Not the CDP Daily News

The World Health Organization has just declared that video addiction is a real disease but they've missed something even more insidious: the dangers of newsletter publishing. The CDP Institute Web site has been down for two days now (hopefully it will be back up by the time you read this and test that link), which means I haven't been able to publish the Institute's daily newsletter. (Yikes -- was my authorship a secret?)  This turns out to be very stressful for me, especially since I feel obligated to write the newsletter anyway so I'm ready whenever the site reappears. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "news junkie".

But, like the gun in a Chekov play, any copy that's created is begging to be used. So I'll post yesterday and today's items here for your enjoyment and my relief.  If you don't already subscribe and like what you see, visit the Institute site (once it's running) and join.

June 19, 2018

Google Invests $550 Million in Chinese E-Commerce Merchant JD.com
Source: GlobalNewswire
Just in case you had doubts that Google is serious about competing with Amazon in retail, consider this: Google just invested $550 million in Chinese e-commerce merchant JD.com. Google doesn’t do much business in China so this is about expanding in other markets and listing JD.com as a seller in Google Shopping. Google also announced several enhancements last week that help retailers display their inventory on-line and drive traffic to local stores. See this from The Street for more thoughts on the JD.com deal.

Adobe Expands Attribution Features
Source: Adobe
Adobe has expanded its attribution capabilities with Attribution IQ, an enhancement to Adobe Analytics that estimates the impact of campaigns in all channels on purchases. The offering includes ten different attribution models and lets users drill into results by customer segments, campaigns, and keywords.


IBM Computer Competes Effectively with Human Debaters
Source: CNET
I could tell you about Tru Optik’s Cross-Screen Audience Validation (CAV) service,
which draws on Tru Optik’s 75 million household database of smart TV viewers to give advertisers detailed information on audience demographics, reach and frequency by audience segment. But I doubt you care. So instead, ponder this: an IBM computer is now competing effectively with human debaters, showcasing skills like marshalling facts and choosing the most effective arguments. In other words: you’ll soon be able to argue with Alexa and lose.

June 20, 2018

RichRelevance Launches Next-Generation AI-Based Experience Personalization
Personalization vendor RichRelevance has launched its next generation of AI-based personalization tools. Key features include dynamic assembly of individual experiences, real-time performance tracking and continuous optimization. A helpful “Experience Browser” overlays the client’s Web site to display data, rules, and results for each decision in context. Marketers can set business rules to constrain the AI decisions and data scientists can draw on system data to define custom personalization strategies.


Automated Data Management: Immuta Raises $20 Million and Crate.io Raises $11 Million
Compared with AI-based personalization, automated data management gets relatively little attention, at least in martech circles. But its potential for solving the data unification problem is huge. Immuta, which marshals sensitive data for machine learning projects, just raised a $20 million Series B.
And Crate.io, an open source SQL database to manage feeds from machines and IoT devices, raised an $11 million Series A.  Now you know.

Mobile Phone Operators Take Baby Steps to Protect Location Data
I have a slew of other items about AI being used for cool things including seeing around corners, rendering 3D objects from photos, and delivering packages via two-legged robots (creepy!).  But let’s get back to reality with a report that several mobile operators were recently caught selling location data with little control over how it was used. The good news is that Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have shut off access to the two companies that were identified as misusing it. The bad news is, they’re still selling it to pretty much anyone else. Apple also recently changed App Store rules to limit apps publishers' access to people’s iPhone contact lists.  So maybe this is progress.