Pegasystems launches Pega Paid Media Manager using AI to serve more relevant digital ads

LAS VEGAS – June 5, 2017 – Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering customer engagement at the world's leading enterprises, today announced at PegaWorld the availability of Pega^® Paid Media Manager – a new Pega^® Marketing application capability that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to serve the most relevant digital advertisements at the moment of interaction. No other solution analyzes customer behaviors across both owned and paid channels to contextually adapt offers in real time. This enables marketers to hyper-personalize their campaigns, increase conversion and retention rates, and optimize return on ad spend.

Most digital campaigns still don't reflect the customer's unique situation – resulting in ads shown for previously purchased or unwanted products, or attempts to upsell when the focus should be on retention. Pega Paid Media Manager automatically makes strategic decisions in real time to serve the offer or content most likely to resonate with an individual customer at a specific moment.

Powered by AI from the Pega^® Customer Decision Hub, the solution continuously learns and recalibrates with each new customer or prospect behavior across owned and paid channels – whether it's making a purchase, browsing an online catalog, requesting service, or clicking an offer. With a deeper level of insight into customer tendencies, marketers can fully orchestrate each paid customer journey with unprecedented control – serving the most relevant ‘right now' ads wherever and whenever their prospects go online.

Pega Paid Media Manager goes beyond personalization by optimizing the return for every online ad served. The software dynamically determines the brand's willingness to pay for a specific ad shown to a specific customer as opportunities come up for bid in real time. Predictive analytics measures the likelihood the customer will click on the ad balanced against the projected financial return. This gives businesses the best possible CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for every advertising interaction – prioritizing high-value opportunities with the biggest impact while ensuring they never overpay for inventory.

Pega's unified approach to customer engagement ensures that the insights learned from ad campaigns aren't siloed away in the marketing function. Pega Customer Decision Hub collects and infuses intelligence across all stages of the customer journey in a continuous feedback loop. For example, if a customer shows interest in a Google ad served by Pega Paid Media Manager, agents using Pega^® Customer Service will be prompted to offer that product at the next point of contact if the moment is right. Now paid channels are always aligned with owned channels to ensure consistent experiences at every interaction.

In addition, Pega Paid Media Manager makes customer engagement teams more efficient by centralizing marketing and advertising control within a single user interface. This eliminates the need to switch between legacy systems or synch siloed applications to get the full picture on campaign performance. This frees the team to spend more time focusing on the next initiative.

Pega Paid Media Manager is available immediately for download for all Pega Marketing application clients. For more information go to https://www.pega.com/products/crm-applications/marketing/paid-media.

Pega Paid Media Manager was unveiled today at the annual PegaWorld conference, currently being held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from June 4-7. PegaWorld gathers industry leaders and innovators to discuss how to overcome customer engagement challenges facing businesses today. For more information or to watch the day's morning keynotes live, visit https://www.pega.com/events/pegaworld.

Quotes & Commentary

"Even as AI rapidly transforms martech and adtech, consumers still loudly complain about irrelevant ads that interrupt their online experiences," said Tom Libretto, CMO, Pegasystems. "Pega makes AI hype real by analyzing both paid and owned customer interactions in real time to optimize the performance of every digital ad. This unparalleled capability enables brands to both maximize their ad spend and deliver consistent customer experiences across every channel."

Supporting Resources:

• Product background: Pega Paid Media Manager web page
• Product background: Pega Marketing application
• eBook: Pega Customer Decision Hub
• Analyst report: Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Centers