IgniteTech Acquires Khoros
IgniteTech acquired digital customer engagement and social listening platform Khoros, marking a strategic move to integrate AI technologies across the entire Khoros platform, including Communities, Service, and Social Media Management. The deal positions IgniteTech to address the challenge facing brands without AI-enhanced capabilities, which are experiencing up to 40% drops in visibility and engagement as AI answer engines reshape customer discovery patterns. Khoros serves 2,000 companies including a third of the Fortune 100, and the acquisition will deliver AI Expert Help functionality by mid-Q3, followed by AI Discovery Defender and AI Brand Defender integration in Q3 and Q4. The integration emphasises a human-centred approach where AI handles repetitive tasks while community managers and service agents maintain control over strategic decisions.
Reddit Launches Community Intelligence Tools
Reddit unveiled two AI-powered advertising tools at Cannes: Reddit Insights for social listening and Conversation Summary Add-ons that showcase positive user comments below ad creative. The tools leverage Reddit’s 22 billion posts and comments to provide marketers with real-time intelligence for campaign planning, creative validation, and brand health monitoring. Early testing shows Conversation Summary Add-ons delivering a 19% increase in clickthrough rates compared to standard image ads, while Publicis Groupe served as exclusive alpha tester for Reddit Insights with clients including The Hershey Company and Comcast.
AMEC Releases Barcelona Principles 4.0
The AMEC Summit in Vienna saw the release of the fourth version of the Barcelona Principles, the industry’s foundational best practice framework for communications measurement first established in 2010. The latest iteration adds clarity and practicality to measurement standards while continuing to emphasise the importance of goal-setting in communications campaigns. The updated principles maintain the position that Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) remain an invalid metric for measuring PR and communications effectiveness. The framework evolution reflects the measurement community’s ongoing efforts to establish credible, standardised approaches to demonstrating communications value in an increasingly complex media landscape.
WPP and Burson Launch AI-Powered Platforms
WPP launched Open Intelligence, described as the industry’s first Large Marketing Model (LMM) that aggregates data from over 350 partners across 75+ markets to reach up to 5 billion adults worldwide. The platform represents a “Manhattan project” effort involving teams from AI unit Satalia, InfoSum, WPP Media, and tech partners including FreeWheel, Microsoft, TikTok, and Meta. Unlike traditional models relying on consumer identity data, Open Intelligence uses a privacy-by-default methodology combining identity data with diverse non-identity sources to predict audience behavior without compromising privacy. Meanwhile, Burson introduced Reputation Capital, an AI-powered technology and consulting solution that connects reputation drivers to specific business outcomes including stock price, sales, and purchase intent. The platform analyzes eight reputation management levers using advanced AI models to predict media environment impact 24/7, with a profiling study of tech sector firms showing weekly returns shifting an average of 0.97% in direct correlation with changes in reputation scores. Reputation Capital was validated by University of Oxford’s Augmented Intelligence Labs and includes features from Burson’s proprietary cognitive AI solution Decipher. It is available through WPP Open.
PRophet Completes UNICEPTA Integration and Expands Hootsuite Partnership
PRophet completed its integration of UNICEPTA, rebranding the media intelligence capabilities as “PRophet Media Intelligence” within its comprehensive communications technology suite, positioning PRophet as the third-largest comms tech suite globally. Simultaneously, PRophet announced an expanded global partnership with Hootsuite at Cannes Lions, deepening integration of social listening capabilities into PRophet’s MIND platform while establishing mutual preferred partner status. The exclusive agreement extends to all Stagwell agencies, which will access Hootsuite’s social listening and performance services solely through PRophet.
Media Intelligence Product Updates
Here are some of the product announcements that caught our attention this month:
Meltwater hired Antony Cousins as VP of product to grow its Mira AI interface and tools, with Cousins bringing experience from Cision where he served as executive director of AI strategy after joining through the Factmata acquisition.
APO Group announced a strategic partnership with BytesView Analytics to strengthen media intelligence across Africa, integrating AI-powered tools from BytesView’s NewsData.io platform which aggregates real-time news data from over 84,000 sources in 206 countries and 89 languages.
ReadPartner announced expanded capacity to process over 5,000 trends daily through its AI-assisted analysis systems, using natural language processing algorithms to identify emerging trends with greater speed and precision for enterprise clients.
TVEyes launched Insight, a next-generation monitoring suite for audio and video intelligence that unifies digital and traditional media tracking across broadcast, podcasts, and online video, representing two years of development to create a cross-format media monitoring platform.
Acceso (formerly Rebold Comunicación) completed its rebranding back to its original name, launching with enhanced internal technology development capabilities and preparing to release acceso360 Pro, a media monitoring platform.