Named VirtualSKY, the platform is Airpush’s latest attempt to move the needle in mobile advertising by introducing VR to premium advertiser experiences.

As tech behemoths like Facebook, Google, and Samsung step up to take virtual reality into the mainstream, Airpush is similarly doing its part within this pioneering parade. But is mobile advertising ready for virtual reality? Airpush thinks so.

“VirtualSKY has been designed from the ground up to deliver gorgeous, immersive, virtual reality advertisement experiences from the world’s top brands and advertisers into virtually any VR app,” the Los Angeles-based ad network explained in a news release.

Without question, Airpush is certainly looking in the right direction for a growth market. According to the latest industry estimates, VR is now expected to reach $4.7 billion in sales of software as soon as 2018.

Detecting an opportunity to satisfy a market need, Airpush set out to change the little-publicized fact that until now, there has been no scalable monetization solution for virtual reality developers to consistently generate revenue and, correspondingly, no way for advertisers to place ads inside of content.

So how does it work? Airpush asserts that its VirtualSKY platform overcomes two of the biggest thorns in the side of advertisers seeking to connect with the masses — slow load times and scalable inventory.

By using proprietary technology to eliminate the plodding pace customary with massive virtual reality files, Airpush promises that its new platform can deliver exceedingly fast, pre-cached streaming that practically rids load times from the mobile ad experience while also reducing skipping.

Additionally, the company is quick to point out that integrating with VirtualSKY is an uncomplicated task as it can be swiftly integrated into any VR app. And when you consider that Airpush already integrates into more than 150,000 mobile apps globally, it’s easy to see why the company is optimistic about VirtualSKY’s prospects to “expand at a rate that will bring campaign scale in line with other digital mediums faster than any other offering in the space.”

Taking a page from its popular decision earlier this year to extend to advertisers the opportunity to have their Abstract Banners customized by Airpush’s design team specialists at no extra charge, VirtualSKY advertisers will also have “dedicated access” to complimentary virtual reality design services, something that will allow for campaigns to be created and launched within a matter of days.

“Virtual Reality has received the endorsement and investment of virtually every major player in the tech industry,” says Cameron V. Peebles, Head of Global Marketing for VirtualSKY and Airpush. “From Google to Sony to Facebook, options for VR content development have exploded while any real monetization or advertising capabilities have yet to emerge. VirtualSKY is the first platform to offer both of these.”

To learn more about VirtualSKY, check it out here.

“Urban Airship Connect makes it simple for digital marketers and data teams to select and stream granular mobile signals of customers’ interests, preferences, and intentions to any other business system, driving actions within marketing automation platforms, ad targeting solutions, business intelligence systems, customer databases and more,” the company tells us.

The launch is boosted by 10 partners with connections to more than 50 business systems. As a result, marketers and data analysts “can put mobile user-centric insights to work in minutes.”

While mobile app usage is pegged at five to 10 times higher than Web activity, the sheer volume of behavioral mobile data has been limited by existing approaches.

“With Urban Airship Connect, marketers and data analysts can easily zero in on the exact mobile insights necessary to drive automated and targeted actions in other systems,” notes the firm in its news release. “For example, businesses can instantly send a persuasive win-back email the moment a user uninstalls an app; notify a sales associate when a VIP customer is looking for answers in-store; present a can’t miss Facebook offer based on the product they just researched; feed mobile campaign and audience data to BI solutions for cross-channel attribution and to understand mobile’s ROI impact on the business; and more.”

Existing Urban Airship customers can simply “turn on” Urban Airship Connect, while new customers benefit from only needing a single SDK.

“Mobile is the most personal, permission-based experience brands can have with customers, and now they have a powerful solution to use real-time behavioral insights as powerful triggers for actions in any other system,” said Brett Caine, president and CEO at Urban Airship. “Today, we are moving the mobile industry forward with a commitment to an open omnichannel approach where data freedom empowers businesses to act with insight and benefit from prior investments in business systems.”

There are a host of things, assuredly, but one biggie is the inclusion of more people who represent the diversity of the country.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) wants to do something about it. The IAB just revealed plans to strengthen diversity in the digital media and marketing industries.

“The Diversity Dividend and the Looming Skills Gap in the Interactive Media Industry,” a report it released this week, “summarizes the current state of the interactive media and marketing workforce and reveals next steps the Foundation is taking to educate, welcome and sustain a growing industry that embraces racial, gender, economic, and cultural diversity,” reports the IAB.

The Foundation will establish a dedicated initiative called iDiverse, capable of training 2,000 entry-level candidates, increase the diversity of the ecosystem’s candidate pool by 50 percent, and increase total employee diversity and retention statistics by 25 percent by 2020.

The publication merges findings from “Voices United,” a four-month, multi-city diversity workshop and listening tour co-led by AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, who serves as IAB Education Foundation Chairman of the Board, and Freada Kapor Klein, Founder of the Level Playing Field Institute and Co-Chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact.

“For the first time in U.S. history, the majority of K-12 students are ‘minorities’; this is our future workforce,” said Armstrong. “Collectively, we need to connect with all of our customers, and diversifying the industry is the only solution. The establishment of iDiverse will put the digital media and marketing arena on a path of growth in lockstep with our audience.”

“In the immediate future, the IAB Education Foundation and iDiverse plan to build relationships with science, technology, engineering, and math-focused nonprofit organizations serving underserved populations to attract a more diverse applicant pool, and partner with educators online and on-the-ground to recruit, train, and qualify candidates who reflect the consumer base of our member companies,” explained the IAB.

“The most diverse communication medium in history needs to reflect the full breadth of its users,” said Michael Theodore, Senior Vice President, Learning and Development, IAB, and General Manager of the IAB Education Foundation. “Creating iDiverse to expand our nonprofit, education, and funding partners will be a critical next step towards building a qualified workforce that will reflect the diversity of our industry’s consumer base.”

Evolving Systems, Inc., a leader in activation, enablement and management of services for connected mobile devices worldwide, says it is acquiring privately held Sixth Sense Media (SSM), a provider of real-time analytics and marketing solutions to global wireless carriers.

Sixth Sense Media, based in Durham, North Carolina, is a software technology company, serving multiple carriers around the world. Their software solution, Real-time Lifecycle Marketing, or RLM, platform enables carrier marketing departments to “innovate, execute and manage highly-personalized and contextually-relevant, interactive campaigns that engage consumers in real time.”

Combining SSM’s real-time analytics and campaign capabilities with Evolving Systems’ Dynamic SIM Allocation (DSA) and Mobile Data Enablement (MDE) solutions will allow the Company to offer global wireless carriers solutions that utilize the highly valuable contextual data captured from the subscribers’ initial welcome experience via DSA, their network usage via RLM and their on-device app usage via MDE.

“Evolving Systems’ acquisition of Sixth Sense Media is strategic, enabling us to augment our industry recognized strength in real time activation and aggressively move into the high value space of mobile marketing campaigns, advertising and analytics,” said Thad Dupper, Chairman and CEO.

Agilysys, Inc., a leading global provider of next-generation hospitality software solutions and services, is among the most -buzzed-about brands at G2E today.

According to mGamingWatch, the company has just announced that its solutions will be showcased at this year’s ‘Integrated Resort Experience at G2E,’ which is taking place at the Global Gaming Expo inside the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas.

They will demonstrate the Lodging Management System (LMS) property management solution, the InfoGenesis Flex mobile point-of-sale system and the rGuest Buy self-service kiosk solution.

“The Integrated Resort Experience is an innovative and interactive platform that presents leading non-gaming technology, products and services as guests would experience them in a gaming-resort setting,” Agilysys said today. “The event features amenities that complement the casino-gaming floor, such as dining, live entertainment, guestroom concepts and spa offerings. The event will connect casino properties with solutions that entice visitors, increase spending and lengthen stay.”

The news follows recent meetings between Indian heads of state and company executives.

According to Medianama, Qualcomm will invest in IOT startups, but few other details are known, particularly with regard to which startups.

Qualcomm ventures has been investing in startups in India since 2007 and some of its portfolio companies include online real estate portal Housing, Reverie Language Technologies(which operates the multilingual Android keyboard Swalekh), traffic information provider Traffline, mobile application development and distribution company AppsDaily, medical services company Portea Medical and mapping services company MapMyIndia.

Qualcomm ventures has already invested in 12 companies in India.

“Making matters worse, marketers are focusing their efforts on channels such as websites and search, from which consumers have largely moved on, at the expense of developing more valuable skills in far more important channels such as mobile and video,” the report authors tell us.

For the report, “The Talent Revolution in Digital Marketing,” the BCG Digital Capabilities Index (DCI) was created. The index ranks companies on eight digital skills and seven channels against a best-practice score of 100.

BCG surveyed 57 companies in the UK and Germany. The average company in the survey scored 57. While a few companies ranked higher than 70, the majority fell squarely into the 55-to-60-point range. The report makes it clear that some Industries, including retail and financial services, were at the bottom of the pack.

“Marketers’ priorities also reveal a disconnect with consumers’ digital behavior,” notes the firm. “When asked to identify their teams’ top three learning and development needs for the next 12 months, marketers across the board stressed strategy development and planning (an area of broad current strength).”

The problem? The marketers gave lower priority to the areas that actually matter in today’s digital advertising world, such as video, mobile advertising, display media, and testing.

For instance, in terms of video — using the technology to keep consumers engaged with a brand — a mere 13 percent of respondents said their companies are good at this.

“Companies are a lot further behind consumers than they probably thought,” said Dominic Field, a BCG partner and report coauthor. “The good news is that most companies are starting from the same place, and since digital talent is scarce, those that move quickly can open a lead that others will have a hard time closing.”

The BCG report was commissioned by Google Digital Academy. The Knowledge Engineers contributed insights and advice. The report is part of The Talent Revolution Initiative, which includes Google, BCG, and a team of marketing industry experts.

The report can be downloaded here.

Last week, Growmobile was a contributing sponsor at the Gaming Insiders Summit in San Francisco. The event, the largest gathering of professionals in the videogame industry, saw Growmobile demonstrating its enhanced mobile marketing solutions, including its recent addition of Instagram advertising.

“Kicking off October’s events, Growmobile will participate at the National Retail Federation Shop.org digital summit, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on October 5 to 7, as a sponsor and exhibitor,” the company says. “Shop.org has become one of the most important annual events for digital and multichannel retailers. Growmobile’s team (is) led by its Global CRO, Ms. Joanna Sammartino Bailey.”

Growmobile’s user acquisition platform is available as a self-serve or fully-managed solution, allowing advertisers to promote their app across the industry’s top traffic sources, including mobile ad networks, ad exchanges, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more, all via one operationally-painless interface.

“Our mobile marketing solutions provide some of the world’s best known and respected brands with unmatched user acquisition and engagement capabilities,” said Shai Gottesdiener, General Manager of Growmobile. “We look forward to showcasing our platform at these important events.”

Daniel Saks, co-founder and co-CEO of AppDirect, thinks so.

“One of the aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT) that makes the sector so fascinating — aside from the sheer cool factor of the technology itself — is the mind-boggling predictions that it inspires,” Saks writes in a column on the AppDirect blog. “Almost 40 billion connected devices adding $1.7 trillion to the global economy by 2019? Numbers like those are hard to fathom, but somehow they seem completely realistic.”

Saks knows what he’s talking about.

When AppDirect completed its latest Fortune 500 App Report (it’s annual look at how the top companies in the United States are influencing cloud service distribution and development), it discovered that 70 percent of the Fortune 100 companies now have either IoT initiatives or products.

“Digging deeper, we found that every Fortune 100 company in the telecom, transportation, chemical, automotive, food and beverage, and manufacturing sectors has an IoT program or products,” Saks notes. “Many other industries aren’t far behind, with more than 90 percent of technology companies and 85 percent of retail companies currently focusing on IoT initiatives.”

Saks shared his thoughts in advance of the full report release slated for the coming weeks.

But, in sum, he findings “reinforce the fact that the largest companies in the United States are thinking seriously about connected devices and making investments in the Internet of Things.”

In addition, Saks announced that AppDirect has acquired AppCarousel, the leading provider of app management platforms for connected cars and fleets, smartphones, smart screens, tablets, and other connected devices.

“As part of AppDirect, AppCarousel will continue to grow its business and serve its customers, while we continue to bolster our IoT capabilities and grow our rapidly expanding mobile business,” he said.

BrandID Suite is a visualization of YouTube specifically filtered and organized for brands. It helps marketers better understand the scale, quality, and opportunity of what is the undisputed global video platform champ.

“YouTube is becoming the best place for advertisers, replacing traditional media and TV because of its extensive quality content for the widest variety of topics,” the company said this week during an announcement on BrandID Suite. “However, with so much content — 400 hours of new video uploaded every minute — it can be a challenge for advertisers to know how to harness the potential it offers.”

What does it do?

Basically, BrandID Suite uses ZEFR VideoID technology to identify and organize the best videos for brands on YouTube.

“The result is the visualization of more than 6,000 topics that are grouped into larger packages to give brands and advertisers a comprehensive solution to best target their digital advertising campaigns,” a provided statement explains.

YouTube is a very big place now — but ZEFR has created a map with street signs so marketers can find their way around.

“We’re constantly developing new ways to leverage our technology and data to deliver an advantage for marketers. BrandID Suite was engineered to make YouTube more accessible for brands,” said Tom Furukawa, head of product at ZEFR. “In effect, BrandID Suite merchandises YouTube content like TV, taking a page from media’s past to lay the foundation for its future.”