January, 2022 - CDP Institute - Page 4

Dates : January 2022

Meanwhile, this DataRobot study takes a darker view, reporting that 54% of tech leaders are concerned about AI bias, up from 42% in 2019. A surprising (to me) 81% think government regulation would be helpful even though 45% also worry regulations would make adoption more difficult. In a classic “not my problem” result, 90% are at least somewhat moderately confident that their own organization can identify AI bias.

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Still dark and closer to home for marketers, IBM looked at AI bias in programmatic advertising. Working with industry groups, they’ve released an open source toolkit AI Fairness 360 that can detect it. They concluded potentially harmful bias does exist but were optimistic that technical cures could be found, although ad efficiency might suffer.

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And then there were none: experience analytics vendor Medallia is buying Thunderhead, the last major independent journey orchestration platform. Previous acquisitions in the field have included: Pointillist bought by Genesys in October 2021; Kitewheel acquired by CSG in July 2021; and Usermind acquired by Qualtrics, also in July 2021.

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The trend for supersized martech funding rounds continued today with a $200 million Series E for 6sense, the once-struggling, now-surging account based marketing platform. Total 6sense funding now stands at $426 million. 6sense probably has a CDP buried somewhere inside of it, having acquired ZenIQ back in 2018.

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If you want to put marketing and advertising in a broader context, take a look at Winterberry Group’s 13th annual Advertising, Marketing, and Data industry outlook report. They’re bullish on industry growth in general, reporting a 21.5% increase in 2021, after a 4.8% decline in 2019, and projecting another 11.8% growth in 2022. Fun fact: Winterberry says more is spent on influencer marketing and on audio marketing than on email.

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Location data plays an increasingly important role in marketing analytics, especially as tracking known individuals is constrained by privacy regulations. So it makes sense that Clearlake-backed data quality vendor Precisely has decided to purchase location data leader PlaceIQ. The deal will (literally) add a new dimension to Precisely’s data enhancement and targeting capabilities.

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The term “revenue operations” is having its moment of buzz. It’s how Clari describes itself, although “sales forecasting” might be more clear. In any case, Clari just raised a $225 million Series F, bringing total funding to $496 million and quadrupling the company’s valuation in two years.

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Here’s a trio of surprisingly consistent reports on the dark side of cloud computing. Dynatrace finds that companies are struggling to multi-cloud environments; Nutanix reports pretty much the same thing; and Stacklet says that governance is a “significant inhibitor” to cloud adoption. Of course, all three companies are selling solutions to the problem, but this still suggests that IT departments are finding cloud migrations are not as easy as they once seemed.

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PAPS, a Senegal-based logistics and delivery company, filling the logistics gap in e-commerce in its region has announced that it has raised a $4.5 million pre-Series A round to expand its tech-enabled logistics solution across the Francophone region. The round was co-led by pan-African venture capital firm 4DX Ventures and regional telecom operator Orange. Participating investors include existing funds Uma Ventures and Saviu Ventures and new investors Yamaha Motor, LoftyInc Capital, Proparco, Google Ventures, To.org, Kepple Ventures and Enza Capital.

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Kenyan B2C e-commerce company Copia Global has raised $50 million in a Series C equity round led by Goodwell Investments. The new financing round welcomed new investors such as Zebu Investment Partners, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and Koa Labs, as well as past investors Lightrock, German development finance institution DEG, and Perivoli Innovations.

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Ercess Live, a Bangalore-based event MarTech startup has signed a contract with Big Bazaar to help them market their new home delivery services across the South Indian market. The brand will be leveraging its huge network of influencers in India and a variety of marketing strategies to help Big Bazaar take on the likes of Big Basket, and Jio Mart.

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The initial public offering (IPO) of AGS Transact Technologies opened for subscription on Wednesday. The payment solutions provider has reduced the size of its public issue to ₹ 680 crore from ₹ 800 crore. The IPO consists offer of sale (OFS) of equity shares by the promoter and other selling shareholders. The three-day initial share sale will conclude on January 21.

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