Honda is partnering with Steezy, an online platform and mobile app that offers dance classes and tutorials for all skill levels.

The collaboration includes a video series, “Beat of the Street,” that celebrates dancers, movement, artistic expression and cultural vibrancy, while infusing car culture.

The activation marks Honda's first foray into the dance community. “Beat of the Street” highlights Honda’s commitment to providing a platform for artists and creators to pursue their dreams and embracing diverse cultural landscapes through the brand’s DreamLab platform, according to the automaker. 

The video series leverages content produced from the “Beat of the Street” event held in Los Angeles, hosted by Steezy and Honda, and aims to reshape the perception of dance competitions among the dance community and new fans of dance. 

The “Beat of the Street” video series features exclusive digital dance classes taught by up-and-coming choreographer, Josh Price, as well as special edition performance videos and a showcase featuring several celebrated dance teams.

The video series also highlights a trio of renowned choreographers performing in front of a live audience of dance teams, following the format popularized by Steezy’s YouTube series, “3 Choreographers, 1 Song (3C1S).” Each artist’s dance routine is set to one soundtrack, infusing choreography with their personal style, energy and creativity.

The event featured live dance workshops that highlighted the Honda Prologue SUV, Civic Type R and Honda S2000. 

The video series is available on Steezy’s mobile platform. Additionally, this content will be compiled into a playlist available on Honda Creative Studio's YouTube page.

B2B marketers are in an expensive mood as they allocate resources for acquisition marketing, judging by The State of B2B Customer Acquisition, a study from Stirista, conducted by Ascend2.  

Of those polled, 89% are positive about meeting their marketing goals this year. That may reflect spending — 72% expect an increase in acquisition initiatives over the next two years.  

Specifically, 31% anticipate significant hikes in budgeting for partner programs:  Mobile (in-app) will see a 30% increase, and video 29%. That said. 65% say they will be adjusting their budgeting in the coming two years.  

Email does not seem to be one of the bigger channels: 18% are devoting 25% of their budgets to email, versus 47% who are doing so for live events and 40% for mobile (in-app). Yet email ranks third as a successful channel, cited by 13%, compared to social media (22%) and digital advertising 16%). 

By sector, marketers are focusing on these channels:

• Financial Services — Social media, Email, Digital Advertising, Live events, Mobile (in-app)
• Information Technology — Social media, Digital Advertising, Partner Programs, Email, Mobile (in-app) 
• Business Services — Digital Advertising, Email, Live events, Social media, Virtual events
• Agency — Social media, Digital Advertising, Traditional (postal, billboard, call center) Live events, Mobile 

The respondents seem sure of themselves — 49% say they have at least moderately mature acquisition programs. Of those with highly mature strategies, 36% saw a significant increase in revenue versus 17% of those with moderate or low maturity. 

However, 47% of B2B marketers say data quality and availability are the biggest challenges in reaching and engaging with customers.  

“As in-person meetings and other previous tried-and-true personal sales and marketing tactics fell away due to the pandemic, B2B marketers had to quickly pivot to digital channels,” says Mike Hilts, senior vice president of product at Stirista.  

Hilts adds, “While digital channels have been embraced, savvy marketers are taking a hybrid approach in digital personalization and in-person connections through live events and partner programs that leverage the best of both worlds of new data and technology.” 

Ascend2 surveyed 202 B2B marketing leaders. 

Navigating the modern market landscape requires more than just awareness of trends. Actionable strategies are needed to meet consumers’ evolving demands. So here are eight current trends that define the current marketing landscape -- and how brands can incorporate strategies in response.

Consumer changes. As the speed of business accelerates, the ability to be responsive to changes in consumer tastes must accelerate, too. Use project management platforms for faster marketing methodologies. Real-time monitoring tools can track changes to consumer behavior.

Suggested tools: Trello, Asana, Google Trends, SEMrush

AI and automation takeover. Experimenting with AI-generated content is critical. Implement AI-powered marketing automation platforms for tasks such as email marketing, lead nurturing, and content personalization. Leverage machine learning algorithms to analyze customer data and generate personalized recommendations and content.

Suggested tools: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, HubSpot, Marketo, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics

 Evolving data privacy laws. Fifteen states now have data privacy laws on the books. Privacy management platforms can audit data collection and storage practices, ensuring compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations. Implement consent management solutions, providing transparent opt-in/opt-out mechanisms for data collection and processing.

Suggested tools: OneTrust, Termly

Customer alignment with brand values, sustainability practices. Most younger adults support climate initiatives regardless of their voting habits, according to Pew Research. Integrate sustainability into brand storytelling, emphasizing alignment with environmental and social responsibility. Showcase certifications like B Corporation or partnerships with organizations like 1% for the Planet. Educate your audience about your sustainable practices. Case studies and testimonials can demonstrate commitment to environmental stewardship and corporate social responsibility.

Customers value transparency and trustworthiness. Consumers must evaluate brand trustworthiness in a world where they might only do business with you once, from a distance, as opposed to walking to the corner store and chatting with the owner. Use review management platforms to gather and display customer reviews, enhancing transparency and credibility. Incorporate trust badges and security certifications to assure customers about the safety and integrity of your website.

Suggested tools: Trustpilot, Yotpo, Norton, McAfee

 Data-driven decision making. As consumer tracking data becomes more granular, sorting through it to capture the metrics essential to your company’s success is critical. Implement analytics platforms for real-time tracking of KPIs and measurement of marketing effectiveness. Enable data-driven optimization of website content and user experiences.

Suggested tools: Google Analytics 360, Google Looker Studio, Tableau, Adobe Analytics (for real-time tracking of KPIs); Google Optimize, Optimizely (A/B testing and multivariate analysis)

Diversification of content formats. Making and sharing high-quality videos and animations on a limited budget has never been easier. Consider how and where videos can enhance your brand along with written and photographic content.

Suggested tools: Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud apps (for creation); YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, LinkedIn (for distribution)

Optimization for voice search. Voice search is booming, and brands must optimize their content for this growing subset of potential customers and clients. Optimize website content for natural-language queries, ensuring clear and concise answers to common questions. Enhance local SEO and focus on mobile-friendliness to improve visibility in voice search results.

Suggested tools: SEMrush, Moz Pro, Google Search Console

Data on millions of PayPal users should boost its new advertising business run by Mark Grether, who formerly led Uber’s advertising group. At least that’s what the company hopes as targeting signals vanish.

Grether joined the company Tuesday as senior vice president and general manager of PayPal Ads. He grew Uber Advertising into a $1 billion business with more than 500,000 advertisers globally. Prior to that, he supported Amazon’s ad business and also was co-founder and global COO of WPP’s Xaxis.

John Anderson also has joined as senior vice president and general manager of the Consumer Group. He spend a decade at Meta working in a variety of roles, such as head of product for Oculus, and headed a team of products and operations for its commerce, payments and risk department.

PayPal plans to build an ad-sales business on the data it has collected throughout the years. That means first-party data on purchases, spending behaviors and services, and will include data from its Venmo app. Venmo came with PayPal’s acquisition of its parent company, Braintree, in 2013 as part of its $800 million deal. 

The ad business will include PayPal Advanced Offers, a platform that uses customer data aimed at driving better advertising results.

The move gives PayPal advertisers access to highly targeted inventory that provides a combination of high-intent and lower-funnel traffic, according to Ben Riggle, managing director of North America at Channable, a data fee management tool. “Financial services companies have access to extremely valuable data and, in the case of PayPal, access to a large selection of diverse inventory, neither of which are fully monetized without an advertising network,” Riggle said.

Riggle said the move gives PayPal the ability to “participate in two parts of a sale by collecting advertising revenue and then collecting payment transaction revenue.”

PayPal could offer more advanced targeting than is typically possible through retail media, he said. Its Advanced Offers Platform allows for targeting based on purchases down to the SKU level and works as a pay for performance ad system, which Riggle believes will likely become more attractive for advertisers and help PayPal grow its advertiser base quickly.  

Chase launched an ad business in April that uses payment data to serve targeted ads across its digital platform called Chase Media Solutions, a new digital business that provides brands with the ability to connect directly with the company's 80 million customers.

Chase Media Solutions serves as a key conduit for brands, connecting them with consumers’ personal passions and interests. In turn, Chase customers benefit from personalized offers and the ability to earn cash back with brands they love or are discovering for the first time. The service relies on Chase's first-party financial data, institutional credibility and precise targeting capabilities.

After launching to paying subscribers last November, Playables -- YouTube’s “app store” of free, “lightweight, entertaining” games -- is now rolling out to all users on the Google-owned video-sharing platform, bolstering new competition in the mobile gaming world.

Users can now head directly to YouTube’s home page, either on desktop or the iOS and Android app, to find Playables in the Explore menu.

The company has released over 75 individual titles, including “Angry Birds Showdown,” “Words of Wonders,” “Cut the Rope,” “Tomb of the Mask,” and “Trivia Crack” that users can play and share with friends.

Other offerings include older games like Stack Bounce, which premiered on Google's original HTML minigames service, GameSnacks.

Players will be able to save their game progress as they go, tracking their best scores.

A smaller selection of Playables games originally launched to subscribers last year during a tumultuous period in the gaming market, with ByteDance announcing a mass layoff to restructure Nuverse, its gaming division, and Amazon cutting 130 jobs in its free games unit.

But competition in the free-games and mobile games industry is growing. Meta has made it easier for game developers to publish beta versions of their Instant Games directly to Facebook without review, Netflix is gaining traction with its gaming business, LinkedIn released its first three games on mobile and desktop, and Sony is developing an online store for mobile Playstation games.

Playables may add to the competition, with the possibility of cutting into the App Store’s free games offerings, which generate revenue for Apple via ads. YouTube may be preparing to facilitate additional cash flow via new ad placement opportunities while also retaining engagement of its 2.5 billion users between watching and sharing videos.

YouTube says the games on Playables should become available to everyone within the coming weeks.

Reach and addressability to connect brands to consumers without cookies may seem simple, but for many firms without multiple targeting options, prompting consumers to click on an ad can become complicated.

Research from Infillion reveals increasing concern that the advertising industry has entered a “zero-click” era. Some in the industry point to the increased use of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI).

The study found consumers are three times more likely to navigate directly to the brand’s website in a different browser window or use a search engine to look up the brand rather than clicking on an ad.

Marketers agree there is not one single solution to targeting ads without cookies, so companies try to fill in the gaps with partnerships.

Infillion, a global media-buying platform that combines true[x] and MediaMath services, partnered with Experian, which provides an identity graph that allows companies to understand and connect household to users and devices, to fulfill one of those goals. And when integrations run smoothly, it makes everything much easier.

Chris Feo, chief revenue officer at Experian, said the integration is free of challenges. “This is like an assembly line,” he said. “It’s fully automated. There’s no human interaction from us. It’s really about how quickly our customer can bring the product into their system.”

Feo noted that the firm has the capability to build processes on top of the data rather than just ingesting it.

Experian decided to partner with Infillion because of the comprehensive data sets the company can access as a buy-side and sell-side platform. The company is more than just a technology or service provider, and Feo said its capabilities provide an interesting combination.

Infillion’s offerings seem to integrate well with Experian’s underlying identity graph, which includes information such as addresses and devices. It does not have generative artificial intelligence (GAI) or AI built in for privacy reasons, but Consumer View -- a predictive audience and attribute product -- does. This type of product includes household annual revenue and a list of hobbies or intent to buy a vehicle of upgrade golf clubs.

Feo expects these types of products will increase their use of GAI for ad targeting. “You’re always going to need an underlying seed dataset,” he said, adding that GAI will build out predictive look-a-like models during the next two to four years, as “the industry is just beginning.”

Infillion began as a location-based ad company. In 2020, when the company was known as Gimbal, it acquired true[x] from Disney, and within the past year acquired MediaMath, which allowed it to add a demand side platform (DMP).

Ben Smith, vice president of product for Infillion’s data products division, said brands need several types of technologies to maintain the same reach and targeting that cookies had.

The three technologies include:

• Cohort-based solutions like Google Privacy Sandbox and contextual targeting, which do not have a sense of identity.
• Household-level identity is another layer of solutions.
• Universal IDs is the third component to this stack. 

“If you’re not integrating all three types of ID, you will not be able to get the same reach and addressability,” Smith said.

Infillion has a GAI platform called Brain, which advertisers use to optimize campaigns. 

MediaMath’s proprietary AI performance model automatically allocates budgets to the best performing strategies and channels.

The company also has SDK integrations with streaming publishers, which enable it to capture survey data -- as well as an integration with mobile publishers to capture location data. The data is collected without cookies through an opt-in value exchange. From that data, predictive audiences are built.

General Motors has filed for patents for a system that aims to prevent road rage by taking control of the car.

The 10-page patent filing was registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in November 2022 but was published on May 16. 

"Dubbed ‘Vehicle Occupant Mental Wellbeing and Countermeasure Deployment’ the system focuses on a series of sensors and modules that analyze and evaluate what’s happening in a car equipped with the system,” according to Headlight News. “While the patent filing itself doesn’t explicitly say the system is designed to counter road rage, there are plenty of subtle hints in the patent itself suggesting this is indeed the case with GM saying the system aims to prevent ‘an undesirable situation’ behind the wheel with the system in place. 

If the system detects that the driver’s mental wellbeing is below a desired level, it can deploy various countermeasures.

“These might include adjusting the vehicle’s speed, providing alerts, or even suggesting a break,” according to GM Authority. “The system can also send notifications to the driver’s mobile device to encourage actions that improve their mental state. The system also describes how the ADAS can fully take over certain driving functions if the driver’s condition warrants such an action. The level of countermeasures deployed is directly related to driver’s level of mental wellbeing, as measured by onboard modules.”

While the patent doesn’t use the words “road rage,” the behavior describes seems to be similar.  

“So if you're swerving, tailgating, and cussing up a storm, the system may decide your mental state isn't the best for driving and implement numerous steps to correct the situation,” according to Motor1. “It starts with a simple alert, recommending an ‘exercise’ like taking a deep breath. The next level recommends calling someone (using the vehicle's hands-free system of course) but the third level automatically calls a trained advisor to talk you down, like it or not.”

As with all patents, there's no guarantee that this idea will ever reach production. 

"Driver alerts and phone calls are certainly doable, but larger questions about the forced activation of driver-assist systems could be an issue,” according to Motor1. “ n any case, keep your cool out there. Otherwise, your future vehicle could put you in time-out until you regain your senses.”