms. Also, 50% of the customers have chosen Zoho Analytics after evaluating multiple competitive BI products. With this new BI Platform, Zoho expects above 45% YoY revenue growth.

Statements for Media:

“We originally chose the Zoho BI platform because Zoho Analytics was able to give us a complete 360-degree view of our customer journey and made it easy to blend data from multiple systems to do so. It’s only continued to innovate. While we used to spend a lot of time writing and maintaining custom scripts to import data, fix errors, and transform the data, the new platform has helped us eliminate custom scripts and manual data preparation. With Zoho DataPrep, we easily found the errors in the data and fixed them all from within the tool, and are now able to completely automate data preparation. This brings immense value to our organization as we are able to get the most relevant and accurate insight into our company-wide analytics while spending our time on more valuable tasks.” –  Claudio Cabeza, Director of Grupo Premo

“Self-service data preparation, computer-augmented analysis and in-context story telling are three important, emerging capabilities that set industry-leading BI and analytics platforms apart. The ability to build and share analytic apps is yet another differentiator, so I’m particularly excited to see Zoho enabling customers to publish breakthrough, data-driven applications.” – Doug Henschen, principal analyst at Constellation Research

“For data to be a true catalyst of business growth, there can’t be any gaps in the collection, management, or analysis process. Too few BI platforms in the market excel in both data preparation and analytics, which leaves businesses with weak — or worse, flawed — insights. Zoho’s BI Platform is industry-leading because it ensures organizations are acting on legitimate data, which can be effectively leveraged to determine new revenue streams, refocus funds, drive productivity, and overall gain a competitive edge among peers in their market.” – Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist for Zoho

“Data is now the lifeblood of any organization of every size. The ability to harness analytics and transform it into actionable insights is a strategic imperative — and something that is now far too important to be held hostage by an enterprise analytics or business intelligence team. For this reason, a new generation of self-service-first tools, such as Zoho’s new BI platform, are changing the way organizations look at the entire data-to-insight pipeline. This democratized approach enables organizations to put the power of data — from collection, through cleaning and analysis, to insight — into the hands of those who are best positioned to act upon it, and create competitive advantage as a result.” – Charles Araujo, Principal Analyst, Intellyx

Pricing and Availability

Zoho BI Platform, which includes Zoho Analytics and Zoho DataPrep, is available immediately in two versions, cloud and on-premise. For monthly option, the cloud version is $8 per user, per month. The on-premise version is $30 per user, per month. For annual option, the cloud version is $96 per user, per year. The on-premise version is $360 per user, per year.

Zoho DataPrep is also available as a standalone. The standard plan starts at $40 per month for 2 million rows including 3 users while the enterprise plan is highly customizable and the pricing is based on the customization.

For more information, please visit https://www.zoho.com/analytics/

Disclaimer: All trademarks, product names, and company names cited herein are the property of their respective owners.

About Zoho

With 50+ apps in nearly every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho Corporation is one of the world’s most prolific software companies.

Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 9,000 employees. Zoho is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India. Additional offices are in the United States, India, Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates.

Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. More than 60 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit www.zoho.com

Attachments

Sandra Lo
Zoho Corporation 
1-925-924--9500
slo@zohocorp.com

 

Inspirata Partners with King’s Health Partners ECMC and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to Evaluate the Application of AI Automation in Matching Patients with Cancer to Early Phase Clinical Trials

London, United Kingdom, July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cancer informatics and digital pathology provider Inspirata announced today that King’s Health Partners ECMC and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust will pilot its Trial Navigator™ software as part of an evaluation the organisations are conducting into how artificial intelligence based automation can improve the identification and efficiency of matching patients with cancer to early phase clinical trials. Trial Navigator’s introduction as part of a pilot evaluation within the Cancer Early Phase Trials Unit will see Inspirata collaborate with both King’s Health Partners and the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) Network Programme Office.

Delays in candidate identification and the absence of real-time visibility of open studies introduces a risk that patients miss out on trials for which they could have ultimately proved eligible. By applying oncology-specific natural language processing (NLP) to interrogate both the patient’s individual medical reports and potential trial eligibility criteria, this project will explore the extent to which Trial Navigator can help to improve bottlenecks in both identifying and matching patients to relevant clinical trials.

“At the Cancer Centre at Guy’s, we’re constantly striving to get the best possible outcomes for our patients, and sometimes that means providing them with the opportunity to enrol on trials of new cancer drugs when conventional treatments have been unsuccessful. AI technology offers the potential to better match our patients to available trials, but we need to evaluate them first to prove that they can deliver on their promise,” says Danny Ruta, Clinical Artificial Intelligence Lead, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. “We hope that the intelligent automation afforded by Trial Navigator will prove to be an effective solution for identifying greater numbers of our eligible cancer patient population for clinical trials.”

“Our patients are looking to us for assurances that all possible options and avenues associated with their care have been thoroughly evaluated,” says Debashis Sarker, Reader in Experimental Oncology in the School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Studies of King’s College London, and Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. “I am hugely attracted to any toolset which serves to augment my own understanding of the different trial options available so that I can impart this confidence and where applicable, see more patients obtain prompt access to potential new treatments in a more timely manner”.

While building on an underlying oncology NLP engine that has already been successfully deployed at over 400+ hospitals and cancer centres worldwide, Trial Navigator has been purposely designed to improve clinical trial matching by supporting both the clinician at the point of care, and trial coordinators with patient identification. Trial Navigator can also be deployed to perform instantaneous lookups against any relevant trial database.

“Digital technology will play a key role in ensuring that the UK remains one of the best places in the world to conduct experimental cancer medicine studies, so that our UK patients get access to novel therapies at the earliest opportunity. We are excited to support a project that seeks to aid clinicians in the complex and time-consuming task of matching patients to suitable trials,” says Michelle Mitchell, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, which co-funds the ECMC network.

“We could not be more excited nor proud to work with Guy’s and St Thomas’, Kings Health Partners and ECMC on this project,” says Oenone Duroe, General Manager, Inspirata Europe. “We look forward to collaborating closely with the team to validate the efficacy of AI in a clinical trial matching context, and by drawing on insights derived, support equivalent Trial Navigator engagements within the National Health Service.” 

About Inspirata Europe Ltd.

Inspirata Europe helps patients fighting cancer—and the clinicians they trust—to make every moment matter. Our comprehensive cancer informatics solutions bring disparate data together throughout the entire cancer care journey to drive informed decisions that improve survivorship.

Inspirata has assembled the most advanced and proven technologies to address the complex challenges of delivering cancer care and conducting ground-breaking research. We combine leading digital pathology solutions with automated cancer registry solutions, comprehensive cancer informatics and advanced patient engagement tools to bring users the broadest oncology informatics platform available globally. For more information, please visit www.inspirata.com or contact info@inspirata.com.

For further information about Inspirata, please contact:

Graeme Collins
Inspirata Europe, Ltd.
Tel: +44 (0)330 330 9038
E-mail: gcollins@inspirata.com

Attachments

Graeme Collins
Inspirata Europe, Ltd.
+44 (0)330 330 9038
gcollins@inspirata.com

 

Evrys Bio Awarded $34 Million from DOD to Develop a Single Drug Simultaneously Effective Against Multiple Lethal Viruses

The DTRA Chem Bio Technologies, Vaccines and Therapeutics Division forms industry partnership with Evrys Bio to accelerate treatment for alphavirus, arenavirus and filovirus infections

DOYLESTOWN, Pa., July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Evrys Bio, a biotech company developing Next Gen Antivirals, was awarded a $34.3 million contract from the Department of Defense (DOD) to develop a drug, simultaneously effective against multiple high-risk viral agents. The proposed drug intends to improve disease survival after exposure to one or more viruses from three families: alphaviruses, arenaviruses and filoviruses. Evrys Bio’s broad-spectrum antiviral technology is based on the discovery that certain human proteins, called sirtuins, normally defend the human (host) cell from being invaded by pathogens. The novel drug will target the human SIRT-2 protein.

The DOD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Chem Bio Technologies, Vaccines and Therapeutics Division executed an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement with Evrys for this effort. The milestone-based agreement anticipates five years of development from drug-prototype identification to proof-of-concept and regulatory filings.

“EVRYS stands for the Company’s vision to ultimately address every virus,” said Lillian Chiang, PhD, CEO, Evrys Bio. “This DTRA collaboration addresses highly lethal viral infection and extends our pipeline that already includes developing products to treat pan-respiratory, pan-hepatic, and pan-opportunistic viral infections.”

About DTRA

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD), is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives). The Defense Threat Reduction Agency enables DoD, the U.S. Government, and International Partners to counter and deter Weapons of Mass Destruction and Improvised Threat Networks. Under the auspice of the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, DTRA has the responsibility to manage and integrate the DoD chemical and biological defense science and technology programs. DTRA’s continued effort to enhance the combat support mission also advances public health services by developing innovative technologies that protect against biological threats. For more information, visit http://www.dtra.mil/.

ABOUT EVRYS BIO:
Evrys Bio was founded on breakthrough discoveries made at Princeton University. Whereas immuno-oncology drugs engage the patient’s immune system to fight cancer, Evrys Bio antivirals engage the cell’s intrinsic immunity to defend against infection. Evrys Bio’s vision is to develop first-in-class antivirals that are safe, address the problem of acquired drug-resistance, and provide unique broad-spectrum treatment options. This will transform the practice of medicine by addressing the infectious disease condition holistically as opposed to targeting a specific virus-type.

For more information, please visit evrysbio.com.

Contact: Lillian Chiang MBA PhD (CEO)
+1 609 874 9013
business@evrysbio.com

SOURCE Evrys Bio, 3805 Old Easton Road, Doylestown, PA 18902 USA

Toga Limited’s Wholly-Owned Subsidiary TOGL Technology Sdn Bhd Collaborates with INTI International University and Colleges for Annual Yippi Sticker Contest

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, July 12, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be sealed on 1 August between Toga Limited’s (OTC: TOGL) wholly-owned subsidiary, TOGL Technology Sdn Bhd (TOGL Technology), and INTI International College Subang, for the Annual Yippi Sticker Contest, beginning 1 August to mid-December 2021.

The MOU provides both parties an opportunity to initiate joint projects such as promotional programs and activities, on top of the institution’s panel of judges who will be assessing and evaluating all competition entries.

“This is our fourth year organizing the Yippi Sticker Contest, where we are able to provide a platform for highly creative group to express their creativity and inspiration to the fullest through their sticker creations and meet like-minded artistic individuals.

This MOU represents our continued collaboration with local universities such as INTI, and our commitment in providing an outlet for young people to tap into their creativity. This in turn increases our collection of stickers so as to provide our Yippi users with a better engagement experience as communication technology continues to advance and the sticker collections evolve with it,” said TOGL Technology Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Edward Ng Boon Chee.

INTI International College Subang, which is part of the INTI International University & Colleges under the HOPE Education Group, offers an extensive array of pathways to graduate from high-quality and career-oriented academic programs including pre-university to postgraduate courses in various academic disciplines. Apart from its campus in Subang, INTI also has campuses in Kuala Lumpur, Nilai in Negeri Sembilan, Penang and Sabah in Malaysia.

Contact:

Alexander D. Henderson
TOGA LIMITED, 515 S. Flower Street, 18th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90071
(949) 333-1603
info@togalimited.com

Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact (including, but not limited to, statements to the effect that Toga Limited or its management (the “Company”) “anticipates,” “plans,” “estimates,” “expects,” or “believes,” or the negative of these terms and other similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Company’s guidance, outlook, growth, opportunities and long-term strategy. These statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations as of the date of this release. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks associated with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the Company’s ability to execute on its long-term strategy; the Company’s ability to successfully compete in its intensely competitive industry; the Company’s ability to manage its growth; the Company’s ability to maintain or improve its operating margins; the Company’s ability to identify and react to trends in consumer preferences; product supply disruptions; general economic conditions; accounting standard changes; and other factors as set forth from time to time in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including, without limitation, the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The Company intends these forward-looking statements to speak only as of the time of this Press Release and does not undertake to update or revise them as more information becomes available, except as required by law.