The Stevie® Awards announced today the Grand Stevie Award winners in The 18th Annual American Business Awards^® competition. Winners will be honored during the ABAs’ virtual awards ceremony on August 5, 2020.  Registration for the virtual ceremony is now open.

All organizations operating in the U.S. - large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development.

This year more than 3,600 nominations were considered in the judging process by more than 230 professionals, whose average ratings determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners announced earlier this month. For a complete list of the 2020 Stevie Award winners, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Grand Stevie Awards cannot be applied for directly.  Winners are determined by a points system based on the total number of awards won in the ABAs, with a Gold Stevie win counting for 3 points, a Silver Stevie for 2 points, and a Bronze Stevie counting for 1.5. 

2020 Grand Stevie winners in The American Business Awards are as follows:

ORGANIZATION OF THE YEAR: Cisco Systems, Inc., the multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in San Jose, CA, is the most honored organization in the 2020 ABAs, earning the most award points, 44.5, for nine Gold, five Silver, and five Bronze Stevie wins.

MOST HONORED MARKETING AGENCY: Mayfield Consulting, a business-to-business marketing and sales consultancy in Concord, NC, earned 25.5 points for Stevie wins on behalf of clients such as AspenRidge Recovery, B&S Site Development Inc., Newberry Tanks and Equipment, and Richmond Alarm Company.

MOST HONORED INTERACTIVE AGENCY: George P. Johnson, the Auburn, MI-based experiential marketing agency, earned 22.5 points for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie wins for work for clients including AT&T, Google, IBM, and Infiniti, among others.

MOST HONORED PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY: Havas, the French multinational advertising and public relations company, is this year’s honoree, with several of its US-based agencies earning 22 points for Stevie wins on behalf of Loadsmart, Panda Express, Spireon, Inc., Toyota and other clients.

TOP 10:  The following organizations will also be presented with Grand Stevie Award trophies for being among the top award-point winners in the 2020 ABAs, for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevies won on behalf of themselves and/or clients.

1. PAIRELATIONS, LLC (Denver, CO and New York, NY), 36.5 points
2. Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), 32 points
3. John Hancock (Boston, MA), 30.5
4. Wolters Kluwer (several US-based divisions of the Dutch information services company), 30
5. Melissa Sones Consulting (New York, NY), 26
6. POWERHOME (Mooresville, NC), 24.5
7. Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), 22
8. 10Fold (multiple US offices), 21.5
9. SoftPro (Raleigh, NC), 19
10. The National Association of REALTORS ® (Chicago, IL), 18

 When applied to the workplace, gamification uses game elements to improve employee engagement and performance. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are continuously measured to allow employees to compete against their past performances or to work toward prearranged goals. The concept is somewhat akin to wearing a fitness tracker, but instead of monitoring movement, the process looks at professional achievements.

Performance Management

Rather than setting annual goals, which often become less relevant as time passes, employees can set real-time goals. Achievement is measured without having to set up specific meetings or waiting until the right people are available. Many companies now are focusing their efforts on staying in the moment and adopting a coaching approach, rather than a punitive one. With this mind-set, if you notice problems developing in your business, you can correct mistakes, much like a sports coach, to adjust quickly.

Companies are choosing to focus their performance management efforts on continuous professional development by using gamification. To make the process as interactive as possible, some companies, such as Datagamz, are introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance gamification platforms. In this system, feedback is immediate, and problems can be fixed quickly by demonstrating how the employees are meeting their KPIs and established targets.

Objectivity

Gamification is all about enhancing and developing employee performance in the most objective way possible, rather than relying on subjective scrutiny. The idea is that evaluation becomes a positive process that reflects real-time progress, which will, in turn, have a correspondingly positive effect on company culture. If benchmarks are missed, then workers can be directed to courses or receive additional workplace support.

Employees are secure in the knowledge they are being treated fairly and transparently, and they feel valued in the workplace. They also feel their performance and efforts are recognized.

Transparency

Companies in the tech field, such as Google and LinkedIn, use objectives and key results to demonstrate their expectations. Employees can see their results, as well as their colleagues’. Gamification is an excellent way for staff members who do not have specific goals not only to set appropriate benchmarks but to gauge how their performance compares to others.

This process allows the employer to set general goals and ensure expectations are fair and achievable. The vision is to create an environment that treats people as individuals in order to maximize workplace performance.

Motivation Method

For many, being scored as part of a leaderboard is not a positive motivation method. What managers need to understand is that, when evaluating employees, they are not necessarily rating outcome but performance. Gamification makes sure the focus remains firmly on driving the desired behaviors. For example, a gamification platform can enable staff in contact centers to gamify the working environment in order to engage and reward employees for the right behaviors.

What’s the Game?

Various game mechanics, such as graphs, comparison charts, and rewards for reaching goals, drive engagement. Employees can continuously monitor their progress at work and engage with their goals, which is important for work performance.

Datagamz, based out of Melbourne, Australia, took a Bronze Stevie® Award at The 2019 International Business Awards® in the category of Software Tech Startup of the Year. The company understands a pivotal truth about AI, as it relates to gamification. Although AI is on the rise in the field of workplace engagement, it is vital to retain gamification’s human element to fully reap its benefits.

Interesting in entering The 2020 International Business Awards?

 

When discussing gender equality, the wage gap between men and women nearly always becomes a part of the conversation. While most people know this gap exists, not as many realize the far-reaching and detrimental impacts of that inequality.

Why Does This Gap Exist?

Before diving into the consequences of wage inequality, it’s important to look at some of the reasons the gap exists. It’s a complicated issue involving many interconnected factors, but some of the most prominent reasons include:

• Occupational segregation, wherein more men work in higher-paid industries
• Vertical segregation, with more men in senior (and, therefore, higher-paid) positions
• Nonexistent, poorly enforced, or ineffective legislation related to equal pay
• Barriers to entering the labor market, including outright discrimination, access to education, and work-hindering issues related to child-rearing

Real-World Consequences of the Gender Wage Gap

Closing the wage gap would, of course, be positive because it would be a step toward overall gender equality. However, there would be myriad other positive effects that should motivate people and businesses to make this issue a priority.

For example, gender wage inequality reduces overall economic output. While it’s certainly not the case for every woman, the wage disparity does make it more likely for females to be dependent on welfare or other social aid programs—a problem that becomes even more pronounced in old age. With less savings and fewer pensions, women are generally at a disadvantage in regard to retirement and more likely to face poverty after the age of 65. One study by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services, and Indigenous Affairs in Australia found that eliminating the 17 percent wage gap there would translate to approximately $93 billion in increased gross domestic product (GDP), or 8.5 percent of overall GDP.

Aptitude Research Partners also found that organizations that specifically prioritize gender equity perform better. They are 54 percent more likely to exceed industry average turnover numbers and 46 percent more likely to have higher year-over-year ratings on Glassdoor. With better retention rates and more engaged and motivated employees, companies are more likely to attract top talent, which then generally leads to improved customer satisfaction and higher-than-average financial returns.

In short, closing the wage gap would improve individual employee satisfaction and quality of life, improve a company’s bottom line, and positively impact an entire nation’s GDP and economic standing.

The March Toward Equality

According to the World Economic Forum, if progress continues at its current pace, it will take 108 years to close the global pay gap in the 106 countries covered in that report. This pace is a result of the slowness of global action on the topic and the sheer vastness of the gap itself.

While these numbers can seem disheartening, many individuals and companies are using them as motivation. Lauren Hasson founded DevelopHer, which is based in Dallas, Texas, United States. DevelopHer is an award-winning platform that bridges the gender wage gap, inspires, and empowers women to advocate for themselves to break glass ceilings.

The scalability and affordability offered through DevelopHer programs has allowed and empowered thousands of women to earn 26%, 43%, and 67% salary increases in just a single negotiation. Through DevelopHer, Lauren has created real change at a grassroots level. Women have also gained the confidence to secure better positions and move beyond glass ceilings, bridging the challenging opportunity gap.

Hasson just won the Gold Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year - Consumer Services in The 2020 American Business Awards® as well as a Silver Stevie® Award in the category of Female Solo Entrepreneur of the Year, and Startup of the Year - Consumer Services Industries in the 2019 Stevie® Awards for Women in Business.

Interested in entering the Stevie Award for Women in Business?

Hasson acknowledges not only the complexity of this global issue but the need to focus on local solutions.

“Pay disparity is an intractable issue that will not be solved overnight,” says Hasson, “but the DevelopHer mission is to foster engagement by businesses and individuals at a grassroots level to affect true change.”

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners in The 18th Annual American Business Awards®.

All organizations operating in the U.S.A. – large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development. More than 3,600 nominations were reviewed in the judging process this year by 230 professionals worldwide, whose average scores determined the winners.

Winners of three or more Gold Stevie Awards include:

Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA), CitizenNet & Magnitude Digital (New York, NY), Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), Crocs (Niwot, CO), Fazoli's Italian Restaurants (Lexington, KY), George P Johnson Experiential Marketing (Auburn Hills, MI), Harman International (Stamford, CT), Hearts & Science (New York, NY), Hilton Grand Vacations (Orlando, FL), Humana (Louisville, KY), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), John Hancock (Boston, MA), London Computer System (Cincinnati, OH), Mastercard (Purchase, NY), National Association of REALTORS® (Chicago, IL), Newberry Tanks and Equipment (West Memphis, AR), Nexxt Gen Corporation (Irving, TX), POWERHOME (Mooresville, NC), Red Hat (Raleigh, NC),  State Farm (Bloomington, IL), Toft Group (San Francisco, CA), and United Imaging (Houston, TX).

Among other winners, organizations with five or more Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie wins include:

Bank of America (Charlotte, NC), BMO Financial Group (Chicago, IL), Curion (Deerfield, IL), Fannie Mae (Washington, DC), LifeVantage (Sandy UT), Medical Marijuana, Inc. (San Diego, CA), Merkle (Columbia, MD), Metro Development Group (Tampa, FL), MONAT Global (Miami, FL), Pareto Intelligence (Chicago, IL), Passageways (Lafayette, IN), SoftPro (Raleigh, NC), TBI (Chicago, IL), Tek Leaders Inc (Plano, TX), Tinuiti (New York, NY), United Imaging (Houston, TX), and Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. (New York, NY).

For a complete list of the Stevie Award winners announced today, visit www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

2020 Stevie winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, August 5 at 2pm ET. Details of the event are available on the website.

The categories that recognize outstanding new products and services introduced in the USA are among the most heavily subscribed in the ABAs, and every new product or service nominated in The 2020 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting opened today at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on July 15. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of July 20 and will be honored during the August 5 virtual presentations.

“Despite the toughest business conditions in memory, American organizations continue to demonstrate their commitment to innovation, creativity, and bottom-line results,” said Stevie Awards President Maggie Gallagher.  “This year’s Stevie-winning nominations are full of inspiring stories of persistence, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and compassion.  We celebrate all of their stories and look forward to showcasing them during our virtual awards ceremony on August 5.”

Top HR Awards Program Adds Several Free COVID-19 Response Categories

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, is accepting entries in the fifth annual competition through the entry deadline of Wednesday, June 3.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers honors the world’s best companies to work for and the HR teams and professionals, HR achievements, new products and services and suppliers that help to create and drive great workplaces.

For those who miss the June 3 entry deadline, late entries will be accepted through July 22 with payment of a late fee.

All individuals and organizations worldwide—public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small—may submit nominations to the Stevie Awards for Great Employers. The 2020 awards will honor achievements since the beginning of 2019. Entry details are available at www.StevieAwards.com/HR.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers recognize achievement in many facets of the workplace. Category groups include:

• Employer of the Year
• HR Achievement
• HR Individual
• Solution Provider
• HR Team
• Solutions, Implementations, and Training Programs or Media
• COVID-19 Response

Stevie Award winners in the 31 Employer of the Year categories will be determined by a unique blending of the ratings of professionals and the votes of the general public. Public voting will be open July 23 through August 31.

Several COVID-19 Response categories were recently added to the competition to recognize the positive ways that employers and HR professionals have responded to the pandemic. These categories have no entry fee.

An international judging panel of more than 70 executives will determine the Stevie Award winners. Finalists will be announced on August 13. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will be revealed and presented their awards at a gala event in Las Vegas on September 17, or in a virtual ceremony if the awards dinner cannot be staged.

Interested in entering The 2020 Stevie Awards for Great Employers? 

Using AI in a variety of ways, Stevie-winner ThatWare LLP is optimizing digital marketing and improving customer experience.

Digital marketing is part of today’s landscape, and it's getting smarter by the minute. Smart devices abound. Consumers can ask chatbots all their questions, and artificial intelligence (AI) seems to permeate every corner of people’s lives. AI allows machines to learn from input over time and adjust their output accordingly, and that’s why it’s so valuable to businesses. By understanding consumers’ preferences and delivering personalized content, AI provides an improved customer experience, which is invaluable in digital marketing efforts.

With its ever-advancing tactics to cut out the human middleman when identifying marketing trends, AI is changing the digital landscape. Brands can leverage AI to automate their digital marketing and to save both time and money. The substantial advantages of AI technology are providing brands with the edge that gets them noticed in a competitive space.

Understanding Your Audience

AI can work to analyze data and to build a comprehensive picture of your target customers’ preferences. Once you have defined your customer personas, you can use AI to map their buying behaviors and to track their eventual purchasing decisions. As a marketer, you can use this intelligence to put products in front of your audience that they need, which makes purchasing decisions easy for them. A marketing strategy can evolve quickly and effectively with AI-driven analytics. 

Tuhin Banik, the founder of digital marketing company ThatWare LLP, aims to “positively disrupt the system” and to improve customer experience by using AI in a range of ways, including semantic engineering, natural language processing (NLP), and predictive analysis.

Productivity

The use of smart technology can help increase your productivity by allowing you to automate processes. You can outsource repetitive, time-consuming tasks and instead concentrate on strategizing and creating effective content. AI enables you to optimize the way you interact with your audience, and as AI continues to improve, the way your brand attracts new customers and keeps existing customers engaged to increase sales will continuously transform. 

Optimized Advertising

Your product or service has to reach the right audience to be successful, and with the increasing intelligence of AI, it’s simpler than ever to pinpoint your ideal customer. You can use AI to collect user information, to analyze that data, and then to predict what the customer will do or need in the future. This means digital marketers can target ads to match user data. 

You can be creative with AI too. For example, Topshop, a British high-street clothing brand, created an immersive AI experience in Moscow, Russia. Customers could download a catalog app and then use the in-store smart screens to virtually try on outfits. This innovation not only created buzz around a product, but it also allowed the brand to gather data that fed back into their AI marketing systems. Using that data, they could create even more focused campaigns in the future.

Customer Experience

AI technology allows brands to deliver an enhanced customer experience and to make their digital marketing strategies even more successful. You can use AI to track customer preferences and buying behaviors and then leverage these insights to make further suggestions. 

Digital marketing specialists are focusing on using developing technologies to advance their field in the future. In recognition of this commitment to driving faster results in digital marketing using AI, THATWARE LLP, of West Bengal, India, was presented with a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year - Business Services Industries category at The 2019 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards?

Stevie-winner The LMC Group is a consulting firm that assists small to medium-sized businesses in updating their approach to training and engagement.

Having a process of learning and development in place for your employees is vital; it is the first step to improving employee engagement. With the right training and development program, you can positively impact efficiency and productivity and retain great employees. Remember to consider your end goals when putting a training program in place. A well-thought-out program needs to work for both the company and the employees. It must also deliver what you need when you need it.

Training Goals 

Look at your training program holistically. Ask yourself why you’re doing it and how the program is going to help you. Consider the problem you are trying to solve, and evaluate how the training you have in place is going to fix it. First you need to understand how to achieve your business goals with the training program, and then you must put measures in place that ensure you reach those objectives. 

Due to funding constraints, it can be difficult for smaller businesses to implement targeted employee training initiatives. If your small to midsized company needs guidance bringing an updated approach to your training and engagement systems, consider outsourcing. A niche of companies provide this service, including the LMC Group.

“It’s exciting to bring cutting-edge approaches to organizations lacking the funding, revenue, and resources that larger firms enjoy and often take for granted,” says an LMC Group representative.

By engaging your employees and showing them the benefits of learning systems, everyone involved is more likely to have a positive experience. The most impactful way to accomplish this is by designing trainings that meet defined needs. If you can't demonstrate to your staff members that their efforts in learning and development will be useful and effective, it will be difficult to persuade them to engage and to improve their skills. 

Evolution and Evaluation

You can't expect your years-old training and development program to keep pace with your business needs, technology, and workplace advances. You need to keep your training sessions fresh if you want to keep your employees enthusiastic about their learning. Don’t put out stale content if you wish to keep moving forward. Remember, the best learning and development programs are continually evolving and improving. Evaluate your training by seeing how employees interact with the program. Don’t forget to seek their input about how to make it tailored to their needs. 

Feedback

Ask your employees and service users about their pain points. If you have defined questions or problems to solve, you can better focus your efforts on these critical areas. If you use e-learning, for example, review the end-of-unit tests to ensure no questions are consistently being answered incorrectly. If such problems do exist, this is a sign to reevaluate how certain information is presented or to expand on that point in the training. You can also review customer satisfaction responses to ensure the training you have implemented has had the desired effect.  

Even if you are a small business, you can put some measures in place. You can either do this in house or through an external consultancy that can support you with various technologies and innovations. These days you can’t rely on a tired PowerPoint presentation or some dated online learning to help your employees develop. You need goal-specific training that fits the needs of your company and your clients and makes everyone’s experience more positive. 

The LMC Group, of Manchester, New Hampshire, United States, won a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Company of the Year - Business or Professional Services - Small category at The 2019 International Business Awards®. 

Interested in entering The International Business Awards?

Vietnam has become a popular location for business outsourcing, and Stevie-winner Swiss Post Solutions thrives on solving customer challenges in the most effective manner.

For decades, India ruled the roost as an outsourced software development destination. While it continues to attract businesses looking to build IT teams overseas, it’s not the only major country doing so. Most prominent among these emerging destinations is Vietnam. Its lower costs, favorable business policies, robust economy, and increasingly skilled workforce are driving investments from businesses like Intel, Samsung, IBM, and Microsoft.

Vietnam’s Rise Through the Rankings

In 2010, Gartner released a list of the top 30 countries for offshore IT services, and Vietnam made its first appearance in that year. Five years later, in a similar report by Gartner, Vietnam rose to one of the top five countries, and it has maintained its ranking ever since.

Vietnam’s outsourcing industry has grown between 20 and 35 percent every year over the past decade. In 2015, it surpassed $2 billion in revenue.

Spotlight on Vietnam, a PwC report released in 2017, highlighted business process outsourcing (BPO) as one of the key opportunities for foreign investors.

“The growth so far has been encouraging,” said Dinh Thi Quynh Van, general director of PwC Vietnam. “Vietnam is already the second-largest outsourcing partner for Japanese IT firms, just behind India. We hope to see many more industries in the future.”

The Vietnam Advantage

Almost two-thirds of Vietnam’s population is under 35 years of age. This young generation is highly skilled and motivated. According to a 2015 report by the World Economic Forum, Vietnam is one of the top 10 countries in terms of most engineering graduates.

Also, with the government’s push to teach English as a second language rather than a foreign language, this young workforce is actively scaling the language barrier that was once a cause for concern.

Workplace loyalty is strong in Vietnam, which is why they have low attrition rates (between 6 and 8 percent). This is another strong point in the country’s favor, as businesses grapple with high employee turnover in most Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries.

Besides an improving infrastructure and access to inexpensive, highly skilled talent, the government’s proactive efforts to attract foreign investment are also critical to Vietnam’s continued growth. The Doing Business 2020 report, by World Bank, ranked Vietnam 70th among 190 economies in ease of doing business. As of October 2019, foreign direct investment (FDI) into Vietnam has risen by 7.4 percent year over year.

Challenges in Outsourcing to Vietnam

As with outsourcing to just about any country in the APAC region, cultural, logistical, and legal challenges present themselves when working with Vietnamese providers. One way to anticipate these challenges and to learn how to tackle them is to send an on-ground team to Vietnam that can build relationships and get familiar with the Vietnamese culture. This will help organizations understand the business and political landscape, including taxation, paperwork, and procedures. It will also allow a business to get a head start on recruitment.

There are also productivity challenges that come with working with remote teams. This can be addressed by following best practices, instituting training, and ensuring extensive documentation.

Finally, Vietnam currently does not have the infrastructure to support large teams with thousands of employees. At the moment, the country is best suited for small to midsize operations.

One of Many

One of the companies that bagged a Silver Stevie® Award in the Company of the Year - Business or Professional Services - Large category at The 2019 International Business Awards® was Swiss Post Solutions Vietnam, which is based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

“We are a young, competitive, and innovative organization that thrives on solving customer challenges in the most effective manner,” says Ha Doi, corporate marketing executive at Swiss Post Solutions.

Swiss Post Solutions, which focuses on providing high-quality document management, BPO, and IT operational services, is one of many Vietnamese companies backed by a young team with an innovative culture. Any of these could be your next outsourcing match as you scale your business.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards?

As mobile ad fraud becomes more sophisticated, it becomes more difficult to catch using traditional methods. Stevie-winner Scalarr, Inc. is a mobile fraud detection company that uses machine learning to identify and prevent fraud.

Online fraud is almost as old as the internet itself, and as this technology progressed, fraud evolved and kept pace. In mobile ad fraud, fraudsters abuse mobile advertising technology to swindle online publishers, advertisers, and supply partners.

According to The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet, Ad Fraud 2019, by Cheq, a cybersecurity company based in New York, United States, direct and indirect economic and social costs of global ad fraud could amount up to $30 billion in 2019. 

“I have studied the economic costs of fraud in many sectors for decades, and I was left stunned by the scale of fraud in online advertising,” economist Roberto Cavazos said in the report.

Cavazos is a professor at the University of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, and he worked on the report with Cheq.

AppFlyer, a mobile app analytics firm headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, monitored 2.5 billion installs across 9,500 mobile apps in the first six months of 2019 and extrapolated their results to a global scale. They revealed a whopping 22.6 percent of nonorganic app installs globally could be classified as fraudulent. They published this and other findings in a report titled State of Mobile Fraud, 2019.

The Different Faces of Mobile Ad Fraud

Fraudsters attempting to steal advertising budgets are an ingenious lot. According to Stevie-winner Scalarr, a mobile ad fraud detection company based in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, new and increasingly sophisticated frauds emerge every day. These include smart bots, intelligent device farms, and mixed fraud. 

“Fraudsters have become so smart that you can’t catch them by traditional methods anymore,” says Olga Bazarova, marketing lead at Scalarr.

The AppFlyer report reiterates this sentiment. It reveals that fraudsters are reacting to protection measures at an unprecedented pace. In 2018, it took them a month or two to react; now they do so in a couple of days. 

The upshot of many of these reports is that mobile fraud is ubiquitous, and no platform or publisher is safe.

“Mobile marketers tend to believe that ‘trusted’ traffic sources, such as Facebook, Google, and ad video networks, are a panacea against fraud, and they redistribute marketing budgets there. In 2019, though, we saw a lot of examples of fraud on trusted sources, confirming that fraudsters always follow the money,” said Bazarova.

Mobile ad fraud targets all stages of online advertising, from impressions to clicks to app installs. It even targets in-app purchases. The Financial Times, a daily newspaper headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom, was shocked by the scale of domain spoofing against its site. In domain spoofing, fraudsters eat into advertising budgets by masquerading as a popular domain that can display ads.

“The scale of the fraud we found is jaw-dropping,” says Anthony Hitchings, the digital advertising operations director at the Financial Times. “The industry continues to waste marketing budgets on what is essentially organized crime.”

AI to the Rescue

The speed and scale at which mobile ad fraud has evolved indicates it’s not something mobile developers or marketers can tackle alone. Detecting fraudulent installs is a mammoth task requiring analysis of numerous parameters and correlations.

Mobile ad fraud intelligence and protection solutions are increasingly and successfully relying on machine learning (ML) and big data to identify and to prevent fraud. Scalarr, AppFlyer, Cheq, and several other companies offering fraud detection and protection use ML algorithms to counter the attacks and to ensure marketers acquire only real users.

While the assumption is that fraudsters can’t work around these AI-backed countermeasures, only time will tell how this plays out. 

Scalarr Inc. recently won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Tech Startup of the Year - Services category and a Bronze Stevie® in the Startup of the Year - Business Services Industries category at The 2019 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards?

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the ways we think about our routine habits and work environments, among other lifestyle practices. For businesses large and small around the world, the importance of putting people over profits has heightened. The mission of the Stevie Awards is to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide.

We’d like to recognize some of the ways that Stevie Awards for Women in Business winners and 2019 Women|Future Conference attendees have pivoted their services, products and strategies to help individuals, businesses and communities impacted by the virus.

While thousands of Stevie Award winners are doing incredible work in their fields during this time, here are six that make the top of our list:

1. Arco + Associates, St. Louis, MO

  

Andrea Arco is the founder and CEO of Arco + Associates, LLC, a marketing communications firm based in St. Louis, MO that serves clients nationwide. Her company is a 2019 Silver Stevie® Award for Women in Business winner in the Women-Run Workplace of the Year category. Andrea also served as a panelist during the 2019 Women|Future Conference Panel – “The Significance and Simplification of Being Strategic.” Since March 2020, the Arco team has been offering an incredible value of free 30-minute virtual consultations to any business executives and owners looking for strategic marketing advice during this time. The sessions cover everything from messaging to clients, talking through fears, remote working strategies, bounce back marketing strategies, and more. Learn more about the Arco + Associates COVID-19 response here.

 

2. ScriptDrop, Columbus, OH 

 

ScriptDrop is a nationwide prescription delivery startup. The company’s president Amanda Way is a Silver Stevie® winner for the Women in Business Awards category Female Entrepreneur of the Year – Business Services. ScriptDrop has recently switched from solely a business-to-business model to a consumer-facing one. Its prescription delivery service is making a difference in the lives of all patients who are sheltering at home without a way of getting required medications by enabling pharmacies to deliver directly to customers’ homes. ScriptDrop Founder Nicholas Potts explained this shift during this April 21^st  interview with Fortune: “The coronavirus pandemic has meant a sevenfold increase in order volumes—and the execution of a multiyear business plan in just six weeks.” Learn more.

 

3. Jeunesse Global, Lake Mary, FL

 

Jeunesse Global is a global direct selling company with a mission to impact the world by helping people look and feel young, while empowering each other to unleash their potential. The company’s exclusive skin care and nutritional products are available in more than 145 countries around the world. Jeunesse Founder and Chief Operations Officer Wendy Lewis is a Gold Stevie winner for Female Entrepreneur of the Year – Business Products. Jeunesse has added new products to its Youth Enhancement skincare line in response to COVID-19. The newest addition is the AlōClnz Hand Sanitizer single use packets. Jeunesse also recently donated $500,000 USD to COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Learn more.

 

4. Income Access (a Paysafe Company), Montreal, Quebec (Headquartered)

  

Income Access is an affiliate software provider, digital marketing agency and affiliate network that serves the iGaming, lottery and forex industries. The company received a 2019 Bronze Stevie Award for Women in Business in the Women-Run Workplace of the Year category. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Income Access key leaders have been hosting webinars about how to create a contingency plan and maintain affiliate marketing business during trying times. Income Access SVP and General Manager, Tara Wilson recently spoke on the April 22, 2020 free webinar Business as Unusual. Making Remote Work 'Work'  about keeping teams productive and connected from a distance. Tara Wilson was a Moderator on the 2019 Women|Future Conference panel “The Art of Inclusion: How to Craft Your Company's Diversity Mosaic” and is currently serving on the 2020 Women|Future Conference Advisory Board.

In addition, Paysafe has been providing solutions for small business that want to pivot their model to include an online scheduling or order ahead service using POS systems. For businesses not currently operating a sophisticated POS system, Paysafe works with their payment services provider to launch lightweight solutions such as Clover Go or Clover Flex.

 

5. TriageLogic Group, Jacksonville, FL

 

Triagelogic is a URAC-accredited physician-led company that offers leading-edge solutions for patient care management including emergency healthcare solutions that can be implemented quickly for remote monitoring. Dr. Charu Raheja is the co-founder and CEO of the TriageLogic. She and her team are working tirelessly to help as many healthcare organizations as possible during this crisis. TriageLogic is offering free COVID-19 Protocols to doctor’s offices and hospitals to efficiently triage those who may have been exposed or who are concerned about the virus. The company CTO spoke on live TV network News4Jax to explain the do's and don'ts of wearing a protective face mask. If you need help setting up a #COVID-19 hotline, contact info@triagelogic.com or call (855) 734-4463.

TriageLogic Group and Dr. Charu Raheja are 2018 Stevie® Awards For Women in Business winners. TriageLogic is a Silver Stevie® Award winner in the Company/Organization Awards category, and Charu is a Gold Stevie® Award winner in the Individual Awards category for Women in Business. Dr. Charu Raheja was a breakout session speaker at the 2019 Women|Future Conference; her session was titled “Finding Your True Self and Meaningful Support at Work.”

 

6. Noonday Collection, Austin, TX

 

Noonday Collection designs and sells jewelry and accessories made by Artisans in some of the world's most vulnerable communities. The company partners with Artisan Businesses through fair trade, empowering them to grow sustainably and to create dignified jobs for people who need them. Noonday announced on April 21, 2020  that they are partnering with @nokidhungry to help end childhood hunger. In a time when schools have closed their doors, kids in need have missed millions of school meals that their families rely on. They are also running contests on social media to nominate healthcare workers to receive healthcare packages and work appropriate Noonday accessories. Noonday Founder and Co-CEO Jessica Honegger is a 2019 Gold Stevie® Awards for Women in Business winner in the category Female Entrepreneur of the Year- Business Products.

 

About the Stevie Awards for Women in Business

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s premier business awards for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run. All organizations and individuals worldwide are eligible to submit entries to the competition. The awards feature categories to recognize achievement in many facets of work life, including:

• Entrepreneur Awards
• Executive Awards
• Achievement Awards
• Management Team Awards
• Company of the Year Awards
• Communications & Marketing Awards
• PR Awards
• Media Awards
• New Product & Service Awards
• Website & App Awards
• And More

More than 200 professionals around the world will participate in the judging process, and entrants have access to all of the judges’ comments and suggestions about their entries; an invaluable resource! Finalists are announced in early October 2020, and the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners will be revealed during the Las Vegas award ceremony on November 13, in conjunction with the 2020 Women|Future Conference.

 

Interested in nominating your business in the 2020 Stevie Awards for Women in Business? 

 

About the Women|Future Conference

This two-day conference for women encourages engaging connections, professional and personal development, and health and financial wellness through motivational keynotes, educational sessions, and networking. The mission of the Women|Future Conference is to help women share insights about the changes that will impact their businesses, their industries, their careers, and their lives.

Speakers and topics address the latest innovations and impending change in areas such as technology, sustainability, career planning, social media, government regulation, access to capital, and more. With panel discussions, a must-see keynote, plenty of networking opportunities, case studies from Stevie® winners, and a showcase of young women-owned businesses, this is an event you don’t want to miss! Learn more.

 

Registration is open for the 2020 Women|Future Conference, November 12-13 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.