The mobile advertising platform ‘AdColony’ met the stringent requirements from leading advertising accountability group, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), and received the coveted Certified Against Fraud certification.

The smartphone, our little personal all-rounder and companion in all situations, is extremely important to us not only to search for information - be it finding the nearest bank, the departure time of a train or supporting decision making. In such so-called "micro-moments" companies can offer their help to users as well, if their service or product is sought after, because such useful advertising offers will not be seen as a distraction. In the end, it gives companies a chance to connect with consumers at the very moment their attention to communication is the highest. How that works and what exactly Micro Moments are, I want to explain in the following:

The Japan Cybercrime Control Center (JC3) and the global counter-cybercrime association APWG just released a report detailing the enormous, rapid growth in fake shopping websites pretending to be retail shopping sites, using data from the Japanese National Policy Agency (NPA). These “fake store” websites accounted for about 7,000 reports of consumers in Japan being victimized by the theft of money or their personal information between June 2016 and June 2017.

Ask a five-year-old what they want to be when they grow up. Chances are: ‘machine learning specialist’ will not rise to the top of the list. For decades, our show and tells have been catwalks for classic capitalism, where mini pilots and policemen strut their oversized uniforms for kindergarten audiences. We’re very comfortable with our kids wanting a career as a doctor or a lawyer when they grow up; we may even entertain the idea of builder or architect for some years. But, at the end of the day, when varsity fees are all paid up, we’re still pulling our old-school paradigms, like a hood, over our eyes and expecting our kids to have the same jobs that we’ve had.

Apparently, mobile optimization, the preparation of the corporate website for optimal display on smartphones and tablets, is deemed negligible by many marketing or sales decision makers - in the otherwise often very innovative, industrial companies.

According to a survey published by Reuters Plus, executives think platforms should do more to combat fake news. Of the 1,587 global executives surveyed, 87% think Google and Facebook should do more to control fake news, while 81% believe that Google and Facebook should be held accountable for content.

The cost of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors has decreased remarkably over the past decade, heralding new possibilities of a renewed push for smart cities. With worldwide spending on IoT predicted to surpass the USD$1 trillion mark by 2020, this has increasingly attracted attention within the various sectors.

First, there was the big data hype and now the AI boom engrosses marketing, although none on its own can create data on its own. Since big data gurus once told us that we would only need to collect as much information as possible about our customers to know everything about them, we lived the misconception, but it soon became clear that you can’t find the needle in the haystack by accumulating more hay. Neither does it get easier to find the relevant information about a customer by collecting more data about him.

Organizations are increasingly adopting video and live streaming: from how-to guides for customer service, corporate portraits for marketing purposes or employer branding, to live streaming for internal communications and investor relations.

At ConnecTechAsia, the new mega technology event in Singapore, Irdeto just launched its Android TV security solution named “Irdeto Armor”, which has been designed to protect the device, data and services built on Android TV.

Reuters just unveiled a personalized news app designed to help business professionals make better decisions.

Simply having predictive models that suggest what might be done won’t be enough to stay ahead of the competition, Bill Frank states in his article “Let algorithms decide – and act – for your company”, part of the Harvard Business Review “Predictive Analytics in Practice”.

The trend away from shopping in retail stores to online ordering is gaining momentum, but how can retailers counteract this trend? One possibility is the use of augmented reality, a form of so-called mixed reality. Generally, no costly technologies are necessary because the customer brings his smartphone directly to the point of sale (POS), hence, carrying the necessary equipment with him. AR enhances reality perception by computer-aided information. In retail, these can be the display of product information, offers, product recommendations or navigation through the store. A special form of augmented reality is the AR mirror through which customers can see themselves and virtually test jewelry or clothing.

In the age of digitization, the consumption of content across different channels often changes quickly. Anyway, the search for content itself has remained relatively constant, since search engines are dominant for many years - with Google taking the lead and being far ahead of all competitors. At least, we see as well more and more digital assistants with speech recognition entering the market, like Apple Siri, Samsung Viv, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana, Facebook M, SoundHound Hound and Google's own product Google Home.