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Connected Nation earns GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for ‘longest internet literacy live stream’

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CN’s 25th anniversary event brought together AT&T as the lead collaborator, Amazon, Netflix, and more than 25 partner organizations in delivering free digital skills training worldwide

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — National nonprofit Connected Nation (CN) has earned the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for the “longest internet literacy live stream” after broadcasting free digital skills training without interruption. Guinness World Records states that the record is 25 hours and was achieved by Connected Nation, Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 25, 2026.

The record recognizes the longest continuous live stream in which participants learn to use digital devices, AI tools, and the internet safely.

Broadcast live from Hatfield Media’s studios in Louisville, the marathon marked CN’s 25th anniversary with 25 consecutive hour-long sessions designed to help people build the skills and confidence to navigate an increasingly digital world. The broadcast began at 9 a.m. ET on September 24 and concluded at 10 a.m. ET on September 25.

The marathon brought together experts and community leaders for practical training on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety, digital wellness, workforce skills, digital resilience, foundational digital skills, and other everyday digital needs. The sessions were designed for people at a wide range of ages and skill levels. Training partners included educators, nonprofit organizations, community organizations, libraries, and technology organizations worldwide.

The following organizations served as digital skills trainers during the event, with each hosting one or more hour-long segments focused on a variety of topics from “AI Self-Defense” to “Navigating Digital Life Together” and more. U.S.-based organizations included: Human-I-T, Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) from AARP, Murray State University, United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), LBJ Presidential Library, Compudopt, Common Sense Media, Digital Connect Initiative — Gila River Indian Community, and Tech Savvy Teens. International trainers included: The Hacking Games (U.K.), Fizzics Education and Australian Virtual Astronaut (Australia), Aimers Foundation (India and Australia), Orissa State Volunteers and Social Workers Association (India), Tunisian Association for Educational Initiatives (Tunisia), Angaza Center (Kenya), Impact Hub Harare (Zimbabwe), Causas XXI (Portugal), and Fundación Tecnológicas Conectadas (Argentina).

“We are tremendously proud of this achievement, and it simply would not have been possible without the extraordinary partners who came together around a shared mission: helping people thrive in a connected world,” said Tom Ferree, Chairman & CEO, CN. “We are deeply grateful to our lead collaborator, AT&T, and incredible partners and sponsors, including Netflix, Amazon, the Muhammad Ali Center, Hatfield Media, Americana World Community Center, and dozens more, who brought their expertise, energy, and heart to this effort. To celebrate 25 years of Connected Nation by accomplishing something this meaningful together is a source of pride for our entire team.”

The marathon reflects CN’s work to address a Digital Divide that extends beyond internet access to the skills people need to participate fully in a connected world. All sessions were recorded and will be made available to the public at no cost, extending the training reach beyond the live event.

“Our greatest pride comes from bringing people together across six continents and shining a global spotlight on our mission,” said Heather Gate, Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation, CN. “This record gave us a powerful platform to champion the digital skills people need to pursue opportunities, improve their lives, and navigate the internet safely. Seeing that message resonate around the world is what makes it so meaningful. We are grateful to our awareness partners and to everyone who hosted watch parties that drew viewers to the live stream and sparked curiosity and excitement.”

Additional support came from sponsors Accredible and Educating for Leadership, which provided digital credentials for participants, and from awareness partners including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), Moonshot, Newby Ventures, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, and Virtual Excursions Australia. Watch parties were hosted by the Bowling Green/Warren County AARP Chapter #1967 in Kentucky and ACUTAS in Puerto Rico.

Earning the title for the “longest internet literacy live stream” also resulted in the first “Record of Good” ever awarded in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. This distinction from Guinness World Records recognizes efforts that create meaningful, positive impact in people’s lives. The designation reflects the purpose behind CN’s work for the past 25 years: improving lives through access to broadband and its related technologies.

About Connected Nation: Marking its 25th anniversary in 2026, Connected Nation is a U.S.-based national nonprofit whose mission is to improve lives by providing innovative solutions that expand access to and increase the adoption and use of broadband (high-speed internet) and its related technologies for all people. Everyone belongs in a Connected Nation. Learn more at connectednation.org

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From Data to Action: Gong Debuts New Revenue AI Innovation at Celebrate ’26

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Featuring customers & partners from Anthropic, AT&T, Cisco, Snowflake and more showcasing real revenue AI outcomes, and keynote speaker and bestselling author Daniel Pink

LAS VEGAS and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Gong today unveiled several major revenue AI announcements at Celebrate ’26, its annual customer conference live from Las Vegas. Gong cofounder and CEO Amit Bendov discussed the next evolution of Revenue AI and announced the launch of several new innovations, including Gong Enrich, Agent Builder, and Deep Mode in Gong Assistant. Gong also announced Gong Activate, the next generation of Revenue AI, that allows teams to deploy the motions that win, retain, and grow accounts, with agents and reps all working from the same blueprint.

Introducing Gong Activate
Enterprises are no longer satisfied with evaluating AI; they want scalable results. While modern AI lowers the barrier to automating tasks, without deep contextual intelligence, it can’t be trusted with much of the nuanced work that drives revenue. That’s the backdrop for Gong Activate, centered on Gong’s vision for a self-improving “revenue loop”.

Gong captures your organization’s unique institutional knowledge within the Gong Revenue Graph. From buyer personas and competitive positioning to your best reps’ deal-closing strategies, it creates an ever-improving model of your business.

Gong Activate will convert this into effective action. Always-on agents continuously evaluate every account, opportunity, and revenue play, building detailed prescriptions for the best path forward. This will allow Gong Activate to orchestrate your most valuable revenue work. It delivers up-to-date, highly relevant guidance to team members and provides the context for specialized agents to work alongside them, automating time-consuming steps in full alignment with the plan.

And measurement creates constant feedback, folding outcomes back into the Revenue Graph so every decision and action sharpens the next. The result is a virtuous revenue loop that will help new reps perform like seasoned veterans, build trust in automated workflows, and consistently shift the performance bell curve.

“Gong pioneered Revenue AI in 2015. Today, we’re taking the next step with the announcement of Gong Activate – centered on Gong’s vision for a self-improving revenue loop,” said Amit Bendov, Gong Co-founder and CEO. “For years, AI told you how to win. Now, AI wins deals for you. That means faster cycles, higher win rates, and reps running proven plays instead of guessing.”

New Product Innovations
In addition to Gong Activate, Gong introduced new offerings and enhancements as part of its latest product release, Mission Callisto, built to help revenue teams move faster and with less friction. Highlights include:

Gong Enrich, a new sales enrichment offering, helps close the data gaps that slow sellers down, automatically filling in missing account and contact details so reps spend less time researching and more time acting. Enrich launch partners include Apollo, Findymail, Firmable, Kernel, LeadIQ, Lusha, RocketReach, Wiza, ZeroBounce, and ZoomInfo.Agent Builder enables teams to create custom agents that automatically run in response to the events and conditions they define, helping automate and scale your most critical, winning workflows. Define the triggers, conditions, steps, and actions, or simply describe the agent you want in natural language. Your workflows run consistently across the business whenever the right event occurs, without relying on someone to remember to start them.Deep Mode, an agent within the Gong Assistant, takes on the investigation behind hard business questions, turning what used to take hours of manual digging into a grounded, comprehensive answer.

To learn more about the latest launch and all innovations in Mission Callisto, read more here.

Showcasing customer outcomes
Live on-stage customers like AT&T Business, Anthropic, Cisco, Experian, Snowflake, Thomson Reuters and others shared how they are driving real outcomes with Revenue AI. Highlights included:

AT&T Business is driving better business outcomes with Gong. One example is via coaching. By utilizing scorecards, call reviews, and manager feedback in Gong they achieved a 54% improvement in rep productivity. Additionally, users of the 12 Gong features they are using outperformed the productivity of non-users every time.Cisco returned to the stage a year into their rollout, now with enough scale to measure real outcomes as they have deployed 18,000 Gong licenses company-wide, gained insights from over 450,000 conversations and got their entire salesforce up and running on Gong Engage. This has led to remarkable productivity, including notable incremental revenue from over 50,000 Engage flows executed. Early-adopting teams are showing roughly 32% larger deal sizes and 26% higher win rates.Experian consolidated a division built from four separate acquisitions around one AI-driven platform – not by starting with a tool, but by identifying three specific decisions to improve: coaching, continuity, and renewal risk.The result was a 25% lift in win rates, proof that AI can’t create your strategy; it can only scale it.

Additional Celebrate ’26 Highlights
Celebrate ’26 will feature a keynote from Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of To Sell Is Human, Drive, When, The Power of Regret, and A Whole New Mind. Pink will discuss the 5 Ways to Navigate What’s Next, and will offer a quick look at the big trends reshaping business. He will also share a set of practical, science-based tips for making progress amid the turbulence. Attendees will come away with a clearer framework for persuasion grounded in how people actually think and decide, rather than in sales tricks.

Learn More
For more information on Celebrate ’26 and to watch replays from the event, visit https://www.gong.io/events/celebrate

About Gong
Gong harnesses the power of AI to transform how revenue teams win. Gong Revenue AI unifies data, insights, and workflows into a single, trusted system that observes, guides, and acts alongside the world’s most successful revenue teams. Powered by the Gong Revenue Graph, specialized agents, and trusted applications, Gong helps more than 5,000 organizations around the world deeply understand their teams and customers, automate critical revenue workflows, and close more deals with less effort. Learn more at gong.io.

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Revenue alai by LateralCare Available on the Microsoft Marketplace

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Microsoft customers worldwide can discover and deploy revenue alai by LateralCare through Microsoft Marketplace, accessing trusted solutions that accelerate innovation and business transformation with unified integration across Microsoft products

DALLAS, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LateralCare announced the availability of revenue alai in the Microsoft Marketplace, the unified online destination for customers to buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet their business needs. Revenue alai customers can now discover and deploy trusted solutions through Microsoft Marketplace, with smooth integration and streamlined management across Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft products.

LateralCare is a healthcare technology company dedicated to responsibly applying Agentic AI to transform complex healthcare operations. Its AI-native solutions combine intelligent automation, explainable decisioning, and human-in-the-loop governance to help organizations improve efficiency, strengthen performance, and navigate operational complexity with greater confidence. Revenue alai, LateralCare’s flagship platform for revenue cycle management, brings these capabilities to financial operations, helping healthcare organizations reduce administrative burden, improve visibility, and drive stronger outcomes. Through Microsoft Marketplace, organizations can more easily discover, deploy, and integrate revenue alai within their existing Microsoft technology environments.

“The availability of revenue alai through Microsoft Marketplace marks an important milestone in our mission to transform healthcare revenue cycle management through responsible AI,” said William Reau, Chief Executive Officer of LateralCare. “Healthcare organizations need solutions that not only automate work, but also provide transparency, accountability, and measurable impact. Through Microsoft Marketplace, customers can more easily deploy revenue alai within their existing technology ecosystem and leverage AI-driven intelligence to improve revenue performance, reduce operational burden, and support better organizational outcomes.”

“We’re pleased to welcome revenue alai by LateralCare to Microsoft Marketplace,” said Cyril Belikoff, vice president, Microsoft Azure Product Marketing. “Marketplace connects trusted solutions from global partners with customers worldwide, making it easy to find and deploy apps that work seamlessly with Microsoft products.”

Microsoft Marketplace is a single destination to find, try, and buy trusted cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business objectives. Choose from a growing collection of solutions tailored to your unique needs, available both in Marketplace and directly within Microsoft products. 

About LateralCare
LateralCare is a healthcare technology company dedicated to responsibly integrating Agentic AI to transform complex healthcare operations. Its AI-native flagship platform, revenue alai, modernizes revenue cycle management by uniting intelligent automation with explainable decisioning and human-in-the-loop governance—helping healthcare organizations improve financial performance while operating with greater clarity, confidence, and control.

For more information, visit www.lateralcare.com or follow revenue alai and LateralCare on LinkedIn for the latest updates.

For more information, press only:

Sunya Chandi, LateralCare, sunya@lateralcare.com

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Study Finds Majority of Advertisers Would Pay a Premium for More Audience Choices and Faster Campaign Delivery

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Although most advertisers are bullish on commerce media spending, 86% say slow audience fulfillment could cause them to cut spending or leave a network partner

NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GrowthLoop, a pioneer in agentic AI-powered marketing solutions, today released its 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, revealing that activation speed and audience options have become decisive factors in where advertisers place retail and commerce media budgets. Conducted in partnership with Ascend2, the study surveyed nearly 300 U.S. and Canadian marketing professionals involved in retail media network (RMN) or commerce media network (CMN) advertising decisions.

The findings reveal what motivates advertisers to spend more with network partners and shed light on how execution friction could put that spend at risk:

86% say slow audience fulfillment could cause them to reduce spend or leave a network partner, while 85% say they would pay a premium for same-day fulfillment.  Nearly all respondents indicate that access to more segments would make them more likely to increase spend.32% of advertisers have reduced, paused, or reconsidered investment because of difficulty proving ROI to leadership.

“Advertisers are telling media networks how to win more budget: Provide better audiences, activate them faster, and deliver meaningful results quickly enough to inform the next campaign,” said Anthony Rotio, co-founder and co-CEO of GrowthLoop. “As we’ve seen with customers like Gopuff, a warehouse-native audience building solution is the way to fulfill these requirements and ultimately build stronger advertiser relationships.”

Key report findings

The Index shows that advertisers spread significant budget across a crowded commerce media market. The majority of advertisers allocate at least 15% of their digital advertising budgets to these networks and 90% work with two or more RMN or CMN partners. No respondents plan to decrease commerce media spend in the next year, and a full 85% plan to increase their spend.

Additional findings include:

Speed shapes spending decisions

92% would be more likely to increase spend with faster audience fulfillment.94% would likely spend more with partners offering self-service audience-building tools.Advertisers reporting the strongest ROI are five times more likely than others to receive custom audiences the same day.

Advertisers want more audience choice

Only 38% are extremely satisfied with the number of audiences available through their partners.95% say they would be more likely to increase spend with access to more segments.

Confidence in incrementality measurement drives investment and ROI

Only 40% are very confident in their partners’ incrementality measurement.Advertisers with high confidence in their partners’ measurement spend a larger share of their digital budget on RMN/CMN and are more than twice as likely to significantly exceed ROI targets.

Campaign results often arrive too late to guide the next decision

Nearly half of advertisers wait at least one week for post-campaign performance data, while only 8% receive it the same day.Just 32% say they can consistently use campaign results to optimize future audience targeting.

Putting audience scale and speed into practice

As audience speed and scale remain top of mind for advertisers, Gopuff — the leading instant commerce platform that delivers thousands of everyday products to customers in minutes — has shown how media networks can successfully address these priorities. Leveraging a composable commerce media solution, Gopuff can provide brand advertisers with a larger pool of audiences, activate campaigns quickly, and provide faster, more comprehensive visibility into campaign metrics.

“Advertisers increasingly expect both greater audience customization and faster activation, and we no longer have to trade one for the other,” said JR Crosby, director of data partnerships at Gopuff. “After implementing a warehouse-native stack, we increased our audience segments from 100 to more than 600, and expanded audiences for our subsidiary, BevMo!, from 75 to 400. These expanded audience catalogs give our internal teams and brand partners a broader range of ready-to-use targeting options and create the groundwork for more customized segment offerings.”

To download the full 2026 Commerce Media Investment Index, visit go.growthloop.com/cmn-index. To learn more about GrowthLoop’s Composable Commerce Media solution, visit https://www.growthloop.com/teams/commerce-media.

About GrowthLoop

GrowthLoop is a pioneer in composable, AI-powered marketing on the data cloud, featured on G2 by its customers as a momentum leader with the best ROI for enterprise. The GrowthLoop agentic, composable CDP drives compound growth by accelerating the marketing cycle using agentic AI powered by your enterprise cloud data. Working alongside AI agents, teams use GrowthLoop to translate customer data into precise audiences and activate those audiences across real-time customer journeys, measuring and improving performance through always-on analysis — all with zero data movement. Thousands of marketers at enterprises like Costco, Albertsons, Fanatics, and Ford rely on GrowthLoop to bring their AI strategy to life, grow faster with every experiment, personalize every customer touchpoint, and drive rapidly compounding results.

Media Contact

press@growthloop.com 

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SOURCE GrowthLoop

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